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  Books. Change. Lives.

  Copyright © 2020 by Jackie Coates

  Cover and internal design © 2020 by Sourcebooks

  Cover design by Eileen Carey/No Fuss Design

  Cover images © Jay Berkow Photography/Getty Images; Reed Kaestner/Getty Images; PeopleImages/Getty Images

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  sourcebooks.com

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Count Your Blessings

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Excerpt from Once in a Blue Moon

  Chapter 1

  Back Cover

  To Maisey Yates and Megan Crane. For starting a conversation about small towns…

  Chapter 1

  Flying into Deep River, Alaska, took a special kind of grit. The airstrip was a narrow bit of gravel to the side of soaring mountains, with a river running along one edge, and there was always some kind of crosswind happening that would challenge even the most experienced pilot.

  It wasn’t a forgiving landing, and there was no room for error.

  Luckily, Silas Quinn hadn’t made an error in all the time he’d spent flying around the wilds of the Alaskan backcountry, and he wasn’t about to make one now.

  Particularly not when he was flying into the hometown he’d left thirteen years earlier and hadn’t been back to since.

  Especially not when he was coming back to what would probably turn out to be the most hostile reception since Mike Flint had once said at a town meeting that he thought the idea of a luxury motel on the side of the Deep River would be good and why didn’t they build one.

  Considering the reason Si was here was fifty million times worse than the idea of a luxury motel, the response he was likely to get once he’d broken the news would probably be more than the one month of cold-shouldering that Mike had gotten.

  Si would be lucky if the town didn’t kill him.

  That was if this damn airstrip didn’t kill him first.

  The clouds were lowering, and the rain was coming down hard, and the wind was a problem, but with his friend Caleb’s death still fresh, Si was in no mood to let the elements have their way with him.

  He’d survived three tours in Afghanistan.

  He’d survive this, even if it killed him.

  He kept his nerve and brought the tiny plane down, the wheels bouncing on the gravel as he rolled up just shy of the lone hangar that housed Deep River’s entire aviation industry.

  As the spin of the Cessna’s propellers began to wind down, Si sat in the cockpit trying to handle the rush of emotions that he had known would grip him the second he touched down. The usual mixture of grief, anger, and longing that Deep River always instilled whenever he thought of his hometown.

  There was a special poignancy to it today though. Because Caleb was only a few weeks dead and the shock of the will was still ringing through Si’s entire being like a hammer strike.

  Deep River was an anomaly. The entire town was privately owned and had been since the gold rush days, when town founder Jacob West had bought up all the land around the Deep River and declared it a haven for the misfits and rogues who didn’t fit in anywhere in normal society. He’d leased out the land to anyone who wanted to join him, getting them to pay him whatever they could afford in terms of a nominal rent, and in return, they could have a plot of land to call their own and do whatever they wanted with it.

  The People’s Republic of Deep River, some called it.

  Most just called it home.

  Even over a hundred years later, the town was still owned by the Wests.

  And that was the difficulty. Caleb was the oldest West and had inherited the town after his father, Jared West, had died five years earlier. And he’d ran the place since then—or at least he had until his unexpected death in a plane crash while running supplies up to a remote settlement in the north.

  But that hadn’t been the end to the shocks that Si and his two other friends, Damon and Zeke, had had to endure in the past few weeks.

  First, there had been finding out that Caleb had left the entire town to them in his will. And second, oil had been discovered within Deep River’s city limits—oil that the town had no idea was underneath their land.

  Oil that, once they knew about it, was going to turn the entire place upside down.

  Heavy stuff for three ex-military guys who had nothing to their names but a small company doing adventure tours for tourists, transport runs for hunters, and supply runs for everyone else in the Alaskan bush.

  Si stared out at the rain beyond the windshield of the plane.

  It hid everything from view, which was probably just as well. He hadn’t wanted to come back here, not considering what he’d been trying to leave behind, but it hadn’t made any sense for either Damon or Zeke to be the advance party.

  This was his hometown. He was the one who knew Deep River and the people in it. And he was the one who’d been closest to Caleb.

  Therefore, it made sense for him to be the one to break the happy news that firstly, the fact that he, Damon, and Zeke were the new owners. And secondly, there was oil in them thar hills.

  Some men might have kept the oil a secret and kept all the riches for themselves too, but Si wasn’t that kind of man, and neither were his friends.

  He’d been brought up in Deep River, an extreme environment where everyone learned to rely on each other since that could be all that stood between you and a very uncomfortable death. There was no time for petty grievances—though to be fair, there were
a lot of those as well. But when push came to shove, the town pulled together. Because fundamentally, they were all the same. They’d all come here because they didn’t fit anywhere else, because they were escaping something, because they liked the quiet and the isolation and the return to nature.

  Because they just plain old liked it.

  Si let out a breath.

  And now he was going to give them news that was going to blow it all apart.

  Since the rain didn’t look like it was going to let up anytime soon and since sitting brooding in his plane wasn’t exactly a power move, Si forced himself to undo his belt before reaching behind his seat to grab his duffel bag. Then, hauling it over his shoulder, he pushed open the cockpit door and stepped out into the rain.

  Familiar, this feeling. The mountains like walls on either side, hemming in the narrow river valley, and the rain coming down cold and unpleasant, soaking him to the skin almost straightaway.

  Yeah, he was home, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

  As a kid, he’d loved this place with every fiber of his being. Hadn’t ever wanted to leave. Those mountains had felt comforting, cradling a place of safety, where there was bush to run wild in and rivers to swim in, and the sea to fish in. He’d found it magical. There were dragons in the mountains, and castles, and armies to fight, new lands to conquer, princesses to rescue.

  Then his mother had died, and his father had fallen headfirst into a vodka bottle, and all the magic had disappeared.

  Now he was back and…

  He looked around, scowling. Yeah, the magic was still gone.

  There was only one way to get into the township of Deep River itself, since the highway ran alongside the opposite bank of the river rather than through the town, and that was by ferry. Old Jacob West had wanted to make it as difficult for the outside world to find the town as he could, so he’d positioned it very purposefully.

  The few tourists that managed to make their way there loved that about it.

  Right now, dripping wet and having to get a ferry across the river, Si didn’t find it so amusing.

  Gripping the strap of his bag, he made his way through the rain and down the gravel road that led from the airstrip to the docks.

  It was early evening, and the weather was awful, and there was no one around. Which was probably a good thing.

  Everyone in the town would already know about Caleb’s death, and they would likely also know that the new owner wasn’t Morgan West, Caleb’s little sister and the town’s only police officer. They might even have done some digging and learned about the will and how the town had gone to some “outsiders.”

  But they wouldn’t know about the oil.

  Hell, even he hadn’t known about the oil, and he was Caleb’s closest friend. The guy had kept that secret close to his vest, and understandably. Money brought out the worst in people, especially the kind of money that was tied up in oil.

  In fact, now he was here, Si had to admit that there was a small part of him reluctant to tell anyone about that oil. But not because he wanted to keep it for himself—he had everything he needed in Wild Alaska Aviation, the small company that he and his buddies had started up. No, his reluctance was all about how the rest of the town was going to deal with the oil news. Especially when it was going to mean big things. It could change people’s lives, that oil.

  It could also mean the destruction of the town itself.

  Still, the town had to know what was on their doorstep, and people had to make their own decisions accordingly, no matter his feelings on the subject. Even if he wasn’t in any hurry to spread the news around.

  Just like he wasn’t in any hurry to get to his first port of call that night.

  Seeing Hope Dawson, the third in his and Cal’s friendship triad.

  Hope. Who’d stayed.

  A muscle leapt in the side of Si’s jaw, but he forced aside thoughts of her, squinting through the rain as he stepped onto the dock, trying to see whether Kevin’s boat was there—at least, he assumed Kevin’s boat was still the ferry between the highway and the town. It had, after all, been a long time, and perhaps someone else had taken over the job.

  But no, there it was, right down at the end, Kevin Anderson’s faded red fishing boat.

  Si steeled himself.

  No one knew he was coming because he’d made sure no one knew. Which meant he was going to have to deal with people’s shock.

  He strode down the dock, wiping the rain from his face as he approached Kevin’s boat. Hopefully the guy would be in there, because if he wasn’t, Si would have to start making some calls, and he really didn’t want to do that.

  He wanted to speak to Hope before he spoke to anyone else.

  But his footsteps on the dock must not have gone unheard, because the cabin door on the boat was jerked open and a large man in his late fifties, dressed in a scruffy-looking parka, stepped out onto the deck.

  It was indeed Kevin Anderson. The Andersons had been doing the ferry service, as well as various fishing runs, for decades, so it was hardly surprising that he was still around.

  “Who are you?” Kevin demanded in deeply unfriendly tones. “Saw you come in overhead. If you’re expecting a run into town you’re s—”

  “Hey, Kevin,” Si interrupted before he could get the whole outsider schtick. “It’s me. It’s Silas.”

  Kevin’s craggy face froze. He squinted. “Silas? Silas Quinn?”

  “Yeah.” Si met the other man’s surprised stare but didn’t offer anything more. Not because he didn’t have anything to say. It was just there was a time and a place for explanations, and that time was not now, and this was not the place.

  “My God,” Kevin said. “It is you. Geez, where you been, man? It’s been years. Heard you and Cal went off to the army and…” He stopped suddenly and hunched his shoulders. “I heard about Cal. I’m sorry.”

  Si ignored the grief that tightened in his chest. There was plenty where that came from, but he wasn’t about to indulge it now. He had too much stuff to handle first.

  “Yeah, thanks. Look, I need a run into town.” He didn’t bother to phrase it as a request, not when he was all out of patience and damns to give.

  But Kevin didn’t seem to take offense. “Sure. Hop in.”

  The run over the river didn’t take long—fifteen minutes on a bad day—and mercifully Kevin wasn’t the chatty type. A couple of questions about what he’d been doing that Si answered as briefly as possible—army, then flying up in the bush. Yes, tourists. Yes, hunters. Yes, the business was doing okay—and the guy didn’t ask anything more.

  As Kevin dropped Si off on the dock on the town side, he gave him a brief wave before turning his boat around and heading back toward the airstrip side.

  Si, by now thoroughly soaked and in a foul temper, didn’t bother to watch as Kevin’s boat disappeared into the rain.

  He was too busy contemplating the reality of the town he thought he’d left behind years ago.

  Deep River itself hugged the river it was named for, the buildings, on stilts and projecting out into the water, all linked by a covered wooden boardwalk.

  It was a bit like Ketchikan, the nearest larger town to the south, except without the tourist vibe.

  There was nothing touristy about Deep River.

  It was…quirky. And that was being kind. The old wooden buildings were patched and worn looking, the paint faded from years of exposure to the harsh Alaskan elements, the signs on the stores barely legible. Apart from the general store, that was. Malcom Cooper, who owned the place, must have found some paint from somewhere because the words “Mal’s Market” were painted in bright pink across the store frontage. Last time Si had been here, “Mal’s Market” had been painted in fading orange.

  It was not an improvement.

  Si let out a breath and took a long look at
the rest of the township.

  There was April’s, the diner that made the strongest coffee in Deep River, plus the meanest hash browns. Then the Gold Pan, the town’s only hotel. Next to that was the tiny Deep River Tourist Information Center with the red marker pole standing outside it. The pole had “The Middle of Nowhere” painted down the side—one of Sandy’s many “marketing” ideas—though the paint was wearing thin there too.

  And then, directly opposite him, was the place he was headed for.

  The Happy Moose. Deep River’s one and only bar.

  He didn’t want to go inside. In fact, that was the very last thing on earth he wanted to do. But he had a duty, and if there was one thing he’d learned in his time away from Deep River, it was that a man couldn’t shirk his duty, no matter how much he wanted to.

  Si gripped the strap of his bag and strode toward the bar.

  * * *

  Hope Dawson leaned her elbows on the bar top and watched the argument between Lloyd and Joe escalate. It was coming on seven, the point of the evening where their argument normally always escalated, so they were right on target. In another five minutes or so, they’d launch themselves off their barstools and start throwing punches, and then she’d get Axel to throw them out.

  Same deal every Friday night, regular as clockwork.

  They were a couple of old trappers who spent the summer months fixed to their barstools in the Happy Moose, and they had the same argument they’d been having ever since Hope’s grandfather had owned the bar. Joe swore Lloyd had stolen a lynx from one of his traps, and Lloyd swore he’d found the animal dead under a tree. The actual truth had been lost in the mists of time and probably even Lloyd and Joe themselves had forgotten it, but that didn’t seem to matter. Their argument had gotten to be habitual, a comforting ritual they’d indulged in ever since Hope could remember.

  Really, it wouldn’t be a Friday if Lloyd and Joe didn’t get drunk and end up throwing punches at each other.

  Hope flicked a glance at Axel, lounging beside the bar’s exit. The tall ex-boxer glanced down at his watch, then nodded to her. He knew the drill well.

  Another three…two…one and…