Incriminating Evidence by Rachel Grant

and listened to the advisor my father hired, and my attorney, rather than my own gut.” He paused again, this time meeting her gaze. “I should have been there to pay my respects to a fine soldier, who never should have died.”
    They turned off the perimeter road and onto the narrow dirt track that would eventually meet up with the road to her cabin. She’d rented the cabin when she first moved to Alaska because it was adjacent to the compound. That it was isolated in the middle of the most beautiful wilderness on earth had been a bonus.
    “You like it out here?” Alec asked.
    “Yes. For now.” But she’d been here for nearly ten months. The nomad in her was ready to move again.
    He pulled up in front of her carport—empty thanks to her truck being in the impound lot. “I’m working on getting your truck back for you. It will be a few days.”
    She should probably say thank you, but it was his fault she didn’t have her truck to begin with, so instead she just nodded.
    Alec gazed at her small log cabin, then glanced around. To one side, evening sun broke through the clouds and glinted on the solar panels on the roof. To the other, a faint rainbow arced across the meadow. “If you put this place on a postcard, people would think it was too picturesque to be real.”
    She smiled. The late summer wildflowers were in full bloom across the meadow, and even in the light rain, a pair of caribou had settled down in the tall grass, their large, fuzzy antlers giving away their position. Caribou were terrible at hide-and-seek.
    She grabbed her backpack from the backseat and climbed out of the car.
    “No power lines?” Alec asked, following her to the front door.
    “No. Completely off the grid. The solar panels provide limited power for Wi-Fi, my computer, things that must run on electricity, but the big stuff—refrigerator, range, furnace, water heater, washer, and dryer—those are all gas powered. Even the light fixtures are gas.”
    It had taken some getting used to—electricity as a luxury item—but she’d come to appreciate the quiet and lack of lights on appliances that broke the darkness. Before she’d moved to Alaska, even her toaster oven had had a clock and red glowing light. Now she used the camping toaster rack on the gas cooktop if she wanted crisp bread.
    Chores took longer, but the trees were too tall for a satellite dish, so she had no TV. It wasn’t like she was in a hurry to finish washing the dishes so she could sit on the couch and do nothing. Instead she listened to audiobooks from the library on her battery-powered CD player as she did chores. Her life was solitary but busy, and at least one night a week, she found herself in the Tamarack Roadhouse, because even she could have too much solitary.
    Inside her cabin, while she lit the gaslights, Alec circled the small living room, stopping in front of the mantel, where a picture of Vin and her had pride of place. He wore his Army dress uniform, with his arm draped around her shoulder. To even the casual observer it would be clear they were siblings—he had the same green eyes, obnoxious orange hair, curls, and freckles—although his military buzz meant he lacked the curls in that snapshot.
    Growing up, more than one person had tagged them Raggedy Ann and Andy—they’d both hated the comparison—but at least with a four-year age difference, they’d been far enough apart in school that it hadn’t been a big issue.
    “I’d like to read the emails he sent you,” Alec said. “The ones about Raptor.”
    She nodded. “They’re on the computer. Let me shower, then I’ll pull them up for you.”
    “I could read them while you shower. It would save time.”
    She frowned at him. Did she really want to give him access to her computer while she was in the shower? There were at least a dozen files that contained incriminating evidence—her notes and map database detailing her forays onto Raptor property searching for Vin’s cave—that he