Duplicate Daughter

by Alice Sharpe

  “In Nick’s plane. Almost in Vixen Hill.”

  “No,” he cried, his voice trembling, his eyes desperate. “No, go back, go back.”

  This time when Nick raised his voice, it sounded to Katie as though he was ready to climb into the back and forcibly haul her into her seat. “Now!” he yelled. She scooted back and buckled herself in.

  Lily grabbed her hand as the wheels touched down.

  Go back?

  Why?

  Chapter Nine

  Helen’s aunt lived in a town that made Frostbite look like a large metropolis. The storm hadn’t dropped much snow here and what there was had been plowed aside so that the roads were open. Helen’s sister had agreed to call their extended family and, consequently, a cousin met her at the airport driving a big truck. The cousin seemed content to wait in the truck for Helen to join him.

  It was apparent Nick and Helen had been discussing something since landing that had them both in a fit of temper. The cabin noise had meant that almost one-hundred percent of what was said in the front stayed in the front, just as what Nick’s father had muttered in the back of the plane wouldn’t have reached any ears but Katie’s.

  Go back? Had she heard him right? Was he delirious, was that it?

  No, that wasn’t it. His eyes had held a degree of clarity he hadn’t shown before or after. The uneasy feeling they had missed something of importance out in Nick’s boathouse came fluttering back.

  She had to talk to Nick, but not in front of Helen.

  Meanwhile, Helen said, “You have to let her come with me.”

  “Not in a million years,” Nick said.

  Katie listened without talking. She knew exactly who Helen meant.

  “Nick? Think. Anywhere that man is, trouble follows. Lily can’t be in the middle of it, she just can’t. She’ll be safe here at my aunt’s house. She’s been here before, My cousins have lots of little kids for her to play with. You get rid of…him…and then you come back and Lily will be safe. Please.”

  He shook his head again. He was standing on the tarmac, holding Lily tightly as though afraid she might disappear if he loosened his grip. She had both arms thrown around his neck and the picture the two of them created caused tears to gather behind Katie’s nose.

  Katie, too, had once been her father’s little girl. It had been just him and her, he’d been the center of her universe. She’d thought he could do no wrong, and even later, even after a gambling addiction had distorted him and limited what he was able to offer her, he’d still been her daddy and she’d fought to vindicate him after his death.

  With Tess’s help, she’d succeeded. Sort of. But what right did she have to burst into Nick Pierce’s life and ask him to risk everything for people he didn’t know or care about?

  She said, “Nick? Maybe Helen is right.”

  Turning his green eyes on her, he said, “Not you, too.”

  “Listen to her,” Helen urged. “Now she’s talking sense.”

  “Just get me and your father to a hospital in Anchorage. That’s all you have to do. I’ll take it from there.”

  “How?”

  She shrugged. “I’ll think of something. But we should get going. He’s awfully pale. He rallied for a while, but he sank away when you landed.”

  Nick studied her face for a moment and she wished she knew him well enough to figure out what he was thinking.

  “You’ll be back in a couple of hours,” Katie added. “Then you can go home and forget all about this.”

  His expression intensified. Finally, he turned back to Helen and said, “I guess she would be safer with you. And have a lot more fun.”

  “Yes,” Helen said with obvious relief.

  Looking now at Lily, he said, “How about it, Pumpkin? Would you like to stay with Helen for a while?”

  To everyone’s astonishment, especially Katie’s, Lily pointed at Katie and said, “Will she stay with me?”

  “No,” Katie said, taking Lily’s mittened hand in her own and squeezing it. “Maybe I could come back and visit you sometime, though.” It had suddenly occurred to Katie that she might never see Lily again, and her heart dropped into her stomach.

  “Absolutely,” Nick said heartily. Too heartily. He was faking his enthusiasm, but Lily didn’t seem to notice. The little girl leaned toward Katie and whispered, “Tell Mr. Snowman bye, ’kay?”

  “You bet,” Katie said, and taking Lily from Nick’s arms, hugged her small body tightly while Nick moved Lily’s and Helen’s gear to the truck and spoke to her cousin.

  Helen took Lily at last. “I guess I’ve been pretty rude to you,” she said with a swift upward glance at Katie. “It’s just that—”

  “It’s okay,” Katie said. “Take good care of Lily. She’s special.”

  Casting a swift glace at the plane, Helen’s eyes then bored into Katie’s. “Don’t believe a thing that man tells you. He can’t be trusted. He lies. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself. Dump him at the police station and go back to your life.”

  Katie swallowed painfully. Of course, Helen didn’t know about Katie’s mom, abducted by strangers, abandoned by her husband, unwittingly trapped, awaiting help…or already dead. Katie said, “You’d better go.” She kissed Lily one more time.

  As Helen walked off with Lily, Katie stood by the plane. Nick said his final farewells and the truck took off. He stared after it for a long time and she fancied she knew a little of how he felt.

  “So, now it’s just the two of us,” Katie said as he strode back toward her, straining to put a note of carefree humor in her voice to disguise her sudden sadness. She’d just lost Lily. In another hour or so, she’d lose Nick and be on her own with an injured man, trying to get him to tell her something she could use. There was also the nature of his injury to consider. A gunshot wound had to be reported to the police and Bill had panicked at the mention of police. Even more alarming, Nick had agreed with his father.

  Did her mother’s life depend on stealth and subterfuge? Might notifying the police be as dangerous as Nick’s father believed? By trying to do the right thing, would she inadvertently do the wrong thing and how was she to know the difference?

  And then there was Nick himself to consider. Approaching in that no-nonsense way he had, he returned her halfhearted smile. She couldn’t help wishing she could tug him close and ease the melancholy from his eyes, that she could offer comfort and give it as well. This wasn’t the time for romance, but romance was exactly the emotion that bubbled to the surface when Katie allowed herself to be open to what she was feeling. She couldn’t help but recall the times their lips had touched, the way his gaze had delved deep and long into her eyes, as though he couldn’t quite believe she was standing there, as though he wanted to know more about her, about himself…

  “You, me and the Snowman,” Nick said.

  “Speaking of Mr. Snowman,” she said, pushing dreamy notions aside and concentrating on reality, “I have something to tell you.”

  “We’ll talk when we get back in the plane,” he said, taking her arm, his breath a frosty halo around his handsome face. “Or haven’t you noticed it’s freezing out here.”

  AS NICK HELPED Katie climb back in the plane, he wasn’t sure what course of action to take. He hated indecision. It cost lives in time of war. It moved nothing forward and the argument that at least it didn’t make things worse didn’t make sense to him. How could doing nothing ever make sense?

  It was obvious to him that Katie’s leg had started bothering her again. No doubt the preceding few hours, to say nothing of the ordeal of the night before had caused her a great deal of pain. She never said a word, however, just gamely limped along and seemed to focus all her considerable energy on other people.

  She’d been hit by a car bad enough to end up in a coma and this was only a couple of weeks ago? Hit-and-run, the same thing that had happened to Patricia, only the results for his late wife had been devastating.

  Images like war scenes assaulted
his brain. Patricia lying on the pavement, groceries spilled around her broken body, blood seeping across the newly painted white line that ran down the center of Frostbite’s main street.

  He’d been coming out of the hardware store and he’d seen the whole thing, including the back of the car no one could ever identify. Worse, he’d witnessed his father’s first steps toward Patricia, and then his cowardly retreat.

  His father left her there, not even knowing Nick was fighting his way through the gathering crowd.

  Nick blinked a few times to clear his head. It was too late for Patricia. His concern now was Katie. She should be at home, recuperating, not gallivanting around making recovery more difficult. He had to think of a way to get her to sit tight and let him take care of things, because that’s the decision he’d just reached.

  He’d take care of things.

  If he could figure out how.

  It was down to the wire now. The nature of his father’s injury would necessitate the police being called in and if what his father said was true, police involvement might mean the end of the line for Caroline.

  Katie seemed ready to go it alone. Why? All night she’d been hounding him for help and now, on the brink of getting it, she wanted him to drop her off and fly away?

  He was glad Lily was safe with Helen.

  They climbed into the back of the airplane and closed the door. The space was cramped and his father took up most of the floor, so they sat side by side in the back. “Okay,” he said briskly. “What did you want to tell me?”

  “Your father regained consciousness during the flight.”

  “Which is why you were out of your seat.”

  “Yes.”

  They both looked as one to the prone man at their feet, at his gray skin, his sunken cheeks. It was hard to believe he’d ever been able to mumble a word much less hold a conversation. “Did he talk about your mother?”

  Katie’s eyes looked stricken as she said, “According to him, she was kidnapped from their motel room, right out of their bed, somewhere near Seattle. They hit him on the head, threatened him. He left.”

  “What?”

  “According to Bill, after they beat him up they threatened him and he left.”

  “My God. Who is ‘they’?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And he didn’t call the police or anything?”

  “Apparently not. Do you think they may be holding her for ransom? Do you think he was coming to you for help raising money?”

  “I don’t know,” Nick said, his expression perplexed. “It seems unlikely considering…everything, but then again if he was desperate enough… Did he say anything about a ransom?”

  “No. When he finally realized we were in a plane flying away from Frostbite he grew quite agitated. He said we had to turn and go back.”

  Nick looked startled. “Was he lucid?”

  “I think so.”

  “He’s feverish, though. He might be rambling.”

  “I’m not crazy,” Bill whispered.

  The whisper was like a shout in the small space, and both Katie and Nick immediately slid to the floor on either side of him. Nick had to twist and crunch his tall frame in order to fit.

  “Why do you want to go back?” Nick insisted.

  For a moment, Bill’s fuzzy expression cleared and he swallowed painfully. He said, “Just trust me.”

  Two things struck Nick at the same time. The first came out of his mouth. “Trust you? Now, why in the world would I trust you?”

  The second was that he’d said that same phrase, “Trust me,” to Katie a couple of times.

  “Go back…to your house,” his father said.

  Katie said, “Is it the boathouse, is that it? Is my mother there or…”

  Bill raised a hand and Katie stopped talking. His eyes closing once again, he said, “No…no, she’s not there. Not…in Alaska.”

  Nick glared at his father. “I’m not going anywhere, until you tell me who this Carson is and why he shot you. Have you been following Katie? Is that why you ended up at my house on the same day she did? I need the truth, damn you!”

  Katie stared at him as though he’d just pushed the button to initiate a nuclear explosion. “Nick—” she cautioned.

  But he was tired of tiptoeing around the facts with his evasive old man. He cut Katie a stern look, before staring at his father. “Come on. You’re playing with a woman’s life.”

  “She’s my…wife…”

  “Yeah, well, we all know how much you treasure yours or anyone else’s wife.”

  Bill turned his head away. For a second, Nick expe rienced the thrill of victory—he’d pierced his father’s facade. The thrill quickly dissipated. He’d taken a cheap shot at a man whose cooperation was vital. His own bitterness had exploded out of him and now seemed to coat the inside of the plane like some toxic green goop.

  “Nice going,” Katie whispered.

  He shrugged.

  She leaned close to his dad. Nick heard a few sporadic words uttered in her soothing voice. “…love…sacrifice…” followed by something he didn’t hear and then, “…he’s her best chance.”

  A few moments passed in silence as Katie straightened up and cast Nick a fleeting look he couldn’t decipher. Hopelessness, maybe? If she thought she could sweet-talk the old man the way she had him—

  “I left something…something at your house,” his father mumbled in his increasingly reedy voice.

  “When? Yesterday?”

  “No…no, two years,” he said.

  Nick swore under his breath. Bill had left town after Patricia’s accident without ever coming back to the house. He’d left clothes, a shaving kit, books. That first night, coming home after she died, Nick had dumped everything his father left behind into a box and given it to charity the next day. If there had been something Bill wanted, it was too late now.

  “What did you leave?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” his father said. “Must go back—”

  “You need a doctor,” Katie said.

  “Not now. Take me back. Please…before it’s…it’s too late.”

  Nick swore. He stared into his father’s watery eyes and finally took a deep breath. “And whatever you left at my house will help us get Katie’s mother back? You understand I got rid of your clothes—”

  “Not clothes…” Bill said, wincing with pain. Then he once again drifted away.

  Katie said, “Are we really going back?”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “But he said my mother wasn’t in Alaska. Besides, he needs a doctor.”

  “I know. But your mother may have more urgent needs. We’ll be back in Frostbite in an hour. We can get to the house, reclaim whatever it is he left, then be landing in Anchorage two hours after that. Or, even better, I have an old army buddy who can take care of my father and he’s only a forty-minute flight away. It’s in the wrong direction, that’s why I didn’t think of him before, but if we can bypass Anchorage and fly directly south towards Seattle—”

  “Seattle? You?”

  “Who else?” he said. “Anyway, my pal Doc owes me a favor. Might be time to call it in.”

  There were few other choices, at least as far as Nick was concerned. In a race to save his father or Katie’s mother, the poor woman won hands down.

  He refueled the plane and then he and Katie spent an uncomfortable half hour cleaning his father’s wound and rebandaging it. Instead of morphine, Nick gave his dad oral pain medication. Katie had brought along a Thermos of hot soup and she helped his father drink quite a bit of it, coaxing and cajoling like a pro, her soothing voice and abundant compassion no doubt warming his father as much as the broth.

  Nick watched all this from the corner of his eye, amazed at how good she was. He suspected it went deeper than her knowledge that her mother’s survival hinged on his old man’s survival. He thought it probably went against her nature to hate anyone, to be cruel to anything. Hadn’t his own daugh
ter sensed Katie’s character immediately, responding to her like a starving pup to a bowl of warm milk?

  Thoughts of Lily caused his stomach to clench, and he rewrapped the remainder of the sandwich Katie had produced from a red satchel, made from the pot roast leftovers.

  “It’s time we got going,” he said. “Like Sam said, another storm is predicted for late this afternoon. We’ll have to take off before it comes or we’ll be stuck sitting it out.”

  Which begged the question, what were they going back for? There was no way his father was up to another snowmobile ride, so they had to get him to tell what to look for.

  Of course, Nick hadn’t forgotten the aborted ambush by the bridge and the fact that an unknown—Carson?—gunman was still on the loose, making a trip back to his house a dangerous proposition. He’d leave Katie in the plane with his father. He’d go it alone.

  Katie sat in the co-pilot seat this time, seemingly agog at all the dials and switches. Or maybe it was more than that keeping her quiet. Maybe she was thinking about all the time that had gone by. Which begged the question—how much time had gone by?

  “When did your mother disappear?” he asked, using the headphones they both wore. The cockpit of a small plane was a noisy place.

  She turned to him, blue eyes wide. “I’m not sure. A week, maybe two or three, maybe less. Mom had been out of communication with Tess for quite some time, but we don’t know how much of it was just honeymoon stuff and how much of it was…this. How about your father? How did he get to Frostbite the night of the storm? In the red-and-white plane? What will the pilot think when one of his passengers is missing and the other has a bullet hole? And Nick, who is Carson?”

  Nick shook his head. “Lots of unanswered questions.”

  Next thing he knew, Katie had taken off the headphones and sidled between the two front seats. He glanced back in time to see her drop to her knees beside his father. It was on his mind to stop her when he came to his senses. What did they have to lose? The man certainly seemed more comfortable talking to Katie than he did to Nick. He kept his mind on the business of flying and left the business of witness interrogation to Katie.