Down River (24 page)

L
isa’s first thought when she saw the plane coming their way was that Spike had something to tell them. Maybe he’d found an item in Ginger’s things that would be even more evidence than the spade.

Shading her eyes, Christine shouted over the increasing noise, “Maybe Mitch got back and was really upset we’re out here on the lake. Spike might have brought a load around himself, and Mitch said, let’s go in the plane and get them to come back.”

“But wouldn’t Mitch have just used his motorboat?”

Christine had brought them to a halt with the motor idling. It sounded as jumpy as Lisa felt. Christine said, “Maybe Spike’s just moving the plane down to where it used to be, but he said he wouldn’t. Or he’s trying to teach us a lesson.”

“Like what? This is getting too close for comfort. I don’t think the sun’s in his eyes and that he can’t see us, but let’s get out of the way!”

Christine turned them outward, but the plane adjusted its course. It did not seem to be accelerating enough to take off over their heads, but continued straight for them.

“This isn’t funny,” Lisa heard her friend mutter as she took evasive action once again. The plane was so close now its engine drowned out the rumble of the river and their own motor. “
Iah!
Hang on!” Christine shouted and made a sharp turn.

Rocked by the wake from the plane’s pontoons as they passed within five yards, their boat nearly capsized. It rocked to one side then the other as Christine fought to turn their prow into the choppy waves.

“What’s wrong with him?” she shouted and lifted one arm to make a fist at Spike as the plane came around again to face them.

For one instant, Lisa stared down into the roiling, blue-green depths of the lake, slashed by whitecaps pounding their boat. She fought her fear that faces would float to the surface, that she and Christine could be thrown in to join those drowned women staring up at them.

“It can’t be Spike, it can’t be Spike,” Christine kept reciting like a litany. “Hang on, because we’re too slow to make a run for it if he—if the plane—comes back, so we’ll have to twist and turn.”

Lisa realized they’d made a fatal error, maybe more than one. Nowhere in the boat was there a PFD. They’d been in too much of a hurry, hadn’t checked, when Mitch said that was always a necessity. And
she—maybe Christine, too—had made the huge mistake of trusting Spike.

Mitch wiped the grease and dirt from his hands with a rag the sheriff handed him.

“Where’d you learn to change a tire like that?” Mace Moran asked.

“Never have before, but I’m learning a lot of things since I grew feathered feet. Necessity is the mother of invention, remember?”

“One of Alaska’s creeds. But your real talent’s talking and working at the same time. Glad you finally filled me in about the attacks on Lisa. Pretty clever ones all right, made to look like she could have wanted to hurt herself, so Ginger’s accident could be a setup, too. Let’s get going, ’cause I got a few cages to rattle.”

“I know you don’t like having to deal with attorneys but—”

“But the law’s the law. Now isn’t it just like a couple lawyers to think they can solve a case that should be handed over to law enforcement? You don’t see me trying cases in court, do you? I could get you and Lisa for suppressing evidence, obstruction of justice, at least on Ginger Jackson’s death. I’m so mad that one of your fancy city lawyer friends thinks they can put one over on an Alaska sheriff that I’m about ready to spit nails.”

He threw the tire jack and the flat tire in the trunk, where Mitch saw he had a lot of other police gear,
including an assault rifle. He shuddered as the sheriff slammed the trunk closed. As they both got in the front seat, Mitch couldn’t picture any of the lawyers from Carlisle, Bonner in handcuffs or being taken away in the caged back of this vehicle.
I’ve got a few cages to rattle,
the sheriff had said. At least Spike would rest easier when the investigation into Ginger’s death was reopened. And Mitch and Lisa would finally get some answers so she could put the attempts on her life behind her.

Lisa and Christine had to shout at each other over the noise as the plane made another pass so close that one pontoon almost hit their boat. They got soaked with spray, and water washed in to swirl around their ankles. They would have been hit dead-on if Christine hadn’t veered away at the last moment.

“I’ll try to get us close to shore!” Christine shouted. “He must have snapped. Maybe when he saw we had her boat—”

“Can you swim?” Lisa screamed as the plane, sitting so high in the water that it seemed like a red sea monster risen from the depths, came at them again.

“I think we’re gonna have to swim!” Christine shouted.

The sun glinted off the cockpit windows to nearly blind them before she managed a wild U-turn and gunned the boat toward the shore. Holding on with one hand and bailing madly with the other, Lisa
looked back as the plane made another pass. She could see no pilot in it. Spike was tall, so his head would surely have been visible in that split second, unless he’d bent or stooped.

The plane pursued them. They were not near enough to shore for an easy swim. They were going to get hit hard this time. Shoving its white-crested wake ahead of its bulbous feet, the plane came faster, louder.

“Christine!” Lisa screamed. “Jump!”

They both jumped, even as the plane cracked into the stern of their boat. As it splintered and upended, Lisa dove, digging into the water with both hands, kicking hard, rocked and buffeted, going lower, down to escape the deep-riding pontoons.

Sounds were muted now, distant. The river reached for her again, then the seething wake of the cruise ship where her mother and Jani disappeared. Ginger floated closer, faceup, arms outstretched.

No. No! She would not be sucked under by this water or by nightmares. She did not see Ginger in this lake, did not see her mother’s face or hear her voice, beseeching, begging,
Come to me, Lisa…come to me…

After what seemed an eternity, Lisa broke the rocking surface of the lake with a huge gasp. Christine was a good distance off, stroking for the shore opposite from Ginger’s cabin. Out of breath, exhausted when she’d told the doctor she’d do nothing strenuous, Lisa treaded water, trying to get some
strength and time to think. Now, at least, as she saw the plane turn again and start back, she might learn if it was both of them Spike wanted to kill or just her.

Too soon, she had her answer. Again, the red plane headed straight for her.

“Damn!” Mitch said, as he snatched the note off the door.

“What’s that?” the sheriff asked.

“It’s from Lisa and Christine. Spike needed a break and came by to do a little work on something on his plane. He’s going to be making taxis across the lake to test something, and Christine and Lisa are going with him. ‘A tour of the lake without a boat,’ Lisa’s scribbled here—or Christine. Not sure who’s handwriting this is. I can’t believe they left when it might be Lisa’s last day here.”

“Not if I can get the ball rolling with a murder investigation and a double-assault case. Let’s see if we can spot them on the lake, and if they get close, signal them to come in.”

They went inside and walked across the great room to look out the back bank of windows. At the far end of the lake, the red plane was making all sorts of maneuvers.

“Kind of a thrill ride,” the sheriff said. “Hey, I hear a car out front, so whoever’s back, I’ll start with them.” They heard doors slam and hurried toward the front porch. Mitch frowned. He didn’t like it. Something was really wrong.

Two vehicles had pulled up. Vanessa and Jonas got out of one, and Spike got out of the other.

Lisa was too exhausted to swim, but she knew she had to. She’d never make it out of the path of the plane at this pass, so she was going to wait until the last minute, then dive again. She wished she could leap onto one of the pontoons, cling to the plane as she had when she’d signaled across the lake that they needed help because Ginger had drowned.

Drowned. Drowned in this very lake now churned to chaos by this red monster coming at her.

“Swim! Swim! Move!
Lisa!
” Christine was shrieking from a distance.

The white-water wake pushed at Lisa by the pontoons reminded her of the river rapids. But no Mitch in a kayak to chase and save her this time.

She took a huge breath and jackknifed under, but was sucked upward by the pull of the water, when she had thought it would thrust her away. She wanted to shut everything out but she forced herself to open her eyes. Amazingly, above her head on the surface of the turbulent water, the plane slowed and stopped. Through a blizzard of bubbles, a pontoon rested right over her head, just yards away, a huge, bulky shadow, shutting out the light. Was the killer in it going to sit there until she surfaced and then try to hit her again?

Her first instinct was to surface—had to surface, out of air—and then swim away, but that’s what the pilot was probably expecting. If she could just make
him think that she was gone—drowned—maybe she could hold on for a ride near the shore and then make it in. Under the plane where she couldn’t be seen from the cockpit was the best, the only, place to hide.

She swam up and gasped in air directly between the two red pontoons. Had the pilot hit Ginger over the head with that spade handle, then shoved her in to drown? Yes, it must also be the person who pushed Lisa in the river and somehow jammed that sauna door. Someone she knew, someone who feared something she knew.

Surely Spike hadn’t killed Ginger. Graham and Ellie? Ellie knew how to fly, had been up more than once in this very plane. Ellie was short, maybe too short to be seen when Lisa had glanced through the cockpit window earlier. Had Graham convinced or coerced Ellie to fly Spike’s plane to eliminate her and Christine, or was Christine just an innocent bystander? Surely, they could not have known the sheriff was coming. Or was Graham the one who had tapped their phones in Florida, and had also done it here? Oh, yes, Graham liked to tape-record things.

As Lisa had found a foothold on a pontoon the day she climbed on it to signal for help, she found a handhold now. Her seagull bracelet clunked against the metal, and she hoped the pilot had not heard as she hooked both hands over the back ridge of the right-side pontoon. There she rested, her head well above water, not even having to kick her feet while the plane idled, shifting slightly in a circle. If she
could just convince the pilot that she was drowned, maybe she could slip away and make it to the shore. She couldn’t see Christine now. Even if Christine had made it in, she’d be exhausted, and it was a long hike through thick trees back to the lodge for help.

“All right,” the sheriff said, “everybody just sit down, and I’ll ask the questions!”

At least, Mitch thought, Vanessa and Jonas sat instead of making all kinds of demands as they had at first. That had really set the sheriff off.

Spike was distraught when he read the note the women had left, which he said wasn’t written by Christine. He finally perched on the edge of the couch before jumping up again.

“Sheriff, somebody’s stolen my plane, and there it is!” he shouted, pointing at it hovering on the lake in the distance.

“Either of those women know how to operate the plane?” the sheriff asked.

“Not that I know of,” Spike said. “You’re gonna have to arrest me, sir, ’cause I’m going down there in Mitch’s boat, and—”

“Now we don’t know why Lisa and Christine left a note saying they were going with you, when they obviously didn’t, do we?” the increasingly frustrated sheriff bellowed.

Mitch’s mind raced. Spike was right. They had to get down to the other end of the lake because something was really wrong—and there was water all
around again, as when Ginger died and in the attempts on Lisa’s life.

“Lisa’s finally lost it,” Jonas muttered. “And I swear, Graham’s going to pick her anyway,” he added to Vanessa.

As if mentioning his name had summoned him, Graham came in the front door. “Why the sheriff’s car?” he asked Mitch, ignoring the sheriff himself. “What’s happened now?”

“Everyone’s accounted for except Ellie,” Mitch said to Spike, ignoring Graham’s question and the sheriff’s sputtering. “I’m with you, Spike, so let’s go.”

“What the hell’s going on?” Graham demanded. “Ellie’s upstairs, lying down with a migraine. I dropped her off here about twenty minutes ago, then took a final load to Spike’s place.”

“That’s true,” Spike said, edging for the back door. “Hey, Mitch, look at the dock. Ginger’s boat’s gone. They might have taken it instead!”

“Mr. Bonner,” the sheriff said, “you go upstairs and check on your wife, see if she can come down here, okay?”

Mitch saw that Sheriff Moran’s control of the situation was gone. What terrified him was that he’d lost control, too, and feared once again for Lisa’s life. He ran out the door after Spike, and they raced for Mitch’s boat.

T
he wash of waves against the pontoons, the scraping of her bracelet as she held on and the forbidding rumble of the plane’s engine were the only sounds Lisa heard before distant shouts pierced her ears. Christine’s voice? Yes, Christine shouting at Spike in the plane. Had her friend made it to shore? Lisa knew, however strong a swimmer she was, that she would not make it in, not after the physical setbacks of the river and the sauna. And now this—attempted murder by a plane, with who at the helm?

The plane’s motor pitch went up. She leaned left and could see the propeller spinning faster, faster. The plane began to move forward. Had she convinced the pilot she was drowned?

She gave a garbled cheer when she realized the plane was heading back toward the lodge across the length of the lake. If she just held on—if the water being displaced by the pontoon didn’t push her off—she could ride it nearly to the dock.

The plane plowed its way toward the middle of the
lake. She had no choice but to hang on and try to gauge when she should let go. To breathe, she had to lift herself higher out of the water and really hang on to the ridge at the top of the pontoon. It couldn’t be much farther and then she’d let go. Mitch and the sheriff must be back to the lodge soon. They’d see her, come for her, if she just treaded water.

The plane continued to accelerate, the pitch of the propeller noise rising, humming harder. Dear God, was it going to take off? No matter where they were on the lake, she had to let go now. Gasping in a huge breath, she let go, but she didn’t drop. As the plane skimmed the surface of the lake, her bracelet caught in the ridge of the pontoon and held her there, dragging her with it. To keep her wrist from being broken, she fought to put her other hand back up, holding on as her legs flailed free of the water.

The plane cleared the lake and was airborne. Lisa cursed the bracelet, but its clasp had never opened well, not even the night she’d wanted to throw it at Mitch for leaving her.

The plane climbed, then banked. She tried to pull her wrist free again; her hand had turned white.

Then it was too late, and she had no choice but to hang on for her life.

“Ellie’s not upstairs anywhere!” Graham shouted at the sheriff as he ran out onto the lodge patio. Mitch had never heard Graham sound so panicked. He stood in his boat still at the dock. He had not started the
motor because the plane had gone airborne. To his horror, Mitch craned his neck and saw Lisa hanging from one of the pontoons as it passed overhead.

“Where is she? I want the sheriff to help me find Ellie!” Graham demanded, then looked up and gasped as the plane went over.

Mitch shouted at the sheriff, “Get rescue people here ASAP! Cops, choppers, searchers!”

“That can’t be, can’t be,” Graham was yelling.

“Spike,” Mitch ordered as he grabbed two PFDs and clambered out of the boat, “see if you can find Christine out there somewhere!” He gestured toward the lake and ran hell-bent for the ridge between the lake and the river.

With Lisa hanging on, her wrist still snagged by her bracelet, the plane flew low over the tall Sitka spruce along the ridge between the lake and the river. She dared not let go with her free hand to try to open the bracelet. She imagined she heard Christine shouting, but it was just the whine of the wind and the engine, which blended with the river’s roar.

Did the pilot know she was hanging on and was trying to scrape her off on the treetops, or did he think Lisa was drowned and was just escaping? Surely, the plane would not go low enough to slam her into the cliffs of the Hairpin Gorge up ahead, because that would mean destruction for the plane. Yet the pilot seemed to be on a lark, swinging along, almost as if it were some sort of joy ride. But as the
cliffs narrowed ahead, flying this low would be impossible. So did the pilot intend to take the plane higher—or commit suicide?

She knew then it wasn’t Spike, for he would know the lay of the land and the terror of the rapids and the falls ahead—unless he was so distraught over Ginger’s death that he had, as Christine said, snapped. No, she thought she knew now who was at the controls, maybe the same person who had been at the controls of the law firm, of Graham, maybe of that casino scheme. But why? Ellie Carlisle Bonner had money, lots of it. And a husband and daughter she loved.

A husband and daughter she loved—the words snagged in Lisa’s stunned brain. She knew she was going to die now, either by dropping onto the cliffs or into the river. Strange, how facing death instantly clarified some things. A husband and daughter she loved—surely, Lisa’s own mother had been shattered when her husband deserted her. She’d become suicidal, thinking she was doing Jani a favor by taking her with her. And she’d tried to kill Lisa, too, and she’d been suffering from being left behind all these years, tormented by the loss yet grateful she’d escaped. Worse, she’d blamed herself for pulling free of her mother, but she knew now that she had not caused her loved ones’ deaths. Too late to keep tormenting herself—too late to pull free from this plane. But now, strangely, all that wouldn’t matter soon, because she couldn’t hold on much longer….

The bracelet, which held her left arm tight against
the pontoon, reminded her of Mitch. She’d admired the seagulls flying free on the bracelet in the kitschy antique shop on Las Olas Boulevard in Lauderdale, and he’d bought it for her. He’d given it to her during a walk on the beach near Sunrise Avenue. Mitch—all the time they’d wasted apart when she could have been here with him, but now…

Lisa gasped when she saw that the plane was over the first part of the S turn in the canyon. This wasn’t the way to Anchorage, the way to escape. Either Ellie meant to shake Lisa off here where she’d almost drowned before, or she intended to go down with the plane. Of course, Ellen Carlisle Bonner would not want questions, accusations, scandal. The one time she’d seen Ellie a nervous wreck was when the sheriff questioned her about Ginger.

So had Ellie hit Ginger with that spade handle and put her in the lake? No, this was all too unreal, all too—

The plane bumped and shuddered. Lisa’s bracelet broke and fell away. Her wrist ached—imprinted with a seagull, deep in her flesh. If only she had stayed with Mitch, clung to Mitch. She fought to hang on as the plane slowed. It descended toward the frothing river and came closer to the cliffs of the narrowing gorge. Yes, Ellie, whether she thought she’d drowned Lisa in the lake or knew where she was now, was going to crash the plane.

As he ran toward the river, Mitch heard Spike speed away in his boat. Beyond the riverbank—just
as when Lisa was pushed in last week—the snowmelt water raged. He squinted into the afternoon sun to search the sky, then the river. Nothing. No sign of anyone, not even a red amphibious plane. He could have lain flat on the ground and beat his fists.

Vanessa and Jonas came up behind him, lugging a single green kayak between them. “If you’re going after her again,” Jonas said, “there’s a paddle and two PFDs in here.”

Mitch just shook his head. He couldn’t even manage to say thanks but nodded, then looked away with tears blurring his vision of the river. Twice Lisa had cheated death, but was three times too much to hope for?

Graham came running. “You mean Ellie’s up in that plane?” He looked incredulous, more shocked than sad. “I didn’t even want her up there with Spike again, so what’s going on?”

If Mitch wasn’t going to cry, he would have laughed. His eyes still on the distant sky in the direction the plane had gone, he said, “You don’t get it, do you? It’s hard to believe you’re innocent but ignorant of what she was doing.”

“She’s got her own plane at home! And was that Lisa hang—”

“Ellie must have pushed her in the river last week,” Mitch muttered as the sheriff joined them with a nod that he’d sent for help. “Then,” Mitch went on, “she tried to kill Lisa in the sauna and make it all look as if she was as crazy as her mother—suicidal.”

“What are you suggesting? Why?” Graham asked, swinging Mitch around to face him.

“I assume to make sure Lisa and I didn’t put our heads together to figure out you were behind the money laundering in the casino case.”

“Me!” Graham roared, shaking Mitch. “It wasn’t me, what—”

Mitch couldn’t help himself. Sheriff standing nearby or not, he swung his fist and hit Graham squarely in the jaw to send him sprawling back on the grass.

The plane was going down. Lisa could feel the erratic but intentional flying. Poor Claire, Ellie’s daughter, losing a mother who killed herself. The ultimate betrayal. Treason. A lifetime of regrets.

As they got lower over the river, Lisa realized she still had a choice. Go down with the plane or let go into the river. But she knew those killer rapids, their cold reach, what they could do.

The plane tilted to show white water under them and worse ahead. Ellie would never make it through these hairpin turns before the braided river began where the bears ate the salmon. Strangely proud, Lisa was glad she knew this land below…had seen this great land. It was over now. She’d let go and ride the river without Mitch, with no PFD, or go down with the plane….

As the plane twisted, perhaps tilted to make it through a turn of the gorge, Lisa let go and dropped,
dropped through an eternity of air into crashing water. Dreading it—the impact, the cold. Lisa and the salmon, struggling, struggling with the river, she thought as she hit.

Cold water slammed against her. She went under, but her feet hit the rocky bottom. She had shoes this time. She surfaced, made herself reserve her strength, didn’t fight it. Yes, go with the flow, maybe get near something to grab before the falls…the falls…

As her head cleared the water, she looked up to see where the plane had gone. She saw it happen. Like a toy, not far downriver, the left wing clipped the cliff and it spun slowly, only once before it went down with a crack and a mammoth splash.

Lisa forced away the thought of Ellie in the water, trapped like her mother and Jani, like Ginger—like her now, if she didn’t get out of this cold.

She was so exhausted but she bent her knees and tried to suck in a good breath now and then. Fingers getting numb already, like before. But she knew more now, about this river, her enemy, which had also, in a way, given her Mitch back and led her deeper into the heart of Alaska. She knew when to try to grab a rock and to pick a big one near the bank—if there was a bank with these sheer walls—to try to cling to.

Around the next swirling turn, maybe near the spot Mitch had pulled her out, a big tree leaned across the river rocks in front of her. No, not a tree trunk—the wrecked fuselage of the red plane with one broken wing still attached, reaching out into the brutal rush of river.

“I’ll pay for a massive search,” Graham was telling the sheriff as the first rescue vehicle from Talkeetna screeched up to the lodge. He had an ice pack on his jaw that Vanessa had brought after Mitch’s fist took him down. It didn’t stop Graham from still trying to give orders. “And Jonas here will be serving as my lawyer for now, and Vanessa over there as my wife’s counsel.”

Jonas frowned and shook his head. “I don’t know, Graham. If you or Ellie had anything to do with Lisa’s earlier injuries, I don’t know.”

“I’ll represent you both for now, if that’s all right,” Vanessa piped up.

Rats off a sinking ship, Mitch thought, with Vanessa hoping to take over the helm. But he didn’t care. He really didn’t care about anything if he lost Lisa now—again. He ignored all of them as he jogged over to the emergency vehicle with the sheriff right behind him.

“How long to get a chopper in the air?” he asked.

“They’re on their way,” the driver told him. “But they can only fly surveillance over most of the area downriver from here.”

“That’s what we need. But they can hover and drop a rescue rope or basket. If they need someone to do that, I’ll go down.”

“If they haven’t left the area,” the sheriff said. “If we’re in time.”

Lisa knew she had only one chance to try to grab the wing and get out of the water and onto the
wrecked fuselage. She could see and smell fuel spilling into the water and didn’t want a ride through that. But what if the plane exploded? Would fuel ignite in this much moving water?

With the remnants of her spent strength, Lisa seized the strut of the plane under the wing that she’d used to haul herself up the day Ginger died, and held on. Water poured at, over and under the wing, and she had to climb to get to the split cockpit. The wreck of the plane was like a sieve, like the tree that had let Mitch rescue her not far from here.

Water pounded her back, but when she boosted herself slightly, it also thrust her upward as if a huge hand had pushed her from the river. Gasping for air, sprawled on her stomach across what must have been the copilot’s seat, she grabbed on and held tight.

But the plane was shuddering as if it could be swept downriver toward the falls any moment. Should she let go and try to distance herself from this dead, broken ruin?

Then, Lisa saw the real ruin of a life sprawled and broken, the real monster, who had planned all the accidents, all the torments.

Trapped by her seat belt, Ellie was half in the pilot seat, half out. Her upper torso was pinned between the seat and the broken side window, through which a separate spray of gray water spewed.

Lisa braced herself, reached over and unfastened the seat belt, then hauled Ellie partway toward her like a limp rag doll. If she was dead, she’d leave her
here, but if she was alive, she had much to answer for. Ellie felt cold, so cold. Both of them were so cold and battered.

Battered
—Christine had fought back from being battered. Christine did what she had to do to save herself.

Lisa tried to pull Ellie closer, but her right leg was trapped between the back of her seat and the cockpit wall. What was left of the other side of the cockpit made a barrier to give some breathing space, at least for now, Lisa thought, as the entire plane shook and wobbled.

Leave Ellie or pull her out, whatever it took? Risk her life to get answers? Curiosity, the kind that killed the cat, kept Lisa there when she knew she should have fled the plane. Was Ellie jealous that Mitch hadn’t fallen for their precious daughter, Claire, to become coheirs of the firm as Graham and Ellie had? Did she fear that Graham would be discovered as the spider behind the casino case debacle if Mitch and Lisa got their heads together again?