A Deeper Sleep

KATE SHUGAK is a native Aleut working as a private investigator in Alaska. She's 5 foot 1 inch tall, carries a scar that runs from ear to ear across her throat and owns half-wolf, half-husky dog named Mutt. Resourceful, strong-willed, defiant, Kate is tougher than your average heroine – and she needs to be to survive the worst the Alaskan wilds can throw at her.
A DEEPER SLEEP: Kate Shugak is determined to convict the odious Louis Deem, who has been arrested and tried for several serious crimes but never convicted.
This time, Kate is convinced, it will be different. But when the jury returns a verdict of not guilty, Kate believes that Deem has literally got away with murder. And when, a few weeks later, two people are killed after an apparent robbery, Kate can't help but believe that Deem is involved...
"She'd had to spell the word weary in a spelling bee in grade school. She'd spelled it correctly, but she'd never really understood what it meant, until now. It sounded like what it meant there was a word for that, too, but she couldn't remember it and she was weary, weary from the marrow of her bones out. If he would just let her sleep one night all the way through, if he would just let the old bruises heal before he gave her new ones, if she could just have one single moment in the day to think, to rest, to be. At first his roughness had been exciting, from the very first time when his hands shackled her wrists over her head, his knees forcing hers wide, the foreign invasion so shocking, his eyes narrowed and intent, and then the rush of feeling that spread out and up in a searing flush that seemed to melt down to the base of her brain. He enjoyed making her body rise to his, she could see it in the triumph in his face. In those early days—how many months was it now? when she had said no, he had always been able to seduce her into a yes, always."