Phoenix Rising

by Nance, John J. ;

  The real Creighton MacRae was a mystery she couldn’t ignore. He could help save Pan Am, and that was all she really needed to know, yet there was an internal curiosity about him stirring around inside her like a persistent craving she had to satisfy.

  Yet at dinner he had avoided talking about his early years, deflecting her gentle questioning until she’d given up the effort.

  “There’s a bit of the Heathcliff in you, Creighton MacRae,” she said at last, staring westward toward the freighters riding at anchor in English Bay. “Though I hope that doesn’t insult you as a Scot.”

  He glanced at her, surprised, and smiled. “Not at all. I’m very familiar with Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, though I’m neither a gypsy nor a foundling like Heathcliff.”

  “But you do plead guilty, I take it, to a brooding nature?”

  She expected a defensive response, and regretted asking the question, but instead he turned to her, this time with a puzzled expression.

  “I was raised to be a vicar,” he said, “and vicars are by nature brooding. At least my father was.”

  “What happened?”

  His gaze returned to the bay. “Rebellious sons determined to embrace the world, and all the ladies within it, are hardly suited to a life of stern, unyielding drabness—or to the role of spiritual Gestapo. I was, you see, as much a disappointment to my father as he was to me.”

  “You were a rebel?”

  “Indeed. A well and truly defined hell-raiser. The more my father beat me toward conformity—and beat me he did—the more I was determined to break loose and scandalize the countryside. There’s an American phrase—‘so many girls, so little time.’” He glanced at her as if slightly embarrassed at the reference, then looked away. “I decided I couldn’t escape my father unless I escaped Scotland, too. Going to college in America seemed the perfect answer. Of course, in one respect I had little choice if I wanted a degree. Neither Oxford nor Cambridge was particularly interested in a poor-as-a-churchmouse Scot with spotty school marks. If you want respect in the U.K., you must arrange to be born properly, and I had already failed that test.”

  “Which university over here?”

  He snorted softly and smiled, still looking seaward as she studied his face from the side. “The University of Texas, on a scholarship. An American tourist left an alumni letter from UT in our church pew one Sunday, and I was fascinated. Texas became a metaphor for freedom. Cowboys, wide open spaces, limitless opportunities. I wrote for information on scholarships, and began a letter campaign they couldn’t ignore.” Creighton shifted his position slightly and looked at her. “It was a wonderful school, and I shot through a bachelor’s and MBA program in five years, shed most of my accent, and headed back for London to enter the airline business as an executive—only to find that my American business degree impressed no one.”

  One of the freighters had suddenly turned on all its deck lights, and the throbbing sound of a massive engine rumbled across the water.

  Elizabeth looked over at him again. “Your MBA didn’t open doors?”

  Creighton shook his head. “Without the appropriate background and family, British Airways wasn’t interested, nor was British European, and at the time they were the only games in town. Three years later a gentleman named Freddy Laker took me in and taught me the practical side of business in Britain. Mind you, this was before Mrs. Thatcher democratized the process somewhat, and yet I’ve never really been accepted in that club.”

  “Would it surprise you if I said I understood?”

  He looked at her a long time before answering. “Indeed it would. You’ve never lived in Britain.”

  She shook her head in the negative. “No, I haven’t, but on the subject of not being accepted in the good old boys’ club of American business, a female with an MBA understands that problem all too well.”

  Their eyes met again, and she sensed momentary confusion as he followed her logic to the inevitable conclusion.

  “We do have something profoundly in common, it seems,” he said softly. “I’d never thought of that.”

  Nor understood it, she thought, remembering his arrogant responses to her first calls.

  There was an electricity in his gaze, and she felt herself responding with an insatiable desire to touch him, as if he needed comforting.

  This is silly! she told herself. He’s the same chauvinist he was last week, and I hardly know this man.

  She looked away, unable to ignore the resonant response she was feeling, and the warmth rising within her. It made no sense. He was a pleasant enough fellow, but she wasn’t attracted to him … was she? No! She refused to be!

  Her feelings, however, weren’t cooperating with that judgment.

  There was only one way to regain logical control of the situation, and that was to end it.

  “I’m getting cold out here,” she lied.

  “Permit me to remedy that, Elizabeth.”

  His arm moved expertly behind her, his right hand gently gathering her in toward him as he looked out to the bay again with chaste disinterest.

  A thunderstorm of conflicting emotions erupted in her head as she fought the desire to snuggle against him and respond, lightning flashes of desire crackling around the core of her resistance like Saint Elmo’s fire.

  She jumped to her feet suddenly, leaving him awkwardly fighting for balance on the bench as she turned to face him.

  “I’m … sorry, Creighton. I … it’s getting late, and if I’m going to get an early start back to Seattle in the morning, I’d better …”

  Dammit! I sound like a confused school girl, she chided herself.

  He stood slowly, smiling, as if to say he understood.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  She laughed, but it came out a nervous giggle. “You didn’t. I’m … not sure what I was thinking.”

  With him standing before her, Elizabeth reached down and took his right hand, wrapping it around her waist as she moved in to his side and inclined her head toward the car, feeling back in control and embarrassed.

  “There. It wasn’t you! But we should go.”

  It would be better, he pointed out, if she left on a Canadian airline for Hong Kong from Vancouver. She could be tracked in Seattle, and if she’d been successful in coming north without detection, the dirty-tricks group—as they’d begun referring to Pan Am’s enemies—were probably frantic trying to locate her. They would have the airport staked out, as well as her condo.

  “You said from Houston I was being tracked. How do you know?”

  Creighton nodded his head and watched the street as she drove them back toward the hotel. “Let’s just say Jack has some friends in low places, too. One of them reported back this morning that a West Coast security firm has been making a lot of money in the past few weeks, following a particular airline executive all over the map. The executive is female and lives in Seattle. That’s all they could say, but it was enough.”

  The same chill she had felt before worked its way up her back. She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had been in Eric’s New York apartment with her, watching her, close enough to attack her.

  “Okay, Vancouver it is.”

  He smiled. “I took the liberty of arranging the ticket. Can you leave with Jason tomorrow at ten A.M.?”

  “I really didn’t bring enough clothes, and I lost my other bags in that explosion Friday, but I can make do. Ten is okay. Are you coming too?” She asked the question in matter of fact terms, but she found herself hoping the answer was yes.

  “No. I’m going to fly back to the East Coast with Jack and his crew. We’ve got a mountain of wire-transfer records to probe. I’ll track you through Jason, however. You’ll need to conclude an agreement by Wednesday, but don’t tell your office where you’re calling from before then.”

  “Will we meet later in the week, then?”

  There was a long pause before he replied. “I don’t know where this will take us. It’s all very unexpect
ed.”

  She felt herself blush. It certainly was.

  Creighton secured the entry cards to their two rooms from the front desk while she parked the car. They met at the elevator. He punched the button for the top floor as he handed her the electronic card key.

  “Our rooms are next to each other,” he said with a casual air.

  Elizabeth felt her heart jump with a rush of adrenaline. Since leaving the park she had been concentrating on business, determined to shut out the confusing thoughts that had been battering down the door of her resistance—and she had almost succeeded.

  But now the barbarian named desire was at the gate again, and making progress.

  She thanked him with a chaste and proper handshake for the dinner, and he responded appropriately, carefully masking the disappointment she knew was there. Almost in unison they approached their respective doors. She heard his latch click open, but she found herself fumbling with the key card, and without warning he had come to her aid, moving behind her, his right hand moving over hers as he tried to help her move the card in the slot correctly. The electricity of his touch made her knees feel wobbly. She could feel his warm breath on the back of her neck, and his hard, conditioned body gently brushing her back.

  “These bloody things can be a bit tricky,” he said, his voice resonating through her with sensual results.

  The latch clicked and the door swung open, but she turned to him instead, wondering why it felt so good to get lost in his eyes, startled at how close his face was to hers. She started to speak, but there was nothing to say, and he came to her with great gentleness, his right hand caressing her face like a feather as his lips brushed hers, then engulfed her as his arms pulled her to him. She rose on the balls of her feet to meet him, and the kiss intensified, warm and deep and long. His body felt incredibly good against hers, but there was a voice screaming at her in the back of her mind to back off. There were no reasons given, just the urgency that she was approaching a threshold—a point of no return.

  She felt herself pull back ever so slightly and their lips disengaged. She could feel his heart beating at a furious rate, or was that only hers? They stood, startled, looking at each other.

  “Elizabeth … I …”

  She came to him again, eyes closed, letting herself be pulled even closer to the fire, like a sleeper returning to the warm pleasure of her bed despite the time, wanting just a little bit more.

  She felt herself slipping toward complete surrender, and the realization caused her to pull back suddenly.

  He instantly relaxed his grip, as she put her hands on his chest, her eyes fearing to meet his.

  “We … better get some sleep.”

  She felt him swallow hard and nod.

  “Why don’t I want to let you go?” he said quietly, his voice a warm train of vibrations that coursed through her, challenging her shaky resolve.

  “I don’t … don’t know … but we must,” she said.

  He let her pull back, his hands gently holding only her shoulders as he lowered his head and forced her to meet his eyes—which were pulsing with desire.

  “We share a common door, Elizabeth. If you want anything, just tap on it.”

  She nodded and mouthed an “Okay,” picked up her bag, and moved into the room, gently shutting the door without looking back.

  Elizabeth tried to ignore the sound of him moving around next door—sounds that came from the other side of the connecting doorway. She thought of Brian. She thought of Ron Lamb. She thought of anything she could to get her mind off the fact that she was aching to rip that door off the hinges and engulf him.

  Logic had won over emotion, and emotion was not happy.

  She undressed then, and looked at her naked body in the mirror, patting her flat stomach with some pride before turning out the lights and moving resolutely toward the bed.

  She was anything but sleepy, however.

  She turned her head on the pillow and looked at the lights of Vancouver through the sliding glass door. Finally, giving up thoughts of sleeping right away, she got up and wandered toward the lights of nighttime Vancouver twinkling through the sliding door, and parted the sheer curtains with one finger, startled to see Creighton standing in a white bathrobe on his lanai, his hands gripping the railing, his head turned toward the harbor, the wind ruffling his hair.

  She stayed in the shadows, watching, as he turned away and walked back inside.

  She turned as well then, slipping between the sheets of the king-sized bed and forcing her eyes closed.

  But sleep wouldn’t come.

  For more than an hour she tossed and turned, getting to her feet at last to peek out once again at the harbor lights, half expecting to see Creighton in the same place.

  The lanai next to hers was empty, but the connecting door was pulling at her like a magnet.

  She left the window as if in a dream state, and moved to the door without a sound, her mind in turmoil.

  What am I doing? The question was clear, but logic had lost control.

  She stood before it then, and gently—slowly—she pressed the palm of her left hand against its surface.

  There were no sounds, no vibrations beyond, yet it felt alive. She was tingling with anticipation, and lurched slightly as she brushed the door with her left cheek, putting her ear on it, pulsing a tiny noise into the wooden surface as she stood there.

  So close! It would be so easy to just …

  She looked at the doorknob, wondering if his side was really open. If so, only the doorknob stood between them now.

  Her right hand moved toward it, hesitating, as if she were teasing herself. Then suddenly, she gripped it, causing a tiny metallic noise as the mechanism adjusted to her touch.

  The feel of it, and the knowledge of what lay beyond, aroused her even more, and she felt an urgent aching in her breasts as she imagined what his body was like.

  If she did decide to turn it, should she put on a robe, or perhaps a blouse? Or should she just walk through in naked surrender?

  All it would take is a tiny flick of the wrist! she told herself. He would be startled, but pleased. He would rise from his bed and come to her in an instant, his gentle hands running like coarse velvet over every inch of her skin as his mouth sought hers, and they began the sensual pleasure of merging in every other way.

  And just for tonight, what would it matter? They were consenting adults.

  Her breathing had become rapid and shallow, her eyes fixated on the doorknob, but Brian’s image reimposed itself, propelled by conscience and memory and loyalty into confusion that paralyzed her hand.

  Quietly, sadly, she released the doorknob and stood there for the longest time before returning to bed—alone and confused.

  27

  Wednesday, March 22, 2:05 A.M.

  Bellevue, Washington

  Brian Murphy sat at the kitchen table of his new house and poured the last of the orange juice as he stared at a blank steno pad. Three hours of sleepless tossing and turning was enough. Something about the riddle of Marvin Grade’s death was just out of reach and tying his mind in knots.

  He picked up a pen and drew the pad closer, writing the names of those Pan Am employees who had seen an intruder they couldn’t identify as Marvin Grade.

  The list was short, but important.

  Dale Silverman, Jake Wallace, and a Seatac mechanic whose name he couldn’t recall.

  He drummed a brief percussion solo on the top of the polished glass table before adding the word “definite” to Captain Silverman’s name, and “unsure” to Wallace’s.

  Whoever it was that Captain Dale Silverman found in the cockpit of his 767 in Denver on March 10, Silverman was certain it hadn’t been the late Marvin Grade.

  But the mechanic who had seen an intruder in the Moses Lake hangar was not certain—nor was the Seatac mechanic who had encountered a bogus fuel man on the Seattle ramp. It could have been Grade in both cases, they said, but it could also have been someone else with a must
ache and a similar build. Maintenance chief Bill Conrad had been equally worried as he helped Brian locate his men and question them. Conrad was the only other Pan Am manager who seemed to think that the danger to Pan Am’s fleet hadn’t necessarily died with Marvin Grade.

  Brian had called a worried meeting Monday afternoon with the FBI’s Loren Miller. Miller had listened carefully before opening a folder and tapping a five-page investigative report.

  “Fingerprints don’t lie, Brian. Our Mr. Grade physically touched your file folder, touched the bogus electronics in your 767, and had explosives in his house of the exact type used to blow the engine off your 747.”

  But the feeling that Grade wasn’t the man—or at least wasn’t working alone—haunted Brian all Monday. Now the idea was robbing him of sleep for a second night.

  He picked up the pen again and wrote, “No computer equipment in house.”

  Brian had gone to Grade’s house himself Monday evening with a flashlight and a screwdriver, half expecting to be arrested for breaking and entering as he forced his way in the back door. Miller had let him examine in detail the seizure list of incriminating items removed from the home, but the urge to see the house itself was irresistible.

  Grade had supposedly rewired a sophisticated computer board from a stolen 767 black box. Yet Brian saw no home computers, no books on computer technology, and no collection of wires and switches of the kind amateur electronic buffs always have near their workbench as mute relics from a thousand little jobs. Nor had there been any listing of such items on the FBI seizure report.

  Little incongruities were everywhere. The house was neat and clean, though threadbare. Newly paid bills lay on the corner of his desk, along with pay stubs from his job as a light aircraft mechanic at a local airport. There were no lunatic-fringe magazines, no defaced posters of Pan Am, and no copies of angry letters or threats. Brian could find nothing that would indicate that anyone but a quiet divorced man with a low-level job, a run of bad luck, and a distant family had lived there.