The storm had come hard off the Gulf of Alaska, dragging walls of white across the mountains until the state felt less like the United States and more like the last outpost on earth. Anchorage, perched on its ragged coastline like a stubborn frontier city refusing to fall off the map, lay half-asleep beneath its blanket of snow. The streets were buried. The airport runways groaned under ice. Power flickered across entire neighborhoods the way candles gutter in old horror movies. It was a bad night to be outside. A worse night to be alone. And a fatal night to be hunted.

Miles outside the city limits—beyond plowed roads, beyond cell towers, beyond anything resembling safety—Jasper Smith sat in the silence of his remote cabin, a man who looked like he’d been carved out of the American wilderness itself. He wasn’t there for fun, nor for the postcard beauty of the Chugach Mountains. Jasper was a Navy SEAL on administrative leave, the polite federal way of saying he had seen too much, done too much, and needed to disappear for a while before something inside him snapped. He chose Alaska because it wasn’t crowded, it wasn’t forgiving, and it wasn’t curious.

His cabin, built of reinforced logs and steel, sat half-buried in snowdrifts like an old American military installation that refused to retire. The wood stove pulsed with warm orange light, crackling like a heartbeat against the Arctic cold. Thor, his German Shepherd and former K9 partner overseas, slept at his feet, paws twitching in dreams only war dogs know.

The peace shattered when Thor lifted his head, ears pricked, body stiff. A growl rolled out of his chest like distant thunder.

Jasper froze. Thor didn’t false-alarm. Not in Iraq. Not in Syria. Not in Alaska.
“What is it, buddy?” he asked quietly.

Thor moved to the front door and barked once—sharp, authoritative, unmistakably urgent.

In the middle of a whiteout storm in rural Alaska, there were no visitors. No hikers. No stranded tourists. No neighbors. Nothing.

That bark meant danger.

Jasper pulled on his cold-weather gear with the speed of a man who had done this too many times in too many hostile countries. He grabbed his thermal monocular, opened the door, and stepped into a wall of blinding snow. The wind hit like a physical force, slamming the breath from his lungs. Thor leapt ahead, cutting a path through drifts that reached Jasper’s knees.

They hiked toward the ravine behind the cabin, Thor occasionally glancing back to ensure Jasper followed. Every few seconds, the dog barked downward into the swirling storm.

Jasper raised the monocular. Through the haze of cold signatures, he caught the faint outline of something that didn’t belong in the Alaskan wilderness. Something metal. Something large. Something wrecked.

A vehicle.

He half-slid, half-fell down the snowy embankment until his boots struck twisted steel. The SUV lay overturned, nose buried in snow, windows shattered by the storm’s brutality. On the side panel, beneath sheets of ice, he saw the faint ghost of a logo—

ANCHORAGE POLICE DEPARTMENT.

His pulse spiked. This wasn’t just an accident. Not this far from the road. Not in a storm like this.

He cleared snow from the driver’s side window. His flashlight cut into the dark interior—

A woman. Upside down. Unconscious. Her uniform torn, her skin pale with cold, her wrist—

Cuffed to the steering column.

Not restrained for safety. Restrained so she couldn’t escape.

A setup. An execution method disguised as a weather accident.

Jasper worked fast. He cut the seatbelt, checked her pulse, and freed her from the wreck. When he saw the handcuffs, a chill colder than the Alaskan wind gripped him.

This wasn’t just attempted murder.
This was betrayal from inside the system.
This was something Americans didn’t want to believe could happen.

A faint cry—high pitched, desperate—rose from the back of the SUV. Not human.

He tore open the rear hatch. Inside the bent K9 cage, pressed together for warmth, were three newborn German Shepherd puppies, barely alive. Their tiny bodies trembled violently, breath fading into the cold.

He shoved them inside his jacket.
“You’re not dying out here,” he muttered.

Thor barked sharply, urging him to move. Jasper slung the unconscious officer—Luna Wilson—over his shoulders and began the brutal climb back to the cabin.

The storm clawed at them, trying to drag all four of them back into its frozen jaws. But Jasper was a Navy SEAL. Thor was a war dog. They didn’t lose people. Not on their watch.

By the time they burst through the cabin door, the woman was barely breathing. The puppies were almost still.

Inside the warm cabin, Jasper’s military training switched on like a floodlight. He triaged the officer—checking her head wound, her bruised ribs, her hypothermic skin. The signs were clear: someone had beaten her before the crash, and the cold had nearly finished the job.

He warmed the pups, fed them electrolytes, and watched Thor become a silent, loyal guardian to the tiny lives curled in the crate. The fire glowed. The storm raged. And somewhere out there, the person who left this officer to die was likely assuming the wilderness had done his dirty work.

Hours passed before the woman stirred.

She woke with panic in her eyes, trying to scramble away from Jasper and the unfamiliar cabin. Thor rose to his feet, growl low but warning.

“You’re safe,” Jasper said gently. “I pulled you from your vehicle. My name is Jasper Smith.”

Her voice cracked.
“My pups—where—”

“They’re alive,” he assured her. “All three.”

She saw Thor guarding the crate and collapsed into a mix of relief and heartbreak.

The truth came spilling out—not dramatically, not theatrically, but the quiet, exhausted confession of someone who had run out of places to hide.

Lieutenant Marcus Riley, head of Anchorage PD’s K9 unit—the department’s golden boy—was not who he pretended to be. Behind the polished uniform, TV interviews, and flawless reputation was a smuggling ring using K9 transport routes to move contraband across Alaska. He was untouchable, beloved, protected.

And Luna had discovered him.

He beat her. He searched her. He tried to force her to hand over the encrypted evidence drive. And when she refused, he cuffed her to the wheel and shoved her SUV into the ravine—leaving her and her pups to die quietly beneath the storm.

But he made one mistake.

Luna was alive.

And Jasper was now in the story.

The lull in the storm didn’t bring peace. It brought helicopters—the unmistakable American thump of search-and-rescue rotors cutting across the sky. But these weren’t looking for victims.

They were hunting Luna.

And Riley was leading them.

When the snowmobiles finally roared into Jasper’s clearing, the lieutenant played the part of the concerned officer perfectly. But Jasper saw through him. His men, armed and restless, circled like wolves. And when Riley hinted at a future “no-knock warrant,” Jasper pressed record on his pocket audio device.

He had what he needed: proof of intent.

As soon as Riley’s team retreated back into the storm, Jasper made a call that changed everything—not to Anchorage PD, but to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, one of the most important military installations in the United States.

He invoked a code word.

“Winter Fox.”

Within hours, federal eyes were on Riley. And within days, while Riley was executing his violent “search,” the sky above Jasper’s cabin exploded with the sound of a U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter, floodlights tearing open the snowy clearing as NCIS agents swarmed in, weapons trained and ready.

Riley didn’t go quietly. But he went.

And Luna Wilson, bruised but unbroken, emerged into the cold sunlight holding the tiny micro SD card of evidence she had hidden inside a puppy collar—a hiding spot no corrupt cop had even thought to check.

The aftermath stretched for months. Trials. Convictions. Headlines across U.S. media platforms—“Alaska K9 Officer Uncovers Smuggling Ring”—with Luna stepping into her new role as lead investigator on a federal anti-corruption task force.

The puppies grew. The scars faded. Echo, the brightest of them, became her new trainee.

And Jasper…

He returned to the airport with Thor at his side, just another American soldier disappearing back into the world.

Their goodbye was simple. Real. Heavy with everything that didn’t need to be said.

When he vanished into the crowd, Luna whispered to the pup in her arms:

“He’ll be back. People like him always circle back.”

And Alaska, thawing under the first light of spring, felt just a little less lonely.

The night an Anchorage police officer was left handcuffed in her upside-down SUV with three newborn puppies freezing in the back, the sky over Alaska looked like it was bruised by God Himself.

Wind clawed across the Chugach Mountains, dragging whiteout snow over everything that dared to stand upright. Anchorage, Alaska, one more American city under the flag but perched at the edge of the world, was little more than a cluster of lights fighting not to be swallowed by the storm. Plows had given up. Flights were grounded. Even the die-hard locals had called it and stayed inside.

Which was why Jasper Smith knew something was wrong the second his dog moved.

Inside the remote cabin, miles from the nearest road and at least an hour from anything resembling civilization in the United States, the world was warm and simple. A wood stove glowed orange, feeding heat into thick log walls insulated like a bunker. The power came from a quiet generator and a battery bank in the back room. The internet, when he bothered to turn it on, came by satellite. The cabin didn’t appear in any tourist brochures. It barely appeared on maps.

Jasper sat in a heavy armchair, a rifle bolt in his hands, the rest of the weapon broken down in neat, careful pieces on the table beside him. He moved with the unhurried precision of a man who had taken apart and rebuilt weapons on three continents. His hair was cut short out of habit, his jaw darkened by a couple days of stubble. There was nothing about him that screamed “vacation” or “Alaska experience.” Jasper looked like what he was: a Navy SEAL on administrative leave, told by the United States government to take some time away from operations before he bled out on the inside.

At his feet lay Thor.

The German Shepherd wasn’t a pet. He was a partner, a working K9 who had flown into places most Americans would never see outside the news, nose to the dirt beside Jasper, doing the quiet, dangerous jobs that never made press releases. Even retired from active deployment, Thor was all lines and focus, the kind of dog who carried the room with his presence alone.

For hours, the wind had been a constant roar outside the triple-pane windows. The cabin shook once in a while under a particularly heavy gust, but Jasper barely glanced up. Alaska was loud. That was part of the charm.

Then Thor’s head snapped up.

The dog went from dead asleep to fully alert in a heartbeat, ears pricking toward the door, eyes gone sharp. A low vibration rumbled out of his chest, the kind of warning Jasper had learned overseas to respect more than any sensor or drone feed.

Jasper’s hand froze on the rifle bolt.

“What is it, bud?” His voice was low, calm. The question was just habit. Thor’s body language had already delivered the answer: something out there didn’t belong.

Thor moved to the heavy oak door. He didn’t bark at first; he drew in a slow breath along the seam where cold air sneaked through, then let out one contained, punching woof—an alert, not a panic. A second later, the bark came for real, sharp and commanding, cutting through the howling storm.

There were no neighbors. Not out here. No hikers. No lost tourists. No traffic. Anything that got Thor’s attention this far from Anchorage, in the middle of an American blizzard, was trouble.

Jasper set down the rifle part and rose in a single smooth movement. Whatever he’d come here to leave behind dropped away like a mask. He crossed to the trunk by the door and opened it, bypassing casual coats for his real gear.

Thermal-lined tactical pants. Heavy composite-toe boots. A fleece base layer topped by a waterproof shell that had seen hard use. A beanie yanked low over his ears. Multi-tool, compact medical kit, flashlight, and trauma shears clipped to his belt. Last, he grabbed a thermal imaging monocular from its charger, its battery full and ready.

“Lead,” he told Thor.

The dog gave a short bark and bounced in place, energy coiled, then bolted outside the second Jasper cracked open the door.

The storm lunged into the cabin like a living thing. Wind ripped the warmth out in an instant, pelting Jasper’s face with ice crystals that stung like thrown sand. Snow wasn’t falling; it was flying sideways, a solid wall of white that turned the world into a spinning blur.

Jasper stepped into it and pulled the door shut behind them. Within three paces, the cabin vanished from sight.

Thor moved ahead, plunging into drifts like they were just another training course. He’d been bred for cold, his thick coat beading ice off his outer fur while his undercoat held heat close to his skin. Every few yards he looked back, making sure Jasper was with him, then pressed forward again with renewed urgency.

Jasper leaned into the wind, each step deliberate. He’d operated in deserts, in jungles, in cities. None of those places cared less about you than an Alaskan ravine in a blizzard. He kept his breathing controlled and his senses spread wide.

They passed the woodpile. The trees thickened. The ground sloped downward.

Thor reached the lip of the ravine and stopped dead. He barked down into the white void below, a raw, urgent sound that raised every instinct in Jasper’s spine.

Jasper took a few careful steps forward and peered down. At first there was nothing but swirling snow and vague shadows. He lifted the thermal monocular and pressed it to his eye. Cold surfaces came up dark; anything alive or recently warm would glow.

The world turned to grainy shades of gray. The snow was flat charcoal, the trees darker black. He scanned slowly.

There. A shape. Too straight, too angular to be rock or ice. It sat tilted in the snow, half buried, holding onto the last of some internal warmth. Jasper blinked, angled his body, and saw it more clearly.

An SUV. Upside down. Nose jammed into the drift. Metal bent in ways it was never meant to bend.

He half slid, half climbed down the embankment, boots digging for purchase. The wind tried to throw him off balance, but he moved with practiced weight distribution and the stubborn refusal to fall that comes from years of bad terrain.

When his glove brushed metal, he wiped snow away with his forearm. Headlights shattered. Glass powdered. He circled, his flashlight cutting a thin, determined beam through the whiteout.

On the rear quarter panel, under a thin layer of ice, he found a faded logo.

ANCHORAGE POLICE DEPARTMENT.

In the middle of nowhere. In a storm no sane officer should have been driving through. Upside down in a ravine.

“This isn’t right,” he muttered.

Thor stood at the top of the ravine, watching, ears pricked. He didn’t descend; he guarded the high ground, scanning the tree line.

Jasper moved to the driver’s side window—or what was left of it. Shattered glass clung to the frame like jagged frost. He ducked his head and aimed the flashlight inside.

A woman hung upside down in the driver’s seat, held in place by her seatbelt. She wore dark blue uniform pants and a duty shirt, the kind worn by cops all over the United States. Her hair was matted with half-frozen moisture, her skin a bad shade of pale. A thin streak of red had smeared down from her hairline to her temple before the cold stopped everything in its tracks.

He reached through the broken window and pressed gloved fingers to her neck.

A faint flutter answered.

“You’re not done yet,” he breathed.

He worked fast. Trauma shears sliced through the seatbelt. He braced her weight as he freed her from the twisted steering column. Her body was limp, frighteningly cold. She hadn’t been in the wreck for ten minutes; this was hours.

As he shifted her, his flashlight beam swept across her left wrist—and his blood went colder than the snow.

Her wrist was locked to the steering column with a set of metal handcuffs.

Not trapped. Restrained.

Whoever did this hadn’t just walked away from a crash scene. They had put her here. They had chained her here. They had left her and walked back into the storm, knowing the wilderness would keep their secret.

It stopped being a rescue and turned into a crime scene the moment he understood that.

A sharp, thin noise cut through the wind. It wasn’t a human sound. It rose, wavered, and broke.

A tiny cry. High. Weak. Desperate.

Jasper’s head snapped up. It came from the back of the vehicle.

He circled around, forcing open the rear hatch with a grunt. The metal screamed as it moved, protesting every inch. Inside, bent but intact, was a K9 transport cage. The kind used to carry police dogs to calls and patrols. Inside the wrecked cage, huddled into one trembling knot of fur, were three German Shepherd puppies.

They couldn’t have been more than a few weeks old.

Tiny paws. Closed eyes. Flanks shuddering with shallow breaths that were growing slower by the minute.

The smallest one had lifted its head just long enough to cry. Now it sagged back against its siblings, body limp from cold.

“Absolutely not,” Jasper said under his breath.

He unzipped his jacket without thinking about the fact that the air temperature was somewhere between ruthless and lethal. He scooped up all three puppies. They were almost weightless. Their fur was stiff with ice. He slid them against his chest, under his layers, sealing his jacket back up as fast as his numb fingers would allow.

The sudden warmth made them twitch weakly. One pressed its nose against his undershirt, searching for heat.

He turned back to the driver’s door, heart hammering now from more than exertion.

“Thor!” he called. “Watch!”

The dog barked once in acknowledgment, holding his position.

Jasper reached in and checked the officer’s nametag. L. WILSON. He didn’t know her, but he knew her. She was an American cop, out in the snow serving a city she believed in. Now she was a target someone wanted erased.

“Luna,” he said aloud, giving her name weight. “My name is Jasper. I’m getting you out of here.”

She didn’t stir.

He studied the cuff. The metal loop bit deep into the soft flesh of her wrist, the skin reddened and raw where she’d clearly struggled before passing out. He couldn’t drag her out with that still attached. He scanned the floor and the snow-packed interior, pushing aside debris until he found her duty belt half buried near the passenger side.

No sidearm. The holster was empty. Whoever did this wasn’t worried about leaving her armed—they’d kept the gun. The radio was cracked and dark.

He found the small cuff key clipped to the belt and worked it into the frozen lock, fingers numb but steady. The mechanism gave with a tiny click. The cuff opened. He slid the metal away from her skin carefully.

Then he lifted her out.

The weight across his shoulders was awkward with three barely living puppies pressed to his chest, but his body had carried worse. He paused only long enough to angle his head toward Thor.

“Home!” he shouted over the storm.

Thor barked and turned, leading the way.

The climb back up the ravine took everything he had. He leaned into the hill, boots fighting for grip, lungs burning from cold air and exertion. Every gust of wind felt like a shove trying to send them all back down. The officer’s body was dead weight, arms hanging, head lolling against his back. Under his coat, the tiny forms against his ribs were terrifyingly still.

He didn’t think about how she’d ended up cuffed in the dark. He didn’t think about who would put newborn puppies in a freezing SUV and walk away. He didn’t think about anything except the next step, and the next, and the promise that as long as he could move, they had a chance.

Finally, the dark rectangle of the cabin materialized through the whiteout. Jasper stomped up onto the porch, kicked the door open with his boot, and stepped inside.

Heat washed over them in a wave.

He shut the door with his elbow, sealing the storm outside.

First, he knelt and gently laid Luna on the thick bearskin rug in front of the stove. Then he went to war on the cold.

He unzipped his jacket and pulled out the puppies. For a terrifying second, they lay limp in his hands. Then one twitched, little paws flexing.

“Good,” he breathed. “Good. Stay with me.”

He grabbed fresh towels from the linen closet and spread them near the stove to warm. One by one, he rubbed the puppies vigorously, massaging warmth into their tiny muscles, stimulating their circulation the way an old K9 medic had taught him years ago. The smallest made a soft squeak that sounded like a complaint.

Thor shook himself, snow crystals flying off his fur, then moved in close. He lowered his massive head and nudged the weakest pup with his nose, letting out a faint whine of concern.

“Watch them,” Jasper said.

Thor understood. He lay down beside the crate Jasper had turned into a makeshift nest, forming a living wall between the babies and the cold world.

With the pups no longer on the edge of death, Jasper turned fully to the woman on his rug.

He checked her breathing. Too shallow. Pulse? Weak, but there. He touched her cheek; the skin was cold, but not stiff. He had a window.

He fetched his medical pack—bigger and better stocked than most first aid kits you’d find in the lower forty-eight—and laid it open beside her.

“Sorry, Officer,” he murmured. “We’re doing this the practical way.”

He used trauma shears to cut away her frozen outer layers. Her uniform shirt peeled off in stiff pieces. Beneath it, the long-sleeved thermal layer clung to her like armor, soaked and icy. He cut that too, exposing skin that looked frighteningly pale against the warm cabin light.

He worked quickly, covering anything he uncovered with dry wool blankets as he went to keep the heat in. As he moved, the story of her past few days began to write itself on her skin.

The wound on her temple, deep but clean, matched what you’d expect from slamming into a steering wheel or doorframe. But the bruises along her jaw didn’t. They were rounded, clustered. The pattern of someone’s fingers.

More marks mottled her throat, the faint rings of pressure where someone’s hand had gripped too hard. Fading yellow-green bruises marked her ribs. Older injuries. Someone had been using her as a punching bag long before the snow.

He pushed that aside for the moment. First she needed to live. Later he could be angry.

He felt along her ribs, collarbone, and limbs, checking for fractures. Miraculously, nothing obvious. She’d be sore for weeks, but intact.

He cleaned the cut on her head with antiseptic, wincing in sympathy even though she didn’t move. It was deep, but not catastrophic. He closed it with several precise butterfly strips, then taped over them with a dressing to keep everything in place.

He elevated her legs with extra blankets, wrapping her in layers of dry wool, then sealed the whole thing with a reflective foil blanket, turning her into a cocoon with only her face visible.

“Not dead today,” he said quietly. “Not here. Not like this.”

He stood, stretched his back, and took stock.

On the floor a few feet away lay her shredded uniform, her empty holster, her broken radio. Her wallet had survived inside her jacket, though the leather was soaked through. He opened it and flipped through quickly.

Badge. Anchorage Police Department. ID: Officer Luna Wilson. K9 Unit.

He glanced at the puppies, now breathing more steadily in their crate. Thor rested his head on the edge, eyes half-closed but fixed in their direction, the picture of a veteran soldier guarding a nursery.

“Figures,” Jasper muttered. “K9 people.”

He fed another log into the stove. Flames jumped eagerly, throwing more heat into the cabin.

Out here, the storm was their biggest problem.

Out there, somewhere beyond the swirling white, the real problem was human. And whoever had handcuffed a K9 officer to the wheel of her own SUV and walked away knew how to make a mess vanish in Alaska.

He heated water on the stove and mixed in a packet of electrolytes—something he kept on hand for himself and Thor, but human-grade and safe. He stirred it and let it cool to warm, then used a small syringe to offer a few drops at a time to each puppy. Tiny tongues flicked. Tiny throats swallowed. The smallest pup rallied enough to squirm and let out a feeble protest at being handled so much.

Hours passed. The storm outside raged on, an endless drum of wind and ice. Inside, the cabin turned into an island of tense calm. The puppies slept, woke, complained, and slept again. Thor kept his vigil. Jasper sat in his armchair, med kit still open on the floor, his gaze moving from the crate to the bundle on the rug and back again.

He didn’t clean his rifle. He didn’t read. He just watched.

Sometime in the long Alaskan night, Luna Wilson took a breath that sounded more deliberate than the rest and opened her eyes.

She woke into warmth.

For a second, she didn’t move. Her brain registered the ceiling first—rough, hand-hewn logs, not the sterile white of a hospital. She heard a stove popping softly, not the mechanical beeps of a monitor. She smelled wood smoke and pine, not antiseptic.

Then the memory hit her like a shove. The road. The snow. The SUV sliding. The hands on her glasses, on her collar, on her throat. The cuffs clicking shut.

Panic punched through everything else.

She rolled instinctively and tried to sit up, only to be slammed back down by a stabbing pain in her ribs. A sharp sound escaped her, somewhere between a cough and a curse.

“Easy.”

The voice that answered was low, steady, close.

She forced herself onto one elbow, ignoring the way her vision tilted. The room swam into focus in jerks. The stove. The walls. A man.

He sat a few feet away in an armchair, big hands resting on his knees, watching her with an expression that was somehow both alert and nonthreatening. He wore tactical pants and a simple long-sleeve shirt, sleeves pushed up to reveal corded forearms. His hair was short, his jaw shadowed. He looked like he belonged more on a forward operating base than in a mountain cabin.

Beside him, a large German Shepherd lifted his head. The dog didn’t snarl, but a low warning hum rolled through his chest.

“Where am I?” Luna rasped. Her voice hurt to use. “Who are you?”

Her hand went automatically to her hip. No gun. Her heart rate spiked.

“You’re safe,” the man said. He kept his voice calm, hands visible. “My name’s Jasper. Jasper Smith. This is my cabin, a few miles outside Anchorage. I found you in your vehicle in the ravine behind my place.”

The storm. The shove. The feeling of the world turning over.

Her stomach lurched.

“My—my pups,” she whispered. “Where are they?”

“Right there.”

His tone softened at the edges. He nodded toward the hearth.

Her gaze followed.

A crate sat a safe distance from the stove, lined with soft towels. In it, three small German Shepherd pups lay tucked against each other, their fur dry now, their breathing slow but steady. Beside the crate, the big dog lay like a furry wall, his head resting on his paws, his eyes flicking between her and the little ones.

“You’re watching them, huh?” she murmured.

Thor’s tail thumped once.

“They were almost gone when I pulled you out,” Jasper said. “They’re not out of the woods, but they’re fighters.”

Luna’s throat went tight. She reached down, fingers trembling, and touched the wool blanket over her legs. The sensation grounded her enough to speak.

“You found me,” she said slowly, as if stating it would make it real. “In the snow.”

“Upside down,” he confirmed. “Anchorage PD unit. You were unconscious, hypothermic, cuffed to the steering column.”

Her eyes snapped to his face.

He didn’t look away.

“I got you out,” he said simply.

For a heartbeat she felt naked, not because of the blankets, but because this stranger knew. He had seen the worst of it. He had touched the evidence of what had been done to her, and that meant he was either with them or he was probably the only thing standing between her and a second attempt.

Her fingers drifted up to her jaw. Even before they brushed the tender skin, she felt the sting. Bruise. She knew what shape it would be without seeing it in a mirror.

“Who else knows I’m here?” she asked.

“Just me. And him.” Jasper tipped his chin toward Thor. “Storm’s got everything else locked down tight. Even the United States can’t push helicopters through this if they don’t have to.”

She tried to swing her legs over the side of the makeshift bed. Her ribs screamed, her head throbbed, but her mind was sharpening now. Pieces were slotting into place.

“He left me,” she breathed. The words tasted like ice. “He really left me there.”

“Who?” Jasper asked, though he already had a strong suspicion.

“Lieutenant Marcus Riley,” Luna said. The name came out as if it hurt. “Anchorage PD. Head of the K9 unit. My boss.”

She almost laughed, but it came out as something brittle and small.

“He’s a hero,” she added, eyes going glassy. “At least that’s what the city thinks. Great at press conferences. Amazing with the public. Polished. Smiles with his whole face. Talks about community trust and service. The kind of guy people point to when they talk about American law enforcement doing it right.”

Jasper didn’t say what he was thinking. He’d met men like that. Some were everything they claimed. Some were not.

“He runs a smuggling ring,” Luna said quietly, as if saying it louder might make Riley appear in the doorway. “Uses our K9 transport routes. Nobody questions a marked police K9 truck. Not at checkpoints. Not at private airfields. Not when it’s snowing. It was easy for him. Too easy.”

“How’d you find out?” Jasper kept his tone neutral, giving her space to lay it out.

“By accident,” she said. “There was a GPS glitch on one of the vans. A discrepancy in the transport log. I checked the route, thought it was just a mapping error. It wasn’t. The van detoured to a private strip out in the middle of nowhere. I started double-checking old runs. Things didn’t line up. The more I pulled, the worse it got.”

She swallowed.

“I found a pattern. Dates. Times. Off-route stops. And then I found money. Transfers. Shell companies. Names that shouldn’t mix with Anchorage PD.”

“And you documented it,” Jasper said. Again, not a question.

“I’m a K9 handler, not a detective,” she said with a rough shrug. “But I’m not stupid. I copied what I found. Bank records. Flight manifests. A list of serial numbers that sure weren’t pet supplies. I saved everything. Put it onto an encrypted drive.”

“Let me guess,” Jasper said. “You were on your way to internal affairs this morning.”

“Yeah.” Her laugh was hollow. “I wasn’t supposed to be on duty yet. My retired K9—Nika—had a litter. I was taking three of the pups to my sister in Wasilla. Off the books. Just me, three puppies, one long snowy drive, and a hard drive tucked away where I thought nobody would look.”

Her hand drifted toward her chest, then fell.

“He called me before I left,” she said. “Riley. Friendly as ever. Told me he’d heard I was heading out of town with the pups. Said he knew a back route that would keep me out of the worst of the storm. We’d taken that road a dozen times for training runs. It didn’t feel weird. He told me he’d meet me at the turnoff, show me where the plows hadn’t fully blocked yet.”

Her jaw tightened.

“When I got there, his SUV was parked across the middle of the road. Blocking it. I thought there must’ve been a slide. I got out to ask. His partner got out too. I never even saw the first hit coming.”

She touched her throat, fingers hovering over the bruises.

“He tore my truck apart,” she whispered, staring at nothing. “He ripped open panels, threw my stuff into the snow. Every time he didn’t find the drive, he hit me again. He kept shouting, ‘Where is it, Luna? Where?’ I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about.”

Jasper could picture it too clearly: cop car paint schemes, emergency lights off, parked at a lonely Alaskan turnoff. Snow blowing across the asphalt. A respected lieutenant’s voice turning from calm to frantic.

“He searched me,” she said, the words getting quieter. “Pockets. Vest. Boots. He tore my uniform. He kept checking my sleeves like he thought I had a wire. When he still didn’t find it, he looked at the truck, at the snow, at me, and he just…changed. Like a switch flipped.”

Her eyes filled, but she blinked the moisture away. The anger was burning too hot to freeze this time.

“He said the storm would clean everything up,” she whispered. “He cuffed my wrist to the wheel. He walked to the back and looked at the pups. He smiled. Said, ‘Loose ends.’ Then he shoved the SUV.”

She sucked in a breath that hurt.

“I heard the engine rev. I heard his tires hit the snow as he drove away. And then we rolled.”

Silence settled over the cabin for a long moment.

Jasper had been in rooms where terrible things were said in calm voices. He knew that tone, that hollow space where rage and grief tried to share one chest.

“Your gun was gone when I found you,” he said.

“He took it,” she said. “Had to. Can’t have the unstable officer who ‘snapped’ still armed when they find her, right?”

“Unstable?” Jasper asked.

Her mouth twisted.

“There’s a rookie,” she said. “Ben Carter. Smart. Too observant for his own good. He came to me last week because he’d noticed discrepancies in the armory logs. Ammo counts. Equipment that left the building on paper but never seemed to show up in the field. I told him to stay quiet until I had enough evidence to make sure this couldn’t be buried.”

Her voice broke for the first time.

“I told him I’d protect him,” she whispered.

Jasper sat back slowly.

“And now?” he asked.

“If Riley knows about the drive,” she said, “then he knows about Ben. He’d have to.”

Jasper filed the name away. Ben Carter. Somewhere in Anchorage, a family was wondering why their son, their brother, their friend wasn’t picking up his phone.

He stood and crossed to a small cabinet by the window. He pulled out a hard-sided Pelican case and opened it, revealing a rugged satellite phone and a compact tablet. The sat phone was something he kept for real emergencies, the kind where local infrastructure either failed or couldn’t be trusted.

“This storm isn’t going to last forever,” he said. “When it eases up, he’s not just going to sit at home and cross his fingers.”

“He’ll lead the search,” Luna said dully. “Tell everyone he’s trying to find his missing officer. He’ll bring news cameras. He’ll stand in front of the flag and talk about how concerned he is for my mental state. He’ll spin it.”

“He probably already has,” Jasper said.

He turned the phone on and waited as it climbed through its connection sequence, reaching up to satellites instead of down to cell towers. Once it stabilized, he tethered the tablet.

He navigated to the site of Anchorage’s biggest news station. The connection was slow, but steady enough. The homepage loaded. A headline dominated the screen.

ANCHORAGE OFFICER MISSING IN BLIZZARD – SECOND OFFICER SOUGHT FOR QUESTIONING

Luna went still.

“Read it,” she whispered.

Jasper did. His voice fully flat now.

“Anchorage police are conducting a search for Officer Benjamin Carter, who disappeared during a routine patrol early this morning. His vehicle was found abandoned on a service road near the Knik River. Authorities are also seeking information on the whereabouts of Officer Luna Wilson, a K9 handler who failed to report for duty and has not been seen since yesterday evening…”

He scrolled.

“Sources say Officer Wilson had recently been counseled for signs of emotional strain and may be in a fragile state…”

He stopped and looked at Luna.

“He’s good,” Jasper said. “At this part, anyway.”

“He’s a monster,” she whispered.

“He’s also laying groundwork,” Jasper said. “He’s creating a story. Now if someone sees you, you’re not a whistleblower, you’re an unstable officer who might have hurt a colleague. If they find you dead, you’re a tragic cautionary tale.”

Thor’s ears flicked at the tension in Jasper’s voice.

Luna’s grip tightened on the blanket.

“That cabin,” she said quietly. “This place. Will he find it?”

Jasper shook his head.

“It’s not in my name. No power lines. No water lines. No mailing address. It’s owned by a shell company the government uses for long-term contingencies. It’s off the grid in every way that matters. He can run my name all day and never land here.”

“But he knows where he left me,” she said. “He’ll search outward from the crash. He has snowmobiles. Helicopters. Half the state in his pocket.”

“Storm’s our only real defense,” Jasper admitted. “It covers tracks, grounds air support, slows everything to a crawl. But when it eases up? He’s going to move.”

He closed the tablet and set it aside.

“You have the evidence on you?” he asked.

She stiffened.

“No,” she said. “He searched me. He tore my truck apart. He would have found it if I had.”

“You said you had a drive,” Jasper pressed. “You’re too smart to keep it in your pocket and walk into a meeting with a man who can ruin you.”

A flicker of something—satisfaction, dark and small—crossed her face.

“He was thorough,” she said. “But he sees everything in categories. Cops. Criminals. Assets. Trash.”

She looked past him, toward the crate.

“He never checked the trash,” she murmured.

Jasper followed her line of sight.

Luna pushed the blanket aside, wincing as she forced herself to her feet. The room tilted, but she stayed up, one hand braced against the arm of the sofa. She crossed to the crate and sank to her knees.

Thor looked up but didn’t move, accepting her presence.

She reached in and scooped up the smallest pup—the one who had nearly slipped away in the snow. Its eyes were still closed, its ears folded, but it shifted, nosing at her finger.

“His name is Kodiak,” she said softly. “The big one is Tundra. And that stubborn one over there is Echo.”

She stroked the tiny red collar around Kodiak’s neck. At first glance it was nothing—a flimsy nylon strip used to identify puppies in a litter.

“When I realized how deep this went,” she said, “I knew I had to move the evidence. If I left it at home, he could get a warrant and take it. If I kept it on me, he’d find it when he searched me.”

She slid her thumbnail along a nearly invisible seam in the collar, right next to the plastic buckle.

“So I did what he’d never expect,” she said. “I sewed a tiny reinforced pocket into my puppy’s collar. Loaded the micro SD card into a waterproof adapter. Tucked it inside. I figured if everything went sideways, at least one of them might make it. Someone might find a random litter with more in their collars than just tags.”

The seam gave way. She pinched the tiny pocket open and drew out an object no bigger than her smallest fingernail. Matte black. Unremarkable. Catastrophic for the right people.

She held it up between two fingers, the cabin light catching its edges.

“He was tearing apart the truck looking for a hard drive,” she said quietly. “He never thought to check a puppy’s collar.”

For the first time since he’d dragged her in from the snow, Jasper smiled. It was small, but it was real.

“He’s not as smart as he thinks,” he said. “You, on the other hand…”

He took the chip from her gently, crossed to his own safe, and placed it inside a tiny shockproof case before locking it in with the rest of his most important tools. If the cabin burned down, there were things he could afford to lose. That wasn’t one of them.

The storm stretched their world into three days.

Outside, Alaska roared and blew and tried to bury them. Snow piled higher than the windows. The wind rattled the logs. Somewhere beyond the white, the search for Officer Luna Wilson and Officer Benjamin Carter continued, built on lies and polished for cameras.

Inside, routines formed.

They fed the pups every few hours with warm milk replacer Jasper had stocked for Thor’s occasional stomach issues. The little bodies grew stronger, paws firmer, movements less shaky. Eyes began to slit open, revealing cloudy blue orbs that blinked at the world like it was too bright.

Thor kept his post. He rolled the adventurous one—Tundra—back into the crate with a gentle nudge whenever she tumbled out. He tolerated clumsy paws stepping on his nose, baby teeth testing his tail, tiny bodies climbing over his front legs as if he were part of the furniture.

Luna slept in short stretches, haunted by memories, then woke and watched the fire. When she could move without feeling like her ribs were made of glass, Jasper started teaching her.

At first she thought he was kidding.

“You want to what?” she asked, one hand pressed to her side.

“Run a quick refresher,” he said. “You’re trained to de-escalate, detain, arrest. That’s not what this is going to be. Riley won’t come out here to talk it out. He’s going to come to finish what he started. You need to know how to stop someone who is not interested in playing by your rulebook.”

He stood in the middle of the cabin, open hands at his sides.

“Come at me,” he said.

“I’m injured,” she pointed out.

“Riley won’t care,” Jasper replied. “Come at me.”

She slid into the defensive stance she had been taught at the academy. Weight balanced. Hands up. It felt familiar. Safe.

Jasper took one look and shook his head.

“That stance is for controlling space,” he said. “For keeping someone at a distance until backup arrives. You won’t have backup. You’ll have about three seconds to make a choice. Again. Come at me.”

She lunged with a textbook palm-heel strike toward his sternum, aiming to shove him back, to make space.

He didn’t block it. He stepped inside it. His hand caught her wrist, redirected her momentum, and in a dizzying half-second he was behind her, his forearm across her collarbone, his weight pinning her without hurting her. She couldn’t move. It was over before she could even think about countering.

He released her immediately.

“You’re fast,” he said. “But everything about that move screamed what you were going to do. You were committed to a single strike. Someone like Riley? He’d ride that commitment right through you.”

For an hour, with breaks when her ribs insisted, he showed her a different language of movement. Short. Brutal. Efficient. No wasted gestures. No warnings. How to use an attacker’s grip against him. Where to strike to make a hand go numb, a leg fold, a weapon drop. How to fight for the ground, not the moral high ground.

“You’re not fighting for a conviction,” he said plainly. “You’re fighting to stay alive long enough for someone honest to read that chip.”

By the time they were done, her muscles trembled from effort and pain, but her mind felt terrifyingly clear.

Riley had left her in the snow as a problem to be erased. Now she was something else.

On the third day, the storm shifted.

Luna heard the difference first. The background roar dipped. The wind’s pitch changed from constant scream to something lower, more exhausted. She tilted her head, listening.

“That’s not right,” she said.

Jasper moved to the window, wiping away frost. He listened too.

At first he heard only the trailing breath of the storm. Then, beneath it, a new pattern emerged. Rhythmic. Mechanical.

Whup-whup-whup-whup.

He recognized the sound immediately. A helicopter. Not military—lighter, sharper.

He lifted the thermal monocular and pressed it to the glass. Through the grainy gray, he picked out a bright heat signature moving slowly along the ridge. An AS350, the kind used by state troopers and police departments across the United States. It fought the wind in slow sweeps, moving in a tight search pattern.

“He’s got air up,” Jasper said. “They found the wreck, and now they’re spiraling out from it.”

“Looking for a body,” Luna said.

“Looking for you,” Jasper said. “And for anything you might have left behind.”

They watched the helicopter struggle against gusts for nearly an hour. It passed within a few miles of the cabin, its searchlight cutting pale streaks through the snow, then banked away, forced back by the weather.

“That’s phase one,” Jasper said.

“Phase two?” Luna asked.

“Ground,” he said.

Three hours later, Thor heard them.

The dog, dozing with his head near the crate, lifted his ears sharply. He got to his feet in one smooth motion and stared at the door. He didn’t bark this time. His whole body simply locked onto a point like a compass finding north.

Jasper didn’t hesitate.

“Closet,” he said to Luna. “Now.”

She grabbed the crate handle, the puppies protesting with soft squeaks as she moved them. She carried them to a small insulated storage room at the back of the cabin, normally used for supplies, and set the crate on the floor. Thor followed, crowding in behind her like a shadow.

“Stay,” she whispered to him, running a hand down his head.

Jasper opened a concealed compartment and hit a small latch. A reinforced trapdoor in the floor lifted, revealing a narrow stairway down into a finished root cellar—insulated, ventilated, stocked.

“You go down,” he said. “You, the pups, and Thor. You don’t come back up until I open it.”

“I’m not hiding—”

“You’re the mission,” he said, voice hard now. “That chip in that safe means nothing if you’re dead. They can claim it’s fabricated, stolen, anything. But they can’t refute a living officer with firsthand knowledge. Thor will guard you. My job is to delay.”

She searched his face for any sign of uncertainty. There was none.

She swallowed whatever argument she had left.

“Fine,” she said. “But don’t you dare get yourself killed for me.”

“No plan to,” he answered.

He helped her down the stairs, the crate bumping against her thigh. Thor followed, turning once at the bottom to stare up at Jasper as if to say, You’d better come back.

Jasper lowered the trapdoor and kicked the rug back into place. The cabin looked normal again. Fire. Table. Chair. No sign of the hole in the floor or the woman hiding beneath his boots.

He went to his gun safe and selected his tools.

He bypassed the black rifle he favored for serious operations. Too aggressive. Too military. Instead he took a bolt-action hunting rifle—exactly what you’d expect to find in a remote Alaskan cabin. He slung it casually over his shoulder, muzzle down.

He grabbed a woodsman’s axe, stepped out onto the porch, and began splitting wood.

The sound of engines came first—high, snarling whines cutting through the air.

Three snowmobiles burst out of the treeline, sleds kicking up powder. They were high-end machines, built for speed and power, not weekend joyrides. They fanned out in a practiced semi-circle, engines idling, exhaust fumes mixing with the clean bite of the snow.

The man on the center sled swung his leg off and stood. He wore APD-issue winter gear, patches visible on his parka. His face matched the one from the news videos—handsome, sympathetic, trustworthy.

Lieutenant Marcus Riley.

“Afternoon!” he called over the wind, projecting that careful blend of authority and friendliness that played so well on American television. “Anchorage Police Department. We’re conducting a search and rescue operation. Looking for a missing officer. I’m hoping you can help us, friend.”

Jasper set the log he’d just split aside and rested the axe head on another.

“Seen plenty of snow,” he said. “No people.”

Riley smiled like they were sharing a joke.

“To be specific,” he said, “we’re looking for Officer Luna Wilson. Small woman, dark hair, drives a department SUV. Left Anchorage before the worst of the storm hit and never checked in. We’re worried about her. Storm like this? She could be in serious danger.”

He gestured vaguely toward the woods.

“We found her vehicle a few clicks that way,” he added. “No body inside. That means she might have wandered out, looking for shelter. We’re checking every cabin, every outbuilding, every place a person might go.”

The man to his right—a heavyset guy with a beard and expensive civilian gear layered under tactical webbing—swung off his sled. His gloved hand hovered near a large pistol on his chest.

“We need to look inside,” he said. “Standard procedure.”

Jasper shifted his grip on the axe, not aggressively but with obvious ownership.

“You’re not coming in,” he said. “This is private property.”

Riley’s smile tightened.

“I understand that, sir,” he said. “But this is a matter of life and death. We’re worried she might be in there and unable to identify herself. Maybe confused. Maybe unstable. I’m just trying to do my job here as an American officer of the law.”

“You got a warrant?” Jasper asked.

The bearded man scoffed.

“You’d better show some respect for the badge,” he snapped. “We don’t need a warrant to look for a missing cop in a blizzard, old man.”

Jasper turned his head and looked at him fully. He didn’t say anything. The absence of fear in his eyes made the other man pause.

Riley’s gaze sharpened, taking in Jasper’s stance, the way he held the axe, the hint of a rifle strap over his shoulder. This wasn’t some random hermit with a bottle problem. This was someone who had seen too many things and lived through all of them.

“Stand down, Gage,” Riley said, voice losing some of its polish. To Jasper he said, “Look, I don’t want to get sideways with you. We’re all on the same team here. Just give me five minutes to look around, make sure Luna isn’t inside, and I’ll be out of your hair. You don’t want to be the guy who turned away the police while an officer froze to death two hundred yards away.”

Jasper felt the small recorder in his breast pocket humming with quiet life. He’d clicked it on the moment the sleds appeared.

“You’re searching for someone,” Jasper said. “Good for you. I told you I haven’t seen anybody. You’re not coming inside my home.”

The temperature in Riley’s eyes dropped like a stone.

“Sir,” he said, smooth veneer cracking to reveal something sharper underneath, “this is an active investigation. Officer Wilson is not just missing, she’s a person of interest in another officer’s disappearance. This is a capital matter. If you’re harboring her, you’re committing a serious crime.”

There it was, laid out plain: his intent to treat Luna not as a victim, but as a suspect to be neutralized.

“I’m splitting wood,” Jasper said. “That’s all I’m harboring.”

Riley took a step forward, snow crunching under his boots. His voice dropped so the wind almost stole it away.

“I’m going to be very clear,” he said. “The storm won’t last. When it breaks, I’m coming back with a no-knock warrant and a tactical team. We’ll clear this cabin wall to wall. If you’re smart, you won’t be here when that happens.”

“Is that a threat?” Jasper asked mildly.

“It’s a warning,” Riley said. “You don’t know what you’re getting mixed up in.”

He turned back to his sled.

“You’re making a big mistake, friend,” he called over his shoulder. “People get hurt when they stand between us and doing our jobs.”

The three snowmobiles tore away into the trees, the growl of their engines fading back into the storm.

Jasper watched until the last trace of their tracks blurred into the drift.

Then he went back inside.

Luna emerged from the back closet, her face pale but eyes blazing.

“He was here,” she said. “He saw you. He threatened you.”

“He told me everything I needed,” Jasper said.

He pulled the recorder from his pocket and switched it off.

“Capital investigation. No-knock warrant. Tactical team. We now have him on tape planning an assault on this cabin under color of law. That’s something people in suits back on base take very seriously.”

He sat at the table, opened the Pelican case, and turned the sat phone back on.

“Who are you calling?” Luna asked.

“Somebody who hates paperwork enough to be motivated,” he said. “Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. NCIS liaison office. They handle the kind of mess where local law enforcement goes sideways and Washington doesn’t want to read about it in the paper.”

The phone connected. A crisp, professional voice answered.

“NCIS Anchorage desk. Special Agent Jensen.”

“Sarah,” Jasper said. “It’s Jasper Smith. I’m active. Code Winter Fox.”

There was a beat of silence. Then the voice on the other end shed its generic call-center tone and turned razor sharp.

“Copy, Winter Fox,” she said. “Location?”

He rattled off coordinates. The conversation went from casual to operational in a breath.

“I have an Anchorage K9 officer with me,” Jasper said. “Officer Luna Wilson. She’s a whistleblower in a smuggling ring being run out of APD’s K9 unit. I have primary physical evidence in my possession—micro SD card. The head of their unit, Lieutenant Marcus Riley, attempted to execute her in the field and has now just personally threatened me with a no-knock raid under false pretenses. I’m sending you an audio file now. You’ll want to play it.”

He plugged the recorder into the tablet and pushed the recording over the satellite connection. On the other end, Agent Jensen went quiet as she listened.

“How long until the weather gives them a window?” she asked.

“He’ll move the next time the wind dips enough for sleds to travel safely,” Jasper said. “He’s ground-based now, but he’s aggressive. I give it twelve hours, maybe less, before he tries to ‘clear’ this cabin.”

“We can’t put a Black Hawk in the air yet,” Jensen said. “Not legally, anyway. But we can stage. I’ll get a quick reaction force spun up at JBER, coordinate with federal prosecutors, and lock in some jurisdiction—before Riley tries to make this a local story that never leaves the state. Your job is to hold. Keep her alive. Keep that evidence secure. Don’t start a war unless you have to.”

“Copy,” Jasper said.

“Jasper?” she added.

“Yeah?”

“Try not to make my paperwork any worse than it’s about to be.”

The line clicked off.

He looked at Luna.

“They’re coming,” he said. “Now we buy them time.”

The hours between that call and the sound of engines were some of the longest Jasper had ever counted.

He moved through the cabin like he had in safehouses overseas. He checked sight lines from each window. He walked the perimeter when the wind dipped enough that he wouldn’t get buried. He laid out nonlethal options first—flashbangs, smoke, ways to create confusion without leaving bodies in the snow. The goal wasn’t to win a war. It was to delay a police assault without giving anyone the excuse to declare the place a battlefield.

Luna sat on the trapdoor steps with the crate in her lap and Thor pressed against her knees. She listened to the muffled sounds above—wood shifting, boots on the floor—and tried not to think about her badge, her city, or the rookie whose face wouldn’t leave her mind.

Outside, as forecast, the storm finally exhaled.

The wind didn’t stop; it dropped into a low, steady push. The snow still fell; it drifted instead of screamed. Visibility went from impossible to merely terrible.

It was enough.

Jasper heard the snowmobiles before he saw them this time. Not three. More. He guessed five by the staggered engine notes.

He stood in the shadow beside the fireplace, cabin lights off, rifle held low but ready.

The engines cut.

Silence hovered for a half second.

Then—

“This is Lieutenant Marcus Riley, Anchorage Police Department!” a voice boomed, amplified by a bullhorn. “We have a warrant for this structure. Occupant, step out with your hands raised!”

No knock, Jasper thought. But lots of talk.

He gave them nothing.

“Breacher up!” another voice barked.

He counted under his breath.

Three. Two. One.

The front door slammed inward under a heavy battering ram. Wood cracked, hinges screamed, and daylight poured into the cabin in a rectangle of blowing snow.

Two figures rushed in—Gage and another man Jasper recognized from the earlier approach. They swept the room with rifles, flashlights cutting through the gloom.

“Clear left!” one shouted.

“Clear right!” Gage answered.

They stepped farther in.

“Where is he?” the second man hissed.

“Right here,” Jasper said softly.

He moved out of the shadow like he’d done it a thousand times—as he had. His rifle stayed down. Instead he brought the buttstock up in a controlled arc, catching the second man across the collarbone with a momentum that stole the fight from him without breaking anything. As he staggered, Jasper hooked his elbow, used his own body weight to spin him into Gage, and took both men down into a heap on the floor.

Three seconds. Two men disabled. No shots fired.

Outside, Riley shouted into the bullhorn again.

“Status report! Gage, talk to me!”

Jasper pulled a flashbang from his pocket, popped the pin, and rolled it neatly out the front door.

The world outside went white and loud as the device detonated. The boom echoed off the trees, stunning anyone with eyes on the cabin and ears tuned to orders.

“He’s armed!” someone yelled. “Open fire!”

Bullets chewed into the log walls. Glass exploded from the windows in a spray of glittering shards. Furniture shredded. The stove pipe rang as rounds glanced off it. The cabin bucked under the sudden storm of man-made noise.

Jasper ducked behind the stone of the chimney, breathing slow, counting shots, listening for patterns. He didn’t return fire. Not yet. The more disciplined he looked from above, the more clearly this would play when someone reviewed helmet cam footage later.

And then, over the smaller snap of rifle fire, another sound rolled in. Deeper. Heavier.

Womp-womp-womp-womp.

A Black Hawk helicopter thundered over the treetops, rotor wash flattening the snow in swirling circles. A blinding white searchlight speared down into the clearing, turning men and sleds into stark silhouettes.

A new voice boomed through loudspeakers, cutting over everything else with federal authority.

“This is NCIS acting in coordination with Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson and the United States Attorney’s Office! All Anchorage PD personnel, cease fire! Drop your weapons! Hands where we can see them! You are surrounded!”

The gunfire stopped so abruptly it seemed to suck the sound out of the air.

Jasper peeked past the chimney.

Two military-grade snow vehicles rolled into the clearing from the opposite side of the woods, wide tracks crushing drifts. Men and women in white arctic gear spilled out, forming a perimeter with practiced efficiency. Their rifles were up, but aimed with professional restraint.

Marcus Riley stood in the snow, gun half lifted, mouth slightly open.

A woman in a dark NCIS jacket stepped forward, her handgun steady, her hair whipped by the rotor wash.

“Lieutenant Marcus Riley,” she called, voice clear and carrying. “I’m Special Agent Sarah Jensen, NCIS. You are under arrest on federal charges of conspiracy, assault, and obstruction of justice. Put your weapon on the ground, now.”

“This is a police operation!” Riley shouted back. “You have no authority here!”

“Incorrect,” Jensen said calmly. “I have your entire conversation from earlier today on record, your false statements to the media, and a federal warrant that does, in fact, give me authority here. Put the weapon down before you make this even worse.”

For the first time, Jasper saw something crack in Riley’s expression that wasn’t rage. It was calculation giving way to the realization that he was suddenly the smallest player on the field.

He placed his gun in the snow.

Federal agents moved in fast, cuffing Riley and his men. One of the sleds still ran, its handlebars clattering faintly until a soldier shut it off.

Only when the scene outside assumed the tidy shape of an American arrest did Jasper step out of the shadows and cross the ruined cabin floor.

He kicked the rug aside and pulled the trapdoor open.

Luna blinked up at him from the dim cellar, Echo pressed against her chest, Thor braced at her side.

“It’s over?” she asked.

“It’s starting,” he said. “Come on.”

He helped her up the stairs.

When she stepped into the doorway and saw Riley in cuffs, something in her shoulders released for the first time in days. She walked past Jasper, past the wreckage of the cabin that had become their whole world, and out into the snow.

Riley saw her and went white.

“You—” he started.

Luna didn’t bother to answer him. She kept her eyes on Agent Jensen, who stepped forward to meet her.

“Officer Wilson?” Jensen asked.

Luna straightened. The bruises on her face had turned yellow at the edges, but her gaze was steady.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said.

“Do you have the evidence?”

Luna reached into the pocket of Jasper’s spare jacket. Her fingers closed around the small shockproof case. She drew it out and opened it, revealing the tiny micro SD card.

“This is it,” she said. “This is everything. His accounts. His routes. His messages. All of it.”

Jensen took the case like it contained something radioactive.

Behind them, soldiers moved Riley and his crew toward the snow vehicles. He shouted something about lawyers and rights and misinterpretations, but the wind stole his words.

Jensen glanced from the chip to Luna’s face.

“Officer Wilson,” she said. “Welcome back to the force.”

It took months for all the dust to settle.

Anchorage thawed. Ice melted off the inlet, drifting out toward open water. The bruises on Luna’s face vanished, but the memory of what had been done to her stayed carved into the way she carried herself.

The micro SD card turned out to be as devastating as promised. It mapped out a smuggling network that reached from remote Alaskan airstrips to warehouses and bank accounts in the lower forty-eight. Riley’s carefully polished public image shattered under the weight of messages, deposits, and flight logs.

Ben Carter’s body was eventually recovered in a shallow grave off a service road. The United States flag hung heavy and still above the cemetery the day they laid him to rest. Luna stood at the edge of the crowd by the folded triangle that would go to his parents and promised herself she’d never again mistake silence for safety.

Riley and his remaining crew were convicted on federal charges that would keep them in prison for decades. The city councilman who had quietly helped grease the wheels of import paperwork resigned before he could be shoved out. Two port managers found themselves answering pointed questions in courtrooms instead of in quiet back offices