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“Whoa! You do know that’s just a tip. In fact, it’s a tip on top of the twenty percent tip they added to their invoice.”
Amelia shook her head. “Like I said, they’re great. Why don’t you take a couple of hundred of that and treat yourself to a spa day. Put the rest in the safe and we’ll deposit it tomorrow. Anything I should know about?”
“Yeah. There’s a guy—very sketchy on the details—who has an incredibly lucrative job. He’ll deliver the package for you to fly north. All you have to do is deliver it to a set of coordinates outside the town of Otter Cove on the Alaska Peninsula. Someone will be there to pick it up and then you fly back.” She arched an eyebrow. “Honestly, I think ‘sketchy’ is a nice way to put it. He swears it isn’t drugs or anything associated with them. The name of the company is the Phoenix Corp, like in that television show,MacGyver. I checked them out, they’re legit and have offices in Wyoming, Colorado, and up in Alaska.”
“Stolen?”
“He didn’t say either way, but I don’t think so. There was something kind of straight arrow and almost noble about him. I just got the idea that it was something top secret—not necessarily government, but something they don’t want to call attention to.”
“I don’t know, Phoebe.”
“Amelia, he offered three times your normal rate for an up and back. Just you and the package. I didn’t like the idea of you meeting someone we don’t know in an unpopulated area. He’s agreed to provide a parachute to attach to the package. You circle the drop zone, toss the package out the door, the parachute activates automatically, and it floats to the ground. I got him to agree to five times the normal rate. He’ll wire half before they get here as a non-refundable deposit and the balance as soon as you tell him you’re circling the drop zone.”
Amelia grinned at Phoebe. There was a reason she paid Phoebe what she did. The woman literally ran the business side of Midnight Sun Flight Service. Amelia had picked the name as she’d always been fascinated with all things Alaska, and she piloted both passengers and cargo to the area on a regular basis. She had an outstanding reputation for being able to get into and out of isolated locations. She had several standing contracts picking up and delivering cargo to some of the more remote spots all up and down the Pacific Coast from Northern California to Alaska and northernmost Canada—specifically the Northwest and Yukon Territories.
“I changed my mind. Take $300; go somewhere really nice and tip big.”
As usual, Phoebe had negotiated a much better deal than Amelia would have and had set it up so that the risk to her and the plane was minimal.
Phoebe laughed. “For that kind of money, I’ll skip the spa, head to the Steak House at the Silver Reef Casino, have an amazing meal and gamble the night away. The crab they serve is so good and it’s worth it just for the ‘palate cleansers’ between each course.”
She was right. The Silver Reef’s Steak House was an exceptional restaurant and rivaled some of the best in Seattle. “Have fun.” Amelia made a mental note to have a bottle of wine delivered to the table at her expense. “When do I go?”
“That’s the bad part, and part of how I got them to agree to the jacked-up price. They want it delivered tomorrow. They’ll be here at nine to load the package. I said if it looked hinky to you in any way, the deal was off, and they’d forfeit the fifty percent deposit.”
“Damn, girl. You play hardball.”
Phoebe grinned. “That’s what you pay me for.”
It was and they both knew it.
“I think I’ll pick up a black & bleu burger and onion rings at the Horseshoe Café and head home.”
“Yum. If I didn’t have dinner waiting in the crockpot, I’d probably do the same.”
“Do I need to call anyone at the Phoenix Corp to tell them we’re taking the job?”
“Nope. I told them if we weren’t I’d call them this evening. I was pretty sure you’d want the job.”
“Because you know what a money-grubbing bitch I am.”
“No,” Phoebe laughed, “because I figured it was minimum risk with maximum reward and you taught me those were the best jobs. The only thing I worried about was heading up north the day after you got home.”
“Nothing to it,” said Amelia. “One of the reasons I wanted the Beaver was because it’s easy on a pilot to fly. I’ll be fine.”
“Ok. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Phoebe peeled off three one-hundred-dollar bills from the wad Hal had handed Amelia, locked the rest in the safe and headed out to her vintage Volkswagen bug. Amelia called the café, ordered dinner, glanced at her email and then locked up. She stopped to pick up her food before heading to her waterfront condo that had been converted from one of the older mansions that overlooked Bellingham Bay. There were times she daydreamed about buying one of the townhouses or even a single-family home, but with her business, it was far more practical to have a spacious condo where all the maintenance was taken care of.
Amelia picked up her burger and rings, laughing when the hostess handed her two bags.
“The bigger bag has your burger and onion rings. The smaller bag has some onion rings to munch on the way home.”
“God, you guys know me too well.”
The hostess shrugged. “You’re a good customer, Amelia, and you work hard. You know we do deliver, right?”
“It’s bad enough that I don’t cook very often, the least I can do is pick up my own food.”
