by Karen Harper
“So, I’m going,” she went on, zipping her bag. “We can be there, look at the caves, hike to the cabin and search it together. We’re getting good at breaking and entering, aren’t we?”
“Yeah, and the place goes up in flames. But the fact Lloyd had so many pictures of that cabin in the middle of nowhere, even a picture in his house...”
He sighed and sank onto the edge of her bed. She sat beside him.
“Look, Commander Bryce Saylor. We have been in this together from the first, and you—and you-know-who—have said I helped. We’ll have Rafe along for security and you said you’d go armed. We’re going to work together on this again, get whoever is at fault, or at least find out who they are. And recover whatever of that old treasure is still salvageable and not in the hands of someone—well, someone evil. We then need to move on with our lives, together.”
He sighed and put his arm around her shoulders. “Together,” he said. “That reminds me—Chip said it was all right with him.”
“You asked him?”
“Man to man, while we were unloading the soccer gear when we got back. We decided Ryan will always be his ‘Daddy,’ as he calls him, but he’d like to call me ‘Dad.’ And his best friend, he added.”
She blinked back tears. Bryce’s eyes watered too.
“So that’s all set,” he said. “As soon as I get back from Caribou Lake and Mountain, how about we get an engagement ring in Anchorage? And not at Melissa McKee’s shop.”
“I will love that and I will say I do. But I’m going with you, and I don’t just mean to choose a ring.”
“Let’s not have our first fight even if it would be fun making up. You’re not going.”
“I am, or I’ll tell the Big Man I know who he is and ask about this special covert task force you’re a part of.”
“I’ll tell you so you don’t need to talk to him. There are details I can’t reveal—classified information—but what it boils down to is, the administration thinks—fears—that Alaska is being used as a conduit to smuggle people into the country. Spies. Maybe even saboteurs. Our intel tells us it’s a long-term plan by the Russians to bolster and supplement their growing use of global internet technology.”
“What, like trying to rig elections?”
“Right, but they’re being pretty hands-on, and we don’t know why. Apparently, these ‘people plants’ are flown in across the Bering Strait in small private jets but are picked up on the coast by smaller unmarked planes.”
“But what does that have to do with Lloyd Witlow?”
“Nothing as far as I’m aware, but the moment that Confederate treasure turned up, the Big Man wasn’t about to hand this assignment off. It may not be a matter of international security, but it’s certainly a matter of national concern. The truth is, there’s nobody at the NTSB with clearance to handle something like this. So it’s fallen to the special task force to expose those involved and recover what we can.”
Russian spies. She couldn’t believe it. It felt like something out of a movie. “Can’t these spies or whatever just get in legally under some guise—as an exchange student, a visiting scientist, a tourist, for heaven’s sakes—and then they could just go rogue?” she asked.
“They could,” Bryce said. “But then they could be on the US radar. This way, they’re in black ops—hidden, as is their mission. Finding Lloyd and that plane and its contraband has opened up an entirely new problem—one that you helped solve. Not smuggling people but that historic treasure anyone would like to get their hands on. Sadly, since Lloyd’s plane was blown up, we’ll never know why it crashed. I have a sinking feeling the Big Man is going to be expanding the parameters of the task force’s mission after this. The Confederate treasure sure got his attention—but so did the mention of Senator Hanson Galsworth.”
“I suppose it’s not surprising he wouldn’t want to let this one go. He definitely won’t want to let you go anytime soon either. I know I don’t want to.”
He smiled down at her. “I definitely don’t have a problem with that.”
“Well good. I’m glad to hear that,” she said, then got to her feet. “And now, you’d better get ready, because I’m already packed. Bryce, I am going with you and Rafe.”
* * *
“You’re doing what?” Suze demanded when they were both in the kitchen.
“As soon as it gets light tomorrow, I’m going for a flight from Anchorage with Bryce and Rafe—”
“Rafe too? To where?”
“I can’t exactly tell you.”
“Because you don’t know or won’t say?”
“Suze, please, trust me on this. I know you trust Rafe. And I’m going to be sitting in the copilot’s seat, just to get over the hump. I’m ready for that now.”
“I know you’ve been okay back in small planes since Bryce, but sitting up in front is a big step.”
If only Suze knew, Meg thought, where she was going, she’d really have a fit. She worried that if something did go wrong—like they got stranded or even if they did find more clues to locate the treasure—Suze would be deeply hurt that Meg had kept big secrets from her.
But her biggest worry was that, despite all they’d been through together, Bryce at the last minute still might absolutely refuse to take her. Or he could try to sneak off with Rafe to Anchorage to get in his plane without her. But, taking a tip from Chip, she was going to make sure that didn’t happen.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Meg was grateful for once that they had no guests, if you didn’t count the three-man security team of Bryce, Rafe and Kurt, sent by the man she was now certain was Samson Walters, the Vice President of the United States of America. She knew she risked making a fool of herself by putting Chip’s soccer net in front of Bryce’s bedroom door and spending the night in Chip’s sleeping bag in the hall nearby. She was too psyched to sleep anyway, so no way was Bryce getting past her.
She lay on her side with her head on her packed duffel bag for a pillow. She was fully dressed, even had her shoes on. Absolutely, she had to do this, to help Bryce check Lloyd’s cabin. And, though she had not told Bryce or even Suze, she had to be at Caribou Cliff once more, with Bryce this time, to really say farewell to Ryan. He was gone but her life must move forward.
Suze came padding down the hall in a robe and slippers.
“What in the world are you doing?” she demanded, bending close over Meg and keeping her voice down. “You said you intended to fly with Rafe and Bryce to see a wilderness cabin, but are you supposed to meet them out here?”
“Shh! It’s a long story.”
“One you haven’t really told me—not even chapter one. I know you said you’ve accepted his proposal, and I’m happy for you and Chip, but you and I are going to have to have a serious conversation about all of this and soon. I loved Bryce’s idea of the three of you spending the summers here, but we have a lot more details to work out, young lady, so don’t think for one second that I’m letting you off the hook.”
“I know. And we will, I promise. As soon as this is over, we will find some time to work out the details. The last thing I’d ever want to do is leave you in the lurch. Leaving you will be hardest of all.”
“Well, I appreciate that, but it doesn’t explain why you’re lying here in the hall.”
Meg sighed, feeling ridiculous. “I’m camping out here because I want to go along tomorrow, and he doesn’t want to take me.”
“Because you’d be in the way? It’s a secret trip?”
“I can say one thing, but you can’t tell anyone—anyone.”
“I promise.”
“The place we’re going is near where Ryan died.” Meg took a deep breath. She could do this. “Suze, I went there once before, secretly. To see it, to face it. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I meant to, but then the more time passed, the harder it was to bring up. Going there j
ust felt so...personal. Too personal to discuss. I think I also didn’t want to have to admit that I hadn’t found closure there—that I wasn’t okay. And then somewhere along the way I convinced myself that not talking about it made what happened to Ryan feel less real. It was comforting somehow.”
Suze gasped, then seemed to recover. “Oh, Meg, I’m sorry you went through that alone. I wish I could’ve been there for you, but I do understand why you kept it a secret. I won’t tell anyone, hon, and I hope that this time, you find the closure you’re looking for. I’m always here if you need me. But you know what scares me? Not only that I sometimes think I don’t know you anymore, but that I don’t know myself. As dangerous as working with Bryce sounds, I think if I were you and it was Rafe going, I’d go with him too.”
She sat cross-legged on the hall floor beside the sleeping bag, and they held hands as if they were kids again, scared by owl hoots outside or the haunting cries of a lone loon on the lake when they first came here to visit Grandma years ago.
* * *
After Suze went to bed, Meg did fall asleep and was jolted awake by Bryce shaking her shoulder. She sat up instantly.
“You are damned stubborn,” he said, bending over her. “Let’s grab something to eat, get Rafe and get going.”
Her pulse pounded so hard it was like a drum. He was going to take her? He realized how important it was to her! When he walked off down the hall, maybe to wake Rafe, she darted into the bathroom, then, hefting her duffel bag, rushed to the kitchen and fixed cereal, toast and orange juice for the three of them. No time to even perk the coffee. Adrenaline would have to keep them going today. And she’d asked Suze to cover for her with Chip when he got up. Never mind the conversation she owed Suze about their plans—she planned to more than make up for lost time with that kid when this was over.
They did not talk much at breakfast nor in her truck en route to the Anchorage airport. Had he been planning earlier to take her truck and leave her behind? No, because she had the key and he hadn’t asked for it, so maybe he meant to take her—if she proved to him how badly she wanted to go. And she had. Or something during the night had made him change his mind about her going.
“Frosty in here despite the heater,” Rafe finally said. “And I thought I heard congratulations are in order.”
“True,” Bryce said. “We just had a disagreement about my fiancée coming along today. The site where we’re going—do you want to explain it, Meg?”
“Not to mention that Bryce thinks this trip is dangerous, Caribou Cliff is the place where my husband was killed in a plane crash in bad weather. I’ve been there once before. I recognized it from some photos, and I thought I could help.”
“I hear you’ve been invaluable all along,” Rafe told her. “And yes, Commander Saylor is the one who told me how you helped.”
Both Meg and Bryce let out audible sighs as some of the tension of their disagreement and what they were doing lifted, at least she thought so. But facing that place again, even for a good reason, still scared her more than she could say.
* * *
When daylight came, Bryce was grateful the weather was clear. Great visibility, although the glare of the miles of pristine snow would blind them if they didn’t all wear glacier glasses, which were much stronger than sunglasses.
“You okay?” he asked Meg as they left the Anchorage area behind and banked toward the north. “Rafe can come up here if you’d rather go back like you used to.”
“No more ‘used to,’” she told him from the copilot’s seat. “This is now, and this is something I have to do. Besides, I can’t be married to a man who loves to fly if I can’t completely share that.”
“You’ve come a long way—but so have I. We do this, learn and find what we can, and head back.”
“I saw you brought some tools that make you look like an old-time prospector, or rather, like someone who is getting adept at breaking and entering. Maybe the place will be open.”
“I doubt it. Entering a small, well-built cabin in a snow field with subfreezing temps will be a bit different from lifting an unlocked window at Getz’s—poor guy. These deaths, people being injured—it has to stop.”
“As terrible as things have been, we found each other. And Suze found Rafe, though she’s scared he’ll just leave and that will be that.”
“Maybe you and I can work to keep them together,” he said. “Not meddle, but—I think we’ve been a fantastic team. More than anything, that makes me hopeful about today. Answers have to be out there somewhere, somehow...”
His voice trailed off as he rechecked his instruments and then gazed out into the white vastness of what some called “The Great Alone.” But he didn’t feel alone, and from now on he couldn’t imagine how he could live without her.
* * *
Rafe came up into the cockpit and held on to the back of their seats as Bryce made one circle of their target area. The vast stone face of Caribou Cliff frowned out from one side of the tall mountain.
“See that little lake down there?” Meg asked. “Is it long enough to land this plane on? Carter had a smaller plane when we were here, and it wasn’t iced over then.”
Bryce said, “I see it. Or we could land on that snowfield that leads up to the cabin. But who knows what’s under some of that snow—we could lose a pontoon. Wonder how long that cabin’s stood there. We may have to dig it out. Either landing spot, Meg and I are going to have to snowshoe to it while you guard the plane, Rafe.”
“Smart you brought a pair of walkie-talkies,” he said. “Or else we’d be using signal flags and binoculars out here. You and I can keep in touch.”
“Okay, I say we’ll try this end of the lake that’s closest to the cabin and the caverns Meg described,” Bryce told them. “I’d really like to search those caverns too, but we may not have time on this trip. Still a needle in a haystack, but it’s possible Lloyd was siphoning off some of the treasure, maybe at his daughter and son-in-law’s request, and hiding it here. Or his working for them—or the mayor and Melissa—was a quid pro quo for someone paying for the plane and flying lessons.
“Rafe, better buckle up. I’m going to take us around and in. Meg, you okay? You’ve been doing great, but you look a little queasy.”
“It’s just seeing the cliff again. But it’s not going to stop me. I’m going to conquer it. With your help and support.”
“That’s my woman,” he said as Rafe patted both their shoulders and went in back to take his seat again. “Notice I didn’t say ‘girl’ so I don’t get a takedown like you gave the mayor,” he added, obviously trying to bolster her spirits. “Okay,” he called back to Rafe, “we’re going in!”
* * *
Massive Mount Caribou and its cliff face looked even larger to Meg this time, a hulking monster with snow on its head and shoulders. As Bryce took the plane close to the wall of rock to make a pass at the far end of the frozen lake, her stomach cartwheeled and seemed to go into free fall.
She gripped her hands together, closed her eyes. Dizzy, but just for a moment.
He dipped the left wing to come around to use the entire length of the frozen lake. She saw a herd of the animal that gave the place its name, straggling along the edge of the lake, probably annoyed they had to move to get away from the buzz of the plane—and to stop eating whatever they were getting from the meager stands of trees. The thirty or so caribou, some sporting huge racks of antlers, headed out toward the open area where the cabin stood, half buried in snow. She remembered that, in the photos, there were caribou racks hung above the front door of the cottage, so hunters had obviously been through here for years. Yes, she was glad that Bryce and Rafe were both armed but they weren’t hunting these majestic animals.
Bryce put the plane down smoothly, powered off early, but they still nearly slid into the snow bank at the far end.
“Whew,” he said. “Even shorter th
an it looked. Hope there’s a decent wind for a good lift when we take off.”
Once they landed, it was all business. Rafe had packed their backpacks with some food and more layers of clothes. Eating snow would do for water. The wind outside whined and stung and sent loose drifts skittering across the surface of the ice. They trudged off the lake ice onto the snowy bank. Rafe went that far too.
The men tested their two-way radios, then checked their long-range rifles. Rafe helped them snap on their snowshoes. She and Bryce adjusted their knitted face masks so they could see out and breathe. Hers was knitted in dark blue and his in dark green. It made her think of Halloween masks, but that reminded her of the terrible invasion of the lodge.
Finally, Rafe strapped Bryce’s “break-in” tools on the back of his pack next to his rifle. Across her backpack, Rafe had tied their lone snow shovel, in case they had to dig their way into the cabin.
Rafe hit Bryce on both shoulders and gave them a double thumbs-up. Before he headed back to the plane, he pointed to his watch to remind them to pay attention to the time since the days were extra short up here. Meg realized if they had to take off after dark, it would be like Ryan flying in bad weather so close to that monster of a cliff.
They waved at Rafe and set a good pace on their snowshoes toward the cabin. It was fairly easy to spot, although it looked half buried in drifting snow. She saw the herd of caribou had moved to a site around the cabin and hoped that would not cause them any problems. It looked like they were stripping the bark from it to eat, and no wonder with scarce food sources up here this time of year. They would surely migrate farther down for food, but the continual snowstorms might have delayed them.
The cabin grew larger as they trekked toward it. Meg was sweating, out of breath, but she kept up. To think they’d have to do this in the other direction, hopefully carrying something they found within. But if Lloyd had buried things, the ground would be frozen solid, though she couldn’t imagine their finding contraband just sitting there, like in some Aladdin’s cave.