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looked over at Ben. “Can you try that? Is there signal out here?”
    Ben leaned down to pull his mobile phone out of his gear bag, and then nodded. Normally using personal mobile phones on the rescue helicopter was strictly prohibited. But this was an emergency situation. Evan needed their help. Brett looked up the number for the tour company and called it. After the second ring, a deep, gruff voice answered the line.
    “Frost Peak Tours, this is Sawyer.”
    “Sawyer, listen. I’m Ben Harrington, and I’ve got a friend of yours on board a helicopter right now. His name’s Evan, and he’s pretty sick. He said if I called you up that one of your clan members might be able to come pick him up from an airstrip near Kodiak.” Ben paused to give Sawyer time to respond. Ben had purposely kept the details of the situation vague. If Ben had reached the right number, and Sawyer was a bear shifter, then what Ben had said would make sense to him. If Sawyer wasn’t a bear shifter, though, Ben hadn’t given anything away. Sawyer would probably just think Ben had the wrong number and was a little bit on the eccentric side. That was nothing unusual around these parts. After several beats, Sawyer finally responded.
    “Holy shit. You guys found Evan? We thought he was dead for sure.”
    “Well, to be brutally honest with you, he’s almost dead. But he wants to go home and be with his family. We’re on a Coast Guard helicopter and can’t divert too far without having to answer too many questions, so we were hoping someone might be able to come pick him up.”
    “Yes, absolutely!” Sawyer said, his voice filling with emotion. “I’ll come get our boy myself. You just tell me where to meet you, and I’ll be there.”
    Ben looked over at Ace and nodded in confirmation. Ace smiled.
    “Tell him the Stone Valley airstrip,” Ace said. “It’s remote enough that no one else should be around to gawk at us, but close by enough that it’s barely even a deviation from our flight path.”
    “Got it,” Ben said, and then turned his attention back to the call to give Sawyer the details. Sawyer said he would be there around the same time as the rescue crew, and Ben gave Ace a thumbs up. Ace got on the radio to the air station to let them know the crew would be taking a slight detour to deal with a maintenance issue. Ben breathed a sad sigh of relief. He wished that Evan’s story was going to have a happier ending, but at least the grizzly would have the chance to see his clan one more time.
    “Lance, tell Evan to hang on a little longer,” Ben said into his headset. “He’s going home.”
    Less than an hour later, Ace brought the helicopter to a smooth landing at the nearly deserted Stone Valley airstrip. The place was busier in the summertime, when the tourists were out in full force and wanted to take air tours to see the Alaskan wilderness. Today, the only other aircraft here was a Twin Otter, already parked in front of the empty hangar.
    Ben jumped out of the helicopter as Ace killed the engine, then he rushed back to see if Lance and Brett needed help getting Evan out of the chopper. They were handling Evan just fine, though, so Ben turned to offer his hand to the woman who had been rescued along with Evan.
    When he saw her, he froze in place. Despite the fact that her skin was pale and her hair a mess from her harrowing ordeal, she was, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman that Ben had ever seen. Her jet black hair was thick and shiny, and her eyes were the deepest shade of blue he had ever seen. Her eyelashes were thick, and even though she didn’t have any makeup on her face, her complexion was flawless. She looked down at him with a sort of shell-shocked expression, as though she were still trying to figure out what exactly was happening here. Ben felt his bear’s protective alpha instincts kicking in, and he wanted nothing more in that moment than to calm her down and reassure her that everything was going to be