Free Restless in the Grave by Dana Stabenow

Islands, which memory still made her feel like a popsicle. Alaska was a big place. Having Mutt along might stretch the bounds of an undercover identity, but the plan was to get in, get the job done, and get out again before anyone remembered a certain speech at the AFN Convention some years back.
    Besides, Mutt had made her objections to being left behind vigorously, vehemently, and vociferously known, and Kate hadn’t been willing to go through another scene like the one at Canyon Hot Springs last October, when Mutt had come this close to quitting the firm. The last two years had tested their partnership enough for one lifetime.
    By prior arrangement, she had flown PenAir to Togiak and spent the night. When Wy arrived on her mail run, Kate bought a seat to Newenham. Her cover story was a girl and her dog on the run from village life. It wouldn’t hold up for long, she didn’t look much like a Yupik—legs too long and not enough chest—but she wasn’t worried. So many people saw Alaska Natives as interchangeable.
    And after all, she had her orders from Jim. Just try to wrap it up in a week. She smiled to herself.
    The glitter of sun on snow was painful to the eye. It was a relief when they stepped into the shadow of the second building. As they reached the office door, it crashed open and bounced off the wall. Both of them jumped back out of the way just in time, as a well-nourished twenty-something clad in tight jeans and an even tighter T-shirt with the Eagle Air eagle’s wings lovingly cupping her breasts came trotting out of the office. She was not wearing a bra and her shoes had four-inch heels. The shoes were a bright yellow to match the eyes, beak, and talons of the Eagle Air eagle, so Kate had to assume they were part of the uniform.
    Four-inch heels? In January? She’d kill herself first.
    “Hey, Wy,” this vision said on the fly. “Got a flight coming in, the mailbag’s on the desk.”
    “Sure, Tasha.” The pilot vanished inside.
    Tasha opened a door into the hangar and wheeled out a short airstairs. By then Kate could hear the approach of an airplane, a jet by the sound of it. She squinted against the sun and found it on approach off the end of one-zero. As she watched, the gear descended out of the fuselage and the aircraft touched down light as a feather, using the friction of tires on pavement and all eight thousand feet of runway length to chew up speed. By the time it reached the apron in front of the hangar, it was moving at a pace decorous enough to satisfy the most aviophobic passenger, as well as the most persnickety FAA checkrider.
    It was another private jet, to her untrained eye the twin of the one she’d seen parked on the Niniltna airstrip when she and Campbell had flown out Saturday morning. Austere in anonymous white paint, no logo and no tail numbers. Even the hushed sound of the engines seemed reticent and circumspect.
    “That’s the 550,” Chouinard said, reappearing at Kate’s side. “New York to Tokyo in fourteen and a half hours.”
    “Gulfstream?” Kate said, which was the only possible remark she could have made that might sound reasonably intelligent. She’d learned it only three days before.
    Chouinard nodded. “I’d heard about this one, but I’ve always just missed seeing it.”
    “You know the owner?”
    “Fifty-one thousand feet cruising altitude,” Chouinard said, eyes fixed on the jet. “No commercial traffic to worry about, or weather either, for that matter. Mach point-eight, with four crew and eight SOBs. Rolls-Royce engines, fifteen thousand pounds of thrust each. And they’ve got an integrated avionics suite—PlaneView, they call it—LCD displays, EVS—”
    “You realize you might as well be speaking tongues,” Kate said.
    “Oh.” Chouinard laughed and said a little sheepishly, “Sorry. Got carried away there for a minute.”
    The engines wound down and stopped, and the hatch popped open. A bunch of guys trooped out. They looked like guys,