Up Close and Dangerous (12 page)

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.

T
HE 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

B
AILEY 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.

W
ITH ONLY
J
USTICE’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.

He watched her do this, a quizzical little frown on his face. “Are you practicing for a sobriety test, or something?”

“I’m measuring you. You’re an inch or so longer than seven feet—my real feet, not the twelve-inch kind. I don’t want to make the shelter too short for you.”

She tried to make their bed maybe an inch longer than that—rather, she tried to make one side of it longer than that, because overall the thing was kind of lopsided because of how the trees were positioned. She figured she’d take the short side.

Over the crosshatch of limbs and needles, she put the foam pads she’d removed from the plane’s seats. She had six short pads and one long piece from the bench seat, and she figured that would give more cushioning than they’d have in sleeping bags. Given her druthers, though, she’d have taken the sleeping bag—at least that way she’d be warm. Staying warm tonight, without a fire, would be a real challenge.

When she had the pads positioned, she went to work with the bigger limbs. Obviously she needed some sort of frame, and just as obviously her roll of duct tape was called for to lash the limbs together, but she was oddly reluctant to use it. The roll was a small one, and wouldn’t go far. If she used strips of cloth to tie the skeleton frame together, at least the strips could be reused if she didn’t get it right the first time, whereas the tape, once it was used, was gone.

The ruined silk jacket was perfect for cutting into pieces.

At first she tried making an inverted
V
-shaped thing, but that was evidently beyond her building skills, which wasn’t surprising. After the rudimentary frame collapsed for the third time, she made an executive decision and stopped wasting time on that method.

Returning to where Justice lay under the mound of clothing, she crouched beside him and said, “Remember when I said I suck at construction?”

He cracked his eyes open. “Is this your way of telling me we’re sleeping in the open tonight?”

“No, this is my way of asking for help. Help! Just give me some instructions. Pointers. Anything. If you have
any
experience at this, you know more than I do.”

“I thought you’d been rafting before.”

“I have. I’d like to point out that you don’t raft on top of a snow-covered mountain.”

“Didn’t you set up a tent?”

She made a scoffing noise. “I was a college student. Of course not. We slept in sleeping bags, around a campfire.”

“Okay.” He thought a moment. “What type were you trying to build? An A-frame, or a lean-to?”

“A-frame. I can’t get it to stand up.”

“Make the base first. Lay out the long sides with two parallel long branches, then lay the cross braces on top, one on each end, and secure all four corners.”

That sounded easy enough. Returning to the site of collapse, she sorted out the variety of limbs, sticks, and branches into the two best fits for the length of the bed, which she then placed, one on each side. Then she positioned two shorter limbs, one on each end, and used the strips of silk to tie each short limb to the two longer ones. When she finished she wiggled the frame to see how sturdy it was, cautiously pulled each knot tighter, and wiggled the frame again. Good enough.

“What now?” she called.

“Now you need to establish the height. Get four branches that are taller than you want the height to be.”

That was easy, but all four branches still had a lot of limbs and needles attached. Using the knife, she trimmed off what she could. “Got it.”

“Take two and make a rough
X
with them. The point where they cross will be the height of the shelter. You want to tie the second pair where they cross at the same height as the first pair. Then get two shorter pieces and put them below the crossing point of the
X
s, as braces.”

Hmmm. She thought she saw where he was going with this. She got busy with her silk strips, and when she was finished she had what looked like two letter
A
s, with horns sticking out the top. “Now I tie these to the base, right?”

“First get another long limb and put it in the notches of the two
X
s, and tie it off on both ends so the upper frame is as long as the base. Then you attach the whole thing to the base.”

Even with his instructions, the shelter’s frame sort of listed to the left and sagged at the back, but when she looked for the sun she saw that it had slipped behind the mountains, and time was too short for her to try to improve her handiwork. Instead she tied bracing pieces of limbs wherever the thing seemed to need it most, which was pretty much all over. When she judged it sturdy enough to stand, at least for one night, she moved on to the roof.