“I was going to say don’t give away that we know about Mitch’s death because then they might figure out that she knows how to contact us. We’ve got to protect her.” Ariel also didn’t want to think of how Peter might have been behind the murder.
“If he knew, Father might have her tortured and killed to get the number.” Tempest gulped. “Maybe we better not phone.”
“By calling and playing our parts right, we protect her.”
“’Cause Grandma knows how to get in touch with us and we want to make it sound like she doesn’t?” Ariel nodded. “But don’t-cha think Father could figure that out?”
Ariel nodded. “But he’d never be sure enough to interrogate her. And he will want her alive so he can keep tabs on the wiretap.”
Tempest’s hand hovered near the keypad. “So where do we pretend we’re at? Obviously, we can’t say we’re here.”
“How about Chicago?”
“Father was just there.” Ariel grinned and nodded. Tempest stared at her, then snickered. “I get it. Make him go back.” Tempest snickered louder, as she pulled up the magic jack screen.
“Someone could get a phone number from that. Use the skype account.”
Tempest nodded, switched programs and punched the well-known number. When Elizabeth answered, her face broke into a big smile. “Hi, Gr-Elizabeth! I miss you sooooo much.”
"Sabrina, honey, I miss you, too. But you shouldn’t call me here. You should never call me.”
“Well it’s not as if you know where we are or can call us.” Tempest grinned through her tears. Ariel gave her a thumbs up.
“Is there something wrong?” Elizabeth asked. “Is that why you phoned?”
Forgetting that her grandmother could not see her Skype image, because she was using an actual phone. Tempest shook her head. “I just miss you.” They talked for several minutes, then as Ariel took her turn, Tempest leaned close to the laptop, unwilling to break the tenuous contact to the real world.
“Sherry, you shouldn’t let Sabrina phone me here.”
“Why? Surely you don’t think your phone is still tapped. Besides, Chicago is a big place. Peter will never find us here.” To the best of her knowledge, calls from Skype to phones could not be traced, but they could be recorded.
There was a moment of silence. “Maybe there’s no safe place from someone like him.”
“Or maybe if we have to disappear again, we’ll have to sever all ties.”
Elizabeth’s intake of breath was audible. “I would never –“
“I know,” Ariel said.
After a moments silence, Elizabeth said, “Maybe you should stop running.” Tempest gasped.
“What are you suggesting?” Ariel asked. “Letting Peter find us?”
“No. Never that.” Panic and tears suffused her voice. “Neither of you have the strength to stand up to him.” Ariel raised her chin as she thought of how strong her kickboxing skills were becoming, but she couldn’t tell their grandmother that. Because she was positive her phone was taped and she didn’t need Peter to know what to expect. “I’m not necessarily talking about brute strength.” Elizabeth paused. “It’s Peter’s immorality.”
“The sociopath quality that allows him to do anything to get his way,” Ariel said.
Tempest shivered. “Or because he’s sort of the devil in living flesh.”
“Precisely,” her grandmother said. Her tone hardened, “I never liked him and I don’t think you did, either. I think you were nice to him because you felt you had to.”
Elizabeth’s suspicions about her feelings were frighteningly close to reality. “How long have you known?”
“Known?” Elizabeth’s laugh sounded sad. “About a second. Suspected? Since the first time I saw you with him.” Elizabeth sighed. “I was wrong for encouraging you to testify against him.”
“You thought justice would be served and he’d get convicted,” Ariel said. None of them had foreseen Peter’s ability to create `evidence’ to support his lies or find everyone’s weakness and blackmail them. Of course, having more money than some countries gave him the power to bribe guards, and if all else failed, he could tamper with a jury or find the perfect inducement for a judge.
“There has to be a way to make Father stop chasing us,” Tempest murmured. “I hate him,” she added, “I hate him. I hate him.” Tempest’s cheeks turned scarlet. “He’s taken everything from us. Everything. But it’ll never be enough to satisfy him until he tortures us to death.”
Would that even be enough? The past five years seemed like several lifetimes, each with a new name and face, each discovered and ended. All Ariel could see of the future was more running and hiding. More dye, makeup and colored contacts. More new names. More mornings, when she looked in the mirror and wondered who the stranger was. Did Peter have any idea how devastating living on the run could be? Was he procrastinating on catching them because it amused him to watch their efforts? Or were they actually staying a step in front of him?
Ariel sighed. “He’ll only quit if we die or he does.”
“I vote for him,” Tempest said.
Elizabeth sniffed. “You’d never forgive yourself if you stooped to his level.” She had a point.
“I’m not sure we’d be rid of him even if he died,” Tempest said. “Knowing him, he’d haunt us.”
Elizabeth cleared her throat. “I don’t want to think about Peter right now.” She paused. “Kelsey is overdue by two days.” They could hear the amusement in her voice. “Having a pregnant senator is creating all kinds of fervor.” Elizabeth’s voice warmed. “Bet the voters didn’t see that coming, when they elected her.”
“But she’s okay, right?” Tempest asked.
“Certainly… Of course, Calhoun may never recover from this,” Elizabeth said, alluding to her bigoted brother, Kelsey’s grandfather, “But that’s his problem. I’m confident that Kelsey will be able to manage both career and a baby.”
Ariel’s heart constricted with jealousy. If she could trade places with her cousin and raise a family with the man of her dreams, she’d do it in a heartbeat. Shoot, she’d even do it, if she had to do it alone, like her cousin, who’d decided to raise the son of her high school sweetheart, alone. Ariel blinked to rid her mind of the thought of having a love child, but she could nearly see her baby’s big blue eyes and adorable dimples.
Chapter 4
“The pipeline looks like a snake going in and out of the ground,” Tempest exclaimed, then immediately added, “Ooooo! Look! I see a bear.” When Stone glanced at the ground, his lips tilted up. Ariel tried to see what they saw, but the body of the plane blocked her view.
Stone silently piloted Linkstone’s plane toward the Beaufort Sea, while Link, who was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, kept glancing at his partner, but didn’t say anything. Neither did Ariel. Not that any of them had had much chance of getting a word in over Tempest’s endless string of observations. Had she even paused for breath since they’d taken off an hour ago?
“Ooooo! Look! There’s a wrecked plane!” Excitedly, Tempest grabbed Link’s upper arm and gestured to the ground. “Shouldn’t we so something? Land and help them? Radio someone?”
Stone’s lips twitched. Link outright laughed.
Tempest punched Link’s biceps. Ariel settled back in her seat, wondering what would come next.
“Stop that,” Link said.
Instead, her sister smacked him, again, when he continued to look out the window and laugh harder. Tempest screeched, “Stop laughing. Someone could be down there, hurt or even dead. Someone has to-“
Link turned around and put a finger over Tempest’s lips. “Relax. That wreck has been there for years. It may have been the first crash you noticed, but it won’t be the last. It costs too much to salvage stuff like that, so the wrecks just sit out there until they rust away.” Tempest made a sound of disagreement. “Trust me, you’ll see a lot more before we get to Deadhorse. But perhaps you’ll think you’re seeing bears.�
� Both men laughed.
“Uncle Link, I wish you wouldn’t joke like that. It isn’t nice.”
“I’m not joking, am I, Stone?”
Stone glared at Link. Link raised a brow. Stone sighed and said, “He’s right. That bear you thought you saw was a rusted snowmobile.” Tempest twisted around in her seat, as she tried to look back at 'the bear’. “We’ll be seeing a lot more crash sites before we get to Deadhorse. In fact, wrecks are some of the major reference points for the pilots who don’t use the pipeline for VFR.” He grinned. "We call it ‘I follow wrecks’."
“I thought we were going to a wildlife refuge, Deadhorse doesn’t sound like a good place for animals.”
He rubbed the stubble covering his jaw. “I prefer landing on a runway.”
“But Deadhorse?” Tempest’s voice squeaked. “What kind of a place is that?”
“It’s where people working for the oil companies live.”
“Oil companies! Ick! Take me back!”
Stone glanced at Link, who shrugged and raised a brow. “Is there some reason you don’t like oil companies?”
“I hate them,” Tempest screeched. “They kill animals!”
Ariel put her hand on Tempest’s forearm, in an attempt to quiet her. “Calm down, Temp.”
But her sister’s mouth flattened into a thin, hard line, as she leaned forward. “After that Exxon Valdez thing and all the poor creatures it hurt and killed, it’s hard to see any good oil does.”
She gave her sister a firm look. “None of us want to hear any more about those poor animals or your hatred of oil. Got it?”
Tempest grudgingly nodded, then turned to the window and silently stared at the wilderness passing beneath the Cessna’s belly. With a sigh, Ariel settled back into her own seat and stared out the other window. Granted, the photos of affected animals had been heart wrenching, but she suspected Tempest had brought up the oil spill to cover her fear of the oil companies Peter worked for.
“We have business in Deadhorse,” Stone said, “That first, then we’ll fly over to the park.” Ariel’s bad feeling returned with a vengeance. She narrowed her gaze at him, willing him to tell them why he hadn’t mentioned this detour previously.
“Is that where the VFR is?” Tempest asked.
Stone chuckled. “VFR stands for visual flying rules. The other term is IFR – instrument flying rules. VFR means a pilot needs good visibility because they use landmarks like rivers, roads, wrecks and the pipeline to navigate. Up here, visual rules are easier because magnetic north deviates.”
Tempest scratched her ear. “You mean it moves?” He nodded. “How can north move?”
Trust her sister to latch onto something irrelevant, instead of demand to know why the stop hadn’t been mentioned. Ariel bit her lip, with the knowledge that she couldn’t bring herself to ask that question, either.
“North doesn’t actually move; fact is that the magnetic north isn’t exactly north, so the farther north you go, the more off you are from true north.” Stone’s forehead wrinkled, as if he knew how confusing his explanation sounded. “Luckily, VFR doesn’t matter now days because GPS – that’s the global positioning system – tells me where I am within a few feet.”
“Is this GPS thing some sort of gizmo?”
Stone pointed to a small rectangular panel, which displayed ground speed, the distance to their destination and the time left before arrival. “See the needle? I just follow that line to stay on course. It’s simple and safe.”
“Uhhuh.” Tempest pointed to another gauge. “How come that round one is pointing down?”
“It’s broken.” Tempest gasped. Stone calmly added, “If it mattered, I wouldn’t have taken off. The altimeter only tells me how high I am above ground. I’ve flown thousands of hours in this plane and am pretty sure we’re about five-thousand feet.”
“The only time we need the altimeter is when we’re flying IFR and we never do that unless it’s an emergency,” Link said, “if it makes you feel any better, we’ve got a new one on backorder.”
“What kind of emergencies do you get?” Tempest asked. “The blood and guts kind?”
“Not generally, but we have had a few. Nothing fatal, though.” Tempest pressed her nose against the window and gazed down at the terrain. Link pointed toward the horizon, where the flat expanse of tundra met a thin dark line. “Know what that is?”
Ariel leaned forward to see. “Prudhoe Bay?” She smelled Stone’s rich masculine scent and quickly sat back.
“A lot of people call the whole body of water that, but that portion is actually the Beaufort Sea. We’ll land in a few minutes, then Stone and I have to check on some things. You can come with us if you like, or just wander around.”
Tempest perked up. “I wanna to see everything - except oil wells, that is.”
Stone smiled. “We’ll be checking on schedules and supplies. It’ll probably take us a couple hours.”
“So we can just walk around the town and the -,” she squinted at the distant buildings, “uh, area? Nobody will care?”
“Stay away from the wells and pumping station.” Stone glanced back, his expression amused.
Tempest’s nose wrinkled. “I’d never go near something like that.”
Stone laughed. Ariel had the feeling that her sister’s response had told him something. But she had no idea if Tempest had simply confirmed her distaste for petroleum or given away more. As she studied his profile, wishing she could read his mind, he tightened his seat harness. Not good. Ariel tightened her seatbelt, too and wondered if he planned to crash the plane.
Stone wagged the Cessna’s wings as they passed the pumping station. Ariel bit her lip and wondered what he’d just announced. Even Tempest got quiet. He lined the plane’s nose up with a dirt strip that he apparently intended to land on. Or crash. When she could see individual blades of grass, she bent over, grasped her ankles and prayed for survival. To her left, Tempest did the same. Stone landed the 185 and casually taxied to the gas pumps. Before the prop stopped, Tempest bolted out of the plane. “I’m going to go see that river over there,” she called over her shoulder, then she sprinted toward the desolate area, opposite from town.
“You should have told me you were afraid to fly,” Stone admonished.
“I’m not,” Ariel snapped. Stone raised a brow. She glared at him. Since she was not about to explain, she turned her back on him and shouted at her sister. “Hold up, I’m coming with you.” Ariel grabbed her dark green book bag then scrambled out of the Cessna, and headed away from Deadhorse, her step slightly unsteady on the springy ground.
She caught up with Tempest about a quarter mile from the plane. “This sure is a strange place,” Tempest said. She kicked a clump of vegetation. “No trees. No roads, at least none I could see from the sky. I can see why they call it Dead Horse. A horse wouldn’t be caught dead here.”
“It isn’t that bad,” Ariel said.” In fact, I wouldn’t mind staying here.”
“You just don’t want to get back in the plane. Would you h’ve said okay to this trip if you’d known we’d hav’ta fly in something smaller than our car?” Ariel shook her head. “I didn’t think so.” Her impish look returned. “I’m glad they didn’t tell you beforehand.”
Ariel gazed into the distance. “I wonder if we can walk to the refuge from here.”
“Probably not. Alaska is sorta like Russia, we can drive for days and not get anywhere.” Ariel winced at the memory of a vacation Peter had forced them to join him on. Tempest grimaced. “Sorry for bringing that up.” She cleared her throat. “Mr. Stone is a much better pilot than Father, don’t you think?”
“Stone only seems better because he doesn’t hot-dog and try to scare us.”
“You mean Father flies like a lunatic because he wants to?”
Ariel nodded. “Everything is a power trip to Peter, but I think Stone views flying as transportation.”
“Well, I sorta guess it is.”
“Look around. Ther
e aren’t any real roads. I read somewhere that one out of every three Alaskans is a pilot. We can see why, can’t we?” A chill washed over her and Ariel shivered.
“Are you cold? Do we need to go back and get you a sweater?”
“It’s not that kind of chill.” It was more of the premonition type and never a good thing to feel.
“You aren’t having one of your prem-notions are you?” Ariel nodded, wishing she could figure out what had set her intuition off. Tempest shivered. “I’m glad I don’t get those. It’s bad enough when something nasty happens, I’d hate to have to know bad stuff was coming. So, what is it? Fear of getting back on that plane?”
“Possibly, but I never really know until disaster happens.” She gestured toward the barren landscape. “This reminds me of Siberia.” On that trip, Peter had piloted them to an obscure pump station in another small plane and executed so many roiling theatrics that once she’d finally got home, she had vowed she’d never get aboard one of those horrible things, again. And she hadn’t, until she’d been tricked into agreeing to this trip. But Stone had proven himself an excellent pilot.
“The Russians use Siberia sorta like a barless prison. I wonder why Americans don’t do that.”
They stood shoulder to shoulder looking across the barren area. Another chill flickered over her. Was she reacting to the area, which looked so much like the place where she’d first suspected that Peter wasn’t the upstanding white-collar businessman she’d thought? “It’d probably be too expensive to build an American type facility here.”
Tempest snorted. “Maybe our country needs to get back to making prisons that are nasty places. I’m telling you, if the Turks had caught Father, he’d still be in their dungeon.”
“We don’t know that.”
Tempest kicked a clump of grass, then stomped away from her. Ariel followed. For a while they walked along a narrow trail, the silence punctuated by the squishy sounds their feet made. “I wish we’d see some animals.” Tempest exhaled noisily. “All we’ve seen since we got to this state are dogs, dogs and more dogs. I haven’t even met Mrs. Cabot’s cat. Not that I don’t like dogs, I do. It’s just that all the books tell about the wonderful wild animals and it sounds better’n a zoo, but what kind of zoo doesn’t have anything but dogs?”
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