Page 93 of Untamed Coast

“My father owned a bar in Sitka—the Red Baron. It burned down when I was young. My father died. I was raised by a friend. We were poor.” She looked past Marco’s shoulder toward the water. “I did okay in fishing for a number of years. People may think my money came from that, but trust me, nobody is that good at fishing.”

Marco looked behind them. The flat-black RIB was pulling back onto the beach with his dinghy attached. Marco had to pick up his pace just to keep up with her. “So you own all of Baranof Marine? The tour boats, fishing boats, boatyards, Ms…. I didn’t get your name?”

“Baron. Anya Baron,” she replied. “Family name is Russian, actually—Baranov. My three-times great-grandfather was Alexander Baranov—the one Baranof Island is named after. He came here in the late seventeen hundreds to set up a fur trade and to colonize the place, which is a fancy word meaning he was a slave-trading genocidal rapist. So, someone a few generations ago kindly shortened the name to Baron.”

She led him around the back of the dilapidated cabin.

“This was my fishing cabin thirty years ago.” Anya leaned into the rear door of the cabin. “Originally belonged to my father-in-law—Joe Baxter.” She seemed to survey the ruins. “Joe died before I met his son—my ex-husband. Great overnight hideout when we were trolling for salmon. Lots of memories in this old shack. Not all of them good. I fixed it up a bit, but when I came into my fortune, I just moved on.”

She turned toward the grassy area behind the cabin. “All those seasons we struggled to make ends meet out here. Never knew a fortune in gold from old Joe’s mine was buried right under our woodpile.”

“The woodpile. That’s what we…what I gathered from Joe’s coded journal,” Marco said. “I didn’t remember seeing a woodpile when I was here before, though. I even went back and looked through my photos.”

Anya met Marco’s eye. “So you cracked the code. My guys haven’t been able to yet.”

“Well, I can tell you what it says.” Marco pointed to the edge of the rubble where he’d found the radio. “The radio I dug up that started this whole mess was right under there.”

Wish I’d never found the damn thing.

“The gold wasn’t from Joe’s mine,” Marco continued. “Joe worked with two guys—Virgil Fellows and Sam Worlson—they stole it from the Chichagof mine. Joe’s mine was just a front—laundering the gold, so to speak.”

Anya slowed and turned back toward Marco. “Sam Worlson…” She nodded slowly, enunciating each syllable, looking into space over Marco’s head. “What about Thomas?”

“Don’t know a Thomas,” Marco said. “Who was he?”

“You know, you really messed things up with your fancy radio and your rescue project,” she said. “Almost got our poor girl killed.”

“You mean Crystal?” Marco stopped on the trail. “What are you…She is still alive!”

Anya moved away from the cabin. “Sometimes a woman needs to disappear, Mr. Franco.”

A wave of relief, elation, and confusion washed over Marco. He’d been right. He’d been wrong. His mind spun and wobbled its way through a maze of conflicting thoughts and emotions. “I knew it.”

“I was sick of feeling afraid in my own home,” Anya said. “Keeping bodyguards round the clock, sleeping with a gun under my pillow, waiting for someone to come after me. Funny thing is, the people I’m afraid of probably died a long time ago.” She nodded toward the cabin. “Anyway, I decided to do something about it—not just for me, but for people like me.”

Crystal was escaping. I just stepped right in the middle…

“I run six shelters across Alaska,” Anya continued. “Most of the women we help can go there, get away from their abusers, and get a fresh start. On rare occasions, though, like with Crystal and the Pykes, that’s not enough. Those monsters would go to the ends of the earth to find her unless they thought she was dead. They have people everywhere—including law enforcement, so we couldn’t involve the police.”

“The other two women who went overboard.” Marco tried to keep his voice from trembling. “Was that you too?”

“They went much smoother,” Anya replied. “We scooped them up right after they jumped overboard just as planned.” Anya motioned for them to continue down the trail. “This time, with the bad weather, we lost Crystal. Then you came and trampled on our radio transmissions.”

Marco stopped in the trail. “That seems terribly dangerous.”

“The Pykes are even more dangerous,” Anya said. “But we won’t try it this way again. Three times was pushing it, and you’re right. We almost lost her.” She stopped and moved some branches from beside the trail, uncovering a wooden hatch at ground level. “Joe Baxter’s root cellar.” She opened the hatch and motioned to Marco. “After you.”

Marco touched the inReach in his jacket pocket. Once he dropped into the root cellar, it wouldn’t have a signal.

He turned to Anya. “Are we okay?”

Her stare dug into his heart. “We are.”

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and brought up the inReach app to connect to his satellite device. He thumbed a message into the app, making errors every couple of letters and having to backspace. “EVERYTHNG OK. SAFE. STND DOWN.”

The inReach beeped its confirmation.

Anya took a battery-powered lantern from a dusty shelf and turned it on. The warm glow illuminated a cozy corner hideaway with a cot, provisions, blankets. She lifted the edge of the cot toward the light. Words were carved into the wooden frame.