Up Close and Dangerous Read online

  She fought her way back into the shirt, keeping her back turned to him as she buttoned it up. She thought about taking ibuprophen, to hold the fever down so she’d feel more comfortable, but decided against it. The fever wasn’t a serious one; it was just high enough to make her ache, but the heat was one of her body’s weapons against the infection. She could stand a little discomfort while her immune system and the invading bacteria waged war.

  “Drink the rest of the water,” he instructed, pulling out the mouthwash bottle. “No arguments. With a fever, you’ll get seriously dehydrated if you don’t drink.”

  She didn’t argue, instead drinking the water without comment. Dawn was just a couple of hours away; they’d melt more snow then. For now, she wanted to rest, and maybe start feeling a little warmer.

  She curled on her side, tucking her feet closer to her body. Justice began piling more clothes on top of her, until the mound was so heavy she could barely move. Then he put his arm around her waist and pulled her as close against him as she could possibly be, her back to his chest, her butt to his crotch, his thighs cradling hers.

  Spooning was…nice, she thought. And surprisingly warm. She could endure this for a couple of hours…just until sunrise.

  But it was a damn good thing he was injured, and a damn good thing they’d probably be rescued tomorrow, because otherwise her resistance would need some serious reinforcing.

  15

  SETH WINGATE WASN’T AN EARLY RISER, BUT THAT WASN’T a problem the next morning because he hadn’t gone to bed at all. If he’d followed his normal routine he’d have been in one of Seattle’s hottest nightspots around ten-thirty or eleven the night before, then moved on to another one around midnight. He’d pick up a babe somewhere, maybe smoke a little dope, screw her in some semiprivate place if he felt like it, drink a lot, and make it home before dawn to fall asleep on the sofa if he didn’t actually make it to the bed. That was if he’d followed his normal routine—but he didn’t.

  Instead of hitting the clubs he had stayed home. News of the missing plane was an item on all the local stations. A couple of reporters, both print and TV, called and left messages. Tamzin called twice, left messages both times, but he hadn’t returned her calls either. He didn’t want to talk to the stupid bitch; there was no way of knowing what monumentally dumb thing she’d say next. The messages she left on his answering machine were bad enough: “Call me when you get home. How soon can you get our money released? By the way—thank you. I don’t know how you did it, but you’re brilliant!”

  She also sent text messages to his cell phone, which annoyed him even more. Finally he turned off both phones. He’d have to dump the answering machine, get a new one; this one was digital, so even though he could erase her messages, he wasn’t certain some forensic computer geek couldn’t get erased messages from it somehow. Better to be safe than sorry.

  That was a new outlook for him, because “safe” had never been part of his vocabulary.

  Neither had “sober,” but he added it that night. He badly needed a drink, or some dope—something—but he didn’t dare have even one drink to take the edge off. If the authorities, whoever the “authorities” were in this case, came knocking with any questions about his stepmother and the plane crash, he needed all of his wits about him. He had let his temper, and the booze, goad him into doing something stupid. Now he had to walk a very fine line, or his ass would be in deep shit.

  Seth paced through the hours of the night. He walked through his large, expensive condo, staring at everything in it as though it belonged to a stranger. He roamed like a ghost searching for its soul, in and out of rooms, fighting the urge to have a drink and at the same time facing the darkness of his own depths.

  When morning came, he felt thin and insubstantial, as if he were indeed a ghost. He’d never felt less capable of accomplishing anything than he did that morning, but at the same time the need had never been more urgent. He sensed a point of no return yawning at his feet. If he didn’t act now, he didn’t know if he would ever again have the opportunity, or the will to do anything about it.

  When the sky finally lightened, illuminating the beautiful snow-covered peak of Mount Rainier to the southeast, he knew what he had to do.

  First he went into the kitchen to see what he could scare up for breakfast. He seldom ate at the condo, so he didn’t have much available. He found some moldy sliced cheese, which had never been opened, in the refrigerator; he threw it away. There was no bread for toast. He did have some coffee, so he brewed a pot. There was half a box of stale saltines in the cabinet, and an apple that hadn’t quite gone to rot wilting away in a bowl. The apple and the saltines at least filled the empty spot in his queasy stomach, and even settled it. The coffee made him feel less bleary—not completely alert and awake, but less bleary, and that would have to be good enough.

  He showered and shaved, and dressed in the most conservative of his three suits. He had a shitload of casual clothing, club-hopping clothing, sailboat clothing, but he’d spent most of his life avoiding the type of situation where he would need a stuffy business suit, so his selection was limited. His father, on the other hand, had probably owned fifty suits. He wondered what Bailey the Bitch had done with them. Dumped them in the trash, probably.

  He looked at himself in the mirror again, just as he’d done the day before. There were shadows under his eyes and his expression was…strange. That was the only way he could describe it. He didn’t look like himself to his own eyes.

  Then he got in his car and did something he’d sworn he would never do: he drove to Wingate Group headquarters, with all the other lemmings.

  He was rather surprised, and annoyed, to find that he couldn’t get past the security checkpoint because he didn’t have an employee badge. This was an office building, for fuck’s sake, not the White House, or even a post office. When his father had still been alive, Seth had been able to come and go as he wished, though mostly he hadn’t wished at all. He didn’t think he’d been here in…five, six years, maybe longer. He certainly didn’t recognize either of the security guards.

  He looked around as he waited for one of the guards to call W. Grant Siebold, the CEO. When Seth had been growing up, Siebold had been “Uncle Grant” to him, but that had changed. He hadn’t seen or heard from Grant since his father’s funeral, and then the son of a bitch had practically been stuck up Bailey’s ass, he’d stayed so close to her, so Seth hadn’t bothered speaking. With a kind of grim amusement, Seth thought to himself that Grant’s attitude would probably undergo a sea change now that Bailey was no longer in the picture, or controlling all those millions of dollars.

  Finally he was given the go-ahead, a temporary pass that clipped to the breast pocket of his jacket, and directions on how to get to Mr. Siebold’s office—as if he needed directions, considering the office had once been his father’s.

  The layout of the office had changed, though; the elevator opened into a spacious foyer, which widened into a waiting area with several comfortable chairs, lush greenery, a tropical fish tank built into the wall, and a lot of reading material. Evidently people were expected to wait a long time. Guarding this was a strictly professional woman who looked to be in her mid to late forties, whose desk was beside a set of carved double doors. According to the nameplate on her desk, her name was Valerie Madison. He’d never seen her before. The last time he’d seen Grant’s secretary, she’d been a gray-haired, glasses-wearing fifty-something who’d always given him candy. He guessed she was either retired or dead by now.

  “Please have a seat,” Valerie Madison said, lifting the phone. “I’ll let Mr. Siebold’s assistant know you’re here.”

  Oh, so she wasn’t Grant’s secretary? Now the secretary—excuse me, assistant—had a secretary?

  Seth didn’t sit. He watched the bubbles slowly rise in the fish tank, watched the fish swim aimlessly around. They weren’t accomplishing anything, weren’t going anywhere, but they endlessly performed their circuits of the t