Lost in the Wild by Leigh Mayberry (i am malala young readers edition txt) 📕

was already weeks old. People had homemade grave markers on their deceased family members. Shipping granite and marble headstones to the village was costly. It made the village cemetery—a place older than the established community—more like a burial ground.

“You picked me up from the airport, and this is the first sight I see of your city,” Dana said. She turned from the passenger window to face Meghan. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

Meghan shook her head. She pulled away from the broken property fence. “I didn’t take you by here to show you a cemetery. I wanted you to see a little of how we live around here. Memorial Day is a big deal here. It’s a celebration. You don’t just get a day off. They have a whole festival planned. You’re in for a treat.”

“Great, nothing like getting immersed in the culture,” Dana said.

Dana Wyatt was a long-time friend and part-time work partner of Meghan when she worked in the FBI resident office in Syracuse, New York. They stayed friends throughout Meghan’s tenure with the federal government. They kept in contact since Meghan said ‘goodbye’ to the real world and took the position as police chief for the rural Alaskan community. Dana was the closest thing Meghan had to a sibling. She was a forever friend, in fair weather or stormy nights.

It was on the off chance that Meghan used Dana in an official capacity to help solve the murder of her friend from Kinguyakkii Urgent Care, physician assistant, Jackie Qataliña. While Meghan didn’t agree with the outcome of the case, she reconnected with Dana. It allowed her to strengthen the bond with a current special agent with the FBI while Meghan currently tried to hide the added weight she’d packed on since leaving the bustle of the agency, and the congestion of Syracuse, New York.

Dana was a clear reminder of what Meghan left behind when she moved west and north. At forty-five, Dana chose her career over a husband or children. Never married, engaged twice, she liked the freedom of staying single without the burden of children or a spouse. Meghan didn’t like Dana’s choice when it came to describing her lack of marital commitments. Meghan never saw her daughter, Brittany, as a burden. Then again, Meghan hadn’t physically seen her daughter in almost a year.

“You’ll taste the local cuisine. You’ll mingle with the locals. They’ll sort you out. You’ll get a lot of offers for dating, and you might end up with a few more friends when you fly out on Wednesday.”

“You like it here, don’t you?” Dana asked. There was an allusion to disbelief in her tone.

“What’s not to like?” Meghan asked. She drove down Cemetery Access Road on her way to the house on Bison Street. A one-bedroom, pale blue pillbox house Meghan rented.

“It’s chilly,” Dana said. Meghan didn’t want to point out to her friend that it was the twelfth time she commented about the weather.

“It’s beautiful right now. We still see a lot of ice floe on the bay. A lot of the rivers are clearing.”

Chapter Two

Unlike New York, where April showers brought May Flowers, springtime in Alaska was fleeting and sparse. Above the Arctic Circle, it sometimes happened in late June. A day before a bright summer day, when temperatures reached the sultry zenith of 69°F before the tundra claimed the heat and pulled it deep into the earth for another year.

“Is that a problem?” Dana asked.

Meghan knew her friend assessed the village in comparisons instead of quality. It was quantity for Dana, who lived in an upscale and progressive city in Central New York. Where Kinguyakkii was a place of sporadic low-level buildings, and no common threads of straight roads, Syracuse was older with straight lines and right angles, plus tall architecture that lasted centuries.

Kinguyakkii had some new development. There was a lot of potential growth as the city expanded, gained civilians. The progress stalled when Alaskalytical Construction shut down due to a case of death and greed between owners and friends. Meghan took a little criticism for causing the lack of future for the city. Mostly, it came from people who ran businesses. They were the same people who wanted her officers to act as private security guards instead of police when patrolling their commercial properties. Meghan got more criticism when she single-handedly closed down the traveling hairdresser who killed a boyfriend because she liked the boat he owned. It was a different world, but Meghan grew to love it. When people she knew came up from the lower-forty-eight, Meghan took offense when they didn’t give Kinguyakkii a chance to grow on them. Many of the people who passed through the northern town thought something growing on them was half the problem.

Meghan pulled up to the house. The truck bounced in the divots left in the muck that made up the area where Meghan parked the vehicle. It wasn’t a driveway as much as the designated space, within a few meters, where the Suburban sat. Lawn care or driveways weren’t the kind of thing people worried about. Meghan didn’t care as long as the property owner didn’t mind the deep mud holes from heavy tires that sank deeper into the mud as the weather got warmer.

Dana packed light and carried her duffle bag from the back seat. Meghan wandered upstairs and opened the door.

“It’s not locked?” Dana’s razor-thin black eyebrows rose high on her smooth forehead.

Meghan shrugged. “I lock the door at night. Everyone knows where I live. Everyone knows who I am and what I do for a living. I lock the door when I’m home, which works.”

“Okay, that’s not weird at all.” Dana moved inside. She dropped her luggage without any concern.

Meghan shed her fair-weather jacket. It was a City Police black all-weather coat with a liner. The winter parka took a trip to Anchorage