1
Harley Tatumjust didn’t give up that easily.
Besides, she hadn’t been captain of the Copper Mountain track team for nothin’.
Most of all, she wasn’t going to let some purse-stealer wreck her morning.
“Stop, Travis!”
The brutal late-March wind growled down from the shadowed peaks of the jagged Alaskan range, swept into her ears, and cut into her lungs as her feet slapped the boardwalk along the half-frozen Copper River.
Not exactly how she’d wanted to start her first morning back in her hometown, the town that had taken everything from her ... okay, not the town, really. She couldn’t blame all of Copper Mountain for the betrayals of one man.
One family.
But the last thing she needed was a reminder of the old nickname...Here’sTrouble.
HT for short. And sure, some might think it just stood for her initials, but she knew the truth every time it came out of Jericho Bowie’s arrogant mouth.
So that was nice.
And apt apparently, as she raced down the shoreline.
The sun hung just above the horizon, over the Copper Mountain Range, splashing down puddles of molten gold upon the snowy shore. Below the boardwalk, the river frothed, angry and dark, fighting the grip of ice. The scent of applewood from the Midnight Sun Saloon and Grill suggested Vic was already up, throwing ribs in the smoker.
Clearly life hadn’t changed much in the past five years—smoke haunting the air, snowdrifts marshaling like troops along the roads, the haze of a blizzard on the horizon, and Harley Tatum, daughter of old Sheriff Tatum, running after danger.
If only Jericho could see her now—he’d be shaking his head.
Whatever.
“C’mon, Travis! It’s too early for this!” she yelled.
The fugitive picked his way along the snowy boardwalk, half running, half tripping. He was a skinny whip of a man—probably why he’d used his fists against women. Small-minded, tried too hard to prove himself.
She wasn’t stupid. She came armed, and not just with training. Her nonlethal kinetic pistol could take down a man—if that’s what she was calling Travis—from fifty feet away.
She just needed a decent shot.
“Where do you think you’re going? There’s nothing between here and Anchorage!”
She was wasting her breath, probably, but she had staying power.
Besides, T-Bone was worth fifty grand. So yeah, it was worth leaving her cinnamon roll and coffee behind.
She had been having a nice, peaceful breakfast, thank you, with her old friend Echo, just ten minutes ago...
“I’mnot staying. I’m just here to track down afugitive.”
Words she’d said to Echo even as she tore into one of Mrs.Mulligan’s cinnamon rolls, fortifying herself with delicious black coffee from the Last Frontier Bakery. Just the scent of the cinnamon and coffee and the sound of the local chatter rolled her back seven, maybe ten, years into a past that...
That she was better off forgetting.
Low clouds skated across the valley and hovered over the Copper River, obscuring the hulking Alaskan mountains, the outline of ragged Denali just a faint sketch to the north. Fresh snow wisped in the air, the temperatures hovering, waiting to plummet.
In the back of her mind, it meant they were also running out of time.
“When did you get in?” Across from her, Echo Kingston had wrestled her eighteen-month-old away from her own gooey roll. “Chase, no, buddy—let Auntie Harley eat her sugar bomb in peace.” Echo plopped a sippy cup in front of the boy, and he latched onto it, his big brown eyes watching her.