The Stranger

by Anna del Mar

  “I can guarantee that this is not about me,” I said. “For sure. You’ve got to believe me.”

  “Maybe it was a crime of opportunity,” Jeremy said.

  “Stealing a purse in the street is a crime of opportunity,” Seth said. “Puncturing someone’s brake lines? That’s premeditated murder.” He considered me closely. “It took you what? Three hours to drive up here from Anchorage? So, the lines were cut after you left the rental lot. Otherwise, you would’ve lost your brakes sooner. When was the last time you stopped and lost sight of the car?”

  I had to think about that. “I used the restroom at a rest stop before I turned off the interstate.”

  “Then that’s where it happened,” Seth said. “That’s where the investigation begins.”

  “Wait,” I said. “What investigation?”

  “The police are investigating,” Seth said, “and I’ve asked our security people to take a look as well.”

  “You have security people?” God almighty. “Of course you would. No, hey, no.” I lifted a hand in the air. “Don’t even try to explain. Your family’s mega business, right? Never mind. This is all ridiculous. Sorry, guys, but this has to be some sort of a mix-up. Maybe someone confused my car for someone else’s?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Jeremy said. “Gangs? Mistaken identity? Drug trafficker spat?”

  “Like it or not, the police want to talk to you,” Seth said.

  “Fine, I’ll talk to the police,” I said. “But I’m telling you right now that this is much to-do about nothing. Right now, I’m going to go find my sister, before my stepmother goes nuclear. I have twenty-nine missed calls and seventy-two texts from her just in the last hour.”

  “Jesus,” Jeremy said. “Seth did say your family was a little off.”

  I shot Seth a cutting glance. “Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black.”

  Jeremy laughed. “Feisty.”

  Seth rolled his eyes. “No kidding.”

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m sitting right here.”

  “You call it like you see it, every time,” Seth said. “Annoying, maybe, but nothing too terribly wrong with that. Don’t look at me like that. I just gave you a compliment.”

  “Has anyone told you that you suck at giving compliments?”

  Jeremy grinned. “That’s so true.”

  “Who the hell made you judge and executioner?” Seth took a deep breath and aimed his yellow glower in my direction. “Where’s this sister of yours, anyway?”

  I flipped my hair and stuck out my chin. “What is it to you?”

  His ears flushed so red I feared the top of his head might blow up. “Just tell me, please?”

  “Maybe we can help,” Jeremy suggested.

  Well, I supposed that at this stage in the game, a little help couldn’t hurt.

  “Let’s see.” I scrolled through my messages and found the information I’d copied from Tammy’s computer. “I went to the police first, but they said that Tammy didn’t meet their criteria as a missing person. So, I went to this guy’s address in Anchorage next, but the neighbors told me he was at his family’s cabin somewhere up here. His name is...Nikolai Golov.”

  “Golov?” Seth’s eyebrows knotted over his nose. “We know the Golovs quite well.”

  “Really?” Awesome news.

  “I went to school with Nikolai,” Jeremy said. “He’s worked for us out on the Dalton. He’s a jack-of-all-trades, decent sort of fellow. Didn’t make him for an internet stalker.”

  “Do you know where his family lives?”

  “The roads are a mess,” Jeremy said, “but I’ll be happy to drive you out there.”

  “No need,” Seth cut in. “I’ll take her.”

  Jeremy’s eyes widened in surprise. “Are you sure?”

  “Sure as shit,” Seth said. “Don’t you have some construction projects to manage or something?”

  “Don’t you have to negotiate a contract with the governor and a board meeting coming up?” Jeremy countered. “I thought you couldn’t afford to waste your time babysitting.”

  I glared from one man to the other. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “I said I’d drive her and I will.” Seth’s tone forbade further discussion.

  “Okay, bro,” Jeremy said, “but don’t underestimate Alex.”

  “I won’t.” Seth snatched his keys from the counter. “Want to help me load the truck?”

  “Sure.” Jeremy got up.

  “Can I help?” I said.

  “You’d be no help at all, so stand down,” Seth said. “Eat something. There’s food in the pantry. Come down in twenty.”

  I thanked Jeremy for his help and watched the brothers go. Talk about contrasting personalities, Mr. Charm and Mr. Grouch. My stomach grumbled, so I checked out the refrigerator. Other than a jug of milk and a carton of orange juice, it was empty. A quick look at the freezer revealed more desolation. I closed the freezer door and opted for the box of high-protein cereal I found in the bleak pantry. It tasted like dirt, but it was food.

  I tackled my messages on the cell. My boss, Hector Carrera, answered as soon as I replied to his frantic texts.

  Where are you?

  @AK, I wrote back. Searching.

  Tammy?

  Nothing yet.

  Need you back ASAP, he texted. Need third floor redesign for Darius.

  Email new specs, I wrote. Will email redesign by tonight. You won’t even know I’m gone. GTG.

  I ended the text exchange before we got testy with each other. Hector had given me such a hard time about leaving for Alaska. I couldn’t understand why he was so upset about me taking a few days off. First off, he knew I was a hard worker. The project was going to get done and on time. My work record spoke for itself. Nobody worked as hard as I did. Nobody.

  Second, I had the time off on the books. I should be able to take it if I needed to. I’d kind of told him that. He hadn’t liked it at all. Third, Hector had been my dad’s business partner. He knew Tammy and Louise really well. He knew all about our family and that I took care of them.

  On the other hand, I couldn’t take my job for granted. I needed it to make ends meet and help Louise and Tammy with their bills. Plus, deep down, I hated to disappoint Hector. He’d always been there for my dad and, after his death, he’d been there for my family as well. He’d given me a job when I graduated in the middle of a recession and no one was hiring. I owed him my hard work and tons of gratitude. I decided on the spot to work late tonight and blow his mind with a kickass redesign. Meanwhile, I had to find Tammy and get the hell out of Alaska.

  My mind drifted back to Seth Erickson. Yes, I was leaving, but still, I was really curious about him. Don’t do it, Silva. Don’t bother. I considered the cell in my hand. Oh, what the hell. I googled him. Everybody did it these days. Right?

  His business bio came up. CEO of Erickson & Erickson Enterprises, the largest family conglomerate in Alaska. The company was valued in...the billions? I had to close my mouth. Lots of pictures of him with presidents, governors, senators, rig workers, construction workers. Impressive.

  I did a little bit more internet sleuthing. Not an iota of personal information, no social media presence, nothing. Either he had no personal life, a possibility considering his sustained level of irritability, or he’d devoted some serious resources to protecting his privacy. A cleanup job, maybe?

  Oh, well. What did I care anyway? I was out of his life today. I drank the milk out of the cereal bowl, tucked the dish and spoon in the dishwasher, grabbed my purse, bag, and laptop, and made my way down the stairs. Good-bye high-tech cabin. Farewell amazing views. Sayonara hunky stranger and associated, assorted complications. First order of business: find Tammy. Get her to Anchorage. Go back home. Second order of business: keep
my job. Finish the Darius project. Forget that Alaska had ever happened to me.

  That was the plan and I intended to stick to it because Seth was way out of bounds and I was not on the market. Besides, I couldn’t bear the thought of spending one more second than was absolutely necessary exposed to his radioactive glare.

  Chapter Five

  By the time I heard the door open upstairs, Jer had left, the snow machine was loaded on the truck, and I’d talked to my assistant and rescheduled all of my videoconferences for later in the day. I was stuck in a piss-poor mood. In the last forty-eight hours, I’d gone from the low of Danny’s death, to the highpoint of my extraordinary night with Summer, to the pits of the worst morning-after that two people could have.

  It served me right for giving in to an impulse, for detouring from logic and reality. Wishful thinking was for idiots. Who the hell would want to be with me anyways? It wasn’t only the scars. It was the shit going on in my head. Last night I had stepped into an alternative reality. Now I was back and ready to deploy my brain instead of my dick.

  I cinched the truck bed’s straps and took a deep breath, trying to calm the acid roiling in my stomach. I thought about the security camera footage I’d reviewed this morning. It showed a grainy, black-and-white rendition of the stunning woman lying on my dining table and the balance of our encounter. I looked for clues, but other than that ethereal, translucent look in her eyes, I couldn’t find anything that should have suggested to me that she’d been sleepwalking.

  The footage was proof of consent, but it also showed that I wasn’t completely clueless. Summer had wanted me as much as I had wanted her. My imagination hadn’t manufactured last night and, whether she remembered it or not, something had happened between us. Something in addition to the sex.

  She wasn’t part of Alex’s plan. She couldn’t be. Her attitude wasn’t consistent with deception. The additional call I’d placed this morning backed up my gut feeling with facts. I hadn’t met too many women in my life who’d pass up the opportunity to exploit a situation like this one. Not Summer. So far, she didn’t seem to be about the money, or about power or control.

  Then there was the murder attempt. In my fucking backyard, no less. The state troopers and Spider were on the trail, but there was nothing in her background that suggested this kind of trouble. Maybe she was right and it was a mistake or a random act of violence. Who the hell would want to kill Summer?

  Well, it wasn’t going to happen, not while I was around. As to the rest, my mind was a one-way street. Summer might not remember what happened last night, but I did. How a single night with a stranger had turned me into the horniest son of a bitch in Alaska, I couldn’t begin to explain. But I had to face the music. My body buzzed when she was near. Hell, I was getting hard just thinking about her.

  I cranked up the winch one last time, visualizing a plunge in a glacial lake, willing my blood to flow elsewhere. I wondered if this is how moose bulls felt during the rut. I wanted more of what I’d had last night, more of her. If she remembered, she’d want more too. I made up my mind. If I had to go to extremes to flush out the truth—and jostle her memories—then I would.

  “Helloooo?” Summer’s voice came from the top of the stairs.

  Showtime.

  “Ahoy, down there.” She inched down the steps. “Please don’t shoot. I come in peace. If I had a white flag I’d wave it, but I didn’t pack one and I bet hell would have to freeze over before you ever owned one of those. Permission to come below?”

  My lips twitched. I waved her down. “Permission granted.”

  She stepped down the last of the stairs, taking in my garage as if she’d never seen one like it, which was probably true, considering that I’d designed the house around the garage and I was damn proud of it. She checked out the bikes, ATVs and motorcycles parked on the heated concrete floors.

  “Do you play every sport known to man?” She studied the gear organized on the shelves, equipment for kayaking, fishing, hiking, ice climbing, skiing, you name it—it was there. “Are there any toys missing from your collection?”

  “Since you asked,” I said, “the planes and the helicopters, we keep at the hangars.”

  “The hangars, eh?” She giggled under her breath—do-re-mi-fa—a delicate, distinctive singsong laugh that ended on a suspended note, the kind of sound a guy could get used to having around. “You talk as if everyone owns hangars in Alaska.”

  “Many do. Alaska is a big state and we don’t have that many roads.” I took the bags from her hand. “Why are you bringing these?”

  “I’m hoping to go home today.”

  Not if I had anything to do with it.

  “You’re in a big rush,” I said, stowing her bags in the backseat. “Do you hate Alaska that much?”

  “It’s not my natural habitat, that’s for sure.” She rubbed the back of her thigh, where I had intimate knowledge of the bruise that marred her superbly constructed body. “Ice and gravity make for a brutal combination. But truth be known, I don’t want to get fired. Some of us have to work for our tiny, puny, human garages.”

  I found myself laughing, something I didn’t do very often these days. Her mouth turned up in a crooked smile. Considering her earlier tears, the smile felt like a huge accomplishment.

  “Wow.” She studied the garage, taking in the ceiling beams, the massive hydraulic columns, and the springs-with-dampers base isolators. “This is a seismic support system on steroids. Who designed this incredible house?”

  My chest may have puffed a little. “I did.”

  “I thought you were some sort of a businessperson.”

  “Me? No,” I said. “I spend a lot more time with financial reports these days, but I’m an engineer by training and I like to tinker. This is my version of an experiment.”

  Her eyes followed the beams. “Clever, innovative, and probably very pricey.” Her hands caressed the pylons with an appreciation that made me jealous. “Do you think it’ll work?”

  “We’ll see when the big one hits.”

  She flashed me another smile and, judging by the way my dick yanked on my groin, I had to wonder if the big one hadn’t already hit.

  I opened the door of the truck for her. “Let’s get going.”

  She stopped before she climbed on the cab and met my eyes. “Why are you doing this?”

  “What?”

  “Driving me out there,” she said. “Helping me find my sister.”

  I had a long list of reasons and the need to anticipate Alex was still at the top. Other reasons were plain and selfish. But sex wasn’t the only answer and some of my other reasons were not easy to explain. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I understood them exactly. Maybe I wanted to make it up to her, just in case she wasn’t a plant, for being clueless, for being a jerk. Perhaps, I wanted to show her Alaska, to share with her the beauty of the wild land where I made my home. For sure, I needed her trust to achieve my objectives. But maybe, just maybe, I wanted to help her because I liked what I’d seen from Summer Silva so far and I wanted to know more about her.

  “I don’t mind helping out every once in a while,” I said instead. “Now get in. There’s weather coming in later today, and I’ve got to get back to work as soon as possible.”

  I’d already installed the front snowplow on the truck so, as I drove out of the garage, I scraped the way along the driveway, through the automated gates and across the bridge.

  Summer craned her neck and looked back. “Do you live on an island?”

  “The property is surrounded by the sound and the river, that’s true.”

  “Looks like a pretty big island.” She glanced at me. “You live alone there?”

  “I like my privacy.”

  Those eyes. They were analyzing me, drawing conclusions about me, knocking at my door in a way that fired
my blood. I was usually the one doing the analyzing, but if I had to put up with her curiosity to satisfy mine, then I was game.

  The roads were a mess of mud, snow, and ice, but the F-450 plowed through the stuff like an elephant stomping on ants. Summer looked nervous riding next to me, fingers tight around the door handle, feet pressing on imaginary pedals. I had to suppress a smile. She was the original backseat driver.

  “Why did you become an engineer?” she asked as I drove.

  It was a pretty neutral question, one I could answer.

  “Engineering is the science of problem-solving,” I said. “My father wanted problem solvers, not spoiled brats. I went to MIT, Jer graduated from Caltech and Ally went to Stanford.”

  “Who’s Ally?”

  “Ally’s my little sister,” I said. “She just got married last year. She lives in Anchorage. You’re wearing her clothes.”

  “Oh.” She looked down on herself. “I’ll have to send her a thank you note or something. I’m lucky she’s got good taste. So your family owns a construction firm?”

  She was fishing for additional information. I wasn’t much of a talker, but I was a damn good fisherman. I knew to let the reel out before bringing in the catch.

  “My family owned a construction firm back in the seventies when my dad and his brother first founded the company,” I said. “Now we’re a highly diversified conglomerate: energy, fisheries, forestry, mining, infrastructure. But enough of the boring stuff. Let’s talk about you.”

  “What about me?”

  “Sleepwalking?”

  “Oh.” Her shoulders slumped. “Do we have to talk about that?”

  “I’d like to.”

  “Maybe we could pretend it didn’t happen at all?”

  “I don’t want to forget or pretend.”

  “Ooof.” She sounded like a deflating balloon. “Look, I take full responsibility. I don’t mean to make excuses for myself, but I didn’t choose the disorder. It chose me.”

  “I understand that somnambulism runs in families.” I ventured out into the open. “Something about genetic predisposition?”