Excerpt from Yukon Justice, by Dana Mentink
The young reindeer nuzzled Katie Kapowski’s palm with velvet lips, pawing the ground uneasily as nighttime settled around them. Too thin, with an Alaskan winter closing in.
“It’s okay, Sweetie. We’ll get your mama back.” Anger at Uncle Terrence burned in her stomach. The baby reindeer was suffering since Terrence had stolen his mother Lulu from the Family K Reindeer Ranch. At least the rest of the small herd had kept a close eye on Sweetie. Reindeer, above all else, were a family oriented species. People should be so devoted.
Katie felt her own quiver of uncertainty at her return to the ranch. The job she’d left behind for a week pulled at her, Assistant to Alaska K-9 Unit Colonel Gallo and the six elite state troopers along with their highly trained dogs. How hard she’d worked to get there. She was accustomed to the sleek Anchorage office, her multiple computer screens and a constant bustle of activity. She’d exchanged her slacks and low heels for jeans and grimy work boots, auburn hair caught in a hurried ponytail. No professional polish required on a ranch near Palmer, Alaska, a town of barely 7,000 people.
Skin prickled on her neck. She whirled around. Nothing was there, only a twig born by the autumn wind. The ranch was a broad sweep of flat pasture which lost itself into the neighbor’s forested property to the west. The Frontier River defined the eastern property line. Isolated and wild. The quiet made her jumpy. The older animals shifted, intricate antlers highlighted by the setting sun. Reindeer were the only members of the deer species where the females sported antlers as well as the males. “Girl power,” she whispered to a nearby female. “Wear those antlers proudly.”
She stroked the baby reindeer’s wiry fur in an effort to soothe them both.Was the animal also hearing noises, or perhaps he was uneasy about the recent abduction. Three of the precious rescued animals had been stolen over the last few months. The Alaska K-9 team had recovered one, but Thunder the male and Sweetie’s mom Lulu were still missing. Katie’s worry grew every day they were not found.
Why steal reindeer to get back at Aunt Addie? It was still so hard to believe the
culprit was her own uncle. Katie hadn’t even known of Terrence’s existence until the K-9 team found DNA which proved the perpetrator was a relative. Aunt Addie had no choice then but to come clean about her estranged brother. Still, stealing reindeer to punish his sister for some perceived slight? Could someone really be so juvenile? None of it made any sense to Katie.
“Oh Aunt Addie. Why couldn’t you have told me sooner?” she thought. Things with her aunt hadn’t exactly gone smoothly, since Katie’s temporary return. She was still the same surly, stubborn woman who’d raised Katie from the age of ten, even less likely to filter her comments now that she was approaching sixty. Tact and finesse were unknown concepts.
“No one tells me how to run my ranch,” she’d said. “I’m not changing a single thing, even if my brother has turned up to harass me. He’s a cruel hearted louse. Always has been.”
Addie was doubly stressed with Terrence bent on ruining the ranch and the annual Christmas Fair looming in two months and she had good reasons to be short tempered, but it didn’t help that her outbursts had caused both her regular ranch hands to quit. Blaze was no loss, since he’d been stealing petty cash, but Gary had been a steady worker who’d endured one tongue lashing too many from Addie. Now with virtually no help, two hundred fifty acres of Alaskan wilderness and a herd of twenty three rescued reindeer to tend to, things were getting downright desperate. Whether Addie wanted to admit it or not, she needed Katie’s help. Perhaps Katie could help set a few things in order during her week away from the office without a major blowup with Aunt Addie.
A leaf scuffled over the top of her muddy boots startling her. Her sideways movement alarmed Sweetie who edged back to the comfort of his reindeer sisters.
Relax, Katie, she told herself. Addie was back at the main house. The police drove by on regular checks of the property, including Trooper Brayden Ford. An image of him popped into her mind along with the ever present tension. Ridiculous. It didn’t matter now that he’d almost cost her a position at the police department. And certainly, he must know she had not meant to humiliate him when she told him the truth about his girlfriend Jamie, though it proved mortifiying. Water under the proverbial bridge, right? Still she wished it was anyone but him patrolling her aunt’s ranch at the moment.
The October moon hung low in the inky sky. She breathed in the cold, scented with the musk of the animals gathered in the pasture pen and the meagre remnants of the alfalfa hay they’d finished devouring. The lighter fur of their chests glimmered against the darkness. So quiet here, so peaceful, except for the everpresent drone of the mosquitos. Nights like these made it hard to imagine why anybody, even Addie’s disgruntled brother, would want to harm the ranch.
Why such covetousness over a place that existed purely to care for rescued reindeer? The ranch barely covered expenses, let alone made a profit. Not exactly a money factory. The gate squealed as she closed and secured the holding pen.
Something snapped in the distance. She tensed.
