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  Fontaine rolled the now subdued Donut onto his side, patting him down for weapons. She steered clear of his blood-soaked shoulder, but he winced wherever she happened to touch him. Sean had done some damage, and it was clear Cutter had broken a bone or two with the iron bar.

  “Did you see that?” She whispered so the thug couldn’t hear.

  Blodgett chuckled, filled with the euphoria of still being alive. “I can’t see shit,” he said, squinting at her, a curtain of blood over his face.

  “I thought this new supervisor was the picture of calm,” she said. “But I’m pretty sure he was about to bury the spike end of that crowbar into this guy’s face.”

  “I told you,” Blodgett said, still keeping his voice low. “The new guy’s got issues. My friends at headquarters say he did some pretty bad shit in Afghanistan.”

  “Saw bad shit or did bad shit?”

  Blodgett got on all fours and used an overturned chair to push himself to his feet.

  “From what I hear, a hell of a lot of both.”

  CHAPTER 3

  TWENTY-NINE WAS MUCH TOO YOUNG FOR CARMEN DELGADO TO contemplate her own death, but gazing out at the cold sea with the frost-covered graves behind her, she could think of little else. The island was beautiful, pristine even, with green mountains, old-growth forests, and more waterfalls per mile than anyplace she’d ever seen. And still, it was impossible to shake the feeling that this place was going to kill her.

  She’d never seen a more cinematic location. Even now three fishing boats chugged out in front of her, braving the slap of a cold morning wind to bring back a haul of kelp for the herring roe fishery. Carmen had heard the old “odds were good, but the goods were odd,” saw in regards to the male to female ratio in Alaska so many times it wasn’t funny. If a girl was into flannel-wearing, hipster guys with well-oiled beards and ear gauges who could make the finest caramel macchiato on the planet but didn’t know one end of a chain saw from the other, that was probably true. But so far as Carmen could see, the fishermen and loggers on this island were some of the toughest, most resilient men on earth—which made what she was doing to them even more difficult to stomach.

  Hugging her knees to her chest, Carmen pulled her head deeper into her fleece, nibbling on the collar as she often did when she was nervous or thinking. To her left, across the breakwater bridge and up past the boat harbor, the quaint little town of Craig lay nestled alongside a place called Shelter Cove. She couldn’t have come up with a better name if the network had sent in a script change.

  There were wolves on the island, and bears too, burly black things that were three times her size. A fisherman at JT Brown’s General Store tried to calm her fears by reminding her that wolves only ate short people—a small comfort to someone a hair over five feet tall. The same well-meaning guy had gone on to explain that she didn’t have to worry about any grizzlies on the island, only the much more timid black bears. As an afterthought, he’d warned her that although black bears were more shy, if one did decide to approach it was because they considered you to be food. Black bears had killed two people in Alaska the year before. But, hey, you got nothin’ to worry about, kid.

  A Tlingit girl waiting in line at that same general store of horrors began to talk about Native legends of fearsome frogs and shape-shifters who abducted women and forced them into mixed marriages with fanged otter-men.

  Carmen had felt out of place from the moment she’d stepped off the ferry on her first scouting trip months before. She was a city girl, born and raised in East LA. Two of her cousins had been killed in shoot-outs with rival gang members and a third was turning tricks on Atlantic Avenue. Nothing should have fazed her, not wolves or bears or creepy otter dudes. But they did. And what was worse, she had no one to blame for being here but herself.

  She’d spent the first seven years after graduating from UCLA film school clawing her way through menial crew jobs on several reality television productions, all the while filling stacks of spiral notebooks with her own ideas. None of them clicked. And then she’d watched a show on Nat Geo about life in the far North. It was an absolutely terrific program, chock-o-block full of interesting characters who not only lived but thrived in the harsh and unforgiving environment. The concept was as incredible as the location and she began to watch everything she could get her hands on about Alaska.

  Carmen’s brother was an LAPD cop and she spent many evenings talking with her sister-in-law about the close friendships developed by cop-spouses. One night while her brother was at work, she and her sister-in-law binged on pizza and watched a decades-old documentary about fishing in southeast Alaska. The kernel of an idea began to sprout in her mind. She worked through the night, filling up an entire notebook with a draft proposal for a smart new show—one that would inform and entertain. The production company she worked for funded a three-week trip to Craig to shoot a sizzle reel.

  She returned to LA fairly giddy with the prospects. Two weeks later, she was ready to pitch.

  A network picked up the show right off the bat, but, as par, had their own ideas. They read her treatment, watched her sizzle reel, and showered her with compliments on the fresh approach—then proceeded to change everything. Oh, they named her the executive producer and, in typical network fashion, said she was the one in charge. But she knew how it worked. Unless your title was “signer of the checks,” you weren’t in charge of anything. In the span of one three-hour meeting with network execs, her baby became unrecognizable.

  Now, she and the production crew of her gross monstrosity had descended on this picturesque little village in the middle of nowhere—and she feared the experience would change the place forever. There was something here that was likely to kill her all right, more deadly than any wolf or bear or otter-man, and it wasn’t indigenous to the island. No, whatever it was, this had come with her.

  CHAPTER 4

  DEPUTY BLODGETT NEEDED TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL, SO CUTTER drove him. Fontaine and Special Agent Simms followed in her car with Donut Woodfield, who required an Emergency Room visit as well to get his various wounds treated before the jail would accept him.

  Blodgett completed his form CA-1 at the hospital, noting his on-the-job injuries in case they caused problems for him in the future. There was no real rush but it would give him something to do while he waited. Cutter assured him he was good to go, despite what looked like a fractured orbital around his eye and a dislocated index finger that was probably broken. He was sure to feel much different once the adrenaline wore off.

  Donut Woodfield turned out to have a broken collarbone, three cracked ribs, and a dislocated jaw. The wounds in his shoulder and hand required fifteen stitches combined. None of it was quite enough to keep him out of jail once he was treated. Cutter was pleased when it became clear that Woodfield was hurt worse than his deputy, but he kept that to himself.

  Special Agent Simms agreed to transport Blodgett home so Cutter could ride with Fontaine to the jail with the prisoner. He considered himself a “you catch ’em, you clean ’em” supervisor, and if he was in it for the fun of the arrest, he was also in it for the jail-run and ensuing paperwork.

  The book-in took forever, with the jail nurse looking over her granny glasses at Woodfield, then the deputies, then the hospital paperwork, and then back to the deputies again. Lola Fontaine bounced with tension by the time she retrieved her handgun from the lockbox in the vehicle sally port and got back into Cutter’s Ford. It was the first time they’d been out of earshot of the prisoner.

  The deputy snapped on her seat belt and turned to look him in the eye. Her broad, Polynesian face was passive, the kind of mysteriously all-knowing look that used to terrify Cutter when he saw it on his mother. “Is there anything you want to tell me, boss?”

  “Nope,” he said.

  “You sure about that?” she asked. “Because I’m here to tell you, I think you’re busting at the seams to talk to me.”

  “You would be mistaken,” Cutter said, putting the car in g
ear.

  “I only asked because things got pretty intense back there.”

  “Let me ask you something, Lola,” Cutter said. “If you had seen Woodfield holding a bat over me, would you have shot him?”

  Fontaine shrugged. “Many times, boss.”

  “Well, there you go,” Cutter said. “Deadly force is deadly force. Shoot someone with a Glock or brain ’em with a metal bar—they’re the same amount of dead.”

  “Roger that,” Fontaine said, still sounding unconvinced. She stared straight ahead, tapping the infernal pencil on her folder. At length she shrugged, then sat back with a resigned sigh. “I could use a workout.”

  The Anchorage jail’s sally port was long and narrow and Cutter had to drive forward three car lengths in order for the officers in the control center to notice him.

  “I was under the impression you worked out early this morning,” he said. “Shoulder day . . .”

  “So?” Fontaine said, as if that was a supremely ignorant question. “My grandfather was a Cook Island Mauri and my grandmother was a robust girl from Nebraska who took up surfing to get off the farm. All my aunties on my father’s side are big women—beautiful and strong, but a little too brawny to run very far, if you know what I mean. My mum’s this skinny little thing of Japanese ancestry, but I take after my dad and his family. So, I work out . . . a lot.” She turned to stare out her side window, looking away from Cutter, and changed the subject. “You ever think about trying out for SOG?”

  SOG was the Special Operations Group, the US Marshals Service’s answer to SWAT or the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team.

  “I have not,” Cutter said. “I’m a little long in the tooth to have a cadre of younger deputies scream at me for that entire month of SOG Selection.”

  “Hmmm.” Fontaine settled deeper into her seat. Her constant workouts and apparently clear conscience gave her the uncanny ability to drift off to sleep at a moment’s notice. She leaned back and closed her eyes. “Because I’ve been thinking about putting in for SOG. . . .”

  * * *

  It was nearly one in the afternoon by the time Cutter swiped his proximity card and drove into the underground garage of the James M. Fitzgerald US Courthouse and Federal Building in downtown Anchorage. He took the time to back his little Ford into his assigned spot near the prisoner garage—a habit that allowed for a quick egress. His hands were full of paperwork and the black ballistic nylon “war bag” where he kept his vest and other tactical gear when he wasn’t actually wearing it. Lola was also laden down with gear from the raid. Thankfully, the court security officers in the control room noticed their approach on the garage cameras and buzzed open the door without either of them having to put anything down. The prisoner elevator was waiting with doors open by the time he and Lola made it through the steel door from the garage and into the mantrap. It took them up a level to the outer corridors of the cell block and the back hallway of the US Marshals offices.

  A uniformed court security officer, or CSO, waited behind a window of bulletproof glass as they came off the elevator. Computers and CCTV camera monitors filled the dark room behind him. Cutter was still learning all the CSOs’ names, but he remembered this one as Bill. Like most of the CSOs, Bill was retired law enforcement—in this case, a former Alaska state trooper. He wore a white shirt with a red and blue striped clip-on tie. His work in the control room allowed him to leave the navy blue blazer draped over the back of his chair.

  On the other side of the glass, Bill’s lips moved in time with the sounds crackling out of the intercom speaker on the wall. He looked directly at Lola Fontaine.

  “Your husband’s waiting for you out front by the admin desks,” he said. The disgusted eye roll was impossible to miss.

  As powerful as she was, Fontaine’s entire body drooped at the news. She’d been riding a high from the successful arrest, but this seemed to take all the sauce out of her. She took a deep breath, as if to steel herself for what lay ahead.

  “Thanks, Bill.”

  Cutter hadn’t met the man, but even in his few weeks in the district, he’d learned it was common knowledge around the squad room that Larry Fontaine was a highly jealous man. According to the chief, the guy had convinced himself Lola was cheating on him while on a judicial protection assignment in Los Angeles and flew out to try and catch her in the act. Instead, he found her doing dumbbell lunges in the hotel gym. For some inexplicable reason, Lola stuck with the guy. Cutter couldn’t help wonder how long that was going to last. There was no doubt she could have gotten someone with a few less hang-ups. Then again, Cutter didn’t have room to talk. He’d been involved in his share of toxic relationships.

  His hands still full, Cutter shuddered at those memories and pushed open yet another heavy steel door with the toe of his boot. Escape-proof concrete block walls gave way to painted Sheetrock—which was reinforced with metal grating—as they made their way down the final stretch of the secure hallway. Cutter’s office was located with the rest of the Fugitive Task Force, on the other side of the federal building, away from the operational squad room and the USMS brass. Cutter had found this layout extremely appetizing when considering the move to the district. Never much of a garrison soldier, he was happiest when working as far from the flagpole as humanly possible. Normally he would have gone straight to his office, but the chief had summoned him with a text, asking him to stop by and fill her in about the raid once they finished at the jail.

  Fontaine walked past, rounding the corner at the end of the hall by the administrative staff as Cutter stepped into the chief’s office. He paused at the door. Jill Phillips sat pecking away at her computer, her extremely pregnant belly engaged in an ongoing fight with the lap tray that held her keyboard.

  Hailing from Kentucky, Phillips had one of the best reputations of anyone—boss or otherwise—in the United States Marshals Service. She’d cut her teeth in the Judicial Security Division, running protective details for threatened members of the federal judiciary—including Supreme Court justices. Alaska was her first foray into the broader duties of management in a regular district office. She’d been off for medical reasons for much of the time he’d been in district, but from what Cutter had seen, she was a natural, generally doing what a good boss should do—staying out of the way.

  Phillips pushed her chair back from her desk and rested both hands on the swell of her seven-months pregnant belly. Her brunette hair was cut short in a no-fuss professional bob that suited her slightly round and heavily freckled face.

  “What’s the news on Blodgett?”

  “He’ll mend.” Cutter nodded. “Donut Woodfield fractured his eye socket and broke his index finger. His hands look like he beat them with a hammer, and he’ll be on light duty for a while. But, the bandit has it worse though.”

  “Glad to hear that,” Phillips said. Hands still on her belly, she studied Cutter. “What’s buggin’ you, Big Iron?” Her eyes fell to the Colt Python on his hip. Every word was dipped in a honeyed Kentucky accent. “We’ve not really had a chance to talk much since you got here. Remind me why I let you carry that super cool revolver when policy says I have to carry a Glock?”

  Cutter turned sideways and displayed the small Glock 27 in a holster over his right kidney. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, Chief. My policy gun . . . I mean my duty gun is right here. The Colt Python is my backup.”

  “Still . . .”

  “The Colt was my grandfather’s,” Cutter said. “He was with Florida Marine Patrol during my formative years—got me interested in law enforcement.”

  “Fair enough,” Phillips said. “Can’t really argue with a tactical grandpa. But do me a favor and make sure you always have the Glock on you somewhere.” She waved at the two weathered lavender paisley side chairs and pulled out what was obviously his personnel file, flipping it open.

  “Roger that.” Cutter sat down, looking around the office. It was decorated with paintings of eventing horses and trophies from shooting contests she’
d won. Photos of Phillips with Supreme Court justices and various law enforcement souvenirs also adorned the walls and covered an office-length credenza. Some believed the lavender chairs were the only feminine things in the office—but they were sorely mistaken. To Jill Phillips, doing anything “like a girl” meant doing it better than everyone else.

  Cutter sighed, eyeing the file on her desk. “I guess we should discuss the elephant in the room.”

  Phillips took a long breath. “All right,” she said. “You know, talking about my enormous belly that way is wildly inappropriate.”

  Cutter raised a hand, mouth open, starting to stammer. It would have had less of an effect if she’d thrown a brick at him. “I . . .”

  “You know I’m joking,” Phillips scoffed. “Seriously, though, what’s up with you? I hardly know you, but I know flummoxed when I see it.”

  “I’m fine,” Cutter said, dropping his voice. “I was just listening to Fontaine’s husband down the hall.”

  The chief leaned forward, trying to listen.

  “What’s he saying?”

  “He’s quizzing her about my four failed marriages. How does that stuff get around the district so fast?”

  The chief’s desk chair squeaked as she arched her back, tapping a pen on the edge of her walnut desk. “Telephone, telegraph, and tell-a-deputy,” she said, still eyeing him. “And anyhow, the way I understand it, one of your marriages didn’t end in failure.”

  “Depends on your point of view,” Cutter said, wanting desperately to change the subject. “One divorce and you can blame the ex. Three and the guy I see in the mirror is the only common denominator.”

  “Well,” Phillips said. “Maybe you are just a jerk. Time will tell.”

  Cutter held up his hand again, craning his head toward the hallway listening to Lola Fontaine’s hushed voice and her husband—who was not nearly so muted. A smile spread across his face.