by Terry Spear
Gavin headed back to get the cooler and more of their gear, his fierce expression asking her if she was all right with Heaton. She inclined her head. She suspected Heaton would speak more freely around her when Gavin wasn’t nearby, so she could do this.
Gavin carried the items to the lake and set them down on the beach.
“What’s the deal with him? You sink the plane, and then you become bedmates with an Arctic wolf?”
“I’m sure you can guess how that happened.” She finished packing the tent away.
Heaton cast Gavin a dark look. “How did another Arctic wolf end up here? Was he someone from Alaska you already knew?”
Didn’t Heaton figure she could have been interested in a wolf that quickly after it was over between him and her? Then again, it would make sense. He’d assume Gavin was from Alaska because he was an Arctic wolf shifter like her.
Figuring it would assuage Heaton’s ego to think she’d known Gavin before this, she said, “If you must know, yes, I met him when I was in Alaska.” She wasn’t going to say how she met him, or that the meeting was brief, or that he had been strictly human back then.
Returning, Gavin grabbed the canoe and carried it over his head to the lake.
“Was the meeting at the hangar between the two of you planned?” Heaton looked like it was killing him to not be able to help her with something, anything, to make it up to her for getting fired, as if the plane going down wasn’t important.
She’d been so angry with him over drinking on the job. She’d thought someday they might really have a chance to be mated wolves because of their love of flying, though she hadn’t felt the pull with him like she did with Gavin. With Heaton, it had been all about their interest in flying. With Gavin? He was wolf-mate material she could really fall for.
“No. I didn’t have any idea Gavin lived in this area. He never flies out here. He always paddles. So he’s never used our services. We were completely surprised to see each other here.” She’d said too much already, she realized as soon as she spoke the words.
“Then you weren’t dating before you left Alaska? Or he would have known where you were. Unless that’s why he moved to this area. Then again, why wouldn’t he have come to see you before this? I know you weren’t seeing each other, or you wouldn’t have dated me. Unless you’re just…friends.” Heaton put out the fire.
One of the investigators was talking to Gavin again.
“We’re making up for lost time,” Amelia said, not in a hurtful way, or at least she didn’t mean it that way. Hopefully, her comment would make it sound like she and Gavin had been close in Alaska, but she had left and they’d lost contact. Until he moved into the area. Of course, the timeline was all wrong, but she wasn’t about to enlighten Heaton.
“Why did he book a flight this time?”
She grabbed the bagged tent and began walking toward the beach, not answering Heaton.
“But now you’re staying with him out here? Not returning home?”
“I have no plane to fly, remember? He’s a wolf. I’m due a vacation. I haven’t taken one in eons.” She stopped and turned to face Heaton. “Listen, you might as well come clean on this. You’re wearing hunter’s spray, so you’re concealing your scent from what? Us? Other animals?”
Because he’d been skulking around their campsite wearing hunter’s spray and then had boldly come to see them this morning, she knew he had been up to no good, that he’d sabotaged the plane. She might not have any physical evidence, and the investigators might not be able to prove he was the one who did it, but she was certain he had.
“You’ve been sneaking around our camp here and at the place we were before this. Why would you do that if you were just out here paddling to your heart’s content? Let’s say you did have the trip planned all along. When you did, it was just for taking a vacation. When you were fired, you had another reason to come out here. To use it as an alibi. What I can’t figure out is why you destroyed our raft and tried to take off with our canoe. To strand us? If you’d just wanted to destroy the plane, maybe kill or seriously injure my dad, why harass us? Me? Dad isn’t here. The plane is gone. You’ve done the damage already.”
Gavin returned to take the tent from her.
“I’ll help you pack the canoe in just a second, Gavin.” She still hoped Heaton would say something to fully incriminate himself if Gavin wasn’t within hearing distance.
“No problem, honey.” Gavin leaned down and kissed her mouth in a way that told Heaton to take a hike.
She kissed Gavin back as eagerly to prove this wasn’t just a show. Heaton would be able to smell Gavin’s and her interest in each other, something that hadn’t happened between her and Heaton. When they broke free from the kiss, Gavin carried the tent off.
Heaton watched him leave. “He wouldn’t have planned to take a camping partner, would he have? Does he even have enough food?”
“We’re going fishing.” And she meant for more than just the kind they could eat.
Heaton turned his full attention to her again. “What does Gavin Summerfield do? Don’t tell me he’s a pilot too.” Now Heaton sounded angry.
Amelia imagined Gavin could have any occupation but that and Heaton wouldn’t care. A pilot taking his place? He would blow his top.
“He’s a private investigator and former police officer.”
Heaton frowned, glancing in Gavin’s direction, looking a little worried. Maybe the notion Gavin was a wolf with investigative skills and trained to take down criminals had Heaton rethinking this whole situation. What if Gavin had only been an accountant, for instance. Or a bank president. Whole other story. “Now I get how come he asked all the questions of me,” Heaton finally said.
“Right. You’re his number one suspect, so unless you can prove you should be off his radar, you can count on him checking out your story further.” Digging deep, she wanted to say.
“Then I’d better have an airtight alibi, hadn’t I?”
Gavin returned for her. “Yeah, you’d better.”
He sounded like one pissed-off, growly wolf, and she knew Gavin would take care of the man personally—wolf to wolf. He wouldn’t be concerned with taking Heaton to court if he really was responsible for this, like Gavin would have if they’d been human and Heaton had too.
“You know you can’t have me arrested,” Heaton said slyly to Gavin.
“Why would you even consider that if you aren’t guilty of anything? But if you are, don’t worry about it. Arresting you would be too easy for you,” Gavin said. He wrapped his arm around Amelia’s waist and walked her to the beach.
She and Gavin finished loading the canoe, but they didn’t talk. Not when Heaton might be able to hear them. He was watching them from a distance but still close enough to hear what they might say.
As grim-faced as Gavin looked, Amelia knew he wanted to say something further to Heaton. She suspected with his cop and PI background, Gavin had every intention of proving Heaton’s guilt before he did anything to the guy.
Once they were on the water and paddling across the lake, Gavin said, “He’s lying. Not about being concerned for you. His concern over that seemed genuine. Maybe he’s telling the truth about the scheduled canoe trip he’s been on, but he saw the plane go down. He watched it, and he watched us. He tore up the raft and tried to steal the canoe. He’s been sniffing around our camps. The chance that he didn’t cause the plane’s trouble would be slim.”
“I agree wholeheartedly. I still think he sabotaged the plane, but why would he show up at our camp while the investigators were there?”
“Do you know how many people who have committed a crime come in to tell us who they think did it but make sure they have an airtight alibi first? Who play a cat-and-mouse game, showing how brilliant they are that they got away with it? I think he also was dying to know who I was and how long I’d known you. He had
to meet me face-to-face. To see if I was a beta wolf or alpha enough to take him on. He wondered if he’d been the one to force us to grow close by causing the plane crash.”
“I agree. Do you think he acted alone? For revenge against my dad, but it backfired because Dad wasn’t flying the plane?”
“Possibly. Unless, because he’d been an inside man in your operations, that was the condition of his employment with the other company. Maybe he even received a bonus for doing it. Take down one of your planes. Cause trouble for you. Maybe encourage your family to pack up and leave if you ended up having so much bad press that you lost enough business. And get back at your dad for firing him. Or somehow he’s in cahoots with Red.”
“Did you believe him when he said that he’s leaving this afternoon?”
“Not entirely. He wouldn’t give us the name of the pilot who’s picking him up. And he hadn’t brought his gear to the place where he would need to be picked up either.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “He’s moving his stuff there now.”
“Okay, so he knows we can still see him. If we continue to paddle beyond that island in the direction we’re heading, we won’t be able to see if a seaplane picks him up. If we park the canoe at the island over there, we can climb up that hill and watch to see if the plane comes for him.”
“You’d delay your own mission even further.”
“I would. I want to make sure he’s really leaving. I don’t trust him to go. And I don’t want to worry about watching our backs the whole time we’re out here in case he’s still stalking us.”
“Okay. Why would Heaton be here, taunting us about this?” Amelia asked.
“I’ve worked cases where the perp was extremely helpful, steering us in the wrong direction or being smugly confident that we couldn’t prove he was guilty of the crime, taunting us to just try to trip him up.”
“So what ultimately happens? Do you get convictions in either type of case?”
“Yes. And no. Some we do, and some we don’t. In Heaton’s situation, he may think we can’t do anything about it—even if we learn he really did cause the plane crash beyond a shadow of a doubt—because he’s a wolf.”
“In our Arctic wolf pack back in Alaska, the pack leaders eliminated wolves who were murderers or attempted murderers. Our kind can’t go to prison long-term, but they’re not going to let one go scot-free either.”
“Exactly. He’s a lone wolf. Maybe he’s never been taught what would happen to someone like that.”
“That could be.”
They paddled for about twelve miles to the island with a better lookout point, then pulled the canoe out of the water. They made ham sandwiches at the base of the cliff, had lunch, and then climbed up the cliff.
“He said he’d be picked up later in the afternoon, right?” Amelia asked as they found a safe perch on the cliff, binoculars in hand. She’d halfway believed Heaton when he said he was leaving, but Gavin seemed warier.
“Yeah, that’s what he said.” Gavin was looking over the map. “The fastest way for us to reach the island where the company is staying right now is to cross here. We won’t set up our camp too close. We can stay on this island. The river cuts between the two of them. If we camp far enough away, we can slip across the river at night, move in close to their campsite, and watch from the woods to see if we can observe or hear anything.”
“Do you think they might have stayed at their last campsite, waiting for Theodore to rejoin them, instead of moving to the next site?”
“Hell, we should have asked him. I was counting on them to stay at the old campsite, since he knew where they’d be and it’s much closer.”
“Okay, so what if they followed their original plan and met up with him at the new location?”
“We’ll paddle upriver here.” Gavin pointed to the map. “Portage here and cross another river. They’ll be camping here. If they aren’t already there by the time we get there, we’ll camp on the island here so we can move in close later and listen to what’s going on.”
“That looks like a good plan.” Amelia swore she heard the faint sound of a plane’s engine. Not one of her own though. She turned her head to the side and looked up at the sky. “I think I hear a plane coming this way.”
“I hear it too. I’m surprised. Do you mind if I use your sat phone?”
“No, go right ahead.” She fished it out of one of the bags and handed it to him. “Where are your binoculars?”
“In that first bag.”
She pulled out his binoculars so she could see whose plane it was. It was carrying a yellow canoe and a red canoe. So the pilot was dropping more paddlers off.
Gavin called the number for one of the competitor air-travel tour companies in the area. “Hi, I’m calling to make travel arrangements to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. I’ve heard my old friend Heaton Compton is flying for you now… Okay, well, let me get back with you about some dates, and maybe he can fly me out there… Oh, is he there? No? Okay. Do you know when he’ll be returning? Okay, thanks. I’ll call back later. Got to ask the missus about the dates of our trip. She keeps track of the schedule. Thanks. Bye.”
“I take it Heaton works for them,” Amelia said to Gavin when he got off the phone.
“Right. He won’t be returning to work for another four days.”
“And he’s not there because he’s here. What does that mean, exactly? He’s not leaving here like he said he was?”
“Or he’s returning with that plane,” Gavin said, motioning to the one landing on the water. “And he’s going somewhere else for the rest of his vacation time.”
“It’s one of the Right Flying Adventure Tours seaplanes. We should have asked him what he was going to do with the rest of his time. So he’s lied about the amount of time he had off? Nine days, instead of five, or he’s only been here a day and he has four days left?”
“I don’t know. I was trying not to sound like a cop.”
“You always sound like a cop when you’re trying to learn something from someone.”
“Even when I entered your house after chasing your runaway pups?”
“That was different. I was naked. You hadn’t announced who you were. At that point, I wasn’t taking any chances.”
“I don’t blame you. Did you ever get that front door fixed?”
She squeezed his arm. “Yes. That afternoon, in fact. Probably made the house easier to sell.”
They watched the plane park at the dock. The island was about twelve miles from the other, so it was hard to see all that was going on. When the seaplane was airborne, they should have been able to tell if a canoe was secured to it, which most likely would indicate Heaton was leaving. Unless someone else had shown up and was being flown home. They didn’t know what color Heaton’s canoe was, since he’d kept it hidden from them. When he’d started to bring his gear to the beach, he hadn’t brought his canoe yet.
“Okay, he’s leaving. The seaplane, that is. And I see a canoe, a yellow canoe attached. So maybe Heaton was telling the truth.”
“If that’s his canoe.”
“You mean someone else might have arrived and was being picked up? You could be right.”
They watched while the seaplane took off. The people who had been dropped off appeared to be setting up their camp, smoke already curling up from a campfire. Amelia and Gavin portaged to the other side of the island, put the canoe back in the water, loaded their gear, and paddled to reach the island across the river.
When they reached the end of the second portage, they saw that the greeting-card company group had set up their camp, and Theodore’s red canoe wasn’t among them.
“I hope he’s all right,” Gavin said, worried about the executive who, in his own words, wasn’t a real outdoorsman. “Let’s paddle down the river away from their camp and set up our campsite.”
“Why don’t you stay here with our gear, and I’ll paddle toward the place where they made camp before and see if I can locate him,” Gavin said.
“Sure. I’ll set up the tent and build a campfire.” She gave Gavin a hug and a kiss that told him she thought the world of him for being concerned about the guy.
“I’ll leave the gun with you, just in case you need it.”
Then Gavin took off to see if he could locate Theodore, hoping he hadn’t lost his way or had a heart attack or something. Gavin couldn’t believe how messed up this one little job had become, when he’d thought it would be so easy. Just observe Conrad, see if there was any evidence of his cheating on his wife, document it, end of assignment. Gavin hadn’t intended to meet up with a couple of Conrad’s coworkers first and then get even more involved in their situation.
When Gavin was closer to where the man should be paddling, if he hadn’t gotten lost, he called out Theodore’s name.
Gavin didn’t get any response. He hoped that didn’t mean Theodore had ended up somewhere else. And he hoped Amelia was fine while he was gone.
“Theodore!” Gavin called out again.
Chapter 12
Amelia busied herself with setting up the tent and sleeping bags and then built a campfire. She hoped Gavin would find Theodore quickly and that he was all right. Poor Gavin. At this rate, he was never going to be able to complete the job he’d come here to do.
She called her dad to let him know where she was and what Gavin was doing. And to say that she thought Heaton had left the area.
“Gavin’s supposed to be protecting you. When did you learn Heaton was there?”
“I’m fine, Dad. Gavin will be back before we know it. I’ve got his gun anyway.” But now she had to explain to her dad about Heaton. She had forgotten she hadn’t told her father about Heaton being out there in the Boundary Waters. She shouldn’t have made the slip.