Down River (7 page)

Like most people in these parts, he knew her past. She prayed that wouldn’t come back to haunt her if there was some sort of investigation here. After all, she’d probably been the last person to see both Lisa and Mitch alive.
Iah!
No, she would not think that way. Even if Lisa was a greenhorn around here, Mitch wasn’t. But if Lisa’s loss ended up harming Mitch, Christine would never get over it.

Her chin quivered and she almost burst into tears, when she’d vowed never to cry again after she’d been acquitted. That old, heavy weight of guilt sat hard on her heart again.

“What are we going to do?” Vanessa asked. “Should we fly home, or just wait around for—”

“No one should go anywhere yet,” Jonas piped up. “We’ll find them—local law enforcement or the national park guys will, at least.”

“No, of course, we stay right here,” Mr. Bonner said. “We have four full days left in our stay anyway. We’ve left capable staff behind. We do what we can and hope and pray for the best. Mitch was a great attorney. I just hope he’s as good at what he does now. And Lisa’s resilient and determined, however much she’d be out of out her element in these wilds.”

Spike said, “We’ll go back up again as soon as I refuel and get someone to feed my dogs. They’re all out on lead lines without enough water to tide them over this long.”

“I’ll do it,” Christine offered, surprising herself as she’d blurted that out.

“Better let Ginger, so you can still host the lodge guests,” Spike said, giving her shoulders a little squeeze before he let her go. “But thanks for saying so when I know a dozen big hungry huskies aren’t your thing.”

“But they are yours so that’s okay,” she said, looking up at him. She felt a blush starting, though her tawny skin probably wouldn’t give her away. Even with everyone looking on, even in these dire straights, she and Spike Jackson seemed to have a common cause that went beyond the lodge, even beyond finding Mitch and Lisa Vaughn. That bond
certainly wasn’t the dogs. Her husband, Clay, had kept snarling, half-hungry dogs, and any group of huskies still set her teeth on edge. No, their other common cause in this potential tragedy was taking care of each other.

Lisa could not get the sight of the bear-eating-fish carnage out of her mind. The river was both life and death to those determined salmon. And it could have been death to her, but—with Mitch’s help—she had survived.

And those bears! At first the voracious bloodlust had horrified her, but she had swiftly accepted it as—if not beautiful—part of this beautiful, raw land. Survival. The basic elements of life. And yet in the midst of all that potential violence, there was a mother feeding her cubs, teaching them what they needed to know to flourish here in this land of stark contrasts and stunning sights.

Now she and Mitch sat on boulders at the edge of the beaver-made lake about a half mile from the river, but distant from the beavers themselves.

“It looks pretty deep here,” she said, gazing into the lovely lake the beaver village had created. She was eager to keep the conversation on anything but their past. She shouldn’t have argued with Mitch since she had to rely on him to get out of this wilderness.

“Yeah. Lots of pond vegetation down there makes that green, wavy look.”

“I think I’m going to wash my face and hands here. The water’s not as cold as—well, nothing I’ve ever been near was that cold.”

She took off her denim jacket and rolled up her wet suit sleeves, then rinsed her face and hands in the sun-warmed water. She blinked beads of it off her lashes, then stared down into the green water at her own face, slightly distorted in the wavering reflection. Something shifted beneath the surface. It reminded her of her childhood nightmare, one her psychiatrist had helped her to handle. Her mother’s face, more and more like her own as she grew up, was staring at her through a watery barrier, calling her, beckoning….

A burst of bubbles pulled her from her reverie. Bubbles from fish? Had a beaver come over? The silvery beads were in the shape of a question mark. She dangled her hands in the water, swishing the bubbles and nightmares into oblivion, staring into the swirls she made.

If she was sure she’d been pushed in the river, the question was by whom and why? A few motives were obvious—Jonas and Vanessa wanted the same fat fish she did from the river of ambition, but would they go so far as to push her in? The idea of the Bonners testing her was too far-fetched. She didn’t dare to ask Mitch about his relationship to Christine, so her thoughts kept swirling, fading in and out.

Besides, she needed Mitch’s help out here, despite the fact the so-called Alaskan frontier didn’t scare her
half as much as she’d expected. Once she was out of the river, that is. Even those bears flaying and gobbling down live fish—she accepted it. The howling of the wolves had a certain lonely, austere loveliness—at least that’s the way she recalled it now. The beaver village was fascinating and the sunset stunning. Despite her agonizing over what she faced back at the lodge, she could almost—almost—have enjoyed at least parts of this adventure.

Perhaps this vast, awesome land helped to put things in perspective. Out here, her troubles back in so-called civilization didn’t seem so all-consuming. The chance for her to be granted the senior partnership at Carlisle, Bonner & Associates might now be, sadly, gone with the wind, at least endangered, she admitted silently. But, if she had to, surely she could find another law firm at home and make her new colleagues a sort of family as the Bonners had been to her. Yes, she’d get busy as a beaver once again and make a new life, she tried to assure herself. She was learning to be a strong, independent woman, whether in the fun-in-the-sun southeast or here in the northwest Land of the Midnight Sun.

Maybe she should tell Mitch just that, since he’d said he was going to tell Graham she shouldn’t be the one chosen—

Huge and horrible, the monster rose from the lake. It emerged just four feet from her with massive, bloody horns and the face of a furry ogre, snorting—

Screaming, she vaulted backward, flinging water
as the thing came closer, looming larger. She threw herself into Mitch’s arms and held tight with her heart slamming against her ribs.

“Moose, Lisa!” he said, picking her up. “It’s a bull moose just coming up from where he’s been eating those underwater veggies I mentioned. He’s not dangerous unless you’re another bull moose. He’s just—magnificent.”

“Oh! Yes. Of course. But his red horns—”

“Antlers. That stuff is the velvet he’s shedding off his rack this time of year. Man, almost five feet across. That big boy’s almost nine feet tall at the shoulders—wow! His antlers will be all bone so he can fight other bulls for the choice mates in the rutting season coming up,” he said and bounced her once in his arms, as if to convey some secret, extra message.

“It—it just startled me. I don’t know what I thought,” she admitted as he put her down.

After staring at them, still chewing his cud, the big bull sauntered sideways in the lake, snorted and submerged again in a circle of bubbles.

“We’re not getting much of a rest,” Mitch said. She wasn’t sure, but he looked as if he was trying not to laugh. Thank heavens, she hadn’t been preaching to him what she’d been thinking about her independence and growing self-confidence here.

“I’m sorry I jumped on you,” she said as she dried her hands on the outside of her jacket before slipping back into it.

“Just now or earlier?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I think we could use some solid food, and those bears back there gave me an idea. I could probably catch a salmon with the corkscrew on my Swiss Army knife. Sorry we don’t have a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé to go with it. We’ve got to use this four-pound stove I’ve been carting around for something.”

And so, by quickly moving on in topic and place, he seemed to give her at least the remnants of her dignity back, Lisa realized. He wasn’t such a barbarian after all. And now that she’d been back with him a while, she was starting to remember even more things about him. His instincts had always been to protect her, to coddle and spoil her even—that is, before his big, out-of-the-blue bombshell to move her to Alaska.

Anyhow, she sensed there was something he wasn’t telling her right now, maybe about how they were really going to cross the river to get to that access road. If he thought she was going to walk across a big tree trunk over the rapids or cross in a boat someone had stashed, he was crazy. She’d stay behind, and he could send that chopper with the basket for her. No more white water, not even on a raft farther upstream from the ledge, where he’d assured them all that the river wasn’t as rough as when it rampaged past his property. Again, she thought that maybe the plum position of senior
partner at the firm was not worth some things. Not only almost dying but the vast beauty of Alaska made you think about what life was really worth.

M
itch was proud of the meal they’d just had, and prouder yet that Lisa seemed to appreciate it. For the first time since he’d left the lodge, he felt full. He’d caught a large salmon with a corkscrew, much like the bears speared their fish, and he’d cooked it on their small stove.

“Just like I’ve never had better blueberries,” she told him, “I’ve never had better salmon.”

“I don’t want to sound like your idea of a travel brochure again,” he told her, “but water tastes the best and food even better in Alaska.”

“Yes, but there’s something to be said for Florida lobster, stone crab and citrus salads—not to mention key lime pie.”

“True. And I miss those things, but that doesn’t mean I can’t go back—to visit, I mean.”

“You could become a snowbird.”

“Maybe. For a month or two. If things go well here financially and Spike and Christine could keep an eye on things when I’m gone.”

“I can tell she thinks a lot of you. I take it she’s single.”

“She is now. Her husband abused her.”

“So she left him. Separated or divorced?”

He frowned out over the water. Everyone around Bear Bones knew, but he’d promised Christine he would never tell any of the guests, and he felt he should get her permission first before telling anyone, even Lisa.

“Separated,” he told her. “Permanently because he died.”

“Oh. She seems to have a mixture of sadness but pride about her. But I guess the Eskimo people have to be strong.”

“Most people in the lower forty-eight don’t know it, but the term Eskimo is about on par with calling Native Americans just Indians these days. We say Inuit or use tribal names. Like a lot of people in these parts, Christine’s Yup’ik.”

“I certainly don’t want to offend anyone. I’m glad you told me. I didn’t know.”

There was a lot that she didn’t know, Mitch thought, because he’d told her a couple of half truths—but with good reason.

They sat close together on the bank of the river. Though it roared past them again, it wasn’t quite as fierce as it was near the lodge. But Mitch knew it was deeper, since it had picked up several other streams that fed it. Sometimes he could hear granite boulders, grinding, rolling along in its depths like distant thun
der. He figured they were just around the bend from where their only shot at a crossing for miles would be, so he had set up their last stopping point here. They both needed strength from a meal. And, he feared, once she saw what he intended, he’d have trouble on his hands. He might have to overpower her and tape her hands and feet to get her across. He wouldn’t even know about the way to the other side if he hadn’t remembered what one of his uncle’s hunting buddies had said about the crossing below the braided rivers. He prayed really hard that it was still there.

It bothered Christine that Spike had taken Mitch’s chair at the head of the table for this very late meal, but everyone was famished. Ginger was the only one not there, because she had gone to feed Spike’s dogs about a mile away.

Though they all desperately needed sleep and it was getting lighter outside again, no one had gone to bed, though she noted that Vanessa had gone up to take a shower, wash her hair and put on fresh makeup. Compared to everyone else, she looked rested and calm. Jonas had taken over the pacing Vanessa had done earlier, but it was actually Mrs. Bonner who had insisted on helping Christine get this food on the table. The woman was rock solid—going up with Spike, being such a support and pitching right in when she and her husband could have lorded it over everyone.

“I regret that the salmon’s cold, but it would be dry
if I rebaked it,” Christine told everyone. Spike had insisted she eat with them, just as Mitch always did. If Mitch never came back…

“It’s delicious—all of it,” Mrs. Bonner said. “Salmon is excellent hot and cold.”

“Christine’s a great cook,” Spike said. “And thanks for saying you’d stay and for buying the airplane fuel, sir,” he told Mr. Bonner.

“Mitch was—and I only use the past tense because he chose to leave us for a different life last year—like a son to me, to us. Since I don’t have an heir—”

“He means a son,” Mrs. Bonner interrupted. “We have an heiress, a wonderful, bright daughter in law school who will join the firm next year.”

“Exactly,” Mr. Bonner said with a nod. “Just like Ellie’s father, Cameron Carlisle, who mentored me and took me into the firm when I married his daughter, I had similar hopes for Mitch.”

“That he would marry your girl?” Spike asked, a sourdough biscuit halfway to his mouth.
Iah!
If Christine could have reached him under the table, she would have kicked him.

“At least,” Mr. Bonner said, “we had hopes that our Claire would marry someone who would take an interest in the firm—keep the majority of the control all in the family. When Lisa and Mitch announced their engagement, of course—and then Mitch left—the other was out of the question.”

“That they were even dating,” Vanessa said, “came as a huge surprise to everyone, because they kept it
very sub rosa—secretive,” she added as if Christine and Spike needed a translator.

“I certainly don’t mean to rush anyone,” Christine told them, pushing back her chair and starting to clear dishes, “but we won’t be any good for the search if we don’t get a little rest.”

“Will the sheriff be coming out here, Spike?” Jonas asked. “Or the state patrol you mentioned? If they start asking questions, will you need some counsel around? If I can help you with any of that, just say so. I owe Mitch a lot.”

“I’m going up in the plane again and I’ve got two other guys who fly to search, too. Christine’s in charge here if there’s any questions from the sheriff or troopers.”

She almost dropped the plates she held. No way did she want to be answering any law enforcement questions.

Spike continued. “Still, the law better be looking for them and not wasting time here. See all of you in a few hours. Keep your spirits up. Just like Mitch was a good lawyer, he’s a smart Alaskan, even though he’s not lived here that long.”

Taking a couple of his sister’s homemade sourdough biscuits with him, Spike left to get the plane refueled. When Christine came back in to clear more plates, everyone else was still sitting there until Mrs. Bonner, then Vanessa, jumped up to help her. Though she would have protested that just yesterday, she
nodded her thanks, because once she got everyone in their rooms, she needed to search Mitch’s.

“I can’t believe it!” Lisa cried when she figured out where Mitch intended to cross the river. “Another gorge starts here. This surely isn’t where you said we could get to the other side. Do you have a boat here somewhere? The water’s just as violent here as by the lodge.”

“Not quite. We’re not going through the water, but above it. See?” he added, pointing.

“What? No, I don’t see—Oh. A cable goes from side to side. But we can’t just hang on that.”

“Come on. I’ll show you,” he said, setting out ahead of her again, climbing uphill on a rocky path as they had for the last half hour. “Up ahead, where that cable is tethered, is called a gauging station, a spot where scientists—hydrologists, specifically—used to drop a weighted plumb bob to measure the water’s depth. I heard it was built by a geological survey team but was abandoned for lack of funds. Hunters use it now.”

He kept talking. She could tell he was nervous, too. “It’s like a little ski lift, I guess, with a cable car. At least that’s what I heard from a friend of my uncle’s. I’m just glad I recalled what he said.”

“But that cable—”

“It’s made of braided steel.”

“I don’t care. It sags. It’s old.”

He didn’t answer as they neared the spot where the cable was connected to the gorge, bolted into solid rock on this side and attached to what looked to be
about a ten-foot tower so it would be fairly level. But the so-called cable car was actually a big, aluminum bucket, a bit smaller, but shaped like the gondola baskets that hung under hot-air balloons. It measured maybe two feet by four feet, and its height might come to Lisa’s chest.

“No way!” she told Mitch, and sat down right where she was.

“It’s the only way across for miles. We’ll be over the river in minutes, onto the access road and home quickly.”

“My home is thousands of miles away. I’ll stay here while you go and send help. But I don’t think you should trust it either. I haven’t looked down, but, honestly, I just can’t do it, and it looks like we’d have to cross one at a time. Alone. The weight of one person in there would be scary enough, but two?”

“I’ll test it first with a trial crossing. We can’t send it over empty because it looks like the pulley system will have to be worked by hand to haul it up the last little distance on both sides.”

“Even more than the worry about its condition, I just cannot go in or over this river. It almost killed me—that and whoever pushed me,” she protested.

He came back, dropped the pack and sat down beside her with his knees bent up almost to his chin and his arms linked around his long legs. She thought he would berate her, but his voice was calm and steady, almost seductive.

“So how are you going to handle that when you
get back? Call the sheriff in from Talkeetna and ask him to arrest whom? Pretend to go back to normal, trying to get the senior partner position as if you just fell in? Or do you plan to carefully investigate—try to discover or set up whoever shoved you?”

“You believe me now?”

“I’m just strategizing like I would with a client preparing a defense. Whichever of those paths you take, unless you’re just going to run—and back to where, to the law firm where someone might have tried to kill you? Those are your choices. You and I made a good legal team a couple of times—the Dailey case, then the big casino money-laundering investigation. You cross that river, after I’ve checked out the steel cable and aluminum tram first,” he went on, pointing down at it, “and I’m your sidekick private detective and co-counsel on this attempted homicide investigation. Even if someone ends up claiming they didn’t mean for you to fall in that foaming, freezing river, we’ll know who did it and can find out why. Or maybe we’ll figure out the why first and that will lead us to the perp. It’s possible that the why involves me, too.”

“I’m remembering why you have such a great reputation as a persuasive attorney. But what do you mean it could involve you?”

“Two reasons. One, maybe someone didn’t want us back together to talk things out.”

“About our breaking up? Who cares about that but us?”

“We’re just in the realm of ‘what ifs’ right now.”

“Do you mean someone could be afraid we know about something they did?”

“Or didn’t do. I don’t know. I’m just fishing here again and not even with a corkscrew.”

“Maybe Jonas or Vanessa thought I could sway you to tell the Bonners I’d be their best bet for senior partner. But is that enough motive to try to kill me?”

“I’ve been trying to reason it out, but I’m too exhausted to think straight right now,” he said.

“But you have thought straight. I’ve been agonizing over the
who
and
why,
too, and if I just say I slipped on that ridge above the river it would give us at least a couple of days to investigate what really happened.”

“One drawback here is that the perp would know you’re lying about falling in.”

“We could say I hit my head and couldn’t really recall what happened. We could intimate my memory might come back, then set a trap. But we can’t let him or her get wind that we’re investigating. Once we get back, he or she will be nervous enough we’ve had some time to talk, to reason things out. Mitch,” she said, turning more toward him, “you really do believe that someone pushed me?”

“Despite your love-hate relationship with churning water, I believe you would not jump in. And, even under duress and in pain, you’ve been sure-footed and brave on this trek, so I don’t think you fell.”

“Thank you. Even though we’re not going to be
life partners, I appreciate your advice and your offer,” she said, putting her hand on his arm.

“So do we have a deal? After I test our tram, you will let me send you over to the other side before I join you there?”

She stared into his dark eyes, sharp and steady—stern but sweet. Yes, Mitchell Andrew Braxton had always shown a tenderness, a gentleness beneath his go-for-the-jugular instincts. But that foaming water would be under her, and she was terrified of falling in just like—

“Yes,” she said. “I thought I’d never trust you again after we broke up, but yes. That much is a deal, and I am grateful for your help when we get back.”

She stuck out her trembling hand to shake his. He took it, pulled her close and kissed her cheek. His beard stubble burned her sore skin, and his words and touch seared deep into her heart.