Charon's Landing (39 page)

“Screw them both!”

Jan, with his mysterious errand and his ravings about making oil so repugnant no one would want to use it ever again. Mercer, with his patronizing order to leave Alaska for her own safety. This wasn’t the nineteenth century, and she wasn’t some simpering damsel needing to be rescued. They both acted as if they knew what was best, as if her wishes and her opinion meant nothing. Jesus Christ!

For all practical purposes, Jan had raped her last night. The man who wanted her hand in marriage had forced himself on her with little regard for her feelings at all. She could have been an inflatable doll for all he cared, a masturbatory toy. She’d thought she loved him — his mind and feelings were so similar to hers — but now she saw, for the first time, how different he was. She’d known all along about his ego and self-absorption, but now she saw how driven he was by them. Even thinking about him made her uncomfortable, as if some multilegged insect was crawling across her flesh.

And what of Mercer, with his testosterone-charged assault this morning, guns drawn and orders shouted, as if they were storming some highjacked airliner? And his threatening to arrest everyone on his authority? He should have done it; everyone on the
Hope
was willing to go to jail for their beliefs. This was just another way for him to patronize her. A little slap on the wrist for the trust-fund environmentalist. Be careful, Aggie, she could almost hear his voice. You’re playing with grown-ups now, and we don’t want you to get hurt.

Hey, I’m an adult too, she thought bitterly. I know what I’m doing. A month shy of her thirty-second birthday and he was treating her like a six-year-old. So many men in her life had taken that attitude with her, treated her like some precious object that must be protected at all cost. Her father, especially, had hidden his problems with her mother until it was too late, fearing that a divorce or even a separation would hurt Aggie too much. That was a laugh. Like her mother’s suicide wouldn’t bother her?

And what in the hell did Mercer mean by “I want to be able to say I hate you too, but I can’t”?

To her amazement, Aggie saw her eyes soften in the mirror, the tension in her face easing, and the scowl almost but not quite becoming a smile.

She knew what he meant.

“All right, Dr. Mercer, you’re going to get what you want.” Aggie spoke aloud, steel in her voice. “I’m going to leave. I’m going to leave Jan and Alaska and, most especially, I’m going to leave you. But not before I have my say and put a stop to this silly crush that should have ended years ago.”

When Jan and she had talked about marriage, he had not given her a diamond ring. He’d said that he could not condone the devastation caused by mining and thus would not help the industry by buying into their popularist notion that a diamond signifies a lasting love. The ring he had given her as an engaged-to-be-engaged present was fashioned from antler. It seemed quaint and appropriate for what they both believed. She dug it out of her luggage, its tiny velvet box too elaborate for the simple beige bauble.

“You’re a cheap bastard,” Aggie scoffed and left it on Jan’s desk, the lid open as if the little box was laughing.

She took a shower and dressed, hiding her wet hair under a baseball cap. She packed a few things into a knapsack, ignoring most of the clothing and “essentials” she’d brought with her to Alaska. She’d buy what she needed when she got to San Diego, the home of an old college friend. Aggie just wanted to leave everything behind: Jan, Mercer, PEAL, this whole wasted year of her life. She’d played close to the edge, and it was time to return to normalcy.

Aggie knew the name of Mercer’s hotel from the dinner receipt she’d found in his jacket pocket. She thought about calling him but decided surprise would be much more effective.

MERCER lay against the headboard of his hotel bed, the television bringing him a great college football game between Florida State and Georgia. It was the third quarter, the score only ten to fourteen, both defenses able to thwart numerous well-executed drives just short of field goal range. A beer rested within reach on the nightstand, a thick ring of condensation surrounding the smoky bottle of ale like a medieval moat.

Taking a sip, he flashed a look at his watch and hoped that the rest of the waning afternoon would pass quietly. Since the raid, Mercer hadn’t strayed more than a few feet from his phone, fervently wishing it wouldn’t ring but knowing it would.

He was having
that
feeling again. Something was very wrong. Jan Voerhoven not being aboard the
Hope
was just the most obvious sign, but there were others, things he couldn’t explain, even to himself. Mercer ran through the connections again, the little things that made him so certain. This kind of second-guessing was unnecessary and dangerous, but it was also his nature to keep working at a problem, no matter how easy the solution seemed to be.

It started with tons of liquid nitrogen being smuggled into the state. Why? Who would do it and for what purpose? Second, the most radical environmental group in the world is already in Alaska, its leader missing on some mysterious mission that his girlfriend didn’t know about. Then there was Ivan Kerikov, an international terrorist or, more accurately, a terror broker. A man with no loyalty except to himself but with seemingly unlimited resourcefulness. He was in Alaska, too, with a couple of Arabs. What was their role in all of this?

Now what would a former KGB agent, a couple of Arab henchmen, and an environmental group do with liquid nitrogen on the eve of the opening of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge? The presence of even one of these elements was enough to give pause. But there was more.

Aggie’s disclosure about her father, for one thing. She asserted that Max Johnston knew what time she’d been at his house, the exact moment of a devastating attack that only Harry White’s timely interruption had prevented from turning into a massacre. Was Max connected somehow? Wasn’t it one of his tankers that had been late arriving at the Alyeska Terminal to take on her cargo of Prudhoe Bay crude? Was that even significant?

Mercer shifted on the bed to reach for the phone. He wanted to call Dave Saulman in Miami. He wanted the marine lawyer to give him an update on that tanker. It was a long shot, a potential wild-goose chase, but sometimes wild geese lay golden eggs. His hand was only an inch from the phone when there was a loud knock on his door. He got up, and when he opened the door, he took a quick pace backward. Aggie Johnston wore jeans, a sweater, and her olive anorak. A baseball cap covered her head, tendrils of hair as delicate as silk threads falling down past her ears. She carried his leather jacket under one arm. Behind her angry expression, he saw a deeper emotion, a secret place that she didn’t know existed, for surely she’d have tried to hide it from him. She was hurting, he knew, and scared. Mercer’s heart slammed in his chest.

Her voice was brittle. “I need to say a few things to you.”

“Do you really?” He had to force his voice to remain neutral.

Aggie pushed her way into the room, closing the door behind her. “I just want you to know that I’m leaving Alaska and I’m leaving Jan.”

“Why?” There was an intrigued smile on Mercer’s face.

“Why what? Why am I leaving?”

“No, why are you telling me?” Mercer’s smile deepened as he saw the uncomfortable play of emotions on Aggie’s face. It was clear she hadn’t expected that question.

“I just want to,” Aggie replied, flustered. “I’ve had enough. Enough of Jan with his ego and his condescension and you with your overblown hero act.”

“It’s not an act,” Mercer teased.

“Goddamn it, Philip, is everything a joke to you?” Aggie’s use of his first name surprised him as much as it did her. Suddenly the room was an intimate place charged with something palpable.

“No, Aggie.” His voice took on a tenderness he’d never shown her before. “I don’t think Kerikov is a joke, or your ex-boyfriend. I don’t think the attacks on my house were a joke, or the deaths of Howard Small and his cousins. None of this is a joke. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“And what about us?” Aggie asked so quietly he hardly heard her.

It was his turn to be startled by a question he’d not expected. Before he could respond she turned back to the door, dragging her eyes away from his.

“Never mind,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. It’s all over for me — PEAL, Jan, and even my crush on you.”

She was reaching for the door when Mercer called out her name. He couldn’t let her go and his desire thickened his voice. It was the first time that neither of them was on the defensive. They faced each other not as adversaries but as a man and a woman who were ready to admit a strong attraction, two minds coming together as surely as their two bodies wanted.

Aggie came across the room, stripping off her jacket. She crashed into him with enough force to push him back against the bed, her hands clutching at the sides of his head, pulling his mouth to hers, crushing his lips savagely.

Mercer’s arms circled her body, one hand pulling her T-shirt out from her jeans, the other tracing up the smooth skin of her back to rest against her slim neck. She pulled him tighter to her body as if trying to burrow into his embrace like a frightened animal, yet there was nothing timid about her tongue, which roamed his mouth with slick, velvety strokes.

Their movements were feverish, hands never resting, urged onward by the desire to explore, caress, possess. Without conscious thought, they fell onto the bed, the comforter adding to the sliding movement of their bodies as they pressed against each other, their lips parting only enough to emit low moans and gasps.

“Why?” asked Mercer with reverent curiosity.

“Shut up, this is what we both want.” She grasped his buttocks, pulling him to her.

Aggie’s shirt was tangled up around her throat. She wriggled free for the instant it took to shed the cotton garment. She wore no bra, and Mercer’s glimpse of her breasts brought him to the height of sexual tension. As if willed on their own, his hands could not be denied. One palm found her left breast, cupping it fully, the tips of his fingers extending along the cage of her ribs. Her breasts were small, almost girlish, peaked with tiny flushed nipples no larger than nickels.

He had always been self-conscious about his hands when it came to touching a woman’s body. They were callused and scarred by a lifetime of physical labor, his palms like the horned skin of some desert reptile. His fingers were so hardened that the joints resembled chinks in medieval armor. When his skin raked against Aggie’s breast, she broke the kiss and cried out. Mercer pulled his hand back immediately, fearing that he’d hurt her, but just as quickly Aggie pressed it back with her own, scraping the rough palm against her most sensitive flesh, increasing the tempo in time with her labored breathing.

“Oh, my God,” she managed to squeak into Mercer’s mouth.

Aggie pulled his hand from her chest and guided it to the juncture of her thighs. Even through the layer of denim, Mercer could feel the wet. He tore at the button fly of her jeans with mindless abandon, all thoughts blocked except for his desire. As his fingers worked the fastening, his mouth came in contact with her breast, his tongue washing over it, stiffening its tip until it looked like an overripe raspberry, sweet and alluring. The final button came undone. Her panties were just a soaked wisp of silk, deeply clefted by her arousal.

The phone rang, its chime as intrusive as a church bell.

Never in his life did Mercer want to ignore a call so much, but he knew he couldn’t. He pulled himself off Aggie angrily, looking down at her as the phone purred again. The confusion on her face was the most painful thing Mercer had ever seen. Forcing himself to ignore it, he picked up the receiver. “Hello.”

“Mercer, Mike Collins at the terminal.” Mercer pictured Alyeska’s Chief of Security, the calm watchful eyes of a former cop, the long jagged scar of a former soldier.

“I’ve been expecting your call,” he said bitterly, watching Aggie dressing again, her back to him.

“Andy Lindstrom thought you might. All hell has broken loose. We got some sort of riot at our principal depot in Fairbanks, and all the computers at the terminal are locked out. Andy asked me to give you a call. Since you knew something was going to happen, you got any ideas?”

“I’m on my way over. Have you called the authorities yet?” Mercer watched Aggie struggle into her jacket. She looked at him for a moment and then she was gone, closing the door quietly behind her. Mercer couldn’t stop her, and he realized that she hadn’t wanted him to. Aggie had made her choice, while Mercer had none. He sadly turned his full concentration back to Collins.

“Not yet, at least not about our computer thing. It was the cops who called us about the trouble up in Fairbanks. Seems some sort of protest at the depot’s main gates has gotten out of hand. According to the Fairbanks police, it’s not PEAL but some natives’ rights group, jawing about us swiping sacred land.”

“Don’t worry about the riot. It’s not important.” Mercer had the phone clamped between his shoulder and his head, freeing his hands to lace up his boots. He gave Dick Henna’s personal cellular phone number to Collins. “Call him, tell him who you are, and tell him I want Elmendorf Air Force Base put on alert.”

“Why? You just said the riot in Fairbanks is nothing. Just a bunch of ’skimo lovers getting a little rowdy, is all. I’ve already got some of my security people from farther up the TAPline en route. It’ll be dispersed within a couple of hours.”

“Yeah, but when your men are chasing at shadows, Kerikov is going to make his real attack somewhere else and your security people won’t be near enough to deal with it,” Mercer said sharply. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

There was no sign of Aggie in the parking lot as he fired up his Blazer. And unless he went looking for her later on, he knew he would never see her again. An emptiness formed in the pit of his stomach, though he felt this was probably for the best.

Aggie had waited in the vending machine alcove a few doors down from Mercer’s room. She watched him leave through tear-blurred eyes. Giving back Jan’s ring had been a definitive act of closure, ending their relationship and her affiliation with PEAL. She’d wanted the same from Mercer, a final moment together to satisfy all the questions she had about him and about them. But it hadn’t happened. Once again, they hung in some sort of limbo, neither enemies nor lovers. She knew now that she’d come here to sleep with him and purge herself of her feelings. Because that hadn’t happened, her feelings were even stronger than before. Somehow, by not making love, she’d managed to prolong the possibility of a relationship. But watching him walk down the hall, his purposeful strides carrying him farther and farther away, she felt her chest ache. Tears finally spilled from her eyes.