From Out Of The Blue

“This runway’s closed. Hell, this air base is closed, as is every other airport in the state. Everyone’s holed up for the duration.”

“The duration of what? Are you telling me a little snow and wind shuts down an entire air force base? I have a schedule to keep.”

“Not anymore. Don’t you swabbies listen to the weather report? This Pacific howler’s expected to drop upwards of three feet. Your flight log just ended here, a few miles shy of the arctic circle.” When she didn’t react, he added, “Don’t worry—we’ll get your plane checked out in time for you to catch up on your California sunbathing. I’m pretty skilled with a sledgehammer and chain saw, and the good news is you’ll have time for a drink or two at the Mad Dog while you wait. I’ll even drive you over there myself and introduce you around to the polar bears. They’re kinda cute when they aren’t hungry.”

She followed him into the hangar, where several hissing and sputtering Coleman lanterns provided the only light. “Power’s out and the emergency generator won’t come on line, probably because this is a real emergency,” he explained, slamming the door on the storm. “The lights you saw on the runway were from the plow trucks. We like to provide a little guidance for you lost pilots. Skidder! We got us a pretty little Hornet parked outside that needs to be dragged in here before the drifts get much higher. Both engines flamed out in the final approach and she had a rough landing.”

A hulking giant of a man ambled across the hangar and stared at Kate with that slack-jawed look she’d grown accustomed to over the years. “This the pilot, Major?”

“Skidder, meet Lieutenant K. C. Jones.” Major Mitchell McCray gave her a brash, arrogant grin. “She wants the plane checked over and ready to go ASAP. For some reason, she prefers California sunshine to our Alaskan blizzards, but she hasn’t been to the Mad Dog yet.”

THAT HAD BEEN almost five years ago, but it felt like yesterday. She could still smell the jet fuel and the fresh paint scents of the hangar, feel the sting of the wind-driven snow when he escorted her out to the plow truck to ferry her the blustery mile to the Mad Dog for the promised drink. Only, as it turned out, the Mad Dog Saloon was closed due to the power outage. That didn’t faze Mitch. The saloon owner tossed him the keys on his way out the door along with a brusque, “Lock ’er up when you leave.”

Major McCray fixed her a drink by the soft glow of a kerosene lamp and they huddled near the woodstove in the center of the room for warmth, first sharing flying stories, the way all pilots do, then war stories the way combat pilots do. Then they had another drink and the combined effects of the alcohol, the heat from the stove and the lack of any solid food for the past twelve hours conspired against her. Kate was way beyond being seduced by an arrogant jet jock with a type A personality. She’d long since decided that men had been put on earth solely to hone an intelligent and motivated woman’s desire to prove her equality, and in many cases, her superiority. She’d spent years fighting for every toehold on that precarious Navy ladder, years proving that she was a whole lot better than most of the men who looked down on her, yet she’d nearly thrown it all away in one stormy night with an air force officer in a rustic saloon called the Mad Dog.

For the past four years, she’d tried to forget how easily Mitch had seduced her, but now, standing in the harsh light of the motel, she admitted to herself that, once again, her mother was right. He’d been something else. Five minutes in his company and she’d felt like she never wanted to leave his side. Even before she’d taken the first sip of that drink he’d mixed, she’d been captivated by those dark bedroom eyes, that handsome grin and the masculine strength of him. Years of rigid discipline and unwavering focus had melted away in the heat of that passionate night. While the blizzard piled the snows up outside the Mad Dog and blew drifts beneath the door, the lone kerosene lamp gradually burned itself out, engulfing them in a darkness neither noticed.

She’d spent years trying to forget how he’d made her feel, but the memories could still make her blush. Mitchell McCray had effortlessly threatened a lifetime of dreams and visions and left her scrambling to find solid footing again in a profession that she’d fought so hard to be a part of. She’d landed on her feet after that fall from grace, but only barely. That one night had resulted in a pregnancy that nearly destroyed her career, but the only person she could blame for her actions was herself.

Kate retrieved the cold can of iced tea from the dispenser and started back to the room, stopping abruptly as the world shifted beneath her feet and tipped her off balance. She reached out for a porch post, closed her eyes and leaned against it until the dizziness passed. The fatigue gnawed at her constantly, but the dizzy spells and intermittent stomach pains were something new. She hadn’t been able to swallow more than two small bites of her hamburger, in spite of her mother’s frequent glances across the Formica table in the little diner, while Hayden smeared his fries in ketchup and in a feeding frenzy shoved them into his hungry mouth. “Try to eat,” her mother had said. “You need to keep your strength up.”

This had been so hard on her mother, and it was only going to get worse. What had she been thinking of, agreeing to spend the next two months in Montana? The base doctor had urged her to stay near the Seattle hospital that had been treating her, but her parents had argued that being home would keep her happier and hopefully healthier until that miraculous bone marrow donor came along. But what about Hayden?

What about Hayden!

She straightened, drew a shaky breath and wondered what the letter had said, the one she’d so willfully destroyed. What a fool she’d been. What an arrogant, stubborn, prideful fool. Was Mitchell McCray married now? Did he have a family of his own? Did Hayden have brothers and sisters he’d never met? These were things she needed to find out, and quickly. The bone marrow registry might come through with a good match for her, but thus far the prospects remained bleak. Not many people volunteered to be tested for such a donation unless a friend or family member was stricken.

She needed to get her affairs in order—right away—just in case.

THE NEXT DAY, two hours into the morning’s journey and not a hundred miles from home, Kate finally found the nerve to say to her mother in a quiet voice, so Hayden couldn’t overhear, “Mom, I’ve been thinking about what you said and I’ve decided that you’re right. I need to talk to Mitch. I made some phone calls last night. It turns out he’s no longer in the air force but he’s still in Alaska, flying for an air charter service in a place called Pike’s Creek. Hayden and I have a flight out of Bozeman this afternoon.”

“This afternoon?” her mother exclaimed. “Don’t you think you should go home and see your father first?”

She felt the twist of painful emotions and focused hard on road ahead. “I think the sooner I get this meeting over with, the better.”

“But what if they find a donor? How will we contact you?”

“I’ll give you my phone number so you can reach me, and I promise I’ll call you every night. But I’m not going to hold my breath on a donor coming through. It might not happen, and I could be running out of time.”

“Please don’t talk that way.”

“Mom…”

Her mother sat up straighter, preparing to deliver another maternal lecture. “You’re taking Hayden? How will you take care of him? You’ve been so sick, you’re still weak, and he’s such a handful…”

“I’m not weak. I feel lots better—really, I do. But don’t worry, I called Rosa last night from the pay phone in the diner. She’s meeting us at the Seattle airport this evening and she’s agreed to come and stay with Hayden until this is resolved one way or the other.”

Her mother slumped back in her seat with a look of bewilderment. “You decided all this last night?”

“While you were sleeping.” Kate heard the concern in her mother’s voice, but she was resolute. “Our flight leaves at 2:00 p.m. We should be in Bozeman with an hour to spare. You can take Wiggins to the ranch, turn him loose on the mice in the barn and I’ll be home in a week or two.”

“What about infection? You’re so vulnerable right now. Your immune system is practically nonexistent. Flying on a big commercial plane and breathing all those germs…”

“The doctors wouldn’t have released me from the hospital if my blood counts hadn’t been adequate, but I promise I’ll hold my breath on the plane.”

“Couldn’t you just call this man up and ask him to come to Montana?”

“Sure I could, but how will I meet his friends and family that way? How will I see the way he really lives? How will I know what he’s really like unless I see him in his own world?”

Her mother nodded slowly and sighed. “What do you want me to tell your father?”

Kate gripped the wheel tightly and had to work hard to speak the next words without breaking down. “Tell Dad I love him, and I’ll be home soon.”

THE MOOSEWOOD Road House was gearing up for the summer tourism season, but in early June they were still a few weeks away from being all that busy and, best of all, they were located not ten miles from the place where Mitch worked. Kate made reservations from the airport in Anchorage when their flight arrived. The helpful person at the car rental booth told her that the Moosewood was a small place with a number of cabins scattered along the edge of a river valley overlooking the mountains, and a main lodge with a restaurant and bar on the ground floor. It was a little over two hours’ drive from the airport. While Rosa held the sleeping Hayden in her arms, Kate filled out the rental paperwork, got the directions to the roadhouse, and fifteen minutes later they were on their way.

It was still broad daylight at 11:00 p.m., though by the time they arrived at their lodging, twilight had fallen. They were shown to one of the larger two-bedroom cabins, which had a living room, a fireplace, a full bath and a sleeping loft.

Kate was so exhausted she had trouble mustering an obligatory “Wow” when she stood on the porch and looked toward the snowcapped mountains that appeared to glow across the violet-hued distance.

The employee set their bags inside the cabin door. “You’re looking right at Denali. Believe it or not, you can’t see that mountain most of the time. Big as it is, it’s completely hidden in the clouds, but the past few days have been clear. You folks been here before?”

“I passed through once in the middle of a blizzard.”

“Well, you’re in for a real treat. Enjoy your stay and if you need anything, room service or whatever, just call the front desk. We serve in the restaurant until 1:00 a.m. and we open for breakfast at six.”

Hayden barely woke as Rosa changed him into his pajamas and settled him into the queen-size bed in Kate’s room. “I could sleep with him in my room, señora, so you can get a good rest,” she’d offered, but Kate shook her head.

“That’s okay, Rosa. He’s so tired he won’t twitch all night.”

Neither did she. Even the nightmares left her in peace. A mere five hours later, she woke, feeling refreshed, much better than she had in a long time, and even better than that after taking a long hot shower. The sun was already well up when the room service breakfast was delivered. Kate drank her first cup of strong black coffee standing on the porch and staring across a vast, timbered valley toward that gigantic mountain. “Denali,” she murmured, awed by the sheer magnificence of the famed peak.

While Rosa gave Hayden his morning bath, Kate phoned her mother to tell her they’d arrived safely and to give her the name and number of the Moosewood. Then she paid a visit to the office to ask where the Pike’s Creek Road was. The directions were fairly straightforward. “But it gets pretty rough after the first mile,” the desk clerk cautioned.

“How rough?”

“I wouldn’t drive that rental car in there. The rental agencies don’t like their cars being driven on gravel roads.”

“Is there an airport somewhere out there?”

“I don’t think I’d go so far as to call it an airport. There’s a grass strip on the right-hand side just before the road gets really rough. You’ll see where the road forks to the right. That leads to the landing strip. Wally’s Air Charter flies out of there.”

“Oh? Is it any good?”

The clerk hesitated. “I hear the pilot’s great, but the plane’s a derelict. We usually recommend Polar Express out of Talkeetna.”

Kate considered his advice as she returned to the cabin. Hayden had eaten breakfast with Rosa and was complaining about not being able to watch his favorite TV programs because the cabin didn’t have a TV. Rosa turned a practiced deaf ear. She’d grown up without the “one-eyed monster” as she referred to it. She would take him outside, she told Kate, and show him all the small wonders around their cabin.

“Thank you, Rosa. That sounds better than TV any day,” Kate said. “I’ll be back by dark and maybe a whole lot sooner, depending on how things go. You can order room service or eat in the restaurant when you get hungry, whichever you choose. My mom’s phone number is in my bedside drawer if you should need it.”

“Yes, señora.”

“There are lots of books for guests to read in a bookshelf in the living room of the main lodge.”

Rosa smiled, seeing through Kate’s stall tactics. “We’ll be fine, señora. Good luck.”

Luck was something she’d run out of several months ago, but nevertheless Kate was feeling optimistic as she climbed into the rental car. Maybe it was seeing the way the morning sunlight had illuminated the snowfields on Denali’s peak an hour earlier, but she felt as if today might turn out to be pretty good. Maybe this meeting with Mitchell McCray wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe it’d turn out great.

Maybe her luck was about to change.

Ten minutes later, not quite a mile down the gravel road, she felt the steering wheel pull hard to the right and knew before she stopped that she had a flat tire. She got out and stared at it for a moment, then looked down the rutted gravel track that led toward all the answers she was seeking and felt a growing sense of despair. If this was an omen of what those answers would be, she took it as a bad one.

The second bad omen was when she discovered that the rental car didn’t have a spare, and because she already knew that bad things happened in threes, she figured it was only a matter of time before the hammer fell.

CHAPTER TWO

MITCHELL MCCRAY hated Mondays. For some reason, Monday seemed to be the day most of the emergency calls came in. The groups that had been flown in to base camp a week or two before would almost always have a member in trouble by Monday and be on the radio to the flying service that abandoned them there, asking for assistance. Begging, sometimes in that desperate and disbelieving way, as if the idea of failure had never occurred to them. As if illness or injury or bad weather had never figured in to any of their carefully thought-out plans.

But that wasn’t why he hated Mondays. Mitch hated Mondays because it was written into Wally’s secret code of work ethics: never, ever show up for work on Mondays. And because Wally was the boss, he got away with spending every Monday with Campy, who also had Mondays off and was sexy enough to make any red-blooded man forget that Monday was supposed to be the first day of the work week, not the last day of the weekend.

Therefore, all of Monday’s woes fell on his own shoulders and he never had backup. He also hated Mondays because if there was one day of the week the damn plane malfunctioned it would be on a Monday. Somehow, Wally had infused his own pathetic work ethic into the very rivets of the temperamental flying machine he’d dubbed Babe. What kind of a mechanic/pilot/flying service owner would name a plane after a cartoon pig? Then again, maybe it was a perfect moniker. The old red-and-white Stationair sucked down aviation fuel like a factory-farmed market hog and was about as athletic. It had crash-landed twice, sustained serious structural damage both times and taken additional abuse from several bad hail storms, which was why Wally had been able to buy it so cheap.

Which was also why it was on the ground more often than it was in the air.

In the first two hours of the day, Mitch fielded a radio transmission from a bunch of German climbers who were experiencing second thoughts about one of their companion’s stomach pains. “Ve sinks eet might be heez apindeezeez!” So he assured them he’d be along soon, only to discover, when he tried to fire up Babe, that Wally’s market hog had died at the trough sometime between engine shutdown Sunday night and attempted start-up Monday morning.

Mitch now had to drive all the way into Talkeetna to pick up the part they should have replaced weeks ago, which meant he had to give the German climbers’ rescue over to Polar Express, which meant they’d be the ones to reap the huge gratuity for saving the sick climber from a possibly fatal attack of “apindeezeez” because climbers, especially foreigners, tipped big when they were rescued, which was the only good thing to come out of a Monday.

All of which put him in a very ugly mood when he climbed into his truck and gunned it down the middle of the airstrip toward Pike’s Creek Road, throwing up a rooster tail of gravel and dust and nearly running over Thor, who woke from his fourth boredom nap of the morning just in time to realize he was being left behind. Mitch slammed on the brakes and the big, black wolfish-looking dog leapt effortlessly into the back. He’d ride there all the way to the “big city” and back, yellow eyes staring through the rear sliding window and the windshield, watching intently for moose—a tact that was both his hobby and profession. The brute was good at it, too, especially at night. Whenever he saw one he’d let out a woof that never failed to get the driver’s attention. Thor had saved Mitch’s life many times over. Seeing a dark moose on a dark road in the dark was damn near impossible, and lots of Alaskans had lost their lives because they hadn’t seen it.

He was almost out to the highway when he spotted the little tan-colored sedan with the flat tire. Why the hell anyone would try driving a city car like that on a road like this was beyond him. He slowed down. Who knows? Maybe this was a chance to pick up a few extra bucks and put some gas in the tank. Talkeetna was a long haul if you weren’t a crow, and fuel was damned expensive. He pulled alongside and leaned out his window, sizing up the situation. Rental car. Young slender woman with short dark hair, dressed in blue jeans and a fleece jacket trying to put one of those little scissor jacks under the axle on the opposite side of the car. Couldn’t see what she looked like, but maybe she’d be good-looking enough to turn his day around. A man could always hope.

“Need a hand?” He cut the engine and got out, slamming the truck door behind him. She abandoned her efforts and pushed to her feet to face him as he rounded the front of her car. Recognition struck a hard blow to his solar plexus, stopping him in his tracks. God almighty. K. C. Jones stood in front of him, staring him right in the eye in that proud defiant way, and she was just as dangerously gorgeous as the first time he’d set eyes on her. She’d cut her beautiful long hair, but it was her, all right. He’d thought about her from time to time over the years, more than he liked to think about any woman, but that was because of the way she’d treated him. She was the first woman he’d been intimate with who’d left him without so much as a goodbye.

“I’ll be damned,” he finally managed to say. “You must be one of them fancy naval aviators the government sent north to field-test rental car tires on the Pike’s Creek Road.”

“Hello, Mitch,” she said, cool as the morning. “How are you?”

“Great. You?”

“Fine.”

“Been awhile.”

“Yes, it has.” And then she nodded over his shoulder. “Is that your truck?”

He glanced behind him as if there might be some question. Thor was standing on the diamond-plate toolbox that spanned the bed behind the cab, ears at attention and eyes fixed on K. C. Jones. “No. It belongs to Thor. The dog. But he lets me drive it,” he said, wishing the rust spots weren’t so big and numerous. “Good to see you, by the way. What’s it been, four, five years? What brings you this far north?”

She gave him a small smile. “I had some time off and thought I’d see what Alaska looks like without any snow on it.”

“So it’s just a coincidence that you happened to be driving down this particular road when you got a flat?”

“Not exactly. I was coming to see you.” After an awkward pause, during which she had the decency to blush, she added, “I’m sorry, I know you must be busy. You were driving somewhere in a big hurry. I probably should’ve called first but…”

“Not a problem,” Mitch assured her. “I figured you’d show up sooner or later.”

“You did? Why?”

“To apologize for not saying goodbye when you left Eielson.” Her blush deepened. Good. At least she hadn’t forgotten that part. “I’m on my way to pick up a part for Babe in Talkeetna. I’ll fix the flat on your rental car, then if you want, I’ll take you out for lunch.”

“The rental doesn’t have a spare,” she said. “I discovered that just before you arrived. But lunch sounds fine. It’ll give us a chance to talk.”

Mitch removed her flat tire in minutes, threw it in the back of the truck to drop off at the local gas station, and in minutes they were on their way.

She’d said she wanted to talk and he was kind of curious to find out why she’d shown up from out of the blue after four plus years, especially since she’d never answered his letter, but several miles passed without her saying a word. The silence between them soon became the loudest thing he’d ever heard. He figured it was up to him to jump-start this conversation.

“So, how long have you been in Alaska?”

“I just arrived last night.” She gave him a questioning glance. “Who’s Babe?”

“Babe’s the only plane owned by Wally’s Air Charter at the moment, but I have my eye on another.”

“I heard you left the air force.”

“Yeah. It was time. I started out on the career track, same as you, but I lost my enthusiasm for military life after they tried to court-martial me.” Her eyes bore into him with such a peculiar look, he nearly drove off the highway, but he wrenched the wheel and managed to keep all four tires on the asphalt. “I wrote you right after it was over. The trial was short because they didn’t have much of a case, but when the time came to reenlist, I didn’t. No regrets.”

“I see.” She sat through another endless five-mile silence before asking, “How do you like flying for an air charter?”

“The flying’s great, but business is iffy. Wally’s a good mechanic—he specialized in airframe and power plant in the military—but trying to keep Babe in the air is costing us more than it’s worth. I should be flying out to the mountain to pick up a sick German climber but instead I’m driving to Talkeetna to pick up another airplane part. Which means no groceries this week.”

Six more miles of silence slipped past before she said, “Do you have a family?”

Didn’t everyone? “Yeah. Three brothers, two younger, one older; a baby sister; and my dad. My mother died of cancer a few years back. They all stayed put in Maine. I’m the only escapee.”

This time the silence was brief. “What I meant was, are you married?”

This wasn’t quite the conversation he’d thought they’d be having. “Huh?”

“Wife, kids?”

“Happily divorced for six years, no kids.” Four more miles of silence went by. With the tension screaming around the cab of the truck, he decided they were the longest four miles he’d ever traveled. He was beginning to regret asking her to come along. Why was she here anyway? “You married?” he finally asked.

“No.”