Maybe I can get her to admit it in my company, if she’d ever agree to be alone with me some time. That smile… I think it says she would show me a little of her vulnerability, if I could work up the nerve to ask for it.

My brother, having to work up the nerve to talk to a woman? When had that ever been the case? He was always so confident. Charming, funny, warm. He drew people like a sunflower attracts butterflies. And why had he never mentioned his attraction to Skyla to me?

Mani’s reticence stung, but I trusted he would have told me, if he’d had more time. To my knowledge he had never reacted to a woman this way. Skyla had sparked something in my brother, and maybe he had needed time to deal with it before admitting it to me.

Skyla was a puzzle piece I had never considered before—one I hadn’t known I needed to consider. And if she was a piece I never knew about, did that mean there were others? Probably. And that only made things more complicated. Where did I even start?

Skyla. Begin with her. She was the only tangible lead I had at this point, and I intended to follow it.

Chapter Five

Thorin Adventure Outfitters, the sporting goods store, operated in a refurbished, waterfront shop on the boardwalk in downtown Siqiniq. The store’s front porch gazed over the glacier-green waters of Resurrection Bay. Behind the store to the west, Mount Marathon, a bald and jagged peak, watched over the town like a devoted sentinel. Several cruise lines ported in the bay in the warmer seasons, and the Iditarod Trail enticed year-round visitors. Both attractions brought the village a bustling tourist industry, and Thorin’s store was the ideal business to thrive in that environment. Mani hadn’t gotten rich working there, but he never hurt for money, either.

Thorin’s employees took turns manning the sporting goods shop when they weren’t booked on a tour or excursion. Val offered to take me out to dinner if I promised to keep him company for the last few hours of his shift. I accepted Val’s offer on the condition he let me bring my laptop and hide behind the counter.

“What’s so interesting that you have to bury your nose in that computer instead of paying attention to me?” Val crouched over a box of newly arrived North Face fleece jackets. I eyed a fuzzy pink one, but my budget would never survive those kinds of purchases.

“I got a copy of Mani’s police file yesterday,” I said.

Val paused, hugging a bundle of jackets like a giant, plush animal he’d won at a carnival. “You did?”

“Sure, why not?”

“You sure you want to look at that stuff?”

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

Val furrowed his brow and started hanging the jackets on a circular rack near the register. “Because we’re worried about you.”

“I get that. Believe me. But nothing so far has been worse than my imagination… or my nightmares.”

“I didn’t know you were having nightmares.”

“I’ve always had very weird, vivid dreams. Lately they’re all about Mani’s murder. It was like I was there while it was happening.”

Val sniffed. “Don’t you worry digging around in all that police business will make things worse?”

“It couldn’t get any worse.”

Val gave me a dark look. “Never say never.”

I spent the afternoon looking through Mani’s computer files and finding way too many bootleg movies. Based on the number of video files on his hard drive, my brother must have been the pirate king of illegal downloads, and he harbored a fanboy devotion to superhero flicks. His image files mostly contained photos of friends, clients, and Alaskan scenery. One stood out to me because it illustrated the epitome of Mani at his best: happy, adventurous, thriving. In the picture, Mani reclined in the passenger seat of a dog sled, and he grinned wide enough to split his face in half. Behind him, someone in goggles and a parka stood on the sled rails. A pack of huskies strained at the leads, obviously eager to run.

I closed out Mani’s pictures and opened another folder containing the content of his email account. Mani’s email history was routine and boring, and the largest percent had come from me. Reading through them was like reading through a time capsule. I scrolled through the messages and scanned the ones he’d sent in the weeks before his death. He talked about his job, his friends, the usual.

One e-mail in particular caught my attention. My brother always had a mission of some kind: a broken car that needed fixing up, a new person in town in need of a friend, and in this case, a dog that needed some attention.

To: solinasweets@mundybaking.com

From: mani.mundy@thorinadventures.com

Cc:

Subject: How much is that doggie in the—parking lot?

You remember when we had that goldfish when we were kids because Mom and Dad said we were too busy to have a dog or a cat? If I ever have kids I’ll never tell them I’m too busy. They can have the whole damned pet store if they want.

Why am I bringing this up, you ask?

Well, this past week I’ve noticed this dog hanging around the trees at the edge of the apartment complex. He reminds me a lot of a wolf, gray and black. I don’t think he’s a full wolf because he’s always alone and seems comfortable with civilization, although he’s really skittish. Maybe he’s a mix of some kind. Whatever he is, he’s huge. I know it’s a bad idea to mess with unfamiliar dogs, but I’m worried he might be sick or something.

I can hear you telling me to call animal control, but I hate to see him wind up in the pound, or euthanized. I thought I’d leave some food out for him. See how he responds to that. I’m not trying to make him the next White Fang or anything, but I don’t want to see him suffer if I can do something about it.

I’ll try to catch him on my camera phone and text you a pic.

Mani never sent me that picture, and I forgot about his canine charity case until I re-read the e-mail. What were the chances that a wolfish dog had haunted his apartment complex in the days before his death? From my current perspective, the mysterious dog and Mani’s death had to be more than coincidence. But how did that fit in with my dream of a prophetic wolf tearing my brother apart? Maybe my subconscious had gathered things from several sources that had no business going together. But that would be too easy, wouldn’t it?

Reading through so many documents had left my eyes dry and gritty, and I wanted to splash a little cold water on my face. I leaned back, rubbed my eyes, and stretched until my back popped. “Where’s the bathroom?” I asked Val.

Val looked up from a box full of ski bibs and motioned in the general direction I needed to go. “Use the one in the back of the storage room.”

I hopped from my stool and headed through a set of swinging doors into a storeroom littered with boxes. Merchandise spilled off the shelves. I lurched over and around the disorder, an inventory obstacle course, until I reached the bathroom in the back corner. On my return trip, I kicked over a box of D-rings and spilled them across the floor. I cursed and knelt to gather them up.

At my family’s bakery, we kept our storerooms and kitchen immaculate. Our sanitation grade depended on our efforts. The Thorin Adventure Outfitters’ stockroom defiled every one of my sensibilities about storage and orderliness. I peeked through the swinging doors; a couple of customers interested in climbing harnesses had occupied Val’s attention. I glanced over at the counter where my computer waited and blanched at the thought of reading more documents. My brain felt overloaded and ready to blow. I needed to process, and organizing the stockroom would keep my hands busy while my brain digested the glut of information I had stuffed in it.

In one hour, I made more progress organizing the store’s inventory than I had made in getting rid of Mani’s things over the past couple of days. Making decisions about water bottles and dehydrated meals presented far less trouble than decisions about my brother’s collection of British punk rock vinyl. I lost myself in the work and didn’t notice anyone had come into the room until he spoke.

“Miss Mundy, I’d ask what you thought you were doing, but I think it’s apparent.”

I sprang up from where I knelt among a pile of mismatched thermal underwear and spun around to find Aleksander Thorin smirking at me. “I’m organizing,” I said.

“Obviously.” Thorin’s eyes skimmed over the shelves and growing floor space, and then he looked at me. “Did Val put you up to this?”

I blew several loose hairs out of my eyes. “Hardly. I came back here to use the bathroom and almost killed myself trying to get past this stuff. I hope you don’t mind.”

Thorin shook his head. “I’ve been trying to get the staff to do this for months.”

“I thought you were the big bad Boss Man.” Thorin’s presence roused my defense mechanisms, and sarcasm was one of my standard shields. “Don’t they bow at your feet?”

He ignored my derision and stepped further into the room. “Why are you here, exactly?”

I shrugged. “Val asked me to keep him company, and I was happy to get away from Mani’s place for a while.”

“Are you looking for a job, Miss Mundy?”

His non sequitur knocked me off guard. “What?”