Knight Before Dawn

by Kristi Cramer

  She didn’t answer him, just stood at the window with her back to him.

  He surprised himself by staying. “Cassie, please talk to me.”

  Turning tormented brown eyes to look at him, she didn’t step away when he approached her. She let him lead her to the couch, and Nick sat next to her.

  “Please.” He let the single word lie between them.

  “I’m scared.” That truth showed in her eyes like evidence at a crime scene.

  “Don’t be, not of me. Talk to me, please.”

  Cassie took a deep breath and began to talk.

  About halfway through her recital, Nick got up and began to pace in agitation. When she finished, she sat watching him stalk from the window to the bureau and back again.

  “Do you believe me?”

  Nick came and knelt in front of her, gently took her arm, and pushed her sleeve up past her elbow. He tenderly touched the tiny red brands from carelessly applied needles.

  He took a deep breath to control the rage he felt. “What do you want to do?” His gentle question and tender concern slipped right through her defenses and she burst into tears.

  “Oh, Nick!” she sobbed, and he watched with some amazement as she seemed to collapse in on herself before drooping into his arms. He could only guess at the tension she had endured in the past few days. Once the first tears fell, she couldn’t seem to stop, even though he felt her shuddering, trying to gain control. Nick held her through the entire outburst, stroking her hair and rocking her slowly.

  Finally, she sniffed mightily and gave Nick a hug of thanks. She didn’t lift her head from his shoulder, and he kept his arms around her, resting his chin against her hair.

  “I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I told myself I wasn’t going to lose it. It’s just...today was so perfect, and you, your faith in me, it’s all so much more than I could have hoped for. I only wish we could have met under different circumstances....”

  Nick leaned back to look at her. “Do you want to go to the police?” His voice was level, but he had never been so angry in his life. How could anyone do something like that to a woman? Any woman, but especially this woman.

  He picked up the envelope and studied it, noting that there was no clue as to where it came from. The note had been printed by computer on plain paper in a plain font that could be from any inkjet printer in town. He picked up the ticket and saw it had been purchased in person, payment in cash.

  “Do you think it would do any good?” Cassie ran her fingers through her hair, pulling the vagrant strands away from her face. She didn’t look at him, appearing to be considering every angle. “I mean, whoever he is, this man is a very important person. I don’t have any concrete evidence.”

  “I saw the man who brought you here, and there are the marks on your arm.” He kept the emotion from his voice, trying to remain objective.

  “I’d look like a junked-up bimbo O.D.ing on the street. He found me and kindly put me up in the hotel to dry out.”

  “The money?

  “Again, a benevolent stranger, or a john.”

  “The airline ticket? There might be a way to track who bought it by asking to see surveillance footage from the airport,” he suggested.

  “It might have been bought at a travel agency, or they might even have paid a random person to buy it.... There are plenty of scenarios to use.” Cassie looked up at Nick. “I need something stronger. Getting surveillance videos would require going to the police, and I’m not ready to do that just yet. This guy could have a bought-and-paid-for police officer, or hell, even a chief. I’d rather find out what’s going on.” She looked around the posh room. “He hasn’t treated me badly, all things considered. I could be dead.”

  That made Nick look up sharply, his hand on her shoulder tightening convulsively. “Do you want to find out what’s going on? Or do you want to go home?”

  “I don’t know....”

  “You’ve got your ticket, there’s nothing to stop you from leaving all this behind.”

  “That’s just it. I don’t think I can leave it all behind.” It was Cassie’s turn to get up and pace. “But I don’t want you caught up in my problems, either. If I have to go home, then I’ll go home.”

  “But what you want is...?” Nick watched her striding back and forth, distractedly flipping her hair away from her face.

  “I want to find out why I’m here,” she said in a resolute voice, “and I want to keep this from happening to Felicity, if I can.”

  He couldn’t help but admire her determination. Nick slapped his hands on his knees and stood up. “Then come on.”

  “Where?”

  “My place. You’ll be safe, and we can figure out a course of action from there.”

  Cassie turned to Nick, searching his eyes. “Your place?”

  “Not my room here at the Prospector. My home.” Nick smiled for the first time since they began this conversation. “Don’t worry. My mother taught me to be a perfect gentleman.”

  “Right,” she said, with a wry smile. “The one who gave you those lethal eyes.”

  * * *

  In the plane flying over the Alaskan countryside, Cassie fretted about her decision. When she found out they would have to fly, she almost changed her mind. Her mother would have screamed at her stupidity, but her father would have told her to go with her gut feelings. And her gut told her she could trust Nick.

  Nick had made a good argument: presumably her abductors didn’t know she had an ally in Nick, and since she had checked out of her room, they should assume she had gone home. She and Nick would be able to conduct their investigation without having to worry too much about being watched. It sounded like a good idea—better than blundering in without a plan.

  Cassie had checked out of the hotel with her small bag of newly purchased possessions. Then they had stopped by the airport and given her seat to a man waiting on standby for a flight to Seattle. So if anyone checked it out, her seat would be taken.

  A short shopping trip outfitted Cassie with another two pairs of jeans, a couple of tees, more underwear and socks, a sweater, a parka, some warm boots, and a duffel bag to put it all in. Nick caught the bill, telling her when she protested that she could pay him back when everything settled down.

  From the store they had walked to the dock to take off in Nick’s plane.

  After half an hour of flight Nick circled a beautiful lake nestled in the arms of wooded mountains. The last rays of daylight bathed the water in a golden glow. Even as they watched, the shadows of the mountains crept across the surface toward the east shore of the lake. A small cabin stood in a clearing fifty yards or so back from the west shore.

  “This is where you live?” Cassie asked, craning her neck to look down from the plane’s window. “It’s beautiful. Does anyone else live on the lake?”

  “Nope,” said Nick, checking the wind sock he’d hung on a buoy and angling his approach into the wind.

  The plane dipped in a downdraft and Cassie exclaimed, clutching her belly with the sensation. She laughed and turned to Nick, but seeing the intense concentration on his face, she waited until the plane touched down with a splash to comment.

  “Are the air currents always so tricky?”

  “Here, yes. Well, usually.” Nick maneuvered the plane up to the floating dock. “This lake is fed by a warm spring, and the water is 65 degrees year round. On fall evenings, like now, warm air rises off the lake to meet the cool air and causes lots of turbulence.”

  “Have you ever made a bad landing?” Cassie asked just to see his reaction.

  “Not so bad it killed me.” Nick flashed a grin at her and unbuckled his seat belt. “Come on. We’re home.” He reached behind him and grabbed their bags.

  They walked up the dock together, approaching the small cabin. Made of logs, a standard sight in the Alaskan countryside, the cabin snuggled cozily into the slope upon which it sat. The overhanging eave of the wide front porch sheltered a hefty accumulation of wood, sta
cked neatly between the house and the supporting beam. A large ham radio antenna perched on the roof, reaching barbed fingers into the sky.

  “The door’s open,” Nick said as Cassie paused in front of it.

  “Open? You leave your house unlocked?” She tried it, pushing the door open when the handle turned, and went in, standing aside as Nick entered. He dropped the bags to the floor just inside.

  “Sure.” Nick kicked the door closed, going straight to the wood stove. “The only way in and out of this basin is by plane, unless you want to pack or sled in. Best of all, you have to be right on the money or you’ll never even see the lake. One mile off course and all you see is mountains.”

  Cassie looked around the cabin. It looked bigger inside than it had from outside, though that wasn’t saying much. One room made up the first floor, with a little alcove on the end for the kitchen. A steep stair climbed to the smaller second level above the kitchen, leaving a high open space over the front room. With no rail to the room above, Cassie could see into what looked like a bedroom.

  Crossing through the kitchen to the back of the house, Cassie looked out the small curtained window in the back door. Wires from the house led to a small outbuilding, its one window facing the house at an angle. Beyond that, trees rose to climb along the steep ridge.

  “Generator?” Cassie asked without turning around. She could hear Nick crumpling paper as he prepared to light a fire.

  “Um hmm. All the comforts of home.”

  “How do you bring up the fuel?”

  “A little at a time, by plane. I have a good stockpile of gasoline. There’s also more firewood in the shed. I like to have plenty of seasoned wood—it burns better.”

  “Indoor plumbing?”

  “Yes ma’am. The pump house is on the side by the kitchen. Only one bathroom, upstairs.”

  Cassie turned to see Nick putting flames to paper, which caught the kindling on fire like magic, at least that’s how it seemed to a city girl. In no time two bigger logs were snapping in the blossoming fire.

  “Why upstairs?”

  “Seemed like the thing to do when I built the place. I figured it is easier to build an addition on the main floor, if I decide to add another bathroom later.”

  He was watching her now, a match still burning between his fingers. She cleared her throat. “You’ve thought of everything.”

  Without looking at it, he shook the fire out of the match before it burned him. “It’s coming along. I’ve been through three winters up here, and every spring I have a long list of things I need to do or buy.”

  “Is it worth it?”

  “All the trouble isn’t trouble when it guarantees I’ll be here in the country I love for another year, for as long as I can land that plane on the lake.” Nick’s eyes flashed with emotion, and Cassie could hear his love for his home in the words he spoke.

  “It’s beautiful.” She crossed to a window that looked out front onto the lake. “A person could forget about the city out here.”

  “It is easy to forget,” Nick agreed, coming to the window to stand beside her. “The only thing I like better than being out here, fishing or doing whatever, is flying.” He laughed. “Sometimes my secretary has to call to remind me of an appointment I have for a trip. Which reminds me....”

  Nick walked over to a cabinet, flipping the catch to open the door. A ham radio came to life with a flick of a switch, and he picked up the handset and dialed into a band.

  “Blue Sky to Knight,” he said into the handset. “Do you copy?”

  Cassie felt the warmth of the fire now. She pulled off her parka and laid it over the back of a chair.

  “Nick? Is that you? Over.” The woman’s voice coming over the speaker sounded young and anxious.

  “Who else? Over.”

  Cassie walked around the room, looking at the various objects hanging on the wall. A stuffed bear’s head hung above the mantel behind the wood stove, flanked on either side by photos of Nick holding up fish, some very large. In one, he stood bare-chested, tanned, and smiling beside a scale, tropical blue waters stretching away behind him. The shark hanging beside him was half again as long as he was. In another, Nick held up a huge brown trout on the shore of a lake Cassie recognized as the one outside.

  “Did you forget you were supposed to have dinner with Mr. Knight? He’s called at least six times asking for you.”

  “Oh, dear. Denise, is he mad?”

  Cassie looked over at Nick to see him frowning.

  “He always sounds mad to me. I don’t know. Where are you!? I mean, when are you coming in?” The woman sounded harassed and more than a little irritated.

  “I’ll be out at Blue Sky for a couple days. Do me a favor, wouldja? Call him and ask him to reschedule. Something came up.”

  Cassie walked over to the orderly bookshelf and perused the titles collected there. Fishing books, survival books, hunting books, some light reading—historical fiction and science fiction—and several textbooks on a variety of subjects.

  “Nick, I am not going to make your excuses for you....”

  “Fine, tell him to come into the office. He can use the radio to call me, and I’ll explain it to him.”

  “Oh no, I’m not going to put him out like that. For Pete’s sake, Nick.”

  Nick didn’t answer, but he smiled at Cassie as she bent to pick up a photo album she spotted on the bottom shelf.

  “Fine,” the girl said at last. “I’ll call and tell him. Any particular day?”

  Nick had the good grace not to laugh. “You have my schedule. Whatever works for both of us. I’ll be back in town for my appointment on Monday. Call in if there’s an emergency, ’kay?”

  Cassie set the album down on the coffee table and settled on the couch.

  “Yeah. Nick, I’ll see what I can do about your dad. But check in with me when you come back to town. I’d just as soon be found right away, and buried before I rot. Knight out.”

  “Ha ha. You’ll be fine. Blue Sky out.”

  Nick put the handset down and crossed to the couch. He slipped out of his jacket before sitting down next to Cassie.

  “Buried?” Cassie asked, confused by the girl’s parting shot.

  Nick laughed. “Denise is scared to death of Pop. He knows what he wants, and he has enough pull to get it. Denise is just a kid, and that kind of power scares her.”

  “I know how she feels. I’ve met more than a few men and women like that in my field. They unnerve me every time.”

  “Why?” Nick leaned back, stretching both arms out across the back of the couch.

  Cassie sighed. “I’m just not cut out for my job, I guess. I’ve been a financial advisor for five years now, and it isn’t getting easier. I hate it.” She turned to him, tucking one leg beneath her. “I envy you. You love what you do.”

  “So what’s stopping you from reaching your dream, from doing what you love?”

  Cassie turned away from his green eyes and looked into the burning heart of the fire in the stove. “Scared, I guess.” She didn’t say any more, and Nick didn’t seem to expect her to.

  His hand on her cheek surprised her.

  “You can reach as high as you like. If you fall short, at least you tried.”

  Cassie sniffed. “It’s better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all?” When Nick nodded, she continued. “I don’t buy into that. It’s easy for you. You’ve had money all your life. I had to scrape my way through college, and I’m finally making ends meet.... If I still have a job when I get home.”

  * * *

  Nick shook his head. The money didn’t matter to him. Cassie didn’t know all the years he had spent fighting to stay clear of his father’s money, to make his own way. He had spent a few hungry years himself, but he knew she wouldn’t believe that. So instead he said quietly, “You made your way through college, but what did it get you? A job you hate. What if you had spent your time and money finding out what you like to do?”

  �
��I was good in my field in college. I had to survive. I....”

  Nick’s fingers on her lips stopped her from continuing. “I don’t mean to put you on the defensive. It’s just a shame that you won’t let yourself do what you love.”

  Cassie sighed. “I don’t even know what it is I love.”

  “You must. What gives you the most pleasure?” Nick couldn’t believe she didn’t know.

  She thought about it for a long time. “Photography, I guess.”

  “There you go.” Nick gave her leg an approving pat.

  “But I don’t know much about it and I don’t have the money to get the kind of equipment a professional would need.”

  “So study.” Nick sat forward as the ideas began to roll in his head. He started ticking them off on his fingers. “Borrow a camera from a friend. Start as a hobby on weekends and in your off hours. Sell a few photos and see what happens. You can offer to take pictures of people’s weddings—free at first, where they pay only for the prints they like. You can start charging when you get better results. I’ll help you get started, we can....”

  Cassie shook her head. “I couldn’t,” she said. “It would be too hard.”

  “Then I’m sorry.” He stood abruptly to put another log on the fire before closing the woodstove doors.

  “What for?”

  Nick turned to look at her from where he crouched in front of the hearth. “Because if that’s the way you think, all you’ll ever be is a financial advisor—and not a very good one because you don’t like what you do.” Nick hid a smile as her jaw dropped slightly. He could see her working up a retort.

  Before she could say anything, Nick did smile. “Or you could accept a friend’s offer of help, and make a new start on your life while you’re still young enough to enjoy it.”

  Cassie closed her mouth. Then she replied, “I don’t have any friends.”

  “You’re looking at one. I’ve got a ton of ideas for this photography thing. Think about it.” Nick came back to the couch. “But for now, let’s figure out what we’re going to do about your situation. Tell me again what the building looked like. The one where those goons took you.”