"Are you okay?"
"Gray, they could still be there. We might find them in Klewnugget Bay."
"Klewnugget is a popular anchorage. The odds are that if there were two kayaks staying in that inlet, they'd have been reported to the Coast Guard ten times over by now. But we'll check, Emma. We'll check everything."
"They were going up the mountain. That's what Ed said, isn't it?" She searched the deep blue of his eyes.
"If they'd gone up the mountain and failed to come back down, someone would have reported the abandoned kayaks on the beach."
Unless they'd hidden the kayaks, she thought. Maybe they'd put them under some trees, in the dense forest. She shivered and tried to let that nightmare go.
"All right?" he asked.
She nodded.
"We'll find them." He searched her eyes before he let her go.
Back in the air, the sky seemed dark as they rounded an island and began the flight up the long narrow Grenville Channel. The mountains rose straight out of the waters of the channel on both sides, and she realized they must be blocking much of the light. The channel narrowed as they flew north. Fierce tidal currents, Gray told her.
"The boys would have come up here when the tide was running north. The current runs up to six knots, so when it turned against them, they would put in to shore and wait."
"Chris would love this country." She had been happy to see her son's love of outdoor challenges transform him from an insecure fourteen year old to a confident young man of seventeen, although she never understood what it was he loved about the wilderness. Now she thought she understood, at least a little. The majestic mountains. The smell of the seductive ocean all around.
Gray pointed to a spot on the chart. "There's Klewnugget, just around the corner ahead, where the channel widens out. It's really two bays, not one."
Flying over the first bay, they spotted two anchored fishing boats. Gray dropped down to fly in a slow sweep over the boats and the beach, and Emma spotted a man throwing a Frisbee to a small child. In the second bay, they found a sailboat in the water, and on shore a deer running toward the trees.
Gray managed to raise the captain of the sailboat on the radio.
"Sorry," said the sailor. "I did hear the overdue report and I've been looking, of course, but I haven't seen any kayaks."
Gray turned the plane and skimmed low over the water.
"We'll have supper before we go on," he said.
He landed on the water and ran the plane up onto the beach where they had seen a man playing with a child. As the plane stopped, Emma could see the man waving from the edge of the trees. He was one of the fishermen. Gray questioned him while Emma found the sandwiches in the pack and poured coffee for Gray and the fisherman.
The fisherman had seen nothing.
Gray poured the last of his coffee out on the sand. "Six o'clock. We can search another hour or two if we camp on the beach somewhere overnight. We'll lose valuable time if we fly back to Stephens Island for the night."
She took his empty cup and pushed it into the pack.
"All right," she agreed. Bears and mountain lions might prowl the beaches at night, but how many people in British Columbia were actually attacked by wild animals? The odds of anything happening had to be pretty slim, and she had Gray to protect her.
He was watching as if waiting for her to change her mind.
"I said it was all right, Gray."
"I have a tent and supplies for breakfast."
"Okay." She was pretty sure a canvas tent would be no obstacle at all to a bear.
"You'll probably hear wolves in the night."
"Right," she muttered. She hadn't thought of wolves. "Anything else?"
"You can sleep in the plane if you'd feel safer. It's uncomfortable, though."
"Stop treating me like a wilderness-challenged fool."
He laughed.
"That's exactly what you're doing." She closed the pack and pushed it into his arms. "I'll do whatever's necessary to find Chris. Stop trying to punish me because I was too scared to follow you into the wilderness eighteen years ago."
"Were you frightened, Emma?"
"Of course I was. What in heaven's name did you think? I was eighteen. Farley Bay might be a small town, but I'd never spent a night outside four walls. Going swimming at the beach was the closest I'd been to the wilderness. And sitting in Paul's car waiting for him to come back with help when we broke down that night."
His gaze swept down to the thrust of her breasts, then seemed to lock on her hands. Her fingers were clenched tightly together. Without thinking, she unlocked them and reached her hand slowly toward him.
"Back off, Emma."
"I wasn't—"
"The day is gone when you can arouse me by looking uncertain and vulnerable. I'd rather shake sense into you than kiss you, so don't offer."
"I was not offering. If you've got some sort of image of me yearning for you all these years, you can think again, I was in love with you a long time ago. I've got another life now, and you're no part of it. I have my medicine, my son, and a wonderful man I'm engaged to. I am not looking for a rerun of ancient history. You're wrong thinking I came up here because Chris is your son. I came because you've got a seaplane, because you know this area. No other reason."
Chapter 6
The water seemed dull, almost muddy, as they raced over it to take off. Once they were airborne, Emma realized even the trees had lost their color. Sunset, she thought, but surely the sun wouldn't set this early?
The right wing dipped as Gray turned to fly north along the eastern shore of the channel. Ahead, mountains disappeared into gray sky. Gray reached up to switch channels on the radio and as he adjusted a dial, Emma heard static.
She jerked when he spoke. Reflex, because she hadn't expected the sound.
"What did you say?" she demanded.
He'd been silent ever since they left the beach at Klewnugget Inlet, and she'd been glad of his silence, although she still felt the zing of anger in her veins. How could he be so wrongheaded as to believe she was offering herself?
Living in the bush had cost Gray MacKenzie his reason, leaving him at the mercy of delusions. Like thinking she wanted sex with him. Like believing Chris was his son.
"Signal's bad here," he said. "I'm taking us higher."
He must be talking about the radio signal, but she thought he was talking more to himself than to her.
She stared at the ground, knowing he needed to check in with the Coast Guard to learn the status of the search, but also aware that the higher they flew, the less chance they'd spot anything on shore.
Moments later, flying high over the trees, her headphone speakers crackled with the sound of a Coast Guard radio operator reading a weather report. She recognized some of the place names from the charts she'd studied that day.
"Sounds okay," said Gray when the broadcast ended. She saw him glance at the sky to the west. "Winds southeast at fifteen knots. I'd say that's what we've got here." He gave another glance at the western sky before he banked the plane in a wide circle, dropping back down to resume their search.
Twenty minutes later, Emma rubbed at her eyes.
"We'll have to pack it in," said Gray.
"What's wrong?" she asked, but she knew the answer. The light was going.
"I don't like the look of the sky," said Gray. "I'm heading back to Stephens Island."
"But you said—"
"There's a storm coming."
"The forecast—"
"Screw the forecast. I can smell the storm coming."
As Gray's little plane rose above the mountain to their west, she wanted to argue, to demand he search on. There'd been no word of a storm in the forecast.
She thought of the baby she'd taken into surgery last week, casualty of a dispute between a taxi and a truckload of logs out of control. As she fought to save the tiny crushed leg, reason argued she'd have all the time she needed for the tricky repair, but in her blood
she sensed trouble.
Nobody could have predicted the baby's heart would stop on the table, but she'd been ready for the moment the O.R. became a battleground, with death the enemy.
Gray probably had the same instinct for trouble in the wilderness.
* * *
The storm Gray had predicted grew visibly until the western sky loomed heavy and black, its darkness sucking light from their world. Was Chris down there under those trees?
A drop of rain spun across the windshield. Within moments, rain pounded hard on the metal shell of the plane. Had Chris and Jordy prepared for a storm? Were they protected from lashing rain?
She hadn't realized planes had windshield wipers until Gray's began sweeping the window in front of her. As thousands of raindrops exploded on the windshield, the world shuddered. Emma had nothing to hang onto, so she dug her fingers into her own legs. She could see only gray clouds through the windshield.
Gray muttered a curse and his hands moved on the controls. The engine whined in protest. In her headphones, he muttered something about no damned visibility. They must have dropped down, but she hadn't realized because blackness had poured out of the western sky and filled the world.
It felt as if they were skimming the white-streaked water below. She couldn't see land. The rain had come in so fast, and with it the air had thickened, obscuring both trees and mountains.
The plane strained and shuddered as if fighting an overwhelming force.
"Are you going to land?"
She hadn't meant to ask, not now, when she could see intense concentration on Gray's face and knew the last thing he needed was distractions.
"Too rough," he growled, the words barely distinguishable over the sounds of wind, rain, and the plane's engine.
She squinted through the windshield and realized that those white streaks on the water were waves stirred up by the sudden wind. The water had been gray and mostly smooth when they took off only a half hour ago. Now it was wild and white. They must be higher than she'd thought, because she couldn't actually distinguish the waves, only their white tops where the surf broke in the wind.
"Chart our location," he yelled. "I need to know exactly where we are."
She pulled out the chart and quickly located the longitude and latitude showing on the GPS.
"Half a mile off the eastern shore of Grenville Channel," she shouted. "Fifteen miles north of the entrance to Klewnugget Inlet."
"We need a quiet piece of water! Look for—"
"Klewnugget Inlet! We can go back—"
"No, it's blowing like hell from the southeast. We can't fight that wind, and Klewnugget is too big. The water will be a mess in a southeaster. Find me something smaller without a southerly opening. There should be an inlet just north of us." Then she thought he said, "Sin gale. A few miles north."
She found it then, an unpronounceable bay named Kxngeal Inlet.
"There!" she shouted, holding the chart up for him to see, her finger marking the little bay. The airplane dropped suddenly, driving her seat belt into her hips. Emma gasped and clutched at the chart as the air threw the plane back up.
Air pockets, just air pockets. Turbulence.
"There's a rock near the entrance to that bay," he shouted. "Find it on the chart. I need to know how much water is over it right now. There'll be an X on the chart, and numbers beside it What does it say?"
She was trying to make out details on the chart, but the heaving motion of the seaplane made it almost impossible.
"Keep track of where we are," shouted Gray. "We could lose the shoreline at any moment."
The world was shrinking as he spoke, narrowing to gray walls. She thought she could see darkness where the trees might be, but she wasn't sure.
The little plane lurched again, wind or air pockets sending it shuddering, throwing her against the seat belt, moving her world and making it nearly impossible to find the small mark on the chart.
"I see the number one!" she shouted. "And a two, in smaller print, just beside it."
"OK, that's over a meter at low tide. How much tide have we got?"
She pulled out the little tidal chart from the pocket beside her, glad she'd paid close attention earlier when he'd taught her how to calculate tides.
"High tide's three hours away. So we should have"—she did a quick calculation from the numbers in the book—"right now, about eight feet of tide."
"Good enough. We can forget about the rock." He grinned at her then, a dangerous slash of his mouth that reminded her of the boy she'd met all those years ago. "We'll need luck on the water. We can't stay up here or we'll be flying blind." His hand covered hers. "I'm not planning to crash, but when I tell you, I want you to put your head down and wrap your arms around your knees. It could be rough."
"All right," she said. "I'm not afraid."
He shook his head as if he knew her words for a lie, but he nodded and commanded, "Call out our position every thirty seconds. I want to know how far off the shore we are, and our distance to the lighthouse on that point."
It reminded her of surgery, the anesthetist calling out blood pressure and heart rate when things got dicey. She realized she'd told Gray the truth. She wasn't frightened. Her heart was probably pounding faster than normal, though she couldn't tell amid the buffeting vibration of weather attacking the plane, but she could feel the blood zinging in her veins.
Although harsh elements she didn't understand were waging war, it wasn't fear she felt. Tension, yes, and the same alert readiness she felt when she held a scalpel in the operating room, knowing she had skill and willingness, knowing also that fate could raise the stakes in a moment, taking control of the surgery and demanding that everything she had, everything she was, be thrown into the battle for health and life.
In the same way, fate had taken control of this flight from Gray. His hands were steady on the controls, just as hers would have been steady in the O.R.; his eyes narrowed and intent on the little that could be seen through his windshield.
If it was possible to land safely, he would manage it.
Please, God, let Chris and Jordy be all right.
Gray got on the radio, telling the Coast Guard their position, explaining his plan to land in Kxngeal Inlet.
"One mile to the light," she shouted. "Half a mile offshore."
"Good." His voice was strong and steady in her headphones. "I can see the light now. Tell me when we're a quarter mile past it."
When she did, he shouted, "Hang on! This'll be rough."
The engine changed tone, then suddenly the plane was caught in a vortex, shuddering against the wind. She was pressed hard against the seat, and then the plane that was her world seemed to fight back against the wind. She could see only the GPS readout and gray everywhere.
She fought to hold the chart still enough to see.
"You're in the mouth of the inlet, but, Gray, I can't tell—"
"Get your head down. I'm going to try it."
She pushed the chart out of her way and bent over, assuming the crash position with her head against her knees and her arms wrapped around her legs. Her headphones pressed into her ear but she wouldn't take them off. If she did, she couldn't hear Gray if he spoke.
Her mind told her this might be the end of their lives, that they could die together here. Her heart replied it couldn't happen like this, not now, with Gray at her side and Chris lost in the wilderness.
She turned toward Gray, the headphone earpiece pressing into her knee and her face. The vibration of the plane came through her body. She couldn't see Gray's face, only his knees and sometimes his hands as he held the rudder, then moved his right hand to the stick.
She didn't understand the controls, had only a vague idea. Tomorrow, when the weather improved... if the weather improved... she'd ask him how the controls worked. Exercising her brain would help her cope with the stress of worrying, searching.
She found herself praying. God, if something happens, please look after Chris.
&nb
sp; She knew a lot about stress, about waiting when you had little control. She'd seen the panic and helplessness in the faces of others who waited for her to come and tell them their children were safe, that bones would mend and legs develop the strength to run and play ball again.
But almost everything she knew of helplessness and stress was from the other side. She was accustomed to being in charge, to wielding the scalpel that cut through fate. When Chris didn't call Wednesday night or Thursday morning, she'd known she had to search for him herself. Now fate was threatening to take that option from her, to ground Gray and Emma with a storm, leaving them no way to search, nothing to do but wait, just as the parents of her children waited for her to come out of the operating room.
Gray turned the shuddering plane, the metal cage fighting the weather's whim. She lost track of which sound was wind and which the roaring engine. Her world became Gray's hands moving, the flex of muscle in his wrist, the tension in his leg as it shifted only inches from her face.
Suddenly, the plane gave a mighty shudder and a jerk. Silence took her unawares. It seemed as if the wind had stopped, as if the world's pulse ceased beating. Panic rose up and Emma knew they were going to die, that they would crash into the trees or into that rock because somehow she'd read the depth of water over it wrong or she'd got the tidal information backward.
The seaplane's engine had stopped.
No. No, it hadn't. It was purring now, and she heard something else. What was that sound? Flaps? Was Gray putting on the flaps, preparing to land?
The wind was gone. How could that be?
She saw the tension in Gray's hands, the relaxed angle of his thigh inches from her face, the stance of a skilled man who had things under control, but was alert for signs of danger. Through the window beside him, she saw... trees.
They'd dropped below the treetops and the trees must be blanking out the wind.
If You Loved Me Page 9
