CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Kelly Connor sat cross-legged in front of the fire and held her hands over the blaze. The temperature tonight was no colder than it was any other night, which meant it was about as cold as the deep freezer at her most recent ex-boyfriend's workplace. He was a resident in the maternity ward at Alaska Regional Hospital, and like most doctors, he was very fond of showing off how much he knew, including how freezing breast milk to twenty degrees Fahrenheit or below almost eliminated chances of spoiling since bacteria couldn't survive such low temperatures.

She didn't mind his arrogance so much at first, since he also knew a lot about how to please a woman. For the five weeks they'd dated, she had more fun in bed than she'd had with anyone before him.

"And that's how I learned that sex isn't everything," she muttered.

Kevin just wouldn't shut up. Like, at all. Anything she said, he had to give his two cents about. Any decision she made, he had to pick apart.

The last straw came when she shared some of her survival knowledge with him, and he tried to correct her three different times. The one thing she was certain she knew more about than he did, but he had to be right about it.

So, she broke up with him and came out to the wilderness to get over him. Not just him. The only reason she was with Kevin in the first place was to get over Jake. Jake was good in bed too, or well, in sleeping bag. She'd never actually been with him in a bed.

It wasn't that she missed, though. He was kind and strong, and he didn't feel a need to treat her like a little girl. He was the only man she'd dated that she could have seen herself falling in love with.

"Except that he's married, so there's that."

She sighed and stirred the fire. Whatever. She didn't need men. Her friends kept telling her to stop looking to relationships for happiness, and they were right. Hell, she was happier now than she'd been in months. She was doing what she loved, and she was doing it without having to constantly worry what other people thought about her.

Maybe she'd do what Lisa did and start a survivalist group. For women only. No men to get entangled with and no men to act like they were smarter than you. That sounded like—

A noise broke through her musing. That sounded like a branch snapping.

Kelly carefully reached into her pack and pulled out her bear spray. She never carried a gun, even though the "experts" insisted you needed one. Polar bears didn't come this far south, and humans weren't good sources of food for brown bears and black bears, so they would always move on if they got a good whiff of extra strength mace. It worked on wolves, too, although she had yet to encounter a wolf pack.

Another branch snapped, and a soft curse reached her ears.

That sent a chill down her spine. Bears most definitely didn't say, "Shit," under their breaths after stepping on a branch.

She wished desperately that she had a gun with her.

"Who's out there?" she called, trying to sound brave and failing utterly. "I can hear you."

Silence followed, and that was the final straw. A bear wouldn't be silent if a human warned it that she could hear it. Only a man would do that.

It hit her hard just how alone she was. She was so confident that she could handle anything the wilderness threw at her that she'd forgotten the more mundane and arguably more deadly threat a violent man could present to a woman alone.

She got to her feet and grabbed her pack, unhooking the flashlight from its strap before shouldering it. She lit the flashlight and looked through the trees around her. She saw nothing at first, but when she lowered the beam and started to kick dirt over the fire, she thought she caught a flash of movement.

She spun around and aimed at the spot, but she saw nothing there. "You'd better fuck off!" she shouted, hating the terror evident in her voice. "I have a knife!"

Nothing.

Her heart pounding, she quickly put out the fire and started into the forest. She made it three steps before she tripped over a root and fell. As she fell, she felt something whip through her hair. She spun around to see what had touched her and found a crossbow bolt buried in the trunk of the tree. If she hadn't fallen, the bolt would have speared straight through her head.

Her father's voice echoed absurdly in her mind. In one ear and out the other.

She heard another branch snap, and her paralysis broke. She got to her feet and sprinted away, leaping over rocks and ducking under branches. Her flashlight shook and bounced as she ran, and it took all of her strength not to scream for help. All that would do was draw the attention of the man chasing her.

Images flashed in her mind. Her parents in Fairbanks. She hadn't spoken to them in months. Her sister in California who she hadn't talked to in years. Jake and Kevin and all of the other men she'd dated, all brief flings that meant nothing, but all memories. Her life.

Her life was flashing before her eyes.

She ran, tears streaming down her face, and prayed silently that she would make it through this and have a chance at a real life, one that mattered.

She looked up at a towering Sitka Spruce tree a few yards from her. In the beam of the flashlight, she could see the twisted whorl of a large knot the size of a dinner plate growing around chest height. She recognized that tree.

The cabin! She was close to her cabin! Like many survivalists in the area, she had constructed a few lodges to serve as shelter and supply caches in case she ran into trouble and couldn't reach civilization in time.

There was a satellite phone in that cabin and a small portable generator. It would take time to warm the generator and heat the gasoline enough that she could fuel it and use the energy to charge the phone, but there was a crossbow there as well with twelve bolts, and once the generator was on, she could stay inside the cabin and bar the door until she could call for help. If she moved quickly enough, she could be safe before she was caught by whoever was chasing her.

She started south, navigating by memory to the next landmark, a hemlock that had been struck by lightning years ago and now grew branches only on one side. She figured she was a mile away from the cabin. If she could reach it before her stalker did, she would be safe.