Midnight come again by Dana Stabenow

in neon letters twenty feet high.
    And then people started bringing newspapers into the bar, and we heard about Jack. And the rest of them."

    "Yeah."
    "So what the hell happened?" "What they said. What you read." Jim drained his glass and dropped a couple of ones on the bar. "Gotta go."

    "Jim?"
    "I'll find her, Bernie. You know how she is, she won't make it easy, but I'm a trained law enforcement professional." Jim pulled his cap on with unnecessary force and screwed it down over his ears. "I'll find her."
    "Good," Bernie said.

    Jim wasn't sure if Bernie believed him.

    He wasn't sure he believed himself.

    Bobby dropped him off at the airstrip just as George Perry was on his last approach of the night into Niniltna. Jim climbed back out of the Jet Ranger and waited for the Super Cub to taxi up to the hangar.

    The pilot saw him as soon as he stepped down from the plane. "Hey, Jim."

    "Hey, George."

    "What brings you into the Park on such a fine night?" George tried to smile, but the events of the preceding fall had taken their toll on him, too, and it was a poor effort. Both men couldn't help but remember the scene that had met their horrified gazes on the airstrip at George's hunting lodge south of Denali National Park. There had been too many bodies, seven in all, one of which Kate had to be separated from forcibly before they could load it into the plane.
    The dead had outnumbered the living by one. Jim didn't like to think about it even now, with ten months between him and that terrible day.
    By his expression, neither did George. Jim got right to the point. "Have you seen Kate lately?"

    George, in the act of opening the Cub's cowling, paused. "No."

    "When was the last time you did see her?"
    George turned to face Jim, a spark of anger lighting his eyes. "They aren't going to let them go, are they? You didn't forget to read them their rights or something stupid like that, did you?" "We aren't letting them go," Jim said wearily, "and no, I didn't forget to read them their rights. I'm looking for Kate, is all. When was the last time you saw her?"
    George stared at him long enough to decide Jim was telling the truth. He turned back to the cowling. "I don't know. It's been a while."

    "Try to remember. It's important, or I wouldn't ask."

    George's shoulders slumped. "Look, she's been through enough, all right?
    Leave her alone." Old Sam had said almost those same exact words when they had landed at the strip ten months before. Leave her be.

    "I need to know where she is, George."
    "I don't know where she is," George said. His words had the ring of truth to them, but Jim had been a state trooper for more than fourteen years and he knew when someone was telling him the truth but not all of it. He waited.
    With a muffled curse George slapped an open hand against the Cub's fuselage, causing the fabric to undulate in little waves. "I saw her in March, at Bernie's. She said she was leaving the Park for a while. She asked me for a lift to Anchorage. I took her that night."

    "Where'd you drop her off?"
    "Spernak, at Merrill. Last I saw, she was heading for a phone to call a cab."

    "She say where she was going?"

    "No."

    "She say how long she'd be gone?"

    "No."

    "Okay." Jim paused. "When was this, do you remember? What day, I mean?"
    "The fifteenth. The ides of March." A glimmer of a smile. "Why I remember."

    There was something else, though. "What?" Jim said. "What else, George?"

    George took a long, deep, steadying break. "Something wrong with her arm. Her right arm, above the elbow. She had it wrapped up, but there was blood seeping through. She wouldn't let me take a look."

    "What did she say happened?"

    "I knew she wouldn't tell me, so I didn't ask."

    They stood without speaking, trying not to think back to the last time they'd seen Kate Shugak hurt. "Okay," Jim said finally. "Thanks, George."
    George watched the tall trooper walk to his helicopter and climb in. The rotors whined into motion.
    "Bring her home,