by Alice Sharpe
“My old boss. Benito Mutzi.”
“The one you were an accountant for? The one you stole money from? He came all the way from New Jersey to Washington state to kidnap your wife, two years after you robbed him?”
“Time makes no…no difference to Benito…long memory.”
Nick glared at his father and said, “You’re talking about the mob? You stole from the mob!”
Katie’s hands flew to cover her mouth as she cried out. “The mob has my mother?”
“I took…something else…something more important than money.”
Katie’s brow wrinkled. “More? You took more what?”
“A kind of life-insurance policy. Hid it.”
“Where?” Katie snapped.
“Seattle, two years ago.” His eyes closed as a spasm of pain wracked his weakened body. He coughed. Nick was afraid they were about to lose him to unconsciousness.
Katie raised her voice as the same thought obviously crossed her mind. “Bill? Bill, stay with me! Tell us where you hid this life insurance policy. Tell us what to look for. Bill!”
They held their breath as Nick’s old man finally recovered enough strength to cry out, “Thumbnails,” before breaking into silent tears.
Katie looked at Nick, questions burning behind her blue gaze. He had no idea what thumbnails meant. He said, “What else, Dad?”
It was the first time in memory that Nick had used that term to address his father. It seemed to penetrate the fog of his father’s feverish brain. He opened his eyes again. “Emerald,” he whispered, licking his lips. “Find the star, find the…photo and the ledge…”
His voice trailed off. Nick said, “Wait. If I find these things, what do I do then? How do I contact Benito to get Katie’s mom back?”
“Number in my pocket,” his father said. He suddenly gripped Katie’s wrist. “Tell her I’m sorry. Tell her I love her. Get the star…”
Katie and Nick had both bent over Bill as they tried to make sense out of his seemingly unrelated words. When his hand slipped from Katie’s wrist and his expression grew slack, they looked at each other.
“Bill?” Katie said, turning again to Nick’s dad. She felt his forehead before glancing back at Nick. “He’s burning up. He has to tell us more, though. Wake him up. Get Doc to wake him up!”
“Calm down,” he said, grasping her hands. “We have to keep him alive to get more answers, right?” He glanced out to see that Doc had made it to the plane. Two or three large dogs cavorted in the snow around Doc. Nick waved to signal just a moment.
His father coughed, a deep rattling cough that contorted his face. Nick gently searched his father’s pockets until he found a folded strip of paper with a phone number scratched on it. “This is our only link to your mother,” he said, tucking the paper into his own wallet.
“And our only link to the mob,” Katie added with a shudder. “A murdering cop and the mob. How do we make a deal with the mob? How do we ever outrun them or outsmart them—”
Nick cupped her chin and tilted her face up to his. “Don’t look too far ahead,” he cautioned. “Take one thing at a time. Let’s get him out of here.”
With Doc’s help, they managed to get the makeshift stretcher and its human cargo out of the plane without disaster and perch it across the back of the ATV. Seeing the way Katie limped, Nick insisted she drive while he and Doc walked alongside, balancing the stretcher. Doc told Katie to follow his tracks in the snow back to his house. The biggest problem was keeping out of the dogs’ way as they circled the ATV.
They took Nick’s father to a back bedroom made warm with an oil-burning furnace. Doc immediately went to work while Nick and Katie stood by the door and watched.
Doc was a few years older than Nick, another veteran of the Gulf War, a doctor who had long lived in his Alaska home situated on a large parcel of land in a place so remote it didn’t even have a name. He lived with three German shepherds and a white cat who currently sat on a wicker chair near the bed staring at Nick’s father.
Doc wore his graying hair in a long ponytail almost as skimpy as his beard. Only the very bright blue of his eyes suggested an active intelligence. Otherwise, he looked as though he’d spent the past few years sleeping on a park bench.
“He’ll pull through,” Doc said after a quick examination. “I’ll start an IV drip to rehydrate him and get the right drugs started. I’ll clean up the shoulder. His heart doesn’t sound good though, folks. Sounds like a mitral valve problem. You know anything about that?”
“Nothing,” Nick admitted.
“Me neither,” Katie said, voice shaky. “My cell phone still can’t pick up a signal. If you have a phone, I could call my sister and she might know something.”
“No phone, but there’s a shortwave radio that should work. Nick can help you use it,” Doc said.
Nick had been hoping the cold trip on the ATV along with the barking of the dogs would rouse his father for one more conversation. A few details, for instance, would be nice. What exactly constituted a life-insurance policy for a man like his father? Where had he hidden whatever it was? And what did he mean he’d been followed when he left?
Nick glanced down at Katie. He wanted her to stay here with Doc while he went to Seattle. He didn’t want her involved with mobsters and a cop gone bad. How to convince her? He tried a couple of approaches in his head, but neither one stirred the imagination or, he suspected, would get results. Her blue eyes staring into his made rational thought tricky.
“Don’t even think of trying to leave me behind,” she said, proving once again she was a mind reader. He hoped that was all she could read of his mind. “You’re going to need all the help you can get. I’m going with you.”
“But—”
“I promised Tess I would bring Mom back alive and well and bursting at the seams to explain all this to us, and that’s what I plan to do.”
“But—”
“Anyway, you’re a little rusty when it comes to playing nice with other people.”
“Do you think I plan on playing nice with the damn mob?” he snapped, finally getting in a word or two.
He was instantly sorry he’d said it. “No,” she said, blue eyes glittering, “I am not expecting you to play nice with the damn mob. But we’re a team now. Lopsided, sure. But a team.”
He smiled faintly. Some team. A burned-out ex-soldier and a bartender.
“You watch, you’ll find you can’t live without me.”
And that, in a nutshell, was what he feared most.
Chapter Twelve
Nick used the shortwave to contact a man he knew in San Francisco who then used his phone to call Tess and ask a few questions.
Katie had been disappointed to find she couldn’t just call the hospital. She really wanted to hear Tess’s voice and ask her advice. Though they’d had little chance to actually be twins, having only known of each other’s existence for a week, Katie found the mere thought of having a sister fortifying. It was like having someone to cover her back, someone who would be there forever.
Men came and went. Men loved you and then they didn’t. Even fathers had a terrible tendency to wander off, and she’d never experienced having a mother, at least not that she could actually recall. But a sister. A twin sister, that was different.
What she got instead was a call back on the radio, but it wasn’t from Nick’s old friend. Instead Ryan Hill, the cop who had been her father’s partner and was now engaged to Tess, had found a radio of his own. He and Katie held the stilted conversation indicative of taking turns talking and remembering to say “over and out” when finished.
But at least Katie now knew that Tess was slowly recovering. Plus, she could hear the love in Ryan’s voice as he talked about Tess. She’d known Ryan for years and never had second thoughts about him—cute, sure, but not her type. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life with a cop. Dad had been enough. But Ryan was Tess’s dream man and in Katie’s book, that made him ideal…for Tess.
If he ever hurt her…
Well, that was just borrowing trouble.
The other reason Katie wanted to talk to Tess had to do with money. Fuel for the plane, Seattle, food, whatever—she couldn’t go on depending on Nick to pay for everything, and yet she felt very uncomfortable using Tess’s charge card. She’d always paid her own way in life and all this taking was getting on her nerves.
There was nothing to be done about that, however. She would have to settle it all in the future. Somehow.
It was Nick’s turn next. He called Helen, whose cousin had a shortwave in her house. When he asked to talk to Lily, Katie sat forward, shamelessly eavesdropping. The conversation was full of laughter and inane comments that sounded warm and comforting. Daddy-speak.
Back on the radio with Helen, Nick asked her to call the Juneau airport and make two reservations on a commercial airline for the next morning. This was the first time Katie had heard of this plan—she’d assumed they’d fly back in Nick’s plane. He also told Helen a little of what was going on and Katie could easily imagine the scowl on Helen’s pale face as she read between the lines. The conversation ended with a warning: his house had been searched and she shouldn’t go back to it, especially not alone.
Did Nick feel a million miles away from those he loved, those who depended on him? His connection to his family and a single location on the earth awakened in Katie a sense of loss. Though she’d spent most of her life in New Harbor, her father was now dead and her friends had scattered. She’d been directionless so much of her life. She felt a new need to dedicate herself to something important. She wasn’t a child anymore.
After the calls, Katie and Nick sat down with mugs of stew and crispy bread, a piece of paper between them. Doc had taken his mug to the sickroom. Tess hadn’t known any more about Bill’s heart condition than they did and Doc was worried about his only patient. The cat went with Doc while the three big dogs curled up on a rug before the fire and watched Katie and Nick eat.
Doc’s cabin was a fraction the size of Nick’s log house. It seemed to consist of two bedrooms, a pocket kitchen/living area combination, and a couple of small ante rooms like the one that held the radio equipment. It was stuffed with too much mismatched furniture but that gave it an eclectic, cozy feel, heightened on a cold night with the oil burners and a fireplace and the good smells of home cooking.
“I didn’t know about your plan to take a commercial flight to Seattle,” Katie said between mouthfuls of the wonderful stew.
“It’s the fastest way,” Nick said, offering her a piece of bread.
“I take it we fly from here to Juneau?”
“We’ll leave early in the morning,” he said. “Should take us four hours to fly to Juneau, then we’ll board a commercial plane. The flight to Seattle will take two-and-a-half hours. Main benefit is we won’t have to land to refuel in Canada.”
“What’s wrong with Canada?”
He looked into her eyes. His looked tired and discouraged. “I need to take a gun, Katie. Canada frowns on that. We’ll pack it in my suitcase and check it aboard. We’ll leave yours here.”
Katie’s spoon clattered against the pottery bowl as she dropped it. Tears gathered behind her nose and she shivered. The reality of the situation hit home with a bang as she thought about what lay ahead. Nick at risk, Lily fatherless as well as motherless…the possibilities of loss staggered her.
Nick reached across the small table and touched her hair. “It’s okay, Katie.”
“I’m scared,” she said.
“Your mother—”
“I’m scared for you, Nick. Take me to Juneau, then go collect Lily and go home where you’re safe.”
“The little lady has a point,” Doc said. He’d approached without being noticed and now leaned against the door jamb, his empty mug cradled in his hands. “You’ve fought enough battles, amigo,” he added.
Nick laughed. The sound was unexpected. Doc shook his head while Katie stared at Nick. “Doc, you know me better than to think I’d walk away now. And Katie, what exactly would you do by yourself in Seattle?”
“Call the police,” she said.
“That’s what I thought. You’re not used to these kind of people. They won’t hesitate to cut your mother’s throat. It’s written on the paper I took from my father’s pocket that he has a week to call the phone number they gave him. Seven days.”
Katie’s jaw dropped. “A week? I didn’t know that.”
“I didn’t tell you. But this is day four. Maybe day five. We don’t have long. It’s up to me…and you. We’ll do what we have to do. Then we’ll go back to our everyday lives.”
She nodded.
“With a cruising speed of one hundred thirty-eight miles per hour and a maximum range of about four hundred fifty miles, it would take us almost two days of flying and stopping for fuel and shut-eye to get us to Seattle in my plane. We don’t have that kind of time. We need to arrive tomorrow. We need to figure this thing out tomorrow. So, let’s talk about what we know.”
Doc shook his head again as he crossed to the sink to deposit his bowl. “Still crazy after all these years,” Doc said.
“True. Hey, Doc, you have a computer? We have a disk that needs looking at.”
“I don’t have a computer or a television set or telephone. I have a heck of a wood shop and 2,003 books. I have peace and quiet on my terms.”
“I should have known. Thanks anyway.”
“While you guys figure out your problems, I’ll stick close to your dad, Nick. If he regains consciousness, I’ll tell you.”
Nick nodded his thanks as Doc left the kitchen. Looking at Katie, Nick picked up the pencil and said, “What do we know?”
Katie took a deep breath, relieved the threatened tears had never spilled onto her cheeks. “Your dad embezzled over a million dollars from the mob,” she said. “He went to the justice department for help and they offered him a new identity if he would allow himself to be wired and sent back in for more evidence. Before he could do that, one of the cops who apparently was assigned to help him tried to kill him.”
“Carson. The man I shot.”
“Right. So your dad put his money in an offshore bank account, but he didn’t want it for himself, he wanted it for you. He came to Alaska and when you wouldn’t have anything to do with him, he put the information on a disk and hid it in your house. Then Patricia was killed and he chickened out—”
“Again.”
“Yes, again. He came south toward Seattle and apparently someone picked up his trail and started after him. He had taken the precaution of taking other evidence from his employer.”
“And when he realized he was being followed, he hid what he had taken. That’s the bargaining chip for your mother. His ‘life-insurance policy.’ That and the money. So what form did this life-insurance policy take? And where did he hide it?”
Katie nodded at the paper. “This is where you make the list. Let’s see. He’s mentioned emeralds several times now. And a ledge. What ledge? He goes on about photos, but that’s probably because that’s where the disk was hidden in your house.”
Nick wrote down the few meager words. “He mentioned water and clams, too.”
“The beach?”
Nick shook his head. “This is impossible.”
“No, it’s not. Maybe your dad will talk more tonight. I’ll sit up—”
“Doc won’t allow that, Katie. He’ll sit up.”
She looked down the hall and said, “He’s a nice man.”
“Yeah. He’s a good one. Just a little antisocial.”
“Seems friendly enough to me.”
“That’s because you’re with me. Doc and I go way back. I saved his life once. Come on, let’s get some sleep.”
Before they could go to bed, Doc asked Katie if he could examine her leg. She removed her boot and sock and pulled up the flared jeans, then unwound the elastic bandage. Her leg was still mottled with bruising. Doc said it would improve faster if she sto
pped walking on it so much, and sent her off to sleep in his room, refusing her offer to take a turn watching over Bill and all but forcing a pain reliever on her.
“Won’t be the first night I stayed awake,” he said as she swallowed the pill. “Won’t be the last.”
Nick was already in Doc’s bed, piled beneath a mountain of old quilts, eyes closed. Katie turned off the light he’d left on for her and undressed in the dark, leaving on her underwear which had been chosen for warmth and not a sexy rendezvous, and then pulling back on her long-sleeve cotton T-shirt. She gingerly crawled into bed next to Nick, attempting not to disturb him.
The headache she’d suppressed all day with nothing more than determination thundered in her temples. Closing her eyes brought some relief. Come on, pain pill, she chanted, but soon realized it was more than the headache that had her flustered.
She was in bed with a man she found increasingly desirable.
Anxiety manifested itself in a bit of tossing and turning. His face was so close, his breathing so regular, his body heat seeped through the sheets, drawing her like a moth to a flame. He must harbor no feelings for her whatsoever to have fallen asleep instead of waiting for her to come to bed, and staying asleep once she wiggled beside him.
That was discouraging.
And then he caught hold of her hand and brought it to his lips, kissing her knuckles, folding her hand within his to rest against his bare chest. Fire leaped through her body at his touch and she inched closer.
“Your virtue is safe with me,” he mumbled, “so stop fretting.”
“That’s not why I’m fretting,” she whispered into the dark.
She felt his breath caress her cheek as he turned to face her. “I never know quite what to make of you,” he said.
“What you see, or in this case don’t see, is what you get,” she said, wishing he would kiss her. She didn’t want to make the first move, but then she wasn’t proud….
“This isn’t the time,” he added.
“It isn’t? And how do you know that?”
“I’m older and wiser. I know.”
