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  When she entered the community center a short while later, the smells of steak and potatoes had her stomach rumbling. She didn't see Dillon as she put in her request with the kitchen staff. The table they'd shared earlier was vacant. She poured herself a cup of coffee and grabbed a seat to wait. It gave her an opportunity to people-watch, pick up bits of conversation, note the diversity of mushers, what they wore and what they joked about. Some discussed trail conditions and strategy, how their dogs were performing.

  It struck her that she was part of something much bigger than herself. Out here in the middle of nowhere, her dad would say. She wished she could share the experience with him but knew he wouldn't understand. Mama would have. She'd probably have insisted on racing her own team. The thought had Claire smiling into her coffee mug.

  Movement at the entrance caught her attention. It was Dillon. He'd cleaned up. And shaved? She waved to get his attention, drawing a nod and smile from him. Her pulse tripped over itself. Darn it, he has a nice smile. And a nice way of walking, even exhausted as he must still be. She could get used to watching him come into a room.

  "Ooh, look at the pretty boy," somebody commented from the other end of the table. A burly musher with a tangled moustache and broad grin.

  "Must have a date," someone else cooed.

  Dillon slanted them a wry grin of his own. "Jealous?"

  "You bet!"

  They shared a good-natured laugh. Claire stood when Dillon got close enough to touch. She ran a hand over his smooth cheek. "Is this for me?"

  "It sure wasn't for those jokers."

  Warmth flushed through her at the glint in his eyes. She drew his face closer and kissed him, eliciting cheers and a wolf whistle from their audience.

  "Excuse me, honey." Claire looked over at the dark-haired kitchen volunteer setting a plate of food on the table. "Your dinner's ready." The woman winked. "Unless you'd like me to keep it warm for you."

  Warmed-over steak? "No, thank you, I'll eat now."

  The woman's shoulders lifted and dropped with her loud sigh. "Whatever you want."

  Whatever you want. Dillon said those words to her four days ago. Her face heated at the memory. She turned and found him watching her. She wanted him. Pure and simple. Awareness flared in his eyes and she thought she finally understood the concept of swooning. If not for the support of the table against her leg, she wouldn't have been surprised to find herself dropping to the floor in a faint. It had to be exhaustion and hunger. You don't do soft and vulnerable, remember?

  Her stomach chose that moment to rumble again.

  Dillon smiled. "You'd better feed that thing."

  Claire tucked at her hair and gave a self-conscious laugh.

  ***

  Dillon enjoyed hearing her laugh. He enjoyed watching her eat, the automatic way she hooked her hair behind her ear while shoveling mashed potatoes into her mouth. She made it easy to attribute the flashes of darkness to sleep deprivation and concern over his injured dogs. That's all it is, he told himself.

  Maybe I could have acted quicker –

  "You really packed a razor?" Claire asked, slowing her potato shoveling to cut a bite of steak.

  He'd opted for biscuits with sausage gravy and green beans. "I bought a cheap disposable at a store down the street."

  "I should check it out later. I'd kill for a bag of barbequed potato chips right now."

  "You're kidding." He forked a hunk of biscuit into his mouth.

  "Oh please. Don't you have a guilty pleasure? Something you'd eat in spite of the heartburn?"

  "Pepperoni sticks," he mumbled around his chewing.

  "Excuse me?"

  "You know, the kind they keep in a plastic container by the checkout."

  "Gross."

  "You're the one who asked." A forkful of beans hovered over his plate. "When we get to Nome I'll buy you the biggest bag of barbequed chips I can find."

  "Potato chips, not corn."

  "Got it."

  "And I'll buy you a container of pepperoni." She gave a dramatic shudder and muttered, "Along with a tin of breath mints."

  He laughed.

  "Seriously, I'm not kissing pepperoni breath."

  Dillon liked the idea of more kissing. He raised his coffee mug in a toast. "You've got a deal."

  She tapped her mug rim to his. "You heading out tonight?"

  "Midnight."

  "Think you'll get a little more sleep before you leave?"

  "No." Then because his answer sounded abrupt, he justified it with, "I won't have time." Closer to the truth than not. He needed to feed his dogs before leaving, and get a vet to check Maverick's right front leg once more, make sure he was up to running. The fierce little husky rode into McGrath in the sled bag with Bonnie because of a limp, but the vet suggested a heat wrap and rest might be enough to keep him in the race. Dillon hoped so. He hated dropping dogs. Losing both of his best leaders would break his heart.

  "Are you going to be okay?" she asked. "I mean, the moose attack hit you pretty hard. Dropping Bonnie – "

  His guard went up at her concern. He couldn't help it. After years of practice, he had no control over the automatic reaction. "I'll be okay." Repeat it often enough and he might even believe it.

  She studied him for a long second. "Good." She collected her trash and pushed away from the table. "Thanks for dinner. And the kiss. I'm going to get some sleep."

  Dillon put his hand on her arm so she'd look at him. "Thank you for worrying about me," he said.

  "You're welcome."

  ***

  Claire woke at 4:00 a.m. on day five, rolled her sleeping bag and stumbled outside to her dogs. Dillon and his team were gone. Powder-fine snow continued to fall in the predawn darkness. Eight new inches covered the sled bag and turned her dogs, curled under their blankets on beds of straw, into breathing mounds with ears.

  The peaceful stillness, void of air traffic, made her think of Christmas. A string of multicolored lights hung from the eaves of a cabin at the end of the street. In place of the soft jingle of sleigh bells, the muffled drone of a snowmobile drifted from across the river. The thermometer outside the Laundromat read minus two degrees as she prepared to feed her team one more time before heading out.

  Fluffy deep snow meant slower traveling and increased the odds of moose encounters. She hoped Dillon's run-in was an isolated occurrence, for him and everyone else on the trail, but she would make sure she had easy access to her ax and revolver before leaving McGrath. She hoped dropping Bonnie didn't affect Dillon's ability to finish the race.

  And she hoped he outdistanced whatever demons rode shotgun with him.

  Chapter 17

  Maverick's limp worsened on the climb up Porcupine Ridge. Dillon loaded him in the sled bag. "Sorry, Mav, looks like the race is over for you this year." He put Clyde in single lead but the Siberian's head wasn't in the game. Dillon stopped again. "What's up, man? You missing your sister?" He gave Bonnie's brother a consoling rub. "I don't blame you. I miss her too." Clyde returned to the middle of the team and Dillon put Deshka in lead. "Let's see how my caramel girl does. You ready for this?"

  Deshka's enthusiasm got them to Takotna shortly after 3:00 in the morning. Dillon arranged Maverick's drop, loaded a bail of straw and kept moving. From Takotna, the trail followed an old mining road to Ophir and the last remnant of civilization – a 1930s cabin belonging to a couple who flew out every year to help man the checkpoint. Lantern light in the window welcomed the teams.

  Clyde lost interest in running, the rest of the dogs either pushing or pulling him to keep up. And he stopped eating. Dillon made the tough decision to drop him. As much as he hated to do it, there was no point dragging the inconsolable guy all the way to Nome.

  He began the long, isolated stretch to Cripple with thirteen dogs in harness. Minus 30 degrees under a clearing sky, they traveled an easy trail of low rolling hills, creek crossings and sparse vegetation. By mid-morning, one hill and creek looked like the next. They campe
d trailside, other teams passing them as Dillon checked and fed dogs. Once they were comfortable and sleeping, he rolled his bag out on a bed of straw to grab some down time for himself. As sleep pulled him toward unconsciousness, he thought of Claire's concern and his bullheaded insistence that he'd be alright.

  Two hours later, he thrashed awake shouting one word. "No!"

  ***

  Approaching midnight of day six, Claire cranked the volume on her MP3 player, hoping the noise would keep her lucid. She rocked with the Bee Gees to "Stayin' Alive," belting out made-up lyrics. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, stayin awake, stayin awake. Hey!" she shouted to her dogs, "We're stayin awake!"

  They panted along, keeping pace with the beat.

  "Huh, huh, huh, huh," Claire grunted, "stayin awake, stayin awake."

  The song faded and staying awake felt like too much work. The next song began, her own mix – she preferred older tunes over the newer stuff – a heart-tugging ballad by Eric Clapton. Would you know my name... Her head drooped and her eyelids drifted shut. Just a few seconds, she thought. What can it hurt? Her body relaxed forward over the handlebar. Would it be...

  The sled dipped and she jerked upright. Her headlamp flashed on a steel cable stretched neck-high across the trail, coming straight at her.

  Powerline! her mind screamed.

  She ducked hard and slammed her forehead on the handlebar. The MP3 buds popped from her ears, cutting Clapton off mid note. "Ow, shit!" She winced at the explosion of pain across her skull. "What maniac put that there?" Tears sprang to her eyes. "Whoa! Please. Whoa."

  The dogs stopped and looked back.

  To her amazement, her headlamp was still intact. She twisted and shined the light on the trail behind her, hoping to spot the guilty culprit lurking in the dark. "You could kill somebody!" she hollered. "You know that, don't you?"

  No response. She squinted through the tears blurring her vision. Nothing but empty trail and trees. Fine. I know the law. Whoever's responsible will pay. In the meantime, she should mark the cable somehow so other mushers would see it.

  Setting the hook, she pulled half a dozen florescent dog booties from the bag and walked back down the trail. She went several yards before she realized there was no cable. Lots of trees and snow. No maniac and no cable. "Oh man."

  She'd heard stories of mushers imagining things that weren't there: sweeping tree limbs on a treeless stretch of trail, roaming elephants, mysterious lights and buildings on sea ice, a train whistle when the nearest tracks were hundreds of miles away. Hallucinations brought on by exhaustion and dehydration.

  She returned to her team and pulled up the hook. "Sorry, guys. Let's go. Hike."

  Handsome and Ranger got the team moving. As if sensing a need to reach the next checkpoint before their driver went any crazier on them, they picked up speed.

  "Take it easy," Claire said. "What's the hurry?"

  And that's when she spotted the glimmer of lights in the distance. She blinked several times to convince herself she wasn't seeing stars from the smack to her forehead. The lights grew larger. Ruby checkpoint.

  "Good dogs!" she called, and winced. "Straight on! Ow."

  They would take their first mandatory eight-hour rest at the former gold-rush town, its streets tiered into a cozy bowl along the river. After the marathon run from Ophir to Cripple to Ruby, she and her dogs had covered 495 miles and were in thirty-fifth position, too late to claim the seven-course gourmet meal and cash price for the First Musher to the Yukon Award. But volunteers kept a smorgasbord going that included local favorites like moose and fish stew for the mushers.

  When Claire checked in, she discovered she had missed Dillon by half an hour. Good. He's still in the race.

  Chapter 18

  From Ruby, the Iditarod Trail traveled the snow-covered frozen Yukon River. The next checkpoint was Galena, fifty miles away, and then Nulato, another fifty miles. Claire and her team were somewhere between Galena and Nulato when the setting sun bled brilliant red and orange across the horizon. "Isn't that the most gorgeous thing you've ever seen?" she called out to her dogs. Picking up on her enthusiasm, they trekked along as though eager to reach it before it disappeared.

  Almost two miles wide in places, the Yukon's vastness commanded awe. Chunks of pack ice interrupted an otherwise flat surface bordered on the right by a low range of mountains. Claire ski-poled to help her dogs maintain their speed and to lessen the bite of the thirty-below air frosting the fur rim of her parka hood. The temperature seemed to drop another ten degrees when they passed through the shadows cast by the high bank. Thankfully, they had the wind at their back.

  Watching the sun dip low and the colors wane, Claire decided this moment alone made the whole Iditarod experience worth it. "How about it, guys? Does it get any better than this?"

  In the pause between sunset and darkness of nightfall, she saw what looked like steam rising from the river ice in the distance. She stared for long seconds, thinking it might be another hallucination. Her forehead still smarted from the powerline delusion. But the steam remained steady, reminding her of Bagby Hot Springs in the Mount Hood National Forest.

  "What on earth?" The dogs ears stood up. Claire understood their skittish curiosity. Ice should not steam. And there certainly weren't any hot springs out here. The trail appeared to head straight for it. "Easy, guys."

  As they got closer, she saw the slice of open water to the left of the trail markers. The cold river water condensing as it hit the colder air above it created the steam cloud. "Would you look at that," Claire said. "Hold up. I need to get a picture."

  ***

  At 3:30 in the afternoon of day seven, Dillon and his team left Kaltag, the last checkpoint on the Yukon River. Here the northern and southern routes converged and headed southwest to Unalakleet, eighty-five miles away. After traveling the frozen river for almost two days, the trail followed an ancient portage and marked the transition from inland river to the coast of the Bering Sea. The first fifteen miles climbed through wooded country to an eight-hundred-foot summit. Dillon took it slow and peddled often. Each passing mile made it easier to compartmentalize the nightmares. Get on with the race. Shake it off. He made caring for his team his soul focus.

  "How's it going, Deshka? You like being in front, don't you. Elliot, you keeping everybody on their toes?"

  By nightfall, they'd navigated the descent to Tripod Flats. Dillon opted to rest at the BLM cabin a hundred yards off the trail. He fixed his dogs a hot meal, boiled a bag of beef wieners and chili for himself, and caught an hour of uninterrupted sleep before another team arrived.

  From the cabin, the trail ran across low hills and ridges on the south side of Unalakleet River, then along the sloughs of Old Woman River. Fifteen miles later they passed the original Old Woman cabin, said to be haunted by the woman who lived there years ago and died checking her traps, her body never found. Dillon heard a female voice singing on his last trip through, the lyrics indecipherable. He left a candy bar peace offering, just in case there was any truth to the stories of being haunted by bad luck if you didn't. In disrepair, the cabin still served as a shelter when needed.

  The trail emerged onto open tundra and the BLM sign for the new Old Woman cabin. Half a dozen teams were parked in the clearing. Dillon didn't want to share an over-heated cabin with a bunch of other mushers, so he drove his team a short while longer and found a cluster of straggly trees as shelter against the tundra's pervasive wind to rest and snack his dogs.

  In the darkness of early morning, they pushed on. His headlamp spotlighted the backs of his dogs as they ran into an endless void. He missed Claire, missed her smile, her laugh. The easy way she had of making him feel wanted. The hours and miles blurred. He faded in and out of consciousness until staying on the sled became his greatest challenge. He imagined he saw a moose at light's edge, head down, ready to charge. His dogs motored on as though the beast didn't exist.

  Because it didn't. Dillon knew this, yet when he saw the second moose
lurking in the shadows some time later, he shouted, "Whoa!"

  The dogs stopped. Deshka looked back, waiting for instructions. Dillon shined his headlamp over both sides of the trail. Nothing. No sound but the impatient whuffs of his team.

  "Sorry, kids. Let's go."

  The dogs ran on, the rhythm of their gait hypnotic. He thought he saw the green and white flash of Unalakleet's airport beacon but couldn't be sure. He felt himself nodding off again and jerked. The beam of his headlamp cut a swath mid gangline and picked up splotches of red in the tracks of his dogs. He stared for long seconds, his exhausted brain struggling to make sense of something that didn't make sense. It looked like blood. Is one of my dogs hurt?

  With the team churning it up, he couldn't tell. "Whoa!"

  The dogs stopped again. He set the hook and walked the gangline, shining his light on each dog's paw. No obvious injuries. Unsurprisingly, Clyde lacked a right front bootie. Dillon squatted to examine the exposed paw. His headlamp caught the bloody print of a thumb and forefinger in the snow inches away. His stomach shoved into his throat.

  Straightening, he swung his headlamp in a wild arc. A dark-hooded figure knelt in the middle of the trail in front of the team, hands planted in stains of blood. Recognition tore through Dillon. He swallowed against the urge to vomit. The figure's head came up and his lamp shined full in the eyes of a dead man.

  Chapter 19

  Just before noon, Claire arrived at Unalakleet checkpoint in time to catch Dillon in the process of packing to leave. "Hey!" she called as volunteers led her team to a parking spot a few yards away.

  He walked over. "Hey yourself."