Up Close and Dangerous

  She fought her way back into the shirt, keeping her back turned to him as she buttoned it up. She thought about taking ibuprophen, to hold the fever down so she’d feel more comfortable, but decided against it. The fever wasn’t a serious one; it was just high enough to make her ache, but the heat was one of her body’s weapons against the infection. She could stand a little discomfort while her immune system and the invading bacteria waged war.

  “Drink the rest of the water,” he instructed, pulling out the mouthwash bottle. “No arguments. With a fever, you’ll get seriously dehydrated if you don’t drink.”

  She didn’t argue, instead drinking the water without comment. Dawn was just a couple of hours away; they’d melt more snow then. For now, she wanted to rest, and maybe start feeling a little warmer.

  She curled on her side, tucking her feet closer to her body. Justice began piling more clothes on top of her, until the mound was so heavy she could barely move. Then he put his arm around her waist and pulled her as close against him as she could possibly be, her back to his chest, her butt to his crotch, his thighs cradling hers.

  Spooning was…nice, she thought. And surprisingly warm. She could endure this for a couple of hours…just until sunrise.

  But it was a damn good thing he was injured, and a damn good thing they’d probably be rescued tomorrow, because otherwise her resistance would need some serious reinforcing.

  15

  SETH WINGATE WASN’T AN EARLY RISER, BUT THAT WASN’T a problem the next morning because he hadn’t gone to bed at all. If he’d followed his normal routine he’d have been in one of Seattle’s hottest nightspots around ten-thirty or eleven the night before, then moved on to another one around midnight. He’d pick up a babe somewhere, maybe smoke a little dope, screw her in some semiprivate place if he felt like it, drink a lot, and make it home before dawn to fall asleep on the sofa if he didn’t actually make it to the bed. That was if he’d followed his normal routine—but he didn’t.

  Instead of hitting the clubs he had stayed home. News of the missing plane was an item on all the local stations. A couple of reporters, both print and TV, called and left messages. Tamzin called twice, left messages both times, but he hadn’t returned her calls either. He didn’t want to talk to the stupid bitch; there was no way of knowing what monumentally dumb thing she’d say next. The messages she left on his answering machine were bad enough: “Call me when you get home. How soon can you get our money released? By the way—thank you. I don’t know how you did it, but you’re brilliant!”

  She also sent text messages to his cell phone, which annoyed him even more. Finally he turned off both phones. He’d have to dump the answering machine, get a new one; this one was digital, so even though he could erase her messages, he wasn’t certain some forensic computer geek couldn’t get erased messages from it somehow. Better to be safe than sorry.

  That was a new outlook for him, because “safe” had never been part of his vocabulary.

  Neither had “sober,” but he added it that night. He badly needed a drink, or some dope—something—but he didn’t dare have even one drink to take the edge off. If the authorities, whoever the “authorities” were in this case, came knocking with any questions about his stepmother and the plane crash, he needed all of his wits about him. He had let his temper, and the booze, goad him into doing something stupid. Now he had to walk a very fine line, or his ass would be in deep shit.

  Seth paced through the hours of the night. He walked through his large, expensive condo, staring at everything in it as though it belonged to a stranger. He roamed like a ghost searching for its soul, in and out of rooms, fighting the urge to have a drink and at the same time facing the darkness of his own depths.

  When morning came, he felt thin and insubstantial, as if he were indeed a ghost. He’d never felt less capable of accomplishing anything than he did that morning, but at the same time the need had never been more urgent. He sensed a point of no return yawning at his feet. If he didn’t act now, he didn’t know if he would ever again have the opportunity, or the will to do anything about it.

  When the sky finally lightened, illuminating the beautiful snow-covered peak of Mount Rainier to the southeast, he knew what he had to do.

  First he went into the kitchen to see what he could scare up for breakfast. He seldom ate at the condo, so he didn’t have much available. He found some moldy sliced cheese, which had never been opened, in the refrigerator; he threw it away. There was no bread for toast. He did have some coffee, so he brewed a pot. There was half a box of stale saltines in the cabinet, and an apple that hadn’t quite gone to rot wilting away in a bowl. The apple and the saltines at least filled the empty spot in his queasy stomach, and even settled it. The coffee made him feel less bleary—not completely alert and awake, but less bleary, and that would have to be good enough.

  He showered and shaved, and dressed in the most conservative of his three suits. He had a shitload of casual clothing, club-hopping clothing, sailboat clothing, but he’d spent most of his life avoiding the type of situation where he would need a stuffy business suit, so his selection was limited. His father, on the other hand, had probably owned fifty suits. He wondered what Bailey the Bitch had done with them. Dumped them in the trash, probably.

  He looked at himself in the mirror again, just as he’d done the day before. There were shadows under his eyes and his expression was…strange. That was the only way he could describe it. He didn’t look like himself to his own eyes.

  Then he got in his car and did something he’d sworn he would never do: he drove to Wingate Group headquarters, with all the other lemmings.

  He was rather surprised, and annoyed, to find that he couldn’t get past the security checkpoint because he didn’t have an employee badge. This was an office building, for fuck’s sake, not the White House, or even a post office. When his father had still been alive, Seth had been able to come and go as he wished, though mostly he hadn’t wished at all. He didn’t think he’d been here in…five, six years, maybe longer. He certainly didn’t recognize either of the security guards.

  He looked around as he waited for one of the guards to call W. Grant Siebold, the CEO. When Seth had been growing up, Siebold had been “Uncle Grant” to him, but that had changed. He hadn’t seen or heard from Grant since his father’s funeral, and then the son of a bitch had practically been stuck up Bailey’s ass, he’d stayed so close to her, so Seth hadn’t bothered speaking. With a kind of grim amusement, Seth thought to himself that Grant’s attitude would probably undergo a sea change now that Bailey was no longer in the picture, or controlling all those millions of dollars.

  Finally he was given the go-ahead, a temporary pass that clipped to the breast pocket of his jacket, and directions on how to get to Mr. Siebold’s office—as if he needed directions, considering the office had once been his father’s.

  The layout of the office had changed, though; the elevator opened into a spacious foyer, which widened into a waiting area with several comfortable chairs, lush greenery, a tropical fish tank built into the wall, and a lot of reading material. Evidently people were expected to wait a long time. Guarding this was a strictly professional woman who looked to be in her mid to late forties, whose desk was beside a set of carved double doors. According to the nameplate on her desk, her name was Valerie Madison. He’d never seen her before. The last time he’d seen Grant’s secretary, she’d been a gray-haired, glasses-wearing fifty-something who’d always given him candy. He guessed she was either retired or dead by now.

  “Please have a seat,” Valerie Madison said, lifting the phone. “I’ll let Mr. Siebold’s assistant know you’re here.”

  Oh, so she wasn’t Grant’s secretary? Now the secretary—excuse me, assistant—had a secretary?

  Seth didn’t sit. He watched the bubbles slowly rise in the fish tank, watched the fish swim aimlessly around. They weren’t accomplishing anything, weren’t going anywhere, but they endlessly performed their circuits of the t
ank as if this was their express purpose in life. They were too stupid to even be unhappy.

  Behind him, the assistant’s secretary’s phone gave a discreet little beep. He heard the murmur of her voice, too low for him to make out the words. She replaced the phone, stood, and opened the door. Silently he nodded to her, passed through the doors, and found himself in another outer office. This one was smaller, more comfortable, more like a very tasteful living room than an office. Soft music, some kind of New Age shit, sort of oozed from all four corners of the room. He’d go fucking nuts if he had to listen to that crap all day long.

  The woman sitting at an antique French writing desk, on which perched a curved pedestal supporting a flat-screen Mac, was both a little older and a little rounder than the version outside, but just as businesslike. Her salt-and-pepper hair was wound into a sort of figure eight at the nape of her neck, and her vivid blue eyes were calm and noncommittal. “Please have a seat,” she said. “Mr. Siebold will see you as soon as he’s finished with his present call.”

  He looked for her nameplate, which was an engraved brass bar. Dinah Brown. The name was as no-nonsense as its possessor. He said, “I’ve been trying to think of Grant’s previous secretary’s name.”

  “That would be Eleanor Glades.”

  “Mrs. Glades!” he said, snapping his fingers. “That’s right. She used to give me candy. When did she retire?”

  “She didn’t,” said Dinah Brown. “She died of a massive heart attack, twelve years ago.”

  Twelve years—and he hadn’t known it. Why would he have? But shouldn’t his father have mentioned it, even if his mother hadn’t? The Siebolds had been their close friends, and losing his secretary would have shaken Grant.

  But maybe they had mentioned it, and he simply hadn’t listened. He hadn’t listened to his parents a lot. He had, in fact, raised not listening to an art form.

  “You may go in now,” she said, rising and opening the door for him. “Mr. Siebold, Mr. Wingate to see you.”

  Seth went into the office that had been his father’s—at least he was pretty sure it was the same office. Well, it was in the same location. Everything else had changed too much for him to say it was the same. His father had preferred clean lines, uncluttered surroundings, function before style. His office furniture had been leather. Grant Siebold’s office was decorated in more of the comfortable, stylish but inviting decor that characterized the outer office. The furniture was upholstered. At least the New Age music wasn’t piped in here, too.

  “Seth.” Grant Siebold rose from behind his desk; he was as trim as ever, lean almost to the point of thinness. He’d gone a little bald, and a lot gray. His gaze was shrewd and penetrating. “Have you had any news of Bailey?”

  He was a little taken aback that the older man asked, and even more surprised to detect a note of genuine concern in his voice. For some reason, Seth had assumed that his own dislike of Bailey was universal among his father’s old friends and associates, for his mother’s sake if not for the way Bailey had screwed her way into control of a massive fortune. He knew that, since his father died, socializing with her had screeched to a halt, a circumstance that had given him great pleasure.

  “Nothing,” he said briefly.

  “Terrible thing. I was awake most of the night, hoping to hear something,” Grant said, indicating one of the chairs with a wave of his hand. “Have a seat. Coffee?”

  “Yes, thanks.” Seth thought another shot of caffeine couldn’t hurt. He sat down. “Black.” Grant hadn’t offered to shake hands, an omission that could only be deliberate. In the business world, shaking hands was as automatic as breathing. Seth doubted the gesture hadn’t been made because Grant considered him an old friend, almost like a son; no, the subtle message was that Grant wasn’t happy to see him and didn’t want to extend a hypocritical welcome.

  He waited until the cup of coffee was in his hand and Grant had reseated himself before getting down to business. “Now that Bailey’s dead—”

  “Is she?” asked Grant, his eyebrows rising. “I thought you hadn’t heard anything.”

  “I haven’t. It stands to reason, though. The plane disappeared, and they haven’t shown up anywhere. If there was mechanical trouble and the pilot was able to land the plane at some podunk airstrip, or on a road, in a field—we’d have heard. They’d have radioed in. They haven’t been heard from, so that means the plane crashed, and they’re dead.”

  “A court wouldn’t see it that way,” Grant said in a cool tone. “Until Bailey’s death is confirmed, or a reasonable length of time has lapsed and she’s declared dead, she’s still officially in charge of your trust fund.”

  Seth could see it in Grant’s face: he thought that was why Seth was here, to find out how soon he could take control of his own money, part of which was tied to stock in the Wingate Group. Grant was also one of the trustees of the fund, but only in an advisory capacity; all final decisions had been Bailey’s.

  “She can’t be, if she isn’t here,” Seth said, struggling to keep the temper from his voice.

  “Provisions were made for automatic dispersal, so you don’t have to worry. You’ll still get your allowance.”

  Allowance? The word burned through his mind. He was thirty-five years old, and he was relegated to the same level as a ten-year-old. The indignity had never occurred to him before; he’d seen the trust fund as his rightful inheritance, not an allowance.

  “I want an audit,” he heard himself say. “I want to know how much the bitch siphoned off.”

  “Absolutely none,” Grant barked, his sharp gaze narrowing as his temper rose. “In fact, the fund has had a very healthy growth, thanks to her. Why do you think your father chose her?”

  “Because she screwed him into blind stupidity!” Seth shot back.

  “On the contrary, the whole idea was his from the very beginning! He had to talk her into it, into marriage, the whole—” Grant broke off, shaking his head. “Never mind. If Jim didn’t tell you what his plan was, I certainly won’t, because he knew you better than I ever will. All I’ll say is this: Bailey has taken as much care with your money as she has with her own, and that’s saying something. She’s one of the most careful investors I’ve ever seen, and there hasn’t been a dime taken from the fund other than the monthly disbursements to you and Tamzin.”

  Seth’s attention sharpened and he skipped over everything Grant had said about the money. “Plan? What plan?”

  “Like I said, it’s not my place to tell you. Now, if that’s all—”

  “It isn’t.” Seth stared down at the coffee in his hand, furious that he’d let himself be sidetracked. He hadn’t come here to talk about Bailey, or ask about his money. He hesitated for a moment, trying to think of the best way to approach the subject, but nothing occurred other than just saying it. The necessity galled, but it was now or never.

  “I need a job. I’d like to start learning the business…if there’s an opening.” He hated having to ask; this was his father’s company, he should automatically have a place here, but he himself had deliberately distanced himself from it and there was nothing automatic about it now.

  Grant didn’t immediately respond. He leaned back in his chair, that shark gaze giving nothing away. After a moment he asked, “What kind of job?”

  Seth started to say “Vice president sounds good,” but he bit back the words. He was acutely aware that he was the supplicant here, that he hadn’t built up a supply of goodwill from which he could draw. “Anything,” he finally replied.

  “In that case, you can start tomorrow in the mail room.”

  Seth went cold. Mail room? He hadn’t expected a corner office, but he had expected an office…or at least a cubicle. Hell, in that case, why not make him a janitor? Then he gave a wintry smile as the answer occurred to him. “I suppose the cleaning is done by a professional service, huh?”

  “Exactly. If you’re serious about working here, you’ll take the job seriously, no matter what it is. If y
ou blow it off, if you get here late—or don’t bother showing up at all—then I’ll know you’re just fucking around as usual. My time is valuable. I don’t see any point in wasting any of it on you until you’ve proven it won’t be wasted.”

  “I understand.” Seth hated saying that, hated being in the position of begging, but he’d put himself there; he had no one else to blame. “Thank you.” He put the coffee cup on a table and stood; as Grant had pointed out, his time was valuable.

  “One thing,” Grant said.

  Seth paused, waiting.

  “What brought this on?”

  He gave another wintry smile, this one underlaid with bitterness. “I looked in the mirror.”

  16

  BAILEY PUSHED THE TRASH BAG OF CLOTHING AWAY from the shelter’s opening and began crawling out into the gray morning light. She paused with one hand in the snow, staring at the whiteness around her. “Crap.”

  “What’s wrong?” Justice asked from behind her.

  “It snowed some more,” she growled. “The plane’s covered.” Not completely, but near enough. The snow cover made spotting them from the air even more difficult, even if the mountains weren’t wreathed in misty clouds, which they were. Visibility was no more than fifty yards, max. This latest development was almost like adding insult to injury. Why couldn’t they have a heat wave, a nice warm chinook to melt some of the snow and make waiting for rescue just a tad easier? She was cold, and she wanted to be warm. Her head still ached; her entire body ached. She still had a fever. All she wanted was to be rescued off this damn mountain, and now—more snow. Great.

  She’d fallen into a fitful doze just before dawn. Now the sun was well up, not that she could see it through the clouds, and she had an urgent nature call. So did Justice, and she was torn between the necessity of helping him and the feeling she couldn’t wait that long. Her own urgency won out. “I’ll be right back!” she called, hurrying—as much as she was capable of hurrying—deeper into the trees. When she emerged it was to find he’d managed by himself; he was leaning against a tree, his back to her.