"What kind of situation?"
"The kind you need to see in person."
I'm already standing, reaching for my jacket. "Location?"
"Mile marker twelve, where the mining road branches off toward the old Kaiser site. I'll wait here."
The line goes dead.
The drive takes fifteen minutes up roads I know by heart. Every curve, every washout. My grandfather taught me these roads when I was eight years old, let me steer his old Bronco while he worked the pedals. My father reinforced the lessons, added new ones. Third-generation law enforcement keeping watch over Whitewater Junction and the surrounding territory.
And I'm the first one who failed.
Mile marker twelve appears through the windshield. Wells's cruiser sits angled across the road, lights off. He's standing beside it, arms crossed, jaw tight under his department-issue cap. I pull up behind him and kill the engine.
The cold hits immediate and sharp when I step out. November in Alaska doesn't forgive. The sky is low and gray, threatening snow. Wind cuts through the spruce with a sound like grinding metal.
"Show me," I say.
Wells leads me fifty yards up the mining road. The surface is rutted and broken, barely maintained since Kaiser Mining shut down operations five years ago. Trees press close on both sides, dense and dark. Sound gets swallowed here. Light doesn't penetrate far.
He stops at a wide spot where someone pulled off. Tire tracks are fresh, deep treads that suggest a heavy vehicle. Commercial grade, maybe a pickup or SUV. The tracks lead twenty feet into the trees before stopping at a small clearing.
And there, in the center of the clearing, is a camp.
Not recreational. Not tourists who got lost. This is deliberate. Tactical. A fire pit dug and lined with rocks. Scattered food wrappers. Empty water bottles. Cigarette butts ground into the dirt. And on a flat boulder that serves as a makeshift table, a topographical map of the region marked with routes and waypoints.
My chest tightens.
"Found it an hour ago," Wells says quietly. "Was checking the mining roads like you asked. Saw the tracks, followed them in. Haven't touched anything."
I move closer, careful where I step. The map shows our jurisdiction and beyond. Routes marked in red ink snake through the wilderness, connecting points that don't have names on any official map. Some end at the Canadian border. Others loop back toward the coast.
Trafficking routes.
"Get photos," I tell Wells. "Every angle. Then bag everything for evidence."
"You thinking what I'm thinking?"
"That someone's using our territory to move product, yeah." I squat beside the fire pit, touch the ashes. Still warm. Not hot, but warm enough that whoever was here left recently. Within the last few hours. "Question is what."
Wells doesn't answer. Doesn't need to. We both know there's only one thing that requires this level of planning, this remote location, these carefully marked routes.
People.
The wind picks up, and with it comes a sound. Faint. Almost lost in the trees. Muffled crying. Young. Female. Desperate.
My sidearm clears the holster.
"You hear that?" Wells's voice is barely above a whisper.
I nod once. Point northeast, where the sound came from. We move together, weapons drawn, each step deliberate and silent. The muffled cries come again, clearer now. Panicked.
The trees open onto another small clearing. A girl sits with her back against a spruce, hands zip-tied in front of her, duct tape across her mouth. Blonde hair matted with dirt. Face bruised. When she sees us, her whole body jerks.
She can't be more than seventeen.
I holster my weapon and drop to my knees beside her. "Sheriff Blackwater. You're safe now."
