“I don’t care what the hell you told him.”
“Sir? Please! You’ve launched a full-scale attack on my actions, along with some rather raw sexual innuendos, and I believe I should have the opportunity to defend myself.”
There was momentary silence on the other end and she could hear the receiver being shifted to his other ear.
“All right. Go ahead.”
“Thank you. The facts are, sir, that I had a call from Mr. Ashad on Tuesday wanting to set a time for a conference call between us on the lease for the commercial property in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I’ve been working on, and one of the times he suggested conflicted with the personal matter you referred to. I had requested and received approval from Dick Walsh to be gone that afternoon, and I requested we set the conference time two days hence. He said that was fine, remarked that I sounded worried, and asked why. We’ve met and had dinner as lawyer and client, and I believe he respects me. I told him in very brief detail about my best friend’s problem—her father’s problem in Alaska—and he kept pressing me for details. I provided those details. I volunteered one thing and one thing only in that call, and that was the fact that I was in need of finding a salvage firm that could raise a sunken aircraft. He said his equipment was too big and far away, but he knew just the man to call in Valdez, and I later acted on that recommendation.”
“Yeah, well, then you apparently asked him to go fish out some airplane for free.”
Gracie could feel her insides vibrating with tension and fear, but she fought hard to control her voice, barely succeeding.
He is not going to make me come apart!
“Mr. Janssen, that is entirely incorrect. I would never do such a thing, and I can’t believe Mr. Ashad would say I did.”
Janssen was silent, practicing his well-honed ability to draw out statements people didn’t want to make. April cautioned herself not to fall for it.
“What happened,” she continued, “is that Mr. Ashad called me on Wednesday and asked how things were going with the Alaska dilemma affecting the Rosens. I appreciated the call and I told him about it briefly, and I also discussed his business and the progress of the lease negotiations. When we finished with the subject of the lease, he asked me to call him if I needed any more help or advice for the Rosens. On Friday, having been given leave again by Dick Walsh to go file for a TRO against the government for Captain Rosen, I took Mr. Ashad up on the offer, and called and asked him if the Rosens could hire his people for a salvage operation. That’s ‘hire,’ Mr. Janssen, not ‘donate.’ He wouldn’t hear of it. He said he’d been surprised to find one of his ships was sailing through the area, and if I’d give him the coordinates of the wreckage, they’d see what could be done. I again promised normal compensation by the Rosens and he told me their money was, as he put it, ‘no good,’ and that all he expected was my letting him take me to dinner the next time he’s in Seattle. When I had dinner with him before, he was a perfect gentleman and there was no hint of sexual interest or intent, nor is there now, so I agreed.”
“Are you through?” he asked in a sarcastic tone.
“I’m … finished relating to you precisely what happened, sir. And may I ask you a question?”
“Go ahead.”
“Does any of what I just told you vary in any particular from what Mr. Ashad has told you?”
Another long pause hung on the line between them as Gracie listened to her heart pound in her ears. She’d fought so hard for the position at Janssen and Pruzan, the last thing she wanted was to lose it, especially with the onus of being indirectly called a tail-wagging slut.
There was a long sigh on the other end. “No. He didn’t say anything different. He just didn’t tell me enough, as usual.”
“Sir, I’m extremely sorry if I did cross a line. You’ve given us excellent advice on how to nurture and develop a working relationship with our clients, and I was only trying to follow that advice.”
“Look, you’re young and somewhat naive, Gracie. Bernie is a … a … for want of a better phrase, a serial cad, okay? That’s an old term meaning a guy who uses women sexually and shamelessly. Anything female and attractive and he turns on the charm and starts the chase. To him a female attorney is simply a sexual challenge, not his counselor.”
“Why was I assigned to him, then, sir?”
“Good question. I hadn’t realized you were. Who paired you up?”
“I don’t know. I remember Dick Walsh being somewhat surprised.”
There was a rude laugh on the other end. “Yeah, I bet Dick was shocked. Dick’s a decent guy. I’m going to find out and fry whoever did this because—and I’m going to say something here I’ll deny if you ever try to rub my nose in it—whoever assigned you to Ashad is a sexist comedian who wanted to see how fast Bernie could nail you.”
“Well, I can assure you that no such thing has, or will happen.”
“You ever received a five-hundred-thousand-dollar bracelet as a thank-you-for-dinner gift?”
“Wha … what? No!”
“Would it turn your head? Make you just a little inclined to stay the night?”
“I … honestly have no idea what I’d do, besides report it to the firm, if he was a client.”
“Ever had some handsome, incredibly rich guy offer to buy you a million-dollar villa somewhere if you’ll just take a six-month sabbatical and travel with him?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, those are just two of the ploys he’s used on women at our firm in the past. I lost my secretary—who later bore him a child in absentia—to the bracelet scam. Oh, he took the bracelet back, by the way. And then there was our young female attorney associate who got stars in her eyes and ran off with him for six months, lost her job, and was literally left penniless in Maracaibo, Venezuela. She woke up alone in a seedy hotel room one morning with no passport, no clothes, and no money, next to some local laborer who hadn’t had his annual bath that year. Bernie thought it was hilarious, the sick bastard. He’d drugged her, effectively sold her to the guy, and flew off to Europe in his jet. It was his twisted way of saying goodbye.”
“My God.”
“Look, Gracie, you’ve got great promise as a lawyer, and I’m sorry if I’ve broadsided you here, but I’m warning you, stay strictly away from this guy except as an attorney, and under no circumstances get yourself in his debt. Understood?”
“What do I do if he’s already helped my friends and calls back?”
“Call me as soon as he trots out the kicker—what he wants in return. It’ll sound innocent. Don’t fall for it, or I’ll fire your ass. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And regardless of who the client is, if you’re going to ask for anything from one of our big payers in the future, ask Dick or me first. That’s an order.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. See you Monday.”
The line went dead.
Gracie sat in shock for several minutes, her mind replaying every nuance of the conversation, her faith in her previous impression and judgment of Ashad thoroughly shaken. She started to go up the companionway to the galley before realizing she was wearing nothing. She grabbed a terrycloth robe and pulled it around her, still feeling the hole in the pit of her stomach. She’d been getting nothing but praise from Walsh and all the other established members of the firm, and in one fell swoop she’d angered and dismayed the number-one senior lawyer in the whole place.
He thinks I’m a brainless slut! she thought, feeling her face flush at the embarrassment of being naive enough to believe Ashad’s sincerity. She could always spot phonies. April was the one who got sucked in all the time. How could she have stumbled with Ashad?
The phone was ringing again and the sound sent a flash of apprehension through her. Was Janssen calling back?
She pulled the galley extension to her ear, keeping her voice as normal as possible.
“This is Gracie.”
“Gracie, thank God! This is R
achel. You have a minute?”
“Of course, Rachel. You sound stressed.”
“Oh, Gracie! Arlie’s gone!”
She almost howled the last word, stabbing more adrenaline into Gracie as she tried to decipher what the word “gone” meant and shuddered at the possibilities.
“He just took off this morning with no word on where he was going.”
“Took off? Oh my God, he’s not flying, is he?”
“No … at least I don’t think so. He took the car, one of the cars, and … I just thought he was getting up to go to the bathroom, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“Before dawn, and I rolled over and snoozed a few minutes, until I heard a car leaving.”
“No notes or messages left in the kitchen?”
“No! That’s what scares me! Gracie, what should we do?”
“He take the jeep?”
“No. The Infiniti.”
“Does it have a phone?”
“No.”
“Have you called around?”
“Yes. All our neighbors. The airport. His favorite places in Port Angeles.”
“What’s that great little bookstore all the pilots love?”
“Port Book and News. I called. They haven’t seen him!”
“Okay, look, don’t panic, Rachel. The captain’s just upset. He’s probably just gone off to think.”
“Not in all our years together, Gracie, has he ever turned away from me when he was upset or scared. I’m terrified!”
“Stay by the phone, okay? Keep your cell phone on, too. Or did he take it?”
“No. It’s here.”
“Keep it on. Give me a few minutes to think and I’ll call you back.”
“Okay.”
Gracie replaced the receiver and stepped back to lean against the rear of the wheelhouse couch between the galley and the yacht’s bridge, trying to control the spinning in her head. She had never known Arlie Rosen to leave Rachel out of anything except his time on duty in a 747, but the dark, unspoken worry that he might be planning something as extreme as suicide simply didn’t make sense. The captain had always been the ranking optimist, a man in love with life. She could imagine him catastrophically despondent, but not to the point of hurting himself, and never to the point of committing what Gracie had always considered the ultimate act of selfishness, which would be to leave Rachel behind.
Thank God it’s Saturday! she thought, struggling to decide what, if anything, she could and should do. The Rosens’ Cherokee was still at Boeing Field, and although the morning was cloudy, there was a high overcast. She could fly it over and be in Sequim within an hour and a half, but what then?
Think, girl! Gracie commanded herself. She shut her eyes, trying to grab a fleeting memory hanging just out of reach, a peaceful place Arlie Rosen had talked about once. Or was she imagining it?
Dammit! The thought wouldn’t come, no matter how much she struggled.
Okay, what’s that technique April uses? Think of the question and let it go like a search engine. She let the essence of the question roll around in her mind for a few seconds, then purposely shifted her thoughts away.
I can’t sit here on the boat. She turned and moved back down to the lower deck to fix her hair and get dressed, as fast as possible, calculating the route to the airport. She would call Rachel back on the way, as well as call the corporate terminal to have the plane fueled. April had left the key at their service desk.
Hurricane Ridge!
The name popped into her mind without warning. A road leading south into the Olympic Mountains from Port Angeles wound its way to the top of a windswept promontory called Hurricane Ridge, and the place had fascinated him. What were his words? She recalled them suddenly, and they made the need to find him all the more urgent.
“It’s a launching pad for the soul, Gracie,” she recalled his saying. “It’s windswept and beautiful. If there is a perfect point on this beautiful planet from which one could leave this life and just step into the clouds, that would be it.”
THIRTY SIX
SATURDAY, DAY 6 7:05 A.M. ALASKAN TIME
“Ready, April?”
Scott McDermott’s voice sounded strong and confident, but April had seen his hand vibrating slightly as he held the yoke of the Widgeon and tried to pretend the impending takeoff was no big deal.
She nodded.
“Okay. Call out my airspeed.”
His hand was already on the throttles that protruded from the ceiling of the cockpit, and he pushed them forward now to max power, holding the control yoke full to the right as both engines rose to a roar, and the amphibian began moving forward through the icy waters, a bow wave of water cascading over the nose and the windshield, obscuring everything.
They moved past the massive icebergs Scott had shoved out of the way with the Widgeon’s nose, the effect one of a runway between a row of twenty-story buildings.
Quickly the bow wave diminished and they could see. Scott pulsed the yoke, and April felt the Widgeon jump higher in the water, the hull no longer floating but now planing along the surface “on the step” as they accelerated.
“There’s forty,” she called over the roar.
She could see the other end of the mountain lake coming at them, its lip only eight to ten feet above the water’s surface, but the embankment from water to lip was catastrophically steep. If they weren’t high enough out of the water to clear the berm, the impact would probably kill them.
“Fifty-five!” she said. “Sixty … sixty-five.”
The end of the lake was looming close, and she felt herself mentally tensing.
“Seventy.”
Without warning Scott yanked both throttles to idle and pulled the yoke as far back as it would go, letting the Widgeon sink back into the water in a cascade of spray, the hydrodynamic pressure rapidly slowing them as they floated over the remaining distance to the western end.
He kicked the left rudder at the last second, swinging the nose parallel to the embankment with several yards to spare.
“We can’t make it?” April asked.
Scott nodded. “Not enough room that time.”
“That time?”
He turned to her, his tone matter-of-fact. “Yeah. We need more distance.”
Scott continued the turn to the left, aiming at the spot on the other end from where they’d started the takeoff attempt.
“Okay. How are we going to construct more distance? Avalanche? Earthquake? Tectonic event?”
Scott shook his head. “There’s another method we can use, April. We almost had enough that time, but … I just needed another ten miles per hour.”
“You’re not seriously suggesting we try that again?”
“Yep. I’m not leaving this bird up here on this lake.”
“We wait for more wind, then?” she asked.
“That’s one way, but it’s not likely to come.”
“Then how? Come on, Scott, you’re scaring me.”
“I’ll show you. It’s an old trick.”
“Does it work?”
“Sometimes.”
“I’d rather not crash, you know. I’m allergic to disintegrating airplanes.”
“Me, too. Crashing usually screws up my whole day.”
“Usually? You mean you’ve crashed before?”
“Of course. Goes with the territory.”
“Seriously?”
He grinned. “Been killed up here a bunch of times.”
“Uh-huh.”
She was gripping the sides of her seat again, wanting to be airborne, but rapidly losing faith in the technical possibility. “Well, I can promise that if you kill me trying to take off, I’ll never go out with you.”
He looked at her and laughed. “Then I’ll assume the converse is true.”
“Sorry?”
“If I don’t kill you, you’re committed to going out with me, and that’s one hell of an incentive.” He raised a finger for silence as they approached the end o
f the lake and swung the Widgeon to the right in an unexpected direction, moving nearly a hundred yards around the backside of one of the icebergs before spinning the amphibian around.
“Okay.”
“Okay, what? We’re aimed across the narrow part of the lake, if you haven’t noticed. We’re heading south. The so-called runway is due east. We can’t take off like this.”
“No, but if we use a sideways run to gain speed, then angle left around that berg to the middle of the channel we created, then head east, we’ll get a better start.”
“Oh.”
“Besides, the Widgeon has a bad habit of trying to dig her left pontoon in the water, and this helps keep that from happening,”
“Okay.”
“It’ll work, April. We’ll get up on the step before the turn.”
“Don’t you dare say ‘trust me’ again.”
Once more Scott gripped the overhead throttles and moved them forward. The Widgeon began plowing through the water, moving past one of the massive icebergs as the aircraft rose on the step. He worked the left rudder, swinging the Widgeon back to the original easterly heading, the airspeed already at twenty-five knots by the time he steadied the course.
“Forty-five,” April announced. She could see the end looming once more, but this time it seemed a bit more distant.
“Fifty-five.”
The engines were roaring and the throttles firewalled.
“Sixty-five … rising slowly to seventy … there’s seventy-five!”
They were at almost the same place as before, but this time the speed was obviously greater. Scott’s hand held the throttles full forward, his left hand on the yoke, but not pulling.
“Scott, pull us up! Eighty. Scott?”
The end of the lake loomed ominously. Suddenly the yoke came back and the nose popped up to a frightening angle as the Widgeon obediently leaped free of the water, rising to what seemed insufficient altitude to make it over the embankment.
The sound of the metal hull brushing the upper crust of snow and ice on the edge of the embankment was unmistakable and gentle, the noise little more than that of a pine branch brushing the plane. A spray of white from the glancing blow showered the air to the right and was gone as the slope ahead dropped out from under them. Scott pulsed the yoke forward, dropping the Widgeon’s nose as the stall warning horn shut off, and the aircraft traded altitude for airspeed and stabilized as a flying machine once again. He banked slightly to the left, following the downslope of the glacier as he built more airspeed, holding them under the overcast layer of clouds and heading for the massive face of the glacier several miles to the east.
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