Nadia Nichols - From Out Of The Blue

“Please don’t talk that way.”

“Mom…”

Her mother sat up straighter, preparing to deliver another maternal lecture. “You’re taking Hayden? How will you take care of him? You’ve been so sick, you’re still weak, and he’s such a handful…”

“I’m not weak. I feel lots better—really, I do. But don’t worry, I called Rosa last night from the pay phone in the diner. She’s meeting us at the Seattle airport this evening and she’s agreed to come and stay with Hayden until this is resolved one way or the other.”

Her mother slumped back in her seat with a look of bewilderment. “You decided all this last night?”

“While you were sleeping.” Kate heard the concern in her mother’s voice, but she was resolute. “Our flight leaves at 2:00 p.m. We should be in Bozeman with an hour to spare. You can take Wiggins to the ranch, turn him loose on the mice in the barn and I’ll be home in a week or two.”

“What about infection? You’re so vulnerable right now. Your immune system is practically nonexistent. Flying on a big commercial plane and breathing all those germs…”

“The doctors wouldn’t have released me from the hospital if my blood counts hadn’t been adequate, but I promise I’ll hold my breath on the plane.”

“Couldn’t you just call this man up and ask him to come to Montana?”

“Sure I could, but how will I meet his friends and family that way? How will I see the way he really lives? How will I know what he’s really like unless I see him in his own world?”

Her mother nodded slowly and sighed. “What do you want me to tell your father?”

Kate gripped the wheel tightly and had to work hard to speak the next words without breaking down. “Tell Dad I love him, and I’ll be home soon.”

THE MOOSEWOOD Road House was gearing up for the summer tourism season, but in early June they were still a few weeks away from being all that busy and, best of all, they were located not ten miles from the place where Mitch worked. Kate made reservations from the airport in Anchorage when their flight arrived. The helpful person at the car rental booth told her that the Moosewood was a small place with a number of cabins scattered along the edge of a river valley overlooking the mountains, and a main lodge with a restaurant and bar on the ground floor. It was a little over two hours’ drive from the airport. While Rosa held the sleeping Hayden in her arms, Kate filled out the rental paperwork, got the directions to the roadhouse, and fifteen minutes later they were on their way.

It was still broad daylight at 11:00 p.m., though by the time they arrived at their lodging, twilight had fallen. They were shown to one of the larger two-bedroom cabins, which had a living room, a fireplace, a full bath and a sleeping loft.

Kate was so exhausted she had trouble mustering an obligatory “Wow” when she stood on the porch and looked toward the snowcapped mountains that appeared to glow across the violet-hued distance.

The employee set their bags inside the cabin door. “You’re looking right at Denali. Believe it or not, you can’t see that mountain most of the time. Big as it is, it’s completely hidden in the clouds, but the past few days have been clear. You folks been here before?”

“I passed through once in the middle of a blizzard.”

“Well, you’re in for a real treat. Enjoy your stay and if you need anything, room service or whatever, just call the front desk. We serve in the restaurant until 1:00 a.m. and we open for breakfast at six.”

Hayden barely woke as Rosa changed him into his pajamas and settled him into the queen-size bed in Kate’s room. “I could sleep with him in my room, señora, so you can get a good rest,” she’d offered, but Kate shook her head.

“That’s okay, Rosa. He’s so tired he won’t twitch all night.”

Neither did she. Even the nightmares left her in peace. A mere five hours later, she woke, feeling refreshed, much better than she had in a long time, and even better than that after taking a long hot shower. The sun was already well up when the room service breakfast was delivered. Kate drank her first cup of strong black coffee standing on the porch and staring across a vast, timbered valley toward that gigantic mountain. “Denali,” she murmured, awed by the sheer magnificence of the famed peak.

While Rosa gave Hayden his morning bath, Kate phoned her mother to tell her they’d arrived safely and to give her the name and number of the Moosewood. Then she paid a visit to the office to ask where the Pike’s Creek Road was. The directions were fairly straightforward. “But it gets pretty rough after the first mile,” the desk clerk cautioned.

“How rough?”

“I wouldn’t drive that rental car in there. The rental agencies don’t like their cars being driven on gravel roads.”

“Is there an airport somewhere out there?”

“I don’t think I’d go so far as to call it an airport. There’s a grass strip on the right-hand side just before the road gets really rough. You’ll see where the road forks to the right. That leads to the landing strip. Wally’s Air Charter flies out of there.”

“Oh? Is it any good?”

The clerk hesitated. “I hear the pilot’s great, but the plane’s a derelict. We usually recommend Polar Express out of Talkeetna.”

Kate considered his advice as she returned to the cabin. Hayden had eaten breakfast with Rosa and was complaining about not being able to watch his favorite TV programs because the cabin didn’t have a TV. Rosa turned a practiced deaf ear. She’d grown up without the “one-eyed monster” as she referred to it. She would take him outside, she told Kate, and show him all the small wonders around their cabin.

“Thank you, Rosa. That sounds better than TV any day,” Kate said. “I’ll be back by dark and maybe a whole lot sooner, depending on how things go. You can order room service or eat in the restaurant when you get hungry, whichever you choose. My mom’s phone number is in my bedside drawer if you should need it.”

“Yes, señora.”

“There are lots of books for guests to read in a bookshelf in the living room of the main lodge.”

Rosa smiled, seeing through Kate’s stall tactics. “We’ll be fine, señora. Good luck.”

Luck was something she’d run out of several months ago, but nevertheless Kate was feeling optimistic as she climbed into the rental car. Maybe it was seeing the way the morning sunlight had illuminated the snowfields on Denali’s peak an hour earlier, but she felt as if today might turn out to be pretty good. Maybe this meeting with Mitchell McCray wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe it’d turn out great.

Maybe her luck was about to change.

Ten minutes later, not quite a mile down the gravel road, she felt the steering wheel pull hard to the right and knew before she stopped that she had a flat tire. She got out and stared at it for a moment, then looked down the rutted gravel track that led toward all the answers she was seeking and felt a growing sense of despair. If this was an omen of what those answers would be, she took it as a bad one.

The second bad omen was when she discovered that the rental car didn’t have a spare, and because she already knew that bad things happened in threes, she figured it was only a matter of time before the hammer fell.

MITCHELL MCCRAY hated Mondays. For some reason, Monday seemed to be the day most of the emergency calls came in. The groups that had been flown in to base camp a week or two before would almost always have a member in trouble by Monday and be on the radio to the flying service that abandoned them there, asking for assistance. Begging, sometimes in that desperate and disbelieving way, as if the idea of failure had never occurred to them. As if illness or injury or bad weather had never figured in to any of their carefully thought-out plans.