Free Shades of Midnight by Lara Adrián Page A

within the confines of the tiny shelter versus indulging in a bit of sport among the trees and drifts outside.
    Deciding on the latter, he stepped out from the cover of his observation spot and made a low sound in the back of his throat—part warning, part invitation for the now-startled human to run.
    The trapper did not disappoint.
    “Oh, Jesus. What in God’s name—” Fear blanched his bearded face and rendered his jaw slack. He dropped his paltry prize into the snow at his feet, then stumbled into a terrified dash for the woods.
    The hunter’s lips curled off his fangs with anticipation of the chase.
    He let his prey crash away some sporting distance, then he set off after him.

CHAPTER
Six
    Alex packed up her snowmachine and hit the trail with Luna on board in front of her about an hour before daybreak. She was still rattled from the town meeting the night before, and more than a bit curious about the stranger who’d apparently vanished into the bush as oddly as he’d appeared in the back of Harmony’s little log church.
    Who was he? What did he want in tiny, remote Harmony? Where had he come from when the recent snowstorm had left most of the interior cut off from all of the nearest major ports?
    And why had he been the only person in the entire assembly last night who’d listened to her account of the footprint left in the snow out at the Toms place and not made her feel like she had lost her mind?
    Not that any of that mattered today. Mr. Tall, Dark, and Mysterious was long gone from Harmony, and Alex had a sled packed with as many supplies as she could carry—bare necessities for a few of the folks she’d had to neglect when her plane run to the bush was cut short the other day.
    Now she had a scant three hours of daylight and just enough gasoline stowed on board and in the Polaris’s oversize fuel tank to make the hundred-mile round trip.
    She had no good reason to detour toward the Toms settlement about an hour into her drive. None, except the gnawing need for answers. The hope—futile as she feared it to be—that she might find some kind of explanation for the slayings that didn’t involve bloodied footprints in the snow and memories dredged up from the pit of her own private hell.
    As Alex steered the snowmachine onto the drifted-over trail that led to Pop Toms’s place, Luna jumped off to romp in the fresh, glittering powder.
    “Stay with me,” Alex warned the eager wolf dog as she slowed her sled on the approach to the small cluster of dark wood structures.
    Watching Luna’s eagerness to race ahead brought on an unwelcome flashback to that awful moment three mornings ago and to the grisly discovery of young Teddy’s body.
    And, just like that day, Luna tore off now, ignoring Alex’s calls for her to wait.
    “Luna!” Alex shouted into the stillness of the early afternoon. She cut the gas on the snowmachine and leapt off, then huffed and waded as best she could through the deep drifts that had hardly slowed Luna down at all. “Luna!”
    Up ahead several yards, the wolf dog ran up the steps of Pop’s porch and disappeared inside. What the hell? The door was open, even though Zach had made certain everything was closed up tight before the bodies of Pop and his family had been taken away. Had the wind blown the door open?
    Or had it been something more dangerous than an Arctic gale that swept through here in the time since the killings?
    “Luna,” Alex said as she drew closer to the log building, hating the small shake in her voice. Her heart rate started to jackhammer in her chest. She swallowed past her anxiety and tried again. “Luna. Come on out of there, girl.”
    She heard movement inside, then a creak and a loud pop as a floorboard protested the cold and the weight of whoever—or whatever—was inside with her dog.
    More movement, footsteps approaching the open space of the door. Fear crawled up the back of Alex’s neck. She reached around to the handgun holstered under her