If You Loved Me (4 page)

Searching for kayaks and missing boys, a seaplane would be ideal.

Chapter 2

She booked tickets on a Saturday morning flight from Seattle to Vancouver, with a connection to Prince Rupert. Then she spent Friday handing off her cases to two other surgeons.

Saturday morning, after an hour in the air, her flight couldn't land in Prince Rupert because of fog on the coast. The pilot announced they'd be landing in the interior town of Terrace.

Fog would make it hard to search for Chris.

She suffered impatiently through an interminable bus ride from Terrace to Prince Rupert, then took a taxi directly to the seaplane base. By then it was late afternoon, and the base was a flurry of activity.

"Stephens Island?" said the man behind the counter. "Sure, but you'll have to wait." He consulted a whiteboard on the wall. "Dave will be in just before eight. He should have time to take you out there before dark."

Two more hours.

She walked back along the waterfront street, watching seaplanes take off and land. It would be too late to start searching today, so she must school herself to patience. She pulled her cell phone from her purse and dialed the Rescue Coordination Center.

No news yet, except that none of the searching boats or planes had seen her son.

Gray might not want to talk to her, but he
would
help her once he knew. If he wouldn't do it for her, then he'd do it for Paul and for Chris.

Alex had been opposed to her flying north to enlist the help of a man she hadn't seen since she was a kid. He thought she should let the Coast Guard look after the search.

"He was Paul's best friend," she'd said. "He'll want to help look for Chris." She didn't tell him she and Gray were once lovers. Surely that didn't matter now.

"He might not be home," reasoned Alex.

He'd be there. She knew it was irrational, but she believed Gray would be there. He simply had to be. She wished she had a phone listing for him, but she'd checked the directory and he had no telephone. He might have a cellular phone, but she had no way to get that number.

When she arrived back at the seaplane terminal, the clerk told her Dave's plane would land in five minutes, but it seemed longer than that before the lanky pilot appeared.

"You're going out to Stephens Island? The camp on the west coast?"

"I'm going to Refuge Cove."

"Gray's MacKenzie's place? Sure, I'll get you there. It's a twenty-minute flight."

The little floatplane roared over the water, getting up speed for takeoff. When Emma realized she was gripping the seat cushion with her hands, she forced herself to relax. As they lifted above the water, she saw a complex pattern of islands ahead. The seaplane began slopping from side to side, buffeted by winds.

"Calmer once we're over open water," shouted the pilot.

His prediction proved true, and when they'd cleared the islands protecting Prince Rupert harbor, the seaplane settled into level flight over gray water. Ahead, in the distance, she saw a mass of land.

"Is that Stephens Island?"

"It's two different islands. Stephens is the one on the left."

It looked like one land mass to her, but she nodded and stared at the land ahead until it resolved into rocks and trees, and, yes, there
was
a narrow passage that divided one island from the other. She couldn't see a house anywhere.

Dave flew over the trees, following the path of the narrow body of water dividing the two islands. "Stephens Passage below," he shouted. "We'll land in Refuge Cove, just ahead."

The narrow passage widened into an inlet, then Emma lost her bearings in a kaleidoscope of sea and trees and more sea. For a second it sounded as if the engine stopped, but then they were racing along an inlet, the engine purring as they skimmed over glassy water. As the pontoons caught on the water, she saw a wharf ahead with a blue seaplane tied to it. She couldn't see a house, but that had to be Gray's plane. In the magazine picture, he'd been standing on one of the pontoons, one hand stretched up to open the pilot's door of a blue and red seaplane.

Dave taxied his seaplane up to the wharf, then swung open his door and gestured for Emma to remain seated as he climbed out. Through the window, she saw him remove a paddle from a holder on one of the pontoons. Then he crouched on the pontoon, paddling the seaplane closer to the wharf. From somewhere, a rope appeared in his hands and he lashed the pontoon to the wharf.

As Emma stepped down onto the pontoon, the pilot's dark eyes studied her. She knew he'd labeled her a city woman—tailored slacks and silk blouse, low practical pumps that were ridiculously unstable out in the bushes.

As she reached for the carry-on bag he'd removed from the luggage compartment behind the seats, she spotted Gray's house and the boardwalk leading to it from the wharf.

"Gray should have come out when he heard us land." Dave frowned. "Wouldn't want to leave you here if he's not around."

"His plane is here, so he'll be around somewhere." She set her bag on the wharf, its soft city leather out of place on the wooden planks. Perhaps that contrast said more than anything about why she and Gray had been doomed from the start.

"Look, Ms. Garrett, I'd better stick around until we see—"

"I'm absolutely fine. You can head on back." She didn't want witnesses when she met Gray.

"Is he expecting you?"

"Yes, of course."

She must have sounded convincing, because he shrugged and started untying the pontoon. She stayed on the wharf and watched him taxi away. When the yellow plane disappeared around the corner of Refuge Cove into Stephens Passage, she picked up her luggage and began walking along the boardwalk to Gray's house. Behind her, she heard the roar of the seaplane's engines, but didn't turn to look.

She recognized the house from the magazine pictures, but it was bigger than she'd expected. She walked up the front stairs and took a deep breath before she hammered on the big, varnished front door with its stained-glass window.

Even if Gray hated her, he wouldn't turn her away now.

She hammered on the door again, but there was no answer.

Damn! She prowled from the front of the big log house to one side. From his living room, Gray would be able to see the water and the forest across the inlet. He had smaller windows on this side, placed to give a view through the trees.

Did he watch bears and wolves through those windows? She was pretty sure she'd read somewhere that wolves seldom attacked humans, but she'd heard reports of bear attacks in the news.

The thin walls of Chris's tent would never stop a bear. Chris had always laughed at her nervousness about bears. He'd been on so many organized wilderness adventures that she'd told herself her own fears were the result of inexperience. But what if—

Emma shivered in her city jacket. Where was Gray? His plane floated quietly at the wharf, but what if he was off on some wilderness jaunt? What if Chris phoned home now, while she was away, out of touch?

She pulled her cellular phone out of her purse and punched in her home number, then realized that the display on her cell phone said
no service.

No phone here, not even cellular.

The sun slid behind the trees, getting ready for night. Why wasn't Gray inside his majestic log fortress?

She'd been foolish to send the pilot away. If Gray didn't come, she would be stranded here.

Panic wasn't going to help anything, so she shoved her hands into her pockets and continued her survey of the house. Gray must have had someone in mind when he built it; maybe he had a wife, a woman with a beautiful Mother Earth smile. That's the kind of wife Gray needed, the sort who was beautiful even in the morning without makeup, who could live in this wilderness without thinking of bears and wolves. They'd sit together on those two deep chairs on the front porch, watching the sunset over the trees, sharing soft sleepy nights.

Passionate nights.

She didn't care about his wife, if he had one. It was Gray she needed, his plane and his eyes, trained for the wilderness. She needed Gray to find Chris.

She circled the house again and realized she was limping slightly. Stress.

Gray might be in some outbuilding she couldn't see. She hadn't called out his name because she'd wanted to be the one to see him first. She had planned to knock on the door and know he would open it and she would be prepared to give nothing away when he saw her.

Ridiculous! She had nothing to give away but memories so far back. If couldn't matter now that she had given Gray her heart and a year of her life before it ended.

She hadn't realized how empty it would be out here!

"Gray! Are you here? Gray?"

She strained for an answer, heard a sound like a rock dropping into water. She spun around at the sound and saw a branch move to her right.

"Is anybody here? Gray?"

She jerked back as a black shadow swooped into the sky. Nothing human, just the bird crying out as took wing.

Emma tucked a strand of hair into the twist at the back of her head, and then rubbed absently at her left leg. She'd never been camping in her life, hadn't been allowed when she was a girl. Too many dangers.

Later, when she became a woman, camping trips would have been too much like yearning for Gray, who was gone.

She had to stop this trip down memory lane. She needed Gray's knowledge of the coast, needed his skills and his seaplane.

He would come home soon. Meanwhile, she should get up on that front porch, pull a sweater out of her luggage, and curl up on one of those big wooden chairs.

She wondered if Chris was looking at a scene like this, all bushes and darkness. Her imagination supplied an image of her son injured, staring at the darkening sky, hoping for rescue.

Had Jordy gone for help? Left Chris alone?

Three days overdue.

Three days during which she went through the motions of her life. Emergency surgery on a little girl Friday morning. She'd sealed Chris out of her mind before she started, then felt worry flood back while she stood beside the girl's unconscious form in recovery.

The call to the Coast Guard after that. No news. Cleaning up the last of the office visits Friday afternoon. Calls to the Coast Guard in between. Staring at a six-year-old boy in a body cast and knowing this was all that was left of her life without Chris. She'd always cared passionately about the kids she helped, but they were other people's children.

Chris belonged to Emma.

She hated being powerless. She'd always been an efficient person, juggling the needs of her patients and her child. It had been hard, but she'd managed to be there for Chris when he needed her, to be there for the kids who needed healing at the clinic and the hospital. She knew she was both a good doctor and a good mother.

Chris had paid her the compliment of bringing his friends home and confiding his dreams in her. He'd talked about this trip for almost a year, and although she'd been worried, she'd helped him make the adventure real.

Now Chris was missing and Emma was helpless until Gray returned.

She heard a new sound from the bushes. A crack, the sort a big animal might make blundering through the underbrush. She would never be able to sleep outside on his porch. She would hear every noise, every crack and rustle.

She couldn't see the sun from the porch, had no idea how low in the sky it was. She pushed back her sleeve to look at her watch. Nine o'clock. Back in Seattle it would be almost dark.

She jerked as the sound came again.

One of Gray's wildlife pictures flashed into her mind, a huge tawny-colored wildcat crouched in grass the color of its fur, head tilted and nostrils alert, eyes slitted as it smelled prey. Where had Gray photographed that cougar?

Here on Stephens Island?

She circled the house again, stopping to study a small window beside the back door. It was the smallest window she could reach. She could break it with a piece of wood from the woodshed. Not yet, though.

Later, when it was actually dark.

She put her bag down beside the back door. She had been around this house four times lugging her carry-on, limping because she was tired and it was heavy. Did she think someone was going to come out of the bushes and steal her bag? Perhaps that imaginary cougar?

She had read that bears were attracted to some perfumes. What about cougars? She rubbed the spot below her ear where she habitually touched her perfume bottle. Her usual scent, soft but not suggestive. Had her scent attracted a cougar prowling through those bushes? Could he smell her? Or perhaps it was a she. Weren't female cats even fiercer than the males?

What about bears? What kind of perfume did bears like?

She stepped into the shed, picked up a big chunk of wood, and swung it experimentally. Shadows and trees were melting into each other, reminding her of the night she met Gray, of sitting in Paul's car alone with trees all around.

She would go back to the front of Gray's house, sit in the chair, and wait for half an hour. If Gray hadn't turned up by then, she'd break the window.