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Lila was in a great mood because today was the day Molly and Sam were due back from Anchorage. She had high hopes that they’d bring information with them about Allison Casey’s death. Maybe if she knew more, if she understood what had happened, then the dead woman would leave her dreams alone. Pay attention , she’d said.

The poor woman’s murder seemed like a good place to start.

And today, when Molly shared what she’d learned from the FBI, Lila might finally make some progress.

Her sunny mood dimmed when Bear mumbled something about the generator out back and disappeared.

That was good, Lila told herself. She’d been avoiding him for the past few days, too. Why torture herself with getting closer to someone she was inevitably going to say goodbye to?

Everyone in the bar was placing bets on when the first snow would fall. They could all feel it—the snow coming like a freight train somewhere around the mountain. The bets could get insanely detailed as to which hour of which day, how many inches, and even how many inches per hour.

Even the crew from the Community was getting involved. A small group of them filled a table and kept coming to the counter ordering bowls of soup. They often came on “Meatless Monday” since the soup was guaranteed to be vegetarian. The older woman in the poncho lingered at the counter as Lila dished out her bowl. She wore her hair in two braids, and elaborate turquoise beaded earrings dangled from her earlobes. In no way did she look ready for an Alaskan winter.

“How are you liking Firelight Ridge?” Lila asked her.

“I’m thinking of moving on, to be honest with you. It’s too cold for my old bones.” She glanced back at the table. “But I worry about leaving these kids alone. They don’t always make…mmm…good decisions, if you know what I mean. I’m Sequoia, by the way.”

Lila smiled at that. Sequoia gestured toward a small oil painting that hung behind the bar. “Is that Ice Falls?”

“It is. One of our amazing local artists painted it. Paulina Volk. It’s not for sale but she has others.”

“Oh dear no, we try not to participate in the cash economy.”

“I know.” She’d accepted a box of carrots in exchange for the soup today. Bear had given her license to barter with any customer who needed to.

This distance between her and Bear was ridiculous, she thought as Sequoia rejoined the Community table. She needed to fix it.

When there was a lull in the flow of locals swinging through The Fang, she pulled a quad espresso shot into a metal mug and plopped the “back in 5 mins” sign on the counter. At the back door, she grabbed her padded corduroy jacket off the hook. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees overnight, and the dead grass was covered in frost crystals.

She found Bear crouched next to the generator, which sat in a shed off the side of the building. He’d stripped down to his t-shirt, and his powerfully muscled arms were streaked with grease. Some of the stains were actually tattoos, black against his bronze skin.

She sighed. Why did he have to be such a beautiful man? It made things so very much more difficult.

“I brought you a quad shot. Where should I set it?”

He sat back on his heels, on a piece of plywood he’d put on the ground to work on. “You think I need that much caffeine?”

“You’re a big guy.” She tried really hard not to look at his chest while she said that. Didn’t work. She allowed herself one moment to feast her eyes, then lifted them skyward. “When do you think the first snow will come? Everyone’s placing their bets.”

“I’m still feeling it out.”

“Well, everyone is dying to know what you say because apparently you have the best record of anyone in town.”

“That’s because I don’t jump in before I see enough signs to make a valid guess.”

That was so…Bear of him. He didn’t make impulsive moves. He thought things through until he could make the right decision. In other words, the opposite of her. She’d already placed a bet on her favorite number, twenty-three. October twenty-three, at two-thirty in the afternoon, twenty-three inches.

Bear accepted the metal mug and took a swig. “Damn, that’s good. The best yet.”

“I’m honing my skills. Did you know that coffee drinks made up fifteen percent of our take yesterday? That machine was a great investment.”

Bear nodded, although they both knew the truth. He hadn’t bought it as an investment. He’d bought it for her.

“Did Nick mention his and Charlie’s goodbye party? You’re invited.”

“He did.”

“Are you going to come? I hope you do. It’s my first party here, and it wouldn’t be the same without you.”

He gave a noncommittal kind of shrug as he sipped more coffee. Her stomach dropped. She couldn’t blame him. Lately she’d been pushing him away, keeping him at arm’s length.

“Please?” she said softly. “I’d really love it if you’d come.”

He set down his mug, making a metallic thud on the plywood. “Getting mixed signals here, Lila.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I…I freaked myself out a little the other day. That kiss…it was…more than I expected, I guess.”

“More…” He frowned, looking away. “More what?”

“Oh no, not in a bad way! It was more…more amazing.” She swallowed hard. “Does the phrase ‘playing with fire’ mean anything to you? I wasn’t quite sure what to do afterwards.”

When he spoke again, his entire manner had shifted. He seemed lighter, and there was a deep gleam in his eyes. “I see.”

“So can we go back to normal?”

He lifted one eyebrow. “Normal is a moving target out here.”

She laughed. “Wrong choice of words. Can we go back to how things were before I kissed you?”

“We kissed each other, Lila. Can’t take that back. Don’t want to take that back.”

His dark gaze held her in a spell so mesmerizing that she lost track of what they were even talking about.

Her timer went off, making them both jump. “My five minutes is up. I’m sure Pinky’s ready for a refill right about now.”

She practically fled back into the bar. Had they resolved anything? She wasn’t sure, but at least they were talking to each other. And that look in his eyes… oh my.

Sure enough, Pinky was at the bar with his empty tankard. Like many of the regulars, he kept his own mug/glass/drinking horn at the bar. A special shelf was filled with the motley collection of personal receptacles. The drinking horn belonged to a Finnish trapper who wandered the Wrangells and made it to Firelight Ridge a couple times a year, mostly in the winter.

Pinky’s face lit up when Lila reappeared behind the counter and took his mug. “I was just thinking about you.”

“You were?”

“I remembered you were asking about that murder spree from the eighties. I couldn’t recall a whole lot about it. See that man in the corner over there?” He jerked his head behind him. “That’s the one you want to talk to. He was the pilot of the mail plane that day. Buster Conner.”

“Seriously?” She peered into the dim corner where a man wearing a sheepskin-lined hat with ear flaps was chatting with April Steiner. “Was April around then, too?”

“Oh sure. She was prolly busy with the lodge when the murders happened. But she knew the Caseys. They moved into your place right after April moved out.”

That did it. She set the five minutes sign back on the bar.

“Wait! What about my refill?” Pinky complained.

“Help yourself. It’s on the house.”

She grabbed two bottles of their best IPA and hurried over to the table in the corner. Buster and April both glanced up in surprise at her arrival. “Since when does The Fang have waitress service?” asked April in her typically gruff manner, a woman used to holding her own among the rough-edged “sourdoughs,” as the old-timers were called.

“We’re trying all sorts of new innovations. Have you heard about our espresso machine?”

“How could I not? The town’s buzzing.” April gestured toward Buster. “This is Buster. He lives in Fairbanks now, but he’s out here doing some hunting. Buster, Lila.”

“Hi Buster. I’m so glad to meet you. I’m Lila and I have so many questions for you.”

“Oh yeah? An old guy like me?”

Buster had a jowly face and the thousand-yard stare of someone used to scanning the horizon. He seemed friendly enough, so Lila launched right in.

“I’ve been hoping to talk to someone who remembered the shootings that happened here back in the eighties.”

“Nineteen eighty-seven, you mean. December 15, 1987.”

A shiver ran through Lila’s body. Up until now, no one had ever said the exact date when it had happened. Everyone always said “the eighties.” Even that podcast had been uncertain of the dates.

“You were the pilot that day?”

Buster gestured for the beer bottle. She uncapped it and handed it to him. “I was scrambling for my firearm, but he was done by the time I got hold of it. Back in those days, we always carried weapons with us when we flew into the wilderness. Gotta be prepared for a crash. Three people died that day on the airstrip, and two more over the next week while that bastard hid from justice.”

“The killer was Paul Anthony Bowman, right?” According to the podcast, he’d signed a confession and gone to prison, where he had eventually died.

“Yeah, but we didn’t know who it was at first.”

“Really? What happened?”

“We had the whole town out looking for whoever did it. Some folks followed his tracks in the snow. I did overflights of this entire sector looking for smoke or a trail in the snow. Anything. Rough week. Only about forty people lived here at that time. Everyone was on edge that he might kill more folks. Siege mentality took over. It didn’t help that a snowstorm dropped two feet of snow the day after the shooting. No one could land, the roads were closed. The town was cut off.”

Lila could just imagine the fear of being trapped in a snowbound outpost with a killer on the run.

“How did you finally find him? And where?”

“We found him holed up at the abandoned train station, the one they used for copper during mining days. After all that, he surrendered without a fuss. Handed over his firearm. I heard the bullets matched.”

The train station. The same train station where someone had just written a warning in syrup? In shock, Lila listened to Buster’s flow of words, the easy pace of a natural storyteller.

“I was kinda surprised he just gave in like that, but ain’t no one gonna survive on their own in the winter, not even in a train station. He probably saw the writing on the wall.”

Lila wished she had a tape recorder with her, then remembered that she had her phone. “Would you mind if I taped this?” She flashed him her phone. “This is oral history. I’ve been trying to find information about the murders but it’s really hard to come by.”

“Yeah, it’s a funny thing in today’s age. You think everything’s available on the internet. But it’s only there if someone puts it there. There’s a natural churn that happens in a place like this. People get burnt out on the winters, so they drift away. New folks with a spirit of adventure come in. But they don’t know the stories from before. That’s why I always spent my flights learning everything I could.”

“You’re a hero,” Lila said sincerely. She tapped the record button on her voice app. “We need our stories. Even the bloody ones.”

“After the murder spree happened, people didn’t want to talk about it. Kind of a mass trauma situation.”

April pushed back her chair and rose to her feet. “I’m of no use to you, sorry Lila. I was doing my own thing when those murders happened. Building the lodge, mostly. See ya around, Buster.”

With her erect posture, she strode off. Buster leaned forward and whispered, “She was doing a lot more than working on that lodge, according to the rumors I’ve heard.”

Apparently Buster was a bit of a gossip. All the better. But she didn’t want to talk about April, who was still close to Charlie. “Did you know Paul Anthony Bowman?”

“Sure. Not well enough to predict that he’d snap like that. I flew him in when he first moved out here. He’d just gotten divorced. He was still ranting and raving about his ex-wife, but then he also talked about getting her to move out here with him. Seemed pretty confused about that. Maybe that was a red flag. Now, it would be.”

“Did he ever say why he shot those people?”

“Never did. There was no trial. He confessed, pled guilty, then had a heart attack before they even got him into prison. Took his motives to the grave.”

Lila almost said something about the grave not necessarily being the end of things, but stopped herself just in time. “I’ve heard about the three people who died at the airstrip, but who were the other victims?”

“He killed them when he was trying to stay out of sight. Joe Baker, that was one of his victims. Joe was skiing in the woods, checking his trapline, and nearly ran him over. They had a bare-knuckle battle right there in the forest. We found Joe with a knife in his gut.”

Another chill swept through her. A knife. The train station. The name Casey. Could all these things possibly be a coincidence?

“What kind of knife was it?”

Buster gave her an odd look. “I don’t remember that. It was probably a hunting knife. I never heard any different, put it that way.”

Lila quickly moved on before he asked her to explain why she’d asked. “Who was the other victim after Joe Baker?”

“Now that was real sad. There was a girl who was spending the winter here studying marmots. She was a graduate student, real pretty blond girl.” He eyed Lila’s hair. “Like you.”

“My hair is actually white.”

“Yeah? Can’t really see in this light. You’re a little young for white hair, aren’t you?”

It had turned white on her eighteenth birthday, but she didn’t feel the need to explain that to him. “What happened to the graduate student?” A sense of dread gathered in her stomach.

“We found her in the snow a couple miles from those cabins out on Snow River. Died of exposure. We went to her yurt and saw signs that Bowman had been staying there, but he left her out of his confession. Some folks said they were close. Lovers, maybe.”

“Maybe he didn’t kill her.”

Buster shrugged. “Or maybe she tried to break up with him and he killed her for it. Who the hell knows what happened. Poor kid. We found her a few days after Bowman confessed. Gwen was her name. Gwen…I don’t remember. Some Russian name. We all called her Gwennie. Sweet girl.”

The thought of Gwen frozen in the snow took hold of Lila’s imagination and wouldn’t let go. “Was she close to anyone in particular here? Did she have a boyfriend? Friends?”

Buster drank his beer and thought about it that question for a while. “I want to say April Steiner, but that’s not right. There weren’t too many women out here then. Allison Casey, but she can’t help you now. Maybe Paulina Volk, the artist? They were about the same age, came here around the same time. I’m sure they knew each other. You should talk to her.”

Paulina Volk. That was the second time today the artist’s name had come up. Her intuition was screaming that it was no coincidence.