“I should set Ben straight about the boyfriend thing,” Reece said, taking the phone. “I’ll do it now.”
He was still sprawled out in pajamas, looking soft and warm, like he should’ve been waking up in someone’s arms, not alone on a couch on a would-be kidnapper’s trail.
“Why?” Grayson heard himself say. “You could just tell Mr. Castillo that I haven’t seen Mr. Lane either but that we’ll check the show. We can tell him the rest some other time.”
“You think so?” Reece seemed to brighten. “Yeah, I mean, there are a lot more important things than correcting everyone who thinks we’re boyfriends, right? Who even knows where they get such a wild idea?”
“Who knows,” Grayson said, gaze lingering on Reece.
It had snowed in Vancouver the evening before, delaying flights, and Aisha had opted to head from Toronto to Calgary instead, and then up to Terrace for the night.
She’d caught a few hours’ sleep at a cheap motel, then taken the earliest bus from Terrace to Prince Rupert, head propped against the window as she drank rapidly cooling bus station coffee, watching the darkness rush by until the late winter sun finally rose, lighting the forested mountain landscape in gray.
From the bus station, she’d taken a taxi to the address Jamey had sent. She and Liam had caught the last commercial flight from Seattle to Ketchikan the night before, and Liam had wrangled schedules and favors with his family’s charter until he had one of the floatplanes for that morning.
Now, Aisha was walking across the parking lot of the two-story building that held the offices of a local roofing company and the Prince Rupert hub of Archipelago Air. At the edge of a parking lot was a wooden ramp down to a small dock on the gray waters of the inlet. Two people in rain gear were already down on the dock, smoking in front of a small metal shelter on floats.
Jamey’s last text had been fifty minutes ago, saying the sun was theoretically up even if the rain hadn’t stopped and they were taking off. Aisha stood at the top of the ramp and wrapped her arms around herself, watching the sky. The clouds were low, hiding the tops of the evergreen-covered mountains around her, and even though it wasn’t raining at that moment, the air was wet and cold.
She heard the plane before she saw it, the thrum of the motor that seemed to echo around the landscape. A moment later, the small plane, red and white, appeared, flying just beneath the gray cloud line. She waved up at it and made her way down the dock.
Ten minutes later, the plane was touching down out in the strait, water spraying up around the floats. She waved again, just able to make out someone waving back at her from behind the propeller and windshield as the plane taxied to the dock.
The people in rain gear stepped forward as the plane pulled up to the dock, and a couple minutes later the plane was secured and Liam and Jamey were climbing out.
“I take it back.” Jamey had a flushed, happy grin as she stepped onto the wooden planks, and her eyes were bright. “I’m not joining the Vanguards; I’m quitting everything to move to Alaska, get my pilot’s license, and work for the Lees.”
Liam grinned. He’d switched the long, camel-colored wool coat Aisha had previously seen him in for a puffy parka and winter hat, his look definitely lesspublic relationsand moreAlaskan bush pilot. “Nothing like flying.”
“You are joking, though, right?” Aisha said, reaching out.
“Mostly,” Jamey said, as they hugged hello.
Liam opted to stay behind at the office to handle some paperwork. Jamey and Aisha got another taxi back into town and to the museum, where they were shown around by a friendly woman with a gray bun and giant glasses.
“Ah yes, spawning,” Aisha said, trying to sound knowledgeable as they paused by a display of the life cycle of salmon. “You know, one of our friends just interviewed to work here.”
The woman blinked. “She did?”
“Just a couple days ago.” Jamey’s eyes were on the woman’s face. “Her name is Marie. Curls like me, glasses—sound familiar at all?”
The woman gave them a sweet, confused smile. “Are you sure you have the right museum? We haven’t had an opening in nearly a year. We certainly haven’t done interviews recently.”
Of course they hadn’t. “Well, shoot,” Aisha said lightly, exchanging a look with Jamey. “We must have the wrong place then.”
From the museum, they tried the Alder Inn, where Marie had supposedly stayed. But when Jamey had asked about her friend Marie from Montreal, the front desk man had seemed sincere when he said he hadn’t seen her.
“Are you two staying long?” he’d added, glancing between them. “I’m off work soon and could help you look around. Or we could get drinks instead. I’m sure your friend will eventually turn up; you said she’s pretty too, right?”
Jamey had given him a flat look and they’d left. Thirty minutes later, they were inside the warmth of a local coffeehouse, which overlooked the busy harbor. In these small Pacific Northwest towns, the water sometimes seemed like an extension of the town, its own kind of Main Street. Aisha watched a floatplane take off, parting the tops of the waves under its pontoons until it lifted and took off into the sky.
“Was Marie Pelletier ever here at all?” Jamey sipped her triple shot latte. “Or did someone send that text about the inn from her phone, pretending to be her?”
Aisha shrugged helplessly. She raised her gaze to the forested mountains on the other side of the harbor, like she could see past them and over to Haida Gwaii. “We need to talk about the other possibility.”
Jamey followed her gaze. “We admittedly don’t know much,” she said, “but nothing we’ve heard sounds remotely like this was a corrupted empath.”
“Agreed,” said Aisha. “Marie shouldn’t be in Polaris. But what a fucking hell of a coincidence.”
