The Alpha Hunts Every Runner, and I Took Him Down novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Ashes

The jumpers' dock at McCall sticks out into Payette Lake.

On a June morning the water is the color of a bruise.

I stood at the end of it at dawn with the cedar box against my stomach.

My old crew boss came down the planks behind me in his work boots and stopped ten feet off.

He was a stooped man with a gray mustache who had never said more than six words to me in a row.

"Heard you were back," he said. "Heard you're a boss now."

"Of a pack. It's a long story."

"Your spot's open, if you want it."

"Thank you," I said. "No."

He nodded, and went back up the dock, and left me alone with my father.

I had written nothing to say.

I took the lid off the box.

"You'd have hated the fuss," I said to him. "So I'll keep it short."

"Your name is clean, Dad."

"There's a man at home who can't cook, and he stays when I ask him to."

"I think you'd have liked him."

My throat closed.

I tipped the box over the water.

The ash went out in a pale ribbon on the wind, and a little of it settled on my wrists.

Overhead, a twin-engine jump plane came in low over the dock.

It dipped one wing, and I knew someone in the cabin had seen a woman on the end of the dock and guessed.

I stood there until the ribbon was gone.

That night I called Soren from the motel on the highway.

It rang once.

"Greta."

"You picked up fast."

"I've had the phone in my hand since you left."

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