If You Loved Me (12 page)

She broke off, realizing she was chattering like a nervous girl. She lifted her head high.

"If this is question period, Gray, tell me what happened to your father's mining claim." His father's death had precipitated Gray's demand that she leave everything and follow him into the wilderness. Mr. MacKenzie had left his personal affairs in chaos, with creditors threatening to foreclose the claim.

Gray shrugged. "Another of my father's empty dreams."

"You never did believe in dreams, did you, Gray?"

His eyes were black, but he didn't answer.

* * *

After their lunch on the beach, Gray's voice through the headphones sounded strange to Emma. When he called the camp by radio after their takeoff, Ed answered and reported that Bob had gone out with the party of students two hours earlier. Meanwhile, Ed had worked his way through some of the people on Gray's list of contacts, but had been unable to reach others.

"I'll keep trying," Ed promised, his voice distorted over the radio.

"Right," agreed Gray. "I'll check with you again in an hour. We're just coming up to Wright Sound."

Emma lost track. One inlet seemed much like another. She knew the Coast Guard helicopter had patrolled this area, and she was beginning to fear they wouldn't find Chris and Jordy. Flying over yet another body of water surrounded by islands and inlets covered by endless dense rain forest, she was increasingly afraid.

She kept glancing at the chart folded in place between her seat and Gray's. Through the windshield, she tried to focus on the distinction between one green tree and another, but the lush growth blurred and she could only pray that if a flash of fluorescent orange appeared, her brain would sort it out from the tangle of trees below.

Ahead of them, two narrow lines of color interrupted the black of the water.

Emma's heart stopped.

"Kayaks," she breathed.

"Wrong color," said Gray, but they did drop down to fly low over the kayakers. One pulled his paddle out of the water and waved to diem. Emma felt the shift in motion of the plane as Gray signaled back by waving his wings.

"A man and a woman," his voice murmured in her ear over the headphones.

She'd seen two shapes in the kayaks and had no idea how he could have told the sex from up here. His eyes were much better than hers at spotting what was below.

What if she missed something important, something out her side of the plane?

At their next contact with Ed, Emma listened with her heart in her mouth "...old Sammy. Been out fishing Grenville Channel. Radio bust, he says. Says he talked to the boys in Klewnugget on the seventh, or it might have been the eighth. They talked about kayaks because Sammy's sister's boy wants one. Two boys. One blonde. One dark. Taking a hike up that mountain, Sammy says, then they were heading for Rupert."

Gray keyed his microphone. "We'll head north as soon as I refuel. Keep working that list, but concentrate on the names from Klewnugget north now. And relay to Coast Guard."

"I already called Coast Guard," said Ed.

"Good work," Gray said, and signed off.

"Where is it?" Emma could hardly speak for the pounding of her heart in her throat. "Where did he see them?"

"Sixty miles north of us." Gray covered her clenched hands with one of his. "It was over a week ago, so take it easy."

When she turned her hand and gripped his, his hard strength seemed to flow into her. "Where do we refuel? You said we'd go there after we refuel."

"Hartley Bay. It won't take long," he promised. Then he added, "We're one step closer. We've narrowed the search area. That means the Coast Guard chopper and anyone else who's looking can concentrate their efforts on a much smaller area. But, Emma, don't count on finding them in Klewnugget."

"Okay," she agreed, but she hugged herself tightly as Gray landed at the village of Hartley Bay. He looked at her sharply when the plane had come to rest beside the fuel float.

"Get out and walk around. Take the thermos and go ashore. See if you can get it filled."

At any other time, she would have found the small First Nations village fascinating. As it was, she could only walk blindly along the float to shore. She found a steaming coffeepot in the general store and returned moments later with the full thermos, just in time to see the covers go on the fuel tanks in the wings of the seaplane. Gray stopped her as she was about to climb back in. He gripped her shoulders with both hands and stared into her eyes.

"Are you okay?"

"Gray, they could still be there. We might find them in Klewnugget Bay."

"Klewnugget is a popular anchorage. The odds are that if there were two kayaks staying in that inlet, they'd have been reported to the Coast Guard ten times over by now. But we'll check, Emma. We'll check everything."

"They were going up the mountain. That's what Ed said, isn't it?" She searched the deep blue of his eyes.

"If they'd gone up the mountain and failed to come back down, someone would have reported the abandoned kayaks on the beach."

Unless they'd hidden the kayaks, she thought. Maybe they'd put them under some trees, in the dense forest. She shivered and tried to let that nightmare go.

"All right?" he asked.

She nodded.

"We'll find them." He searched her eyes before he let her go.

Back in the air, the sky seemed dark as they rounded an island and began the flight up the long narrow Grenville Channel. The mountains rose straight out of the waters of the channel on both sides, and she realized they must be blocking much of the light. The channel narrowed as they flew north. Fierce tidal currents, Gray told her.

"The boys would have come up here when the tide was running north. The current runs up to six knots, so when it turned against them, they would put in to shore and wait."

"Chris would love this country." She had been happy to see her son's love of outdoor challenges transform him from an insecure fourteen year old to a confident young man of seventeen, although she never understood what it was he loved about the wilderness. Now she thought she understood, at least a little. The majestic mountains. The smell of the seductive ocean all around.

Gray pointed to a spot on the chart. "There's Klewnugget, just around the corner ahead, where the channel widens out. It's really two bays, not one."

Flying over the first bay, they spotted two anchored fishing boats. Gray dropped down to fly in a slow sweep over the boats and the beach, and Emma spotted a man throwing a Frisbee to a small child. In the second bay, they found a sailboat in the water, and on shore a deer running toward the trees.

Gray managed to raise the captain of the sailboat on the radio.

"Sorry," said the sailor. "I did hear the overdue report and I've been looking, of course, but I haven't seen any kayaks."

Gray turned the plane and skimmed low over the water.

"We'll have supper before we go on," he said.

He landed on the water and ran the plane up onto the beach where they had seen a man playing with a child. As the plane stopped, Emma could see the man waving from the edge of the trees. He was one of the fishermen. Gray questioned him while Emma found the sandwiches in the pack and poured coffee for Gray and the fisherman.

The fisherman had seen nothing.

Gray poured the last of his coffee out on the sand. "Six o'clock. We can search another hour or two if we camp on the beach somewhere overnight. We'll lose valuable time if we fly back to Stephens Island for the night."

She took his empty cup and pushed it into the pack.

"All right," she agreed. Bears and mountain lions might prowl the beaches at night, but how many people in British Columbia were actually attacked by wild animals? The odds of anything happening had to be pretty slim, and she had Gray to protect her.

He was watching as if waiting for her to change her mind.

"I said it was all right, Gray."

"I have a tent and supplies for breakfast."

"Okay." She was pretty sure a canvas tent would be no obstacle at all to a bear.

"You'll probably hear wolves in the night."

"Right," she muttered. She hadn't thought of wolves. "Anything else?"

"You can sleep in the plane if you'd feel safer. It's uncomfortable, though."

"Stop treating me like a wilderness-challenged fool."

He laughed.

"That's exactly what you're doing." She closed the pack and pushed it into his arms. "I'll do whatever's necessary to find Chris. Stop trying to punish me because I was too scared to follow you into the wilderness eighteen years ago."

"Were you frightened, Emma?"

"Of course I was. What in heaven's name did you think? I was eighteen. Farley Bay might be a small town, but I'd never spent a night outside four walls. Going swimming at the beach was the closest I'd been to the wilderness. And sitting in Paul's car waiting for him to come back with help when we broke down that night."

His gaze swept down to the thrust of her breasts, then seemed to lock on her hands. Her fingers were clenched tightly together. Without thinking, she unlocked them and reached her hand slowly toward him.

"Back off, Emma."

"I wasn't—"

"The day is gone when you can arouse me by looking uncertain and vulnerable. I'd rather shake sense into you than kiss you, so don't offer."

"I was not offering. If you've got some sort of image of me yearning for you all these years, you can think again, I was in love with you a long time ago. I've got another life now, and you're no part of it. I have my medicine, my son, and a wonderful man I'm engaged to. I am
not
looking for a rerun of ancient history. You're wrong thinking I came up here because Chris is your son. I came because you've got a seaplane, because you know this area. No other reason."

Chapter 6

The water seemed dull, almost muddy, as they raced over it to take off. Once they were airborne, Emma realized even the trees had lost their color. Sunset, she thought, but surely the sun wouldn't set this early?

The right wing dipped as Gray turned to fly north along the eastern shore of the channel. Ahead, mountains disappeared into gray sky. Gray reached up to switch channels on the radio and as he adjusted a dial, Emma heard static.

She jerked when he spoke. Reflex, because she hadn't expected the sound.

"What did you say?" she demanded.

He'd been silent ever since they left the beach at Klewnugget Inlet, and she'd been glad of his silence, although she still felt the zing of anger in her veins. How could he be so wrongheaded as to believe she was offering herself?

Living in the bush had cost Gray MacKenzie his reason, leaving him at the mercy of delusions. Like thinking she wanted sex with him. Like believing Chris was
his
son.

"Signal's bad here," he said. "I'm taking us higher."

He must be talking about the radio signal, but she thought he was talking more to himself than to her.

She stared at the ground, knowing he needed to check in with the Coast Guard to learn the status of the search, but also aware that the higher they flew, the less chance they'd spot anything on shore.

Moments later, flying high over the trees, her headphone speakers crackled with the sound of a Coast Guard radio operator reading a weather report. She recognized some of the place names from the charts she'd studied that day.

"Sounds okay," said Gray when the broadcast ended. She saw him glance at the sky to the west. "Winds southeast at fifteen knots. I'd say that's what we've got here." He gave another glance at the western sky before he banked the plane in a wide circle, dropping back down to resume their search.

Twenty minutes later, Emma rubbed at her eyes.

"We'll have to pack it in," said Gray.

"What's wrong?" she asked, but she knew the answer. The light
was
going.

"I don't like the look of the sky," said Gray. "I'm heading back to Stephens Island."

"But you said—"

"There's a storm coming."

"The forecast—"

"Screw the forecast. I can smell the storm coming."

As Gray's little plane rose above the mountain to their west, she wanted to argue, to demand he search on. There'd been no word of a storm in the forecast.

She thought of the baby she'd taken into surgery last week, casualty of a dispute between a taxi and a truckload of logs out of control. As she fought to save the tiny crushed leg, reason argued she'd have all the time she needed for the tricky repair, but in her blood she sensed trouble.

Nobody could have predicted the baby's heart would stop on the table, but she'd been ready for the moment the O.R. became a battleground, with death the enemy.

Gray probably had the same instinct for trouble in the wilderness.

* * *

The storm Gray had predicted grew visibly until the western sky loomed heavy and black, its darkness sucking light from their world. Was Chris down there under those trees?

A drop of rain spun across the windshield. Within moments, rain pounded hard on the metal shell of the plane. Had Chris and Jordy prepared for a storm? Were they protected from lashing rain?