by Meg Cabot
“Oh, dear,” she said, stroking Alessandro’s silken ears. “But it’s such a long flight. And really, he is such an angel. He won’t bother anyone, I promise you.”
The flight attendant frowned prettily. “I’m sorry, ma’am. But we can’t have animals running around loose during the flight. It’s a safety issue, you understand.”
“Oh, but he isn’t running around loose,” Eleanor said. “He’ll just sit here on my lap, quiet as you please. He won’t be a bit of trouble. I’m sure this nice gentleman doesn’t mind. Do you, sir?”
The tall, white-haired gentleman seated beside her, looking distinctly uncomfortable, shook his head rapidly.
“Oh, no,” he said to the flight attendant. “I don’t mind at all. I love dogs. Well, bigger dogs than this one, actually. But this dog seems all right. He isn’t bothering me. He’s pretty well behaved.”
Eleanor could have kissed him. Would have, if she hadn’t thought he’d have jumped right out of his skin. He was holding onto the grips of his arm rests as if he half expected the seat to eject at any moment.
“There,” she said, giving the flight attendant her most dazzling smile, the one Jack had always called her now suffer smile. “You see? My dog isn’t bothering this gentleman, and he’s the one most likely to be disturbed. And it isn’t as if there’s anyone else in the cabin to be bothered by it.” She looked meaningfully about first class, which was empty, save for her, the white-haired gentleman, and Alessandro. “Can’t he just sit and look out the window for a little while?”
The flight attendant, charmed not so much by the Yorkie as by its owner, said, “Well…I really shouldn’t. But…I guess. Just this once.”
“Oh, thank you,” Eleanor gushed. “You can’t know what a comfort it is to me.” The flight attendant went into the forward cabin to see to her passengers’ suppers, and Eleanor said, to the gentleman beside her, “I can’t thank you enough, sir, for being so understanding.”
The white-haired gentleman gave her a perfunctory smile. Clearly, his mind was on other things, however.
“No problem, ma’am,” he said. “Happy to oblige.” Then he turned his face back towards the front of the plane, as if he, not the pilot, was flying it.
Eleanor, recognizing immediately a man who was used to being in control and disliked the feeling of not being so, even for a ten-hour flight, held her dog out towards him.
“Would you like to hold Alessandro for a little while?” she asked. At his look of bewilderment, she added, “I find that petting animals can be so soothing. It’s actually been scientifically proven to lower the blood pressure. And if you don’t mind my saying so, you seem nervous.” When he hesitated, Eleanor pointed out, “He’s just a little dog. And he’s never bitten anyone in his life.”
Looking as if he very much would have liked to decline, the white-haired gentleman nevertheless held out his hands. Eleanor placed Alessandro in them, and to her delight, the dog immediately began lapping the man’s kindly, rather good-looking face.
“There,” she said happily. “He likes you! I knew he would. Alessandro is actually quite particular, you know. It’s quite an honor for him to accept you so quickly into the pack.”
The white-haired gentleman smiled shyly. “Well,” he said, between laps of Alessandro’s pink tongue. “How nice. I didn’t know they let people in first class have their dogs on their laps while they fly. They don’t in coach, you know.”
Delighted to have a conversation to keep her mind off her son, Eleanor said, interestedly, “Oh, you normally fly coach, do you?”
“Yes,” the white-haired gentleman said. Alessandro, satisfied that he had licked his new friend’s face enough, settled upon his chest and panted rapidly. “The only seats available on this flight were in first class. And I need to get to Anchorage as soon as possible.”
“So do I,” Eleanor said wonderingly. “My son was in a helicopter crash there.”
The white-haired gentleman blinked at her. Alessandro, sensing the man’s sudden tension, stopped panting and whined a little.
“So was my daughter,” he said.
Eleanor reached out and grasped the man’s wrist. “My goodness! Is your daughter a screenwriter?”
“Yes,” the white-haired gentleman said. Then as if suddenly remembering something, he thrust his right hand at her, startling Alessandro. “Frank Calabrese. My daughter Lou’s gone missing.”
“Eleanor Townsend,” Eleanor said, slipping her fingers into his. “My son Jack is missing as well. They say…they say he might be dead. That there’s a blizzard in the area where the helicopter went down, and they can’t get rescue planes there before morning.”
Frank Calabrese’s fingers were very warm and reassuring. It was no wonder Alessandro liked him.
“They told me the same thing,” he said. “They’re worried the survivors—if there were any survivors—will freeze to death in the night.”
“Yes,” Eleanor said. “That’s what they said to me, too.”
Neither of them said anything more for a while. There was nothing to say, really. They both declined the champagne the flight attendant offered them a few minutes later. And when the movie came on, neither accepted her offer of headphones. Instead, they sat exactly as they were, holding one another’s hands, and staring through the window at the blackness of the night sky.
“No,” Tim Lord said into his cell phone. It was simpler to use it than to figure out the intricacies of the phone service provided by the hotel. “I’m telling you, Andre, we’ve got enough footage of Jack that we can digitally superimpose shots over anything I don’t have. Except that there won’t be a need to, because I have everything we could possibly need.”
“Daddy,” said a small voice at the director’s side.
“Listen, Andre,” Tim said into the phone. “I’m telling you, I’ve got it. There’s just that one last shot, of the mine exploding. And once we get rid of these crazy tree-huggers, we can—”
“Daddy.” A dark-haired boy tugged on the tail of Tim’s coat. “Daddy, what’s wrong with Vicky?”
Tim brought the phone away from his face. “Vicky’s resting, Elijah,” he said.“Leave her alone. Go ask Nanny, if you want someone to read to you. Anyway, Andre—” He spoke into the phone again. “—I don’t anticipate going a day over schedule. Once we get the mine shot, we’re done. We can pack up and—”
“I don’t want Nanny to read to me,” Elijah cried, giving another tug to his father’s coat tails. “I want Vicky! I knocked and knocked on the door to her room, and she wouldn’t open it.”
“Hold on a minute, Andre,” Tim said. He lowered the cell phone, then stooped down to say to his son, “Elijah, listen. I told you before. Vicky isn’t feeling well. She’s in bed. She’s sick.”
“What’s she got?” Elijah wanted to know. “Flu?”
“Well, she doesn’t have anything,” Tim replied. “She’s just…she’s sad.”
“Why is she sad?”
“Because…” Tim sighed. Why him? Really. Why today? Tim put the phone back to his face and said, “Look, Andre. I’m going to have to call you back.” Then he made a face. “Look, I know the studio’s upset. Tell them they’ve got nothing to worry about, we’ve got everything we need. I gotta go.” He pushed a button, then muttered, “Can’t even wait until the body’s cold.” Then he looked down at his son.
“Look, Elijah,” he said, taking the boy by the shoulders and sinking onto one knee in the deep pile of the hotel suite’s white carpeting. “You remember Uncle Jack, don’t you?”
“I need a bigger gun?” Elijah recited.
“Right. Uncle I-need-a-bigger-gun. See, there was a helicopter crash, and people are worried Uncle Jack might have—well, that Jack might have died in it. And Vicky’s other friend, too. You remember Aunt Lou, right?”
“Sure,” Elijah said. “From Hindenburg. A triumph of the human spirit.”
“Right,” Tim said. “Aunt Lou is missing, too.”
Elijah blinked.
“Is that why Vicky won’t come out of her room?”
“Yes,” Tim said. “You see, Vicky was very fond of Uncle Jack and Aunt Lou. So she’s very worried and sad. And I need you to be a good boy and leave her alone for a while. And to tell the other kids, as well.”
Elijah blinked once more. “Okay,” he said.
His father’s cell started to chime again. Looking tired, Tim Lord lifted the phone to his ear. “Lord,” he said into it. Then, after listening a moment, he exploded, “No! Paul, you can’t let her. No statements. We are issuing no statements at this time. I mean, my God, the blizzard hasn’t even let up yet. Tell Melanie she is not to issue any comments, and no press conferences until morning, when we have more news….”
Elijah drifted away from his father, back to the glass-topped dining room table, where his crayons and paper lay. Climbing into one of the high, silk-covered chairs, he took a clean sheet of paper, then carefully selected his crayons. Red for Aunt Lou’s hair. Brown for her eyes. Black for Uncle Jack’s hair…but there was some gray in there, as well, so Elijah carefully dotted it. Then he found some blue for Uncle Jack’s eyes.
Satisfied with his creation, Elijah slipped from the chair and, carrying the drawing, padded across the hotel suite floor in his bare feet, while outside, snow came down in a steady white curtain, and in the center of the room, his father barked into his phone.
“No!” Tim Lord yelled. “No, Paul. All we need is an ‘In Memory of,’ right before the credits. Like they did for Vic Morrow in Twilight—well, why not? I think it would be tasteful. Why wouldn’t it be tasteful?”
Elijah made his way to the door of the room his stepmother shared with his father. He reach up and tried the knob. Still locked. This, however, did not bother him. He leaned down and shoved his drawing beneath the door.
“There you go, Vicky,” he called through the crack. “Now Uncle Jack and Aunt Lou can be with you always.”
Then, satisfied at a job well done, Elijah went to join his brothers and sisters in the next room, where they were watching a Disney video and spraying one another with bottles of hotel shampoo.
Hinky.
That’s what Sheriff Walt O’Malley felt about the crash scene. He had been at the site of a lot of aircraft accidents—mostly smaller, private planes, as they didn’t get a lot of commercial jets this far north. But he had never seen anything as hinky as this one.
He couldn’t say what it was, exactly, about this wreck that set his internal alarm bells ringing. It lay in a twisted heap, it was true, in the snow. It wasn’t smoking anymore. Last night’s blizzard had handily put out the fire that had charred and blackened the metal frame, disintegrating anything that wasn’t made of steel.
Maybe that was part of what made him so suspicious. Because aside from the fire damage, the 44 wasn’t that badly beat up.
Oh, the thing would never fly again, that was for sure. But it had landed in more or less one piece. Sure, the nose was flattened. He didn’t doubt that the pilot had been injured in the crash.
But the passengers? There was no reason that Walt could see that they shouldn’t have survived the crash.
So where the hell were they?
They’d found the remains of only one person. Charred beyond recognition, it would take the ME back in Anchorage to determine if the corpse had been male or female. On the whole, however, Walt suspected it was the pilot. The plaid jacket the fellow had been wearing was flame retardant, the same jacket worn by bush pilots throughout the region. Walt couldn’t see a big star like Jack Townsend wearing a jacket like that. Townsend probably wore that what’s-it-called, that stuff Walt’s oldest daughter, Tina, was always going on about. Prada. Yeah. That’s what movie stars wore.
Funny thing about the pilot, though. Sam Kowalski, the charter company had said his name was. Old Sam’s body hadn’t been found in the pilot’s seat, where it ought to have been if he’d died in the crash. No, Kowalski had been in the rear seat.
Now, what would the pilot of the damned chopper be doing in the backseat?
“Walt.”
Lippincott came over, looking red-faced. But then, Lippincott always looked red-faced. It was his first winter in the arctic, and he hadn’t figured out yet that it was all right—manly, even—to use moisturizer. Hell, Walt had a complete collection of tiny bottles in his bathroom back home. The girls had had a blast at the mall, collecting samples for their dad, to see which brand he liked best. Mostly he preferred Oil of Olay. It didn’t clog the pores, was what Lynn used to say.
Lippincott could have used some Olay. Or maybe some of that Burt’s Bees stuff the girls put on their feet. The guy’s face was a mess of cracked and peeling windburn.
“Something hinky, here, Chief,” Lippincott said.
“I was just thinking the same thing myself,” Walt said, slowly. It was past dawn, but the only way anyone could have told was by the faint lightening of the darkness in the eastern half of the sky. The snow had finally stopped, the storm having passed. It had dropped a good twelve inches in about a sixteen-hour period. Not a bad storm at all, by Alaskan measures. But still not one Walt would have liked to weather out in the open, the way it appeared two of the chopper crash victims had.
“Only one body,” Lippincott said. “No sign of the other two. You think they would have wandered off? You know, ’cause they were dazed from the accident, or whatever?”
“Not both of ’em,” Walt said. He squinted up at the thickly clouded sky. “More likely, when the snow got bad, they decided to look for shelter.”
Lippincott’s gaze swept the snow-covered mountainside. “Geez,” he breathed. “You mean they’re out there somewhere? Wouldn’t they—I mean, wouldn’t they have frozen to death?”
“Probably so,” Walt said thoughtfully.
Lippincott looked at the charred ruins of the chopper. “You’d think they’d have stayed close by,” he said. “I mean, the chopper had to have been giving off plenty of heat. If they’d stuck by it, we’d’ve found ’em, soon enough. Why didn’t they stick by it?”
“That,” Walt said, his gaze scanning the snow-covered treetops around the crash site,“is what I’d like to know.”
12
Lou opened one eye and immediately closed it again, having felt a stabbing pain through her head that indicated more sleep was necessary.
Except that she couldn’t sleep any more. She couldn’t sleep any more because something was wrong. Just what that something was, she couldn’t exactly put her finger on—not without opening an eye again, and that she was reluctant to do, given the pain that had shot through her the first time.
Still. Something wasn’t right. Something was, in fact, very, very wrong. She did not think, for some reason, that she was back in her own bed in her Sherman Oaks bungalow. For one thing, her room back home was painted in soothing blues and creams. She had seen neither of those colors when she’d cracked her eye open. Instead, she’d had a disconcerting glimpse of wood paneling. Wood paneling! Where was she, anyway? Her parents’ basement?
And another thing. She was fairly certain she was not alone. And there’d been no one but her in her bedroom back in Sherman Oaks since Barry had moved out.
So whose arm was under her head?
Oh, yes. There was definitely an arm beneath her head.
Which didn’t make the least bit of sense, because Lou was not a promiscuous person. Since Barry had moved out, her Saturday nights had been spent working, or maybe dinner and a movie with Vicky, when she could get away from her stepchildren. Lou had never in her life had a one-night stand, or even allowed herself to be picked up in a bar. She was, simply, not that type of girl. For her, it was love or nothing.
So what was she doing in bed with a man who was definitely not Barry? Because Barry had never been a spooner. He had, in fact, always been vaguely annoyed when Lou strayed the slightest bit over to “his” side of the bed…except during sex, of course.
And then she realized that there wasn’t just an ar
m beneath her head. There was an arm draped across her, as well. Not just across her, either. No, this arm was curled around her, like she was some kind of security blanket. Except that the hand at the end of the arm around her was cupped over one of her breasts. Oh, no, there was no mistaking it. Those fingers were splayed right across there, holding on as if for dear life.
And then memory came flooding back, and Lou realized where she was, what she was doing there, and who that hand belonged to.
She sat up with a scream.
Jack, who’d been curled against her on the narrow army cot, sat up, too, and looked around, wild-eyed.
“What?” he demanded gruffly. “What is it?”
Lou leaped from the cot, dragging the blankets with her, keeping them clutched to her chest.
“You!” she cried, pointing at him with one trembling finger while holding the blankets with the other hand. “I can’t believe you!”
Still not fully awake, Jack ran a hand through his thick dark hair. “What’d I do?” he wanted to know. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Yes, you did,” Lou said, her cheeks beginning to flame. “You…you…”
But even as she was struggling to find the right words, she realized that, beneath the blankets, she was still fully clothed. Not a stitch out of place, in fact. Even her boots.
So she quickly shifted gears, and said, with much less rancor, but still some indignation, “You got me drunk!”
Jack regarded her groggily. But unfortunately not groggily enough. He was awake enough to observe, with undisguised amusement, “Hey. You’re blushing.”
“I am not,” Lou said, grandly, though she knew the heat with which her cheeks were burning belied her. “I’m just…it’s warm in here.”
“It is not,” Jack said. “It’s like ten degrees in here. You’re blushing.”
Lou threw down the blankets and began to zip up her coat. Her hair fell over her face, mercifully covering her flaming cheeks. “I am not,” she said, as she struggled with her zipper.
“Oh, yeah, you are,” Jack said from the cot, where he lay, grinning maliciously. “You know, I think you must be the last woman in Hollywood who still blushes when she’s embarrassed. And who can’t handle hard liquor.”