“Shit,” she said, and tried for the other knob.

This time she heard the clicking of an automatic ignition and could have shouted for joy. The burner lighted with what looked to Kate like a positively joyous flame. Without a moment of hesitation, she held her bound hands over the burner, as close as she could get. The rope began to sizzle. She lowered her hands more, careless of the heat on her wrists, and the rope began to melt. She strained with all her muscles, pulling the rope against itself, and it separated suddenly without any warning. Her left hand hit the cot and toppled it to the floor, and her right hand hit the plastic tub and sent it flying across the cabin.

The ropes binding her feet were quickly untied. She rummaged through the items on the counter and the shelves, looking for a weapon. There was a box of silverware, including a few bread knives with serrated edges. She set them aside.

She remembered the water bottles rolling beneath the counter, and dropped down to peer into the narrow space. It was dark and she couldn’t see anything. She reached beneath with one hand, feeling around in the darkness, hoping a big rat wasn’t waiting there to bite her. Were there rats in Alaska? She couldn’t remember ever seeing one.

She shook her head angrily, concentrating. The sleeve was shoved back from her shoulder and it scraped the bottom of the shelf, picking up a splinter. She pulled out the empty water bottle, the full bottle, a church key, three metal beer caps, seven kernels of popcorn, a couple of blue plastic poker chips, a thick rubber band, a steak knife, and a handful of.22 shell casings.

The steak knife was a welcome sight. The shell casings were not.

She didn’t make the mistake of running for it, not yet. She walked back and forth across the cabin, stepping carefully and opening and closing her hands. God, they hurt, like her feet, and her head. She was so tired. She wanted to set the cot back up and take a nap. She was certainly dressed for it.

That brought her back to her senses in a hurry, and she rifled through the cabin’s one closet, formed by hanging a wire across a corner, where she found a pair of women’s slacks cropped above the ankles. They were too tight in the hips and too loose in the waist, but she put them on and fashioned a belt from the polypro and knotted Jim’s T-shirt at her waist. There was nothing in the way of shoes, which was a damned shame.

The cabin had four windows, one in every wall. Each looked out on trees standing in what looked like late-afternoon sun. Five o’clock, maybe. This time of year, maybe six. Kate went to the door and found it locked from the outside. She picked up a chair and sent it through the nearest window. The glass cracked and prismed but didn’t fall.

“Safety glass?” Kate said out loud. “I don’t think so, you son of a bitch.” She took the chair to the little woodstove and used it to knock the chimney down. There was a small poof of soot, no more, someone had been burning Red Devil regularly in the little stove. Little, but heavy, it was made of cast iron. Kate stooped and got both arms around it and lifted, grunting. Later, when the adrenaline rush abated, causing her muscles to feel the strain, she would realize just how angry she had been, because she now raised that stove up off the floor, staggered over to the window, and reared back to send the stove into the window.

This time, the window gave up the ghost and the stove crashed through and fell on the ground outside. The fresh air coming in through that open window was the sweetest odor Kate had ever smelled. She fetched the chair again and used the legs to clear the window frame of glass, and then she was out and on the ground.

One single-lane road that was more of a game trail led up to the front door, which was locked with a padlock. Kate went back inside for a bread knife. The cabin had never been painted and the screws securing the hasp to the doorjamb came out easily with a small application of muscle. She threw the hasp and the padlock deep into the woods, then took a long, luxurious, and much-needed pee in the outhouse out back, which came equipped with toilet paper. Ritzy.

She walked ten minutes down the road before her feet began to feel it. She heard a jet high over head. It seemed to be descending. She didn’t hear any street sounds that might indicate a road. The trees never thinned out enough to give her a view, something to tell her where she was.

She padded back up the road, went to the window of the cabin, and climbed up on the sill. She stood up, reaching for the eave of the roof. She caught it with both hands and gained the roof in a sort of scrabbling kick. It was made of corrugated metal and was warm from the day. She stood up.

There were mountains in front and behind and all around, sharp peaks, some with snow, some without. They looked slightly familiar. Soft in the distance she thought she heard the sound of running water. A creek perhaps.

The setting sun slanted on the mountains with no snow, another jet appeared over the eastern horizon, and Kate knew where she was. The cabin was located in the Chugach Mountains, somewhere between the front and back ranges. Crow Creek Valley, maybe, reasonably accessible if you knew your way around the Anchorage bowl area. The cabin probably sat on a chunk of land subdivided from some old homesteader’s claim.

Her spirits lifted. Kate liked being lost about as much as she liked getting her feet wet. She went back inside the cabin and found a can of cream of tomato soup and a can of evaporated milk. She stirred both into a pan over the working burner of the Coleman stove and had a dinner of soup and saltines spread with peanut butter, chased with another bottle of water.

They wouldn’t come until dark. They were off busily establishing their alibis, but they’d waited until the wee hours to take her, and they’d wait until the wee hours to kill her, too. But they’d come earlier tonight, because she had something Erland wanted, and they would need time to question her before they killed her. Maybe he thought she knew who had really killed William. Maybe he thought she had proof that he’d had Eugene and Charlotte killed. At any rate, no plan of his would include her leaving this place alive.

She remembered again Max’s story of Jasper Bannister and Richie Constantine and Calvin Esterhaus. How like his father was Erland Bannister?

The.22 casings showed that a gun had been fired in this cabin before. She wondered where the bullets from them had lodged, and in whom.

Erland might come armed tonight, too, but maybe not. He had left her pretty well trussed up. He wouldn’t be expecting to find her free. But then he’d locked the door, as if guaranteeing that if she did get loose, she wouldn’t get anywhere. Which she had done. But maybe he’d locked the door to keep stray hikers out. And the windows were high enough that no one smaller than a giant could look in, so he must have thought she was pretty safely shut in for the day.

She remembered the voices she’d heard the first time she’d come around. He probably wouldn’t come alone, he’d need someone to clean up after him, because guys like Erland Bannister never dirtied their hands with the cleanup work. Probably he’d bring the same someone who had kidnapped her, because using the same crew meant fewer witnesses.

All she had to defend herself was a steak knife. She knew she should walk away, right now. That was the smart thing to do. Start walking, right now, start eating up some of the mileage between her and 911.

Where was her cell phone when she needed it? Back in the town house, in her day pack. Oh yeah, some of the smarter money she’d spent this year.

On the other hand, there was no guarantee that anyone would come if she called. There were damn few Alaskans who were going to believe some wild tale about Erland Bannister murdering his nephew and contracting to murder his brother-in-law and his niece over thirty years later. Kate had some street cred, but nobody had enough to put that story over.