by Karen Harper
Steve had not made a move or sound, but his shallow breathing and pulse assured them he was still alive. Maybe, Meg thought, the cold temperature would help to keep him stable until they could get him to a hospital.
When the snowmobile arrived, Suze’s passenger came as fast as he could, stepping high through the snow. Out of breath, he gasped out, “We’ll leave the dead pilot here if someone can guard him, and try to get this man to Anchorage instead. No sign of a squad yet. If I strap the injured man down, I won’t have room for another body and my orders are not to move frozen limbs.”
Suze came over to see how Steve was, then started out on the ice to stay with the pilot’s body again.
“I can strap him down on the snowmobile too,” the van driver went on. “You know, where I was gonna put the frozen body. It does seem his breathing is getting more shallow, and who knows how long it will take the squad to get here and hike in. We’ll have to bounce him a bit to get him into the snowmobile, then the van. No medical help there either. I came alone and I’m not trained for that.”
Bryce’s gaze slammed into Meg’s wide-eyed stare when she realized what he was going to say. What was logical. What might be life-and-death.
He said to the ME’s driver, “How about you help me put this man on that folding stretcher you brought, and the two of us put him in the back of my plane right over there? I’ll fly him to Anchorage, which will be faster, and you take the dead pilot to the ME as planned.”
“Sure, we can do that. But can one of these women on your team go with you, watch his vitals?”
Meg sucked in a sharp breath. Fly in a small private plane over mountains after she’d vowed she never would again? She had broken that vow once, but still. To not go back to Chip today, but have Suze try to explain? Go off with another pilot into what Ryan always called the wild blue yonder? At least there wasn’t a storm today, except inside of her.
She thought of Steve’s wife and son.
Only a few seconds had passed, but both men were staring at her.
“It’s all right, Meg. You don’t have to—” Bryce started to say.
“We have to try to save him. Time matters. That’s a good plan. I—I’ll go with you to watch him, to help you. But Suze needs to head home on the road, away from here, as soon as she helps the pilot’s body get loaded in the van. We can’t take a chance on Steve’s attacker still lurking here.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“I can’t thank you enough, and Steve’s family will be grateful,” Bryce told Meg when they had the comatose man strapped in. He had helped the van driver strap down the dead pilot while she waited in the plane with Steve. “I called his wife, Jenny, to break the news to her. She and their boy—he’s thirteen—will fly in to Anchorage from Juneau and meet us there as soon as they can.”
Bryce’s voice broke as they looked down at the unmoving man. He lay where two of the seats extended to make a bed. His body and head were taped down to stabilize them on the coroner’s stretcher. The idea of where that stretcher came from bothered her, but everything did right now.
She strapped in just across the narrow aisle where she could watch Steve. The trouble was, each time she glanced over, she was also looking out a window. They’d left it uncovered so she had good light, since she’d pulled down the shutter on her own window.
“I’m glad to help him and you,” she told Bryce, trying to steady her voice.
He leaned down to quickly kiss her cheek. “For luck. For strength. For us. Just yell if you need any help back here.”
“I won’t because you need to fly this plane. We’ll make it.”
He cupped her chin, brushed one thumb across her cheek and went into the cockpit. As she tightened her seat belt even more, she wished she were the one unconscious for this flight.
Her stomach flip-flopped when the engine started. They taxied over the ice, stopped, pivoted, and then he revved the engine. It seemed an endless path across the frozen lake, faster, faster, until they had enough speed for the gradual takeoff. More engine, then liftoff followed by a big loop to head toward Anchorage. She used to love to look out the windows at the passing scenes below, even at the mountains, but not now.
Glancing over at Steve again to see how he was taking the motion, she was tempted to close the blind by his window, but she didn’t want to unbelt to do that.
As they came out of their large arc, she wondered if Suze or even Chip was watching the Falls Lake sky. She saw the frozen waterfall go by, the white-and-gray face of the mountain topped by a snow-laden cliff, then endless blue with puffy clouds. She sucked in a deep breath and looked over at Steve again.
She really didn’t know this man, yet she knew he had a wife and son, so they mattered too. She had to help get Steve safely to Anchorage, then to a hospital for his family.
“Okay back there?” came over the speaker.
“We’re fine,” she told him. “You know what I mean.”
Quite a plane, she thought. Not just Ryan shouting back at her when Chip took a short turn in the copilot’s seat. She shook her head to banish the memory of flying with Ryan and Chip. Suze would surely tell Chip what had happened, that his mom would be back soon. But would they have to spend the night in the hospital waiting room—or somewhere else? How long before Steve’s wife or family would come in from Juneau?
And why were Bryce and his boss or even his boss’s superiors getting even more secretive about everything? Just to avoid a crowd of gawkers and media swarming the lake and getting underfoot? She was involved now, part of Bryce’s team in a strange way. He had to tell her more about what was going on. Was it a covert mission, or was he really not sure?
The steady hum of the plane and its vibration began to soothe her. She’d been foolish to refuse to go up again in a small plane. Commercial jets were one thing. Sure, she’d managed a round-trip flight to take Chip to Disneyland. Wait until Chip heard what she’d done without him.
Since she was feeling fairly steady and safe on this flight, maybe she’d find the courage to somewhat de-Ryan what Suze called her “shrine” in her bedroom. Although when she and Chip moved to the lodge, she’d been brave enough to sell most of their property, everything but her and Chip’s bedroom furniture, she did have a lot of family photos and other marriage memorabilia in her room. Suze had kidded her she was turning into a hoarder. Yes, soon, she’d put some of the photos and mementos away, at least for a while, maybe rotate them.
“Entering the southwest Anchorage approach corridor,” Bryce’s voice jolted her from her thoughts, but she realized he must be talking to an air traffic controller. He was giving the plane’s registration number and explaining it was a medical emergency. The controller’s voice started talking about runway numbers, wind direction, speed and timing.
She heard Bryce ask that an emergency vehicle meet them when they pulled onto the tarmac. She put her hand on Steve’s arm as if to steady him, but she was actually steadying herself.
* * *
As the ER vehicle sliced through midafternoon Sunday Anchorage traffic, despite the steady sound of the somewhat muted siren overhead, Bryce was on his cell phone to his boss in DC. This vehicle had two medics in the back trying to stabilize Steve, so both Meg and Bryce were in the front seat with the driver, allowing her to hear Bryce’s side of the conversation.
“I only had time to glance in there,” Bryce spoke into his phone. “I’ll dive again ASAP. I know you want to confirm if there’s anything suspicious—contraband, surveillance equipment—on board. The pilot came first. By the way, I did look under the wings. No alphanumeric ID numbers there either. I’ll call you back as soon as we know something. Steve’s wife and son are flying in. We’ll probably wait until they’re here, then fly back to Falls Lake.”
Bryce was silent for a moment as his boss responded. Meg couldn’t help but notice his brow furrowed as he listened, then finally respond
ed with, “Thank you. I appreciate any help you can send.”
Bryce ended the call and turned to her. They were wedged in, both in the same seat belt with her almost sitting sideways in his lap. Definitely not allowed, but she wasn’t sure what was anymore.
She gripped Bryce’s hand as the ER van pulled into the entrance of the Anchorage Regional Hospital.
* * *
The emergency department admitted Steve as a Level 1 trauma patient with bleeding in the brain. Bryce heard words like epidural hematoma and neuro-intensive care before the small ER room where they first took Steve exploded with doctors and nurses. Bryce gave what information he could and told them Steve’s wife and son were flying in from Juneau and would be here as soon as possible. No, he didn’t have Steve’s medical information or ID with him because there had been an emergency, and they’d flown him directly here.
No ID on the dead pilot either, Bryce thought again. Sometimes, he just wasn’t sure who was who in this busy, changing world. It was like trying to recognize someone through shifting water in a deep dive.
He took Meg’s hand and they went where they were directed to wait for word of Steve’s emergency surgery—an evacuation of the hematoma—and for his family to arrive. Eventually, they were told the surgery was complete, but, of course, the patient was still unconscious. At this early stage, they could predict neither when nor if he would awake nor if he would recover.
The waiting room on Steve’s hospital floor emptied out of visitors after dark. Exhausted, the two of them sat side by side in the family waiting room after grabbing sandwiches and drinks from the Subway on the main floor. Steve had been admitted to the ER and then finally to this floor’s intensive care, where they treated neuro-injuries.
They both kept falling asleep, propping each other up, holding hands, shoulders touching. She had used Bryce’s cell phone, since only Suze had taken hers to the lake what seemed days ago. She’d called the lodge and talked to both Suze and Chip.
“You went in a small plane?” Chip had asked, his high-pitched voice incredulous. “Not a big one?”
“We thought Bryce’s plane was pretty big, didn’t we? Just do what Aunt Suze says, and I hope to be home tomorrow.”
“I’ll take care of the dogs. Aunt Alex called all the way from London, and she sounded pretty happy, I think ’cause she married Quinn.”
“And because she’s visiting her mom and dad, I bet,” she’d said.
“Yeah, Mom. Remember, the queen lives in London, and she has all those cool soldiers in tall, bear fur hats.”
She had reminded him to be good again, to mind Suze, and said good-night.
“Sorry,” Bryce had said and opened one sleepy eye in the chair next to her, “but I heard that. Can’t beat soldiers. Or former navy men. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”
“That’s okay. I heard parts of your conversation earlier—from Washington, the land of the free and the home of clever politicians.”
“And?”
She turned in her chair to face him before she realized he would seem so much closer. “Bryce, why all the secrecy surrounding the plane crash? I mean, I get it that the aircraft should have been marked with registration and the pilot would ordinarily have had ID. But what is this? Could he be a spy or something worse?”
“Or as Steve joked, an alien?”
“Never mind that. I know he was joking, but what’s your theory?”
“Meg, spies these days use the internet. They don’t send people in unmarked planes.”
He fidgeted when he said that and didn’t meet her eyes. But she ignored that and plunged on. “What about smuggling? I heard you refer to ‘contraband.’ A clever new threat of some sort to national security? Drugs? Or if you told me your secrets, would you have to kill me?”
He sat up straighter. He looked her right in the eyes again and dared to smile. “I wouldn’t kill you—ever. I’d maybe fly you somewhere special. Fly you to see my place in Juneau, fly you to the moon... I mean that to be romantic—at least for this time of night in a hospital waiting room when we’re both exhausted out of our minds.”
“So you’re not going to tell me what you think that plane—and pilot—might be doing?”
“I don’t know yet. I hope it’s just some eccentric idiot who didn’t know how to fly very well and was in the process of repainting his plane so he could register it, and just went for a short test flight. You can’t think of anybody like that in the Falls Lake area, can you? Mayor Purvis couldn’t when I asked him.”
“No. Not unless that recluse, Bill Getz, who lives on the far end of the lake, has taken up flying and come into money, and that would be the day. He’s not even that old, really. Middle-aged. Maybe a bit older. Could’ve still made something of his life, but at some point, he must’ve run into some hardship or another. They say he’s a hoarder and collects old posters and stuff, but hardly airplanes.”
The look on his face told her he was filing that away anyhow.
“You—Chip and the lodge—are my one bright light in this mess,” he said as he stretched and yawned, so she could see he was dismissing her curiosity, but then she decided to believe him. After all, if he knew what was going on, wouldn’t he at least have told his boss?
“Bryce, look,” she said as the elevator dinged and a woman and boy got off and looked around. “Is that them?”
“Yes, Jenny and Mark Ralston.” He got up and went over to greet them.
Meg gave them a moment for hugs and talk, then went over to be introduced.
“I can’t thank you enough for all your help,” Jenny said and offered her hand, then hugged Meg, who hugged her back. She had long blond hair peeking out from earmuffs she finally took off, seeming so stunned she hardly knew where she was. But Meg certainly empathized with that. Her son seemed tall for his age and wide-eyed. “So exactly what happened, Bryce?” Jenny asked.
“I honestly don’t know who or what struck him, but I promise you I’ll find out.”
“You two weren’t on something dangerous again, were you?”
That riveted Meg’s attention. So he’d been assigned other missions that could be dangerous, maybe even deadly? No way was she going to let her feelings for him go further.
Bryce turned to Mark. “I’ll take your mom first to see your dad, and then you can see him later. He’s sleeping right now anyway and may be for a couple of days. Only one guest at a time in intensive care, so I’ll wait out in the hall and bring her back.”
“Oh, sure,” the boy said, finally putting down the big duffel bag he held. “Glad he wasn’t hurt underwater where he couldn’t breathe. That will help when he recovers, I bet.”
“He’s tough,” Bryce said, but his voice broke. He hugged Mark too, maybe so the boy wouldn’t see him tearing up. Then he took Jenny’s arm to lead her toward the double doors that accessed the hall with single rooms beyond.
“Here, Mark. We can sit over here,” Meg told him.
“Bryce is a neighbor of ours at home—a nice guy,” he said, as if to assure her as he dropped his bag at his feet and flopped in the chair. “But I think he’s got secret stuff going on, I mean, like on some FBI TV show or something. Mom and Dad argued over that, but Dad likes to work with Commander Saylor.”
She only nodded, but that rattled her even more. Surely, she wasn’t trusting and getting too emotionally involved with a man she didn’t—maybe couldn’t—ever really know.
CHAPTER NINE
“Will you sit in the copilot seat on the way back?” Bryce asked Meg as they walked toward his plane to head to Falls Lake at 10 a.m. the next morning. The Monday morning rush hour traffic had been thick getting to the airport, but he wanted to get back, get a new crew together fast and dive again.
When she hesitated at the bottom of the short stairs, he added, “In a way, you’ve been my copilot through this whole mess so far.” He
had a feeling she’d gone as far in their early relationship as she was willing to right now, and that made him sad. Then again, she’d agreed to fly to help Steve and his family, so she’d done that for them, not really for him.
“I honestly don’t know if I’m ready for that,” she said, giving her blond, mussed hair a little toss. “The mountains seem to come so close out the cockpit window. But if you need me to keep you awake...”
“No, I’m still running on coffee and adrenaline. That’s fine if you want to sit in the cabin. I understand you’re still working through some memories. Tragedies usually have more than one victim, so I pray Steve’s going to pull through.”
As they climbed the stairs, he raised his hand to thank the guy who had just refueled the plane and now pulled the gas truck away on the tarmac. After they went in, Bryce secured the door. If only they could be refueled to get through this flight today—he and Meg were both running on fumes.
They had slept huddled together for a few hours after Jenny got permission for both her and Mark to stay in Steve’s room, where they would definitely not get any rest as nurses bustled in and out. Bryce could only hope that his friend pulled through and was still himself. He was glad the Big Man was sending more than one diver this time. Keeping the crash site secure was essential, especially since they had yet to ID the pilot, his plane or mission. This could very well be exactly what his special task force had been searching for. At least the frozen lake acted as a barrier to anyone who was either curious or dangerous. But who had tried to sabotage his dive and hurt Steve as an extra warning?
* * *
“Did you manage some sleep?” Bryce asked Meg as he came back into the cabin after he landed the plane on Falls Lake.
