ISBN: 9781335080820
Publication Date: December 29, 2020
Publisher: HQN Books
WRONG JOB
Eighteen-year-old Evelyn Jones lands a job in small-town Alaska, working for a man in his isolated mountain home. But her bright hopes for the future are shattered when Donald White disappears, leaving her to face charges of theft, embezzlement—and a brutal double murder. Her protestations of innocence count for nothing. Convicted, she faces life in prison…until fate sends her on the run.
WRONG NAME
Evie's escape leaves her scarred and in hiding, isolated from her family, working under an alias at a wilderness camp. Bent on justice, intent on recovering her life, she searches for the killer who slaughters without remorse.
WRONG ALIBI
At last, the day comes. Donald White has returned. Evie emerges from hiding; the fugitive becomes the hunter. But in her mind, she hears the whisper of other forces at work. Now Evelyn must untangle the threads of evidence before she’s once again found with blood on her hands: the blood of her own family.
Chapter 1
ALASKA
Midnight Sun Fishing Camp
Katchabiggie Lodge
Eight years ago
JANUARY.
Five and a half hours a day when the sun rose above the
horizon.
Storm clouds so thick, daylight never penetrated, and night
reigned eternal.
Thirty below zero Fahrenheit.
The hurricane-force wind wrapped frigid temperatures around
the lodge, driving through the log cabin construction and the steel roof,
ignoring the insulation, creeping inch by inch into the Great Room where
twenty-year-old Petie huddled on a love seat, dressed in a former guest’s
flannel pajamas and bundled in a Pendleton Northern Lights wool blanket. A wind
like this pushed snow through the roof vents, and she knew as soon as the storm
stopped, she’d be up in the attic shoveling it out.
Or not. Maybe first the ceiling would fall in on top
of her.
Who would know? Who would care?
The storm of the century, online news called it, before the
internet disappeared in a blast that blew out the cable like a candle.
For a second long, dark winter, she was the only living
being tending the Midnight Sun cabins and the lodge, making sure the dark,
relentless Alaska winter didn’t do too much damage and in the spring the camp
could open to enthusiastic fishermen, corporate team builders and rugged
individualists.
Alone for eight months of the year. No Christmas. No New
Year’s. No Valentine’s Day. No any day, nothing interesting, just dark dark
dark isolation and fear that she would die out here.
With the internet gone, she waited for the next
inevitable event.
The lights went out.
On each of the four walls, a small, battery-charged
nightlight came on to battle feebly against the darkness. Outside, the storm
roared. Inside, cold swallowed the heat with greedy appetite.
Petie sat and stared into a dark so black it hurt her
eyes. And remembered…
There, against the far back wall of the basement,
in the darkest corner, white plastic covered…something. Slowly, Petie
approached, driven by a terrible fear. She stopped about three feet away,
leaned forward and reached out, far out, to grasp the corner of the plastic,
pull it back, and see—
With a gasp, Petie leaped to her feet.
No. Just no. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—replay those memories
again.
She tossed the blanket onto the floor and groped for the
flashlights on the table beside her: the big metal one with a hefty weight and
the smaller plastic headlamp she could strap to her forehead. She clicked on
the big one and shone it around the lodge, reassuring herself no one and
nothing was here. No ghosts, no zombies, no cruel people making ruthless
judgments about the gullible young woman she had been.
Armed with both lights, she moved purposefully out of the
Great Room, through the massive kitchen and toward the utility room.
The door between the kitchen and the utility room was
insulated, the first barrier between the lodge and the bitter, rattling winds. She
opened that door, took a breath of the even chillier air, stepped into the
utility room and shut herself in. There she donned socks, boots, ski pants, an
insulated shirt, a cold-weather blanket cut with arm holes, a knit hat and an
ancient, full-length, seal-skin, Aleut-made coat with a hood. She checked the
outside temperature.
Colder now—forty below and with the wind howling, the wind
chill would be sixty below, seventy below…who knew? Who cared? Exposed skin
froze in extreme cold and add the wind chill… She wrapped a scarf around her
face and the back of her neck. Then unwrapped it to secure the headlamp low on
her forehead. Then wrapped herself up again, trying to cover as much skin as
she could before she faced the punishing weather.
She pointed her big flashlight at the generator checklist
posted on the wall and read:
Hawley’s reasons why the generator will fail to
start. The generator is new and well-tested, so the problem is:
- LOOSE
BATTERY CABLE
Solution: Tighten.
2.
CORRODED BATTERY CONNECTION
Solution: Use metal terminal battery brush to clean
connections and reattach.
3.
DEAD BATTERY
Solution: Change battery in the autumn to avoid
ever having to change it in the middle of a major fucking winter storm.
If she wasn’t standing there alone in the dark in the bitter
cold, she would have grinned. The owner of the fishing camp, Hawley Foggo,
taught his employees Hawley’s Rules. He had them for every occurrence of the
fishing camp, and that last sounded exactly like him.
The generator used a car battery, and as instructed, in the
autumn she had changed it. This was her second year dealing with the battery,
and she felt secure about her work.
So probably this failure was a loose connection or
corrosion. Either way, she could fix it and save the lodge from turning into a
solid ice cube that wouldn’t thaw until spring.
That was, after all, her job.
She shivered.
So much better than her last job, the one that led to her
conviction for a gruesome double murder.
“Okay, Petie, let’s grab that metal battery cleaner
thingy and get the job done.” Which sounded pretty easy, when she talked to
herself about it, but when she pulled on the insulated ski gloves, they limited
her dexterity.
Out of the corner of her eye, a light blinked out.
She looked back into the lodge’s Great Room. The nightlights
were failing, and soon she really would be alone in the absolute darkness,
facing the memories of that long-ago day in the basement.
Good incentive to hurry.
She grabbed the wire battery connection cleaner thingy and
moved to the outer door.
There she paused and pictured the outdoor layout.
A loosely built lean-to protected the generator from
the worst of the weather while allowing the exhaust to escape. That meant she
wasn’t stepping out into the full force of the storm; she would be as protected
as the generator itself. Which was apparently not well enough since the damned
thing wasn’t working.
She gathered her fortitude and eased the outer door
open.
The wind caught it, yanked it wide and dragged her outside
and down the steps. She hung on to the door handle, flailed around on the
frozen ground, and when she regained her footing, she used all her strength to
shove the door closed again.
Then she was alone, outside, in a killer storm, in the
massive, bleak wilderness that was Alaska.
Excerpted from Wrong Alibi by Christina Dodd
Copyright © Christina Dodd. Published by HQN Books.
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