Cassandra Caldwell sat in her parents’ expansive Upper East Side living room, watching their faces, knowing they were about to try and talk her out of the major life decision she’d just told them about. She wondered why they’d even decided to have a child at all.

For status?

To keep up with their posh friends who were producing their own offspring and starting to dominate dinner conversations with talk of which exclusive Manhattan schools they’d send them to?

Or had they given it any thought at all? Cassie doubted she was a mistake baby—her parents didn’t make mistakes of such magnitude—but she’d long felt like an afterthought, an obligation to squeeze in between their powerhouse careers and drinks after work with colleagues and friends. Cassie had spent much of her childhood snuggled up in a cozy reading chair at her beloved grandmother’s apartment, which after her death had been remodeled from a classic brownstone into the modern monstrosity they sat in now.

“Cassie. You can’t move to Alaska,” her mother said. “It’s simply not done.”

“Not done by whom, Mom?”

“By anyone,” her mother said.

“We didn’t put you through grad school at the Columbia School of Journalism so you could end up in Bumblefuck, Alaska,” her father said. “I’ve never even heard of Golden Falls.”

“I’m not ending up in Alaska,” Cassie said tersely. “I’m just starting out there, and I don’t really see what choice I have except to give up broadcast news altogether. Have you forgotten? I. Have. A. Stalker.” She enunciated the words her parents had completely glossed over. “I have a stalker who thinks I belong to him, and police who don’t seem inclined to help.” And parents who have never, ever given me what I need. “I was hoping I could count on you to support my decision.”

“Maybe if it was California,” her mother said.

“I haven’t received a job offer in California,” said Cassie, who’d graduated just weeks earlier into an anemic job market.

“Didn’t NBC here in New York offer you anything?” her dad said. “They seemed to be impressed with your work during your internship.”

“They offered me the lowest spot on the totem pole, where I’d be getting coffee and kissing ass for the next five years.”

Her father frowned. “Nothing wrong with paying your dues.”

“I agree, but as I said, there’s a stalker who became obsessed with me when he saw me on the few segments I got to do with NBC, and he somehow managed to find out where I live.” Cassie leaned forward on the white smooth leather couch to emphasize her point. “Don’t you understand? I’m not safe here. I don’t feel safe. Plus, the job at KFLS is an anchor job. I’d get to report and anchor the nightly news. That’s almost unheard of right out of school. This is good, you guys. It’s the best thing for me. And it’s not forever. It’s definitely just one rung on the ladder.”

Her mother waved her hands in dismay. “Well, I think it’s a mistake.”

Her father nodded agreement.

“I don’t know what you guys want from me.” Cassie stood, resigned to their disappointment. “I’d think my safety would mean something to you.”

“So you’ve got a fan who sends you flowers.” Her mom shrugged dismissively. “I’ve received flowers from anonymous men before.”

“It wasn’t just flowers he sent me,” Cassie said. “It was a bridal bouquet of calla lilies saying it symbolized how he was going to purify me into the well-behaved wife I’d be for him. That’s completely creepy.” She shuddered, remembering the yawning mouths of the white lilies, their yellow pistils like tongues. They’d all seemed to be shouting at her.

“I just think if it really was a serious situation, the police would have done something about it,” her mom said.

“How does Jason feel about you moving to Alaska?” her dad inquired of her stock broker boyfriend.

“I’m on my way to tell him right now.”

“He’s not going to wait around for you,” her mom warned. “A man like him—”

“I don’t expect him to,” Cassie said curtly. “He was never intended to be a long-term thing.” None of her boyfriends had been thus far, as she was a career woman above all else. At age twenty-six, she wanted to establish herself before she thought about marriage or kids.

“I don’t know why not. I think you should stick to him like glue,” her mom said. “He’s very handsome, and it’s clear he’s going places. He’s climbing right up that corporate ladder, and he’s going to be somebody someday.”

“What does that even mean?” Cassie asked, although she knew her mother meant Jason would make a name for himself in the circles that mattered to her parents. “Everybody is somebody, Mom—but Jason’s not my somebody.”

She left her parents’ residence with a feeling of dejection. If she was honest with herself, she didn’t want to leave New York at all. To her parents, she’d put up a front that this was the direction she was choosing, but she wasn’t, not really.

She was running away.

As she walked down the street, keeping an eye out for an available taxi, her phone dinged with an email notification. Don’t look, she told herself, but she looked anyway. It was from an unknown address. She didn’t open it, but couldn’t help seeing the first few words of its contents, and she knew who it was from. Doug Whatever-His-Real-Name, Doug who’d started out as a fan and was now her nightmare.

You look so good in that dress you make me crazy I want to take—

She wanted to throw her phone into the street and let it be run over. Instead she set her jaw as if she hadn’t seen the message and kept walking, heart knocking in her throat.

* * *

A few weeks later, Cassie found herself sitting around a conference table with her new KFLS coworkers in the small city of Golden Falls, Alaska. She was Cassie Holt now, not Cassandra Caldwell anymore, at least for TV purposes.

Holt had been her grandmother’s maiden name. When Cassie realized her stalker would easily find her online if she used her real name and therefore she’d have to change it, at least adopting her cherished grandmother’s name gave her a small measure of comfort.

She’d ended things with Jason (no tears shed there), said goodbye to Abby, her best friend and roommate from graduate school who’d just gotten hired by a newspaper in Atlanta, closed all her social media accounts, and made her way to the Land of the Midnight Sun.

So far, so good.

Golden Falls was a small bustling city two hours’ drive northeast of Denali National Park, and home to Alaska State University. It was a place tourists came to stay and play and spend money. It had a tidy, frontier-chic historic downtown complete with an old-fashioned town square where the orchestra performed on summer evenings and where the town’s Christmas tree lighting took place each December. Adjacent the park was a footbridge leading over the town’s namesake, Golden Falls, a twenty-foot waterfall set in the Nanook River, where hopeful prospectors had once panned for gold. A distinctive heart-shaped rock sat under the falls, and it was a time-honored tradition for young lovers to throw stones toward it. The belief was that if you could get your pebble to stay on the rock, you’d found your one true love—and while Cassie had no expectation of finding love during what she expected would be a short stint in Alaska, she’d half-fallen in love with the town itself.

She listened as the news director, Steve Kopacik, gave his daily staff briefing. Steve was a lifelong resident of Golden Falls who’d worked at the station for twenty years. KFLS Channel Eight had a hard news bent, and Steve prided himself on covering issues as well as or better than the Anchorage stations. Proof of that commitment could be found by looking at the conference room wall, which was covered in award plaques from national news associations. Or, by talking to Steve for three minutes, it would be sure to come up.

Steve listened to pitches from the news producers, made a few assignments to other reporters, and then turned to Cassie.

“Holt.” He addressed her by last name. “Is everything good to go with you? Ready for your ride-along with the fire department?”

Cassie straightened in her chair. “Yes, sir.”

After scanning her designer pantsuit, Steve peeked under the table at her peep-toe pumps. “Did you forget, short-timer? I told you open-toed shoes aren’t allowed.”

Next to her Michael Driessner smirked. Her middle-aged co-anchor, he had tried asking her out her second day on the job. When she turned him down, he settled into a smarmy, “you’ll-give-in-one-of-these-days” flirtatiousness with her, punctuated with disdain for her newcomer status. She had a feeling it was a tack Michael took with every new and single female anchor.

“No, Steve, I didn’t forget our conversation from yesterday.” Cassie tried not to visibly bristle at her boss’s disapproving tone and cutting words. “My closed-toed shoes are in my car, and I’ll change into them once I get to the station. They’re loafers.” Gucci, she thought but didn’t say, knowing he’d roll his eyes if she did.

“Good.” He studied her. “I want you to capture their day-to-day life at the station. Give a glimpse into what they do for our citizens twenty-four-seven. Give it some real flavor.”

“Will do.” As we also discussed yesterday, Steve.

“That’s it, folks,” he announced. “Go make some noise.”

As the others filed out, Cassie hung back. In some ways she was her parents’ daughter—a natural hard worker—and she wasn’t accustomed to taking crap from anyone. But Steve had been far less enthused to bring Cassie on board than she’d expected—after all, what rinky-dink news director wouldn’t salivate at the idea of hiring a graduate of the best journalism school in the country? Let’s just call it what it is, he’d said. You’re looking to get your experience and then get out. Cassie couldn’t disagree, but she assured him she was there to learn and give the job her all.

And she would, but she didn’t need to take unjustified insults from him while she did.

He eyed her while making notes on his tablet.

“Something on your mind?”

“I go by Cassie,” she said pointedly, although quivering inside. “Or Cassandra, or Holt’s fine, too—but I’ll ask that you not refer to me as ‘short-timer’ again, especially in front of the others.”

Please don’t fire me, please don’t fire me, she wished fervently. She didn’t think he would jettison the investment of her relocation bonus, not to mention the trouble of finding a new anchor after just a few weeks. But who knew? If he was itching to get rid of her, he might use her challenging him as his chance.

“Duly noted.” There was a begrudging appreciation in his eyes. “I hope you’re this direct with everyone in town, from the mayor to the police chief. I expect my reporters to speak with honesty, like you just did, and report the truth.”

“Will do, sir,” she said, relieved by his response.

Returning to her desk, she prepared her tools of the trade: a digital voice recorder, notepad, pen, and laptop. She had a few minutes before leaving, so she researched her feature story, noting links and typing up statistics about fire and EMS call volume, funding, and public health and safety. As she did, her mind wandered. What would she be doing at this moment if her stalker didn’t exist and she’d gotten a job in New York City? She’d already be well into her day as a beat reporter, desperate for air time in a market choked with others like her, young and ambitious and hungry. This is for the best, she told herself, hoping that if she said it a thousand times she might actually come to believe it.

When she arrived at Fire Station Number One, which was easy to find just one block south of Main Street, she parked between two large pickup trucks, a Ram and an F-350.

The fire station was a new, modern-looking building, two stories of red brick with large windows. One side was entirely taken up by huge four-fold bay doors made of glass. Steel lettering above the doors declared it “Golden Falls Fire Station No. 1.” Three fire trucks were parked inside, along with a standard-size pickup and an ambulance.

She felt an unexpected thrill about her day’s assignment. There’s something to be said about being a big fish in a small pond, she thought as she changed her shoes and walked from her car on the sunny, warm July day, the elevation and latitude making the sun feel stronger and brighter than she was used to. She would’ve had to kill, probably literally, to do a ride-along with the sexy FDNY firefighters.

She hoped the Golden Falls firefighters would be just as smoking hot as those in New York.