Up Close and Dangerous Page 9

  “No, it’s okay. I have two layers of clothes between me and it. You’re working your ass off, so the least I can do is serve as a snow-melter.”

  “That’s true.”

  This time the smile became a real one, showing a flash of teeth and a tiny dimple just above the left corner of his mouth. Only then did she realize how less than gracious her reply had been, and she gave her head a rueful shake. “Sorry. That was rude.”

  “But truthful.” He held his head very still, understandably, but his eyes were crinkled with amusement, and that little dimple flashed again. It was amazing how a smile changed him from Captain Sourpuss to a very attractive man, bandaged head, bruised face, and all.

  “Well…yes.”

  “Thank God you said yes. If you hadn’t, I’d have thought you’d completely lost touch with reality.”

  “I have a fairly firm grip on reality,” she said wryly, and sighed. “Unfortunately, reality is telling me I’d better get my butt in gear, or we’ll freeze to death tonight. The altitude is really getting to me, so I have to be slow and careful.”

  His gaze suddenly sharpened as he studied her face. “You have altitude sickness?”

  “Headache, dizziness—yeah, I’m pretty sure. The headache could partly be from banging my head, but overall I think it’s the altitude.”

  His expression turned grim. “And I can’t do anything to help you. Bailey, don’t push yourself. It’s dangerous if you do. Altitude sickness can kill you.”

  “So can hypothermia.”

  “We can get through the night. There are enough clothes here to cover ten people, and we can share our body heat.”

  They’d have to do that anyway; she had no illusions about her ability in the shelter-building department. She also had no illusions about how cold these mountains could get at night, or how precarious his condition was. Weighed objectively, hypothermia and altitude sickness weren’t equal dangers—not for her, and certainly not for him. Considering how much blood he’d lost, he was in far more danger of dying during the coming night than she was.

  “I’ll be careful,” she said, getting to her feet. She looked up at the plane, tilted almost on its side on the slope above her. Just thinking of climbing those few yards again made her feel exhausted, but she needed the cargo net, as well as the leather from the seats. Oh, yeah, and the wiring, too. She could see lots of wiring, hanging from the broken wing and the gaping hole where the left wing and part of the cabin had been.

  The enormity of the job she faced almost made her panic. She was hungry, she was thirsty, and she was cold. She ached all over. The puncture wound in her right arm, which she’d almost forgotten, was making its presence felt. Even if she’d had a decent meal in her, plenty of water, and the proper clothing—as well as a nice, toasty fire—she wouldn’t have liked knowing she was responsible for building them a shelter that would actually hold together. Architecture bored her. She’d never even built sand castles.

  All she had to rely on were some episodes on survival that she’d watched on the Discovery channel, the details of which hadn’t really stuck with her. She knew they’d be warmer with a layer of something between them and the ground; she knew she had to get a roof of some sort over their heads to protect them from possible rain or snow. Beyond that, all she could think of was that they had to be protected from the wind, too. All of this she was somehow supposed to accomplish with sticks and leaves.

  Worming her way into the wreckage, she finished unhooking the cargo net and let it drop through the door to the ground. That task wasn’t physically demanding, and neither was removing the leather from the seats. To keep the leather in the largest pieces possible, she painstakingly used the point of the knife to cut the stitches. The backseat was a single bench, with two individual seat backs and arms; the bench would provide the largest piece. Wind couldn’t get through leather; that’s why motorcyclists wore leather clothing.

  Cutting all those stitches took time, longer than she’d anticipated. Some of the leather she had to cut out anyway, because it wouldn’t pull free even after she’d sliced all the stitching. Removing the leather from the seats revealed the thick foam that provided cushioning; she could easily see a need for that, so the pads of foam followed the cargo net and the pieces of leather. The floorboard provided more vinyl. The bounty salvaged from the airplane that had almost killed them, she thought, might save them yet.

  11

  “GUESS WHAT?” BRET PRACTICALLY SANG EARLY THAT afternoon as he bounced into the J&L office with his jaunty stride. “Turns out Cam was right about the allergic reaction. It was—” He stopped in midsentence, the humor fading from his face, his sharp blue eyes locking on Karen’s face. “What’s wrong?”

  Karen stared wordlessly at him. Her face was paper white, her expression drawn and stark. She was holding the telephone receiver, and slowly she replaced it. “I was just about to call you,” she said. Her voice was thin, toneless.

  “What?”

  “It’s Cam.”

  Bret looked at his watch. “He called already? He’s made damn good time.”

  “No, he…hasn’t called.” Karen spoke as if she was barely able to move her lips. She swallowed. “He didn’t make the fuel stop at Salt Lake.”

  A tiny muscle in Bret’s jaw began to twitch. “He stopped somewhere else,” he said flatly, after a moment. “Before Salt Lake. If there was any trouble, he’d put down—”

  Slowly, wobbling a little, Karen shook her head.

  Bret hung there, staring at her while he absorbed what she was telling him. Then he bolted for his office, grabbed his trash can, and vomited into it. “God,” he said in a strained voice, when he could talk. He pressed both fists over his eyes. “God in heaven. I can’t—I can’t believe…”

  Karen hovered in the office door. “An alert has been issued.”

  “Fuck an alert,” he said savagely, swinging around. “A search—”

  “You know the protocol.”

  “They’re wasting time! They have to—”

  Her only answer was another agonizingly slow shake of her head.

  Furiously he kicked his chair, sent it slamming into the wall. “Shit!” he bellowed. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  Then he picked up the phone and began calling people, only to be told over and over that protocol would be followed, that if Cam hadn’t checked in somewhere within a couple of hours, a search would be initiated.

  Slamming down the phone for the last time, he went over to the map on his wall and traced a line from Seattle to Denver, marking the route Cam would have taken. “Over a thousand miles,” he muttered. “He could be anywhere. Anything could have gone wrong. Have you talked to Dennis? Did Mike write up the Skylane yesterday for anything?”

  The two questions were directed at Karen, who had been listening to his calls, hoping against hope that he could kick-start the search. “I’ve already checked,” she said. “There wasn’t anything. Dennis said there hasn’t been anything on the Skylane except normal maintenance.” She hesitated. “Whatever happened…didn’t have to be mechanical. A bird could have hit them, or he could have gotten sick and passed out…” Her voice trailed off.

  Bret was still staring at the map. Cam’s route had been over some of the most rugged, remote terrain in the country. “He could have set it down,” he insisted. “In a field, a canyon, on a dirt-bike trail—anywhere. If it can be done, Cam can do it.”

  “They’re doing a communications search,” she said. “If he could land it, he’ll radio in. An FSS will pick up his transmission.” Her voice wavered a little as she said, “All we can do is wait.”

  Flight Service Stations were air-traffic facilities that performed a lot of different functions; among them was the constant monitoring of the aircraft emergency frequency. Cam had filed a Visual Flight Rules flight plan, which placed him in the FSS system of graduating emergency levels. When Cam hadn’t arrived in Salt Lake at his estimated time, the system went into a distress phase. A commu
nications search notified all the communication sites and airports along his route that he was late in arriving and asked for any information.

  The protocol was that, after an hour, if the plane hadn’t been found, the communications search was intensified and expanded, and all possible landing sites were checked. After another hour of no results, the FSS would hand the search over to Search and Rescue. Cam’s friends and relatives would be called. Only after three hours was an actual, physical search initiated; a satellite would pick up the Emergency Locator Transmitter on the plane and lead the Search and Rescue team to it, but depending on how remote the location was, that could take several more hours.

  Karen was right. All they could do was wait.

  Bret paced. Karen returned to her desk and sat staring at nothing, stirring only to answer the phone whenever it rang. The minutes ticked by so slowly that time might have been a variation of Chinese water torture.

  Then Karen answered the phone one last time, in a strangled voice said, “Yes, thank you,” hung up, and burst into tears.

  Bret dragged in deep, ragged breaths. He stood frozen, his fists knotted. “They found wreckage?” he asked hoarsely.

  “No.” She wiped her eyes and firmly set her jaw. “No distress calls were received, no radio contact made. If he’d made an emergency landing somewhere—” She didn’t have to say it. If Cam had landed, he’d have radioed in, but landing and crashing were two very different things. “SAR has been initiated.”

  Brett’s color had gone gray and his shoulders were slumped. “I’d better…I guess I should call Seth Wingate.” Returning to his desk, he dropped heavily into his chair and fumbled with the phone book. Karen quickly pulled up the family’s file on her computer and called out the number to him.

  “Yeah, what’s up?” a slightly slurred voice greeted him. A television played loudly in the background.

  He was already drunk? It was the middle of the afternoon. “Seth?”

  “The one and only.”

  “Bret Larsen, of J and L.” Bret propped his elbows on his desk and covered his eyes with one hand.

  “I thought you were taking the step-bitch—sorry, my dear, dear stepmommy—to Denver today.”

  “Cam, Captain Justice, took the flight at the last minute.” He felt as if he were running out of air so he sucked in a quick breath. Get this over with. “We’ve lost contact with the plane. They never arrived at the refueling stop in Salt Lake.”

  Incredibly, Seth laughed. “You’re shitting me.”

  “No. Search and Rescue has been initiated. They—”

  “Thanks for calling,” Seth said, and laughed again. “I guess some fucking prayers do come true, huh?”

  Bret found himself listening to the dial tone. “Asshole!” he roared, fighting the urge to throw the phone across the office. “Shithead! Bastard!”

  “I gather he isn’t upset,” said Karen. She was still pale, but her eyes were dry and she had the drawn, numb look of someone who was functioning through a massive shock.

  “The son of a bitch laughed. Said his prayer has come true.”

  “Maybe with some help from him,” she said with fierce loathing.

  THE FIRST THING Seth did was mute the television and call his sister, Tamzin. When she answered he could tell by the shrieking and splashing in the background that she was sitting by the pool watching her two brats. He didn’t like his nephew and niece. He didn’t much like his sister, but on this front, at least, they were united.

  “You won’t believe this,” he purred in satisfaction. “Seems like Bailey’s plane crashed on the way to Denver.”

  Like him, her first reaction was laughter. “You’re kidding me!”

  “Bret Larsen just called. He was supposed to be her pilot but the other one, the tall one, took the flight instead.”

  “Oh my God, this is great! I can’t believe—I mean, I know we shouldn’t celebrate, but she’s been so—How did you manage it?”

  Instant fury roared through him. She was so fucking stupid. She had Caller ID; she knew he was calling on a cell phone, which were notoriously unsecure, and she said something like that? Was she trying to get him arrested?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said coldly.

  “Oh, come on. Madison! Don’t do—I’ll have to cancel your play date if you—” She shrieked suddenly. “Now look what you’ve done! Mommy’s all wet! That’s it! You can’t have anyone over for a month!”

  Even over the phone Seth could hear the obnoxious whine of his niece, a particularly grating sound, as she immediately launched into a campaign to wear her mother down and get her privileges reinstated. Tamzin never made good on any of her threats, as her children knew all too well. All they had to do was whine long enough, and Tamzin would give in just to shut them up. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Can’t you shut her up? She sounds like a steam whistle.”

  “They’re driving me insane today.”

  Short drive, he thought, cynically.

  “So, what do we do?” Tamzin asked. “Do we have to claim the body, or anything like that, because I don’t care if she’s buried or not. I’m not spending a penny on her funeral.”

  “We don’t do anything yet. They’re searching for the plane.”

  “You mean they don’t even know where it is?”

  “Why else would they be searching for it?” He pinched harder.

  “How do they know it crashed if they don’t know where it is? You’d think someone would have noticed if a plane just disappeared off the radar screen.”

  He started to explain to her that general aviation flights didn’t occupy the same altitudes as commercial aviation and weren’t tracked by radar until they approached controlled air space, but decided to save his breath. “It didn’t show up at their scheduled refueling stop.”

  “So it might not have crashed? They don’t know for certain?” Disappointment laced her voice.

  “They’re as certain as they can be.”

  “So when do we get control of our money?”

  “When the bodies are found and a death certificate issued, I suppose.” He really had no idea; the legal issues might take some time to settle.

  “How long will that take? It’s ridiculous that we don’t have control over our own money. I hate, I absolutely hate, Dad for doing this to me. I have to pretend to all my friends that we let her live in the house out of the goodness of our hearts, and that I’m careful with money when the truth is she doles out every penny as if it’s hers.”

  “I don’t know,” he said impatiently. “Call your lawyer if you have to find out this minute.”

  “Furthermore, I’m not wearing black, and I’m not pretending to be sorry.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m not either.” Suddenly he couldn’t bear to talk to her another minute. “I’ll let you know when I find out something more concrete.”

  “You could have called earlier. I’ve had a shitty day, and if you’d told me this first thing this morning I’d have been in a much better mood.”

  Seth disconnected the phone and in a fit of anger threw it across the room. What had started out as sheer satisfaction now left a bitter taste in his mouth. Going into the bathroom, he gulped down a glass of water and stared in the mirror as if he’d never seen himself before, wondering if other people looked at him and saw someone who would kill to achieve his own ends. His mouth thinned as he compressed it, and he whirled away from his reflection.

  Going back into the living room, he picked up the scotch he’d been drinking, his third of the day, and brought it to his mouth. Then, without sipping, he set it back down. He needed a clear head, so that meant no more scotch right now.

  He’d have to be very, very careful, or his stupid sister’s loose mouth would land him in prison.

  12

  BAILEY STEPPED BACK TO SURVEY THE FRUITS OF HER labor, and not because she was overwhelmed by its beauty. The “shelter”—she hoped it was sturdy enough to qualify—was such a motley
collection of odds and ends, and so weirdly shaped, that a third-world country might have disavowed it. Her knees were wobbly—after all the work putting the shelter together she was on the verge of falling on her face.

  Her head was throbbing with pain. She was so thirsty her mouth felt like cotton, and melting snow in her mouth provided only short-term relief, plus it made her even colder. She was hungry. She ached all over, her muscles protesting every move. And she was so dizzy that, toward the end, she’d been forced to crawl, which meant her sweatpants had gotten wet with the snow and now leeched even more of her body heat away.

  But the thing was finished, and she and Justice had a place to sleep that, if it didn’t fall down on top of them, would provide at least some protection from the icy wind. And that wasn’t easy.

  WITH ONLY JUSTICE’S pocketknife for cutting, she had to use what broken limbs and branches she could find. The plane had broken a lot of limbs, but not all of them had been sheared completely off. Some of those that hadn’t been completely broken off she’d been able to hack free, if they were hanging by a few shreds, but she couldn’t afford to spend a lot of energy or time on them. Picking up two broken limbs from the ground, even if they weren’t as sturdy as one left still hanging, was much easier than performing an amputation with a pocketknife.

  After picking out a sort of oblong spot among a fairly tight grouping of trees, tucked against the slightly concave side of a boulder and recommended mostly because the spot was fairly level, as well as by the lack of large roots protruding from the ground, she had scraped away as much snow as she could and lined the cleared spot with a crosshatch pattern of the most limber branches. All of the trees seemed to be evergreens and firs, so the branches with their bristling of needles would make a good, cushioned layer between them and the ground.

  Maybe she went about it backward, but for her own thought patterns she needed to make their bed first, then build the shelter around it so she could better visualize how large the shelter should be. As he’d said, the smaller the better. Because she was concerned about getting the shelter long enough so he could stretch out his legs, she stood beside him and carefully measured him by the heel-to-toe method. He was a little longer than seven of her heel-to-toe steps.