My Valdez Valentine (An Odds-Are-Good Standalone Romance Book 4) Page 3

  I know a lot of things she doesn’t, so I try to keep my face neutral because I already mentioned avalanches and snow, and I don’t want to scare the shit out of her…but Chugach’s are home to coyote, wolf, moose, and bears. Her dumb-shit brother’s going to be pretty low on the food chain in the mountains. Not to mention, there have been nine avalanches this year in the Chugach’s and Thompson Pass had a high of –8° last night. I also know there haven’t been any emergency calls for help, because I would have volunteered my chopper. That means wherever her brother is, no one even knows he’s missing. She’s the first one to come forward asking for help. None of this bodes especially well for his survival.

  “When did you last hear from him?”

  “Yesterday,” she murmurs, signing her name at the bottom of the form.

  That he’s survived, lost in the Chugach’s for three days, is nothing short of a miracle.

  “That’s a good sign,” I tell her, looking down at the form, which is a wealth of information about the woman in front of me.

  Big surprise, she lives in Los Angeles. She works at a law firm called Tanner, Fillow & DeWitt, which means either she’s a partner or someone in her family is. I’m guessing her daddy’s a big-time attorney and she works at his firm for spending money. Probably lives in a beach house in Malibu and spends her weekends getting spa treatments in Palm Springs.

  “An hour’s five hundred,” I tell her, inflating my prices a little because it’s clear she can afford it.

  “Do you take credit cards?”

  “Yep.”

  She slides a black Amex Centurion card across the counter without blinking.

  I’ve never actually seen one up close but do my best to appear unimpressed.

  “When do we go?” she asks, signing the receipt.

  “Right now.”

  ***

  Addison

  Ad Astra. Helicopter pilot. Blue eyes. Alutiiq. In Valdez.

  And hot, hot, hot. Whew.

  I’m ninety-nine percent sure he’s the guy from the personal ad I read yesterday.

  Scratch that. I’m positive.

  And with his broad shoulders, high cheekbones, and bright blue eyes, I’m also positive that this trip should include some no-strings-attached, skin-on-skin, fucking-’til-we-can’t-see-straight, wet, hot—

  Wait. No. Stop.

  Get a hold of yourself, Addison.

  Yes, it’s a weird coincidence that he’s the guy from the ad. But I need to stay on task. The only thing that matters is finding Elliot.

  Don’t get sidetracked now.

  I left the office yesterday and packed for a week in Alaska as best I could, without the benefit of a shopping spree for sensible cold-weather gear. Kitty made me a reservation for a flight to Valdez last night, but it wasn’t an easy trip. I flew from LA to Seattle, then to Anchorage, and then to Valdez, where I arrived half an hour ago.

  Every time I had a few minutes on the ground, I tried Elliot’s phone, but every call went straight to voice mail. Because I’m fairly certain he’d pick up if he could, I have to assume he can’t…or his battery’s dead. I’m praying for the latter.

  It’s windy as hell as I pull my suitcase behind me, following Gideon on a long, Arctic-cold walk across the Valdez Airport parking lot to a navy-blue van decorated with yellow stars that reads “Ad Astra Heli-Tours” on the side. He unlocks the doors with his key fob, then takes my suitcase, swinging it into the trunk before sliding open the passenger door.

  “We’re not going far,” he tells me. “Just a short drive up the road to my hangar.”

  I sit down in the backseat, looking out the window at the snow-covered mountains that surround the tiny airport. They rise in jagged peaks behind the terminal building and peek through the clouds behind the drab, two-story “Valdez Mancamp” building across the street.

  “What’s a mancamp?” I ask.

  “Cheap hotel,” he tells me.

  “For men only?”

  “Started out that way.” He shrugs. “Wouldn’t be up your alley, I’m guessing.”

  His tone isn’t lost on me.

  He thinks I’m some insipid, pampered priss who’s out here on a fool’s mission, but he has no idea who he’s dealing with or the lengths I will go to in order to find my brother.

  Maybe that’s best for now.

  Because whether he likes it or not, he’s agreed to help me, and we will not part ways until my brother is found, no matter how much it costs in time or money. I need someone to guide me around the area, and—ding ding ding—Gideon Grigoriev, who spoke up when he didn’t have to, is the lucky winner.

  “Can you suggest a place that might be up my alley?”

  “There’s a Best Western in town. It’s probably the nicest.”

  “Maybe you can take me there later?”

  He sighs, and I can almost hear him thinking, I’m not a taxi service, lady. But instead of saying so, he just nods. “Sure.”

  Up ahead, more mountains, with sharp, flint-gray, diamond-headed peeks, seem to block the progress of the road we’re on.

  “Are those the Chugach’s?”

  “Yeah. A portion of ’em,” he says. “Your brother asked to be dropped about thirty minutes to the east of those peaks.”

  “Thirty minutes by air?”

  “Nope. By car. Thompson Pass is accessible via the Richardson Highway,” he says. “Just not today.”

  “Why not?”

  “Big snow yesterday. Three-foot drifts blocking the road. They’re clearing it now. Should be open again by tomorrow.”

  Which means my brother was probably trapped in a blizzard last night. A chill goes down my spine. My God, Elliot, why didn’t you join a tour or find a guide? How fucking stupid can you be?

  Gideon flicks his eyes up, looking at me in the rearview mirror, so I shift my body away, looking out the window.

  Why do you take risks like this?

  Maybe I have a death wish, Ads.

  A conversation from years ago slides through my head, making my heart clench and my empty stomach churn.

  Why, Elliot?

  You know why.

  I can’t remember the last time I cried, and I’m positive it’s only because I’m sleep deprived, hungry, and worried, but a fat, hot tear slides down my cheek. Shocked when I feel it, I reach up and swipe it away, but not fast enough that eagle eyes in the front seat doesn’t notice.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  “Fine.”

  “Big snow happens all the time here,” he says, pulling into a parking lot where a large metal building bears the name and logo of his company. “Couple weeks back, we got eighty-three inches in twenty-four hours. It’s part of life here.”

  Does he think this is reassuring? It’s not. Not at all.

  “Let’s just get going,” I tell him, clenching my fists so that my nails bite into my skin and willing myself not to shed another useless fucking tear.

  I hop out of the van and follow him through a door into a large hangar where two helicopters, painted navy-blue with yellow stars and Gideon’s logo, are stored. He presses a button that opens an oversized garage door on the other side of the hangar, then gestures to the helicopter on the left.

  “We’ll take Agrippina.”

  This makes me double take. “Did you name your helicopter after Agrippina the Younger?”

  He nods at me, the hint of a smile turning up his lips as he locks the door behind us.

  “What’s that one named?” I ask, gesturing to the other helicopter.

  “Guess,” he says.

  I shrug. “Caligula.”

  “You don’t name vessels after men, only after women.”

  “Cleopatra.”

  “No. Penelope.”

  Penelope, who—if my memory of the Iliad serves—was the wife of Odysseus and refused to marry someone else, even when the entire world was certain he was dead.

  I look at Agrippina. “Strength…” I look at Penelope. “…and fidelity
.”

  “Not bad,” he says, positioning a trolley-like device beneath Agrippina.

  “At some point, you’ll have to tell me more about your fascination with all things ‘ancient world.’”

  “Only if you’re lucky,” he says. He gestures through the wide-open door at the tarmac ahead. “How about you wait for me on the helipad?”

  I walk past the helicopter and back outside, watching as he pulls Agrippina behind him on the small trolley. When she’s outside, he closes the hangar door and helps me into the tiny, four-person cockpit. Then he opens the opposite door, hauls his body into the small space, and sits beside me in the captain’s seat.

  “Been in a helicopter before?” he asks.

  “Many times.”

  “Then you know the drill. Buckle your seat belt and put on your headphones. It’s about to get loud.”

  It takes a few minutes for him to do a quick safety check, after which he turns to me.

  “Ready?” he asks over the whirr of the spinning blades.

  I nod. “Let’s go.”

  Up in the sky seconds later, the airport and town of Valdez quickly slide out of view, and I look down on unreal landscape in front and beneath us. Like something out of a science fiction or dystopian movie, the entire world below us is white. All white. Like billows and billows of grounded clouds.

  Mountains are mounds of pristine white snow, totally out of proportion in my sight until I see three black dots moving below.

  “Snowboarders!” yells Gideon.

  The trio of teeny, tiny dark specks are hard to see, harder to follow.

  Fuck. My brother’s somewhere down there.

  Unfortunately, now that I understand the scale involved here, I understand that my hour in a helicopter with Gideon is worthless. There’s no way I’m going to see my brother from up here unless he’s made a massive bonfire, which is impossible with fresh snow and nothing to burn.

  “I can barely see anything,” I say.

  “We’re not quite at Berlin Wall yet,” he says.

  Out the window, the mountains are interchangeable in my eyes—steep, white, and terrifying, they rise to the sky in both mellow and jagged angles, and the only thing that gives them any depth or perception is the road far below that I’ve realized we’re following.

  “Is that the Richardson Highway?”

  Gideon nods.

  I can see what he means about the snowplow crews working to clear it. I think I see a bright-orange snow-removal vehicle moving along slowly beneath us, the road behind him gray, while the landscape ahead of him is totally white. The truck looks like a toy from up here. Like one of the matchbox trucks Elliot played with as a child.

  “That’s Berlin Wall!” Gideon shouts.

  I look to where he’s pointing, to the mostly snow-covered peaks that rise to the clouds. They all look the same. I can’t tell one from another.

  Jagged and rough, flinty rocks at the peaks of the mountains, only half-covered with snow, make the landscape that much more foreboding.

  “Want to land?” he asks.

  “Okay,” I answer, though I don’t know where or how.

  It’s not like there’s a bright blue H indicating a landing pad, like they have on the tops of most LA office buildings. It’s craggy and snowy—harsh, white wilderness to an unforgiving extreme—and for all I know, hidden under the peaceful-looking snow is a hole, or a jagged rock, or the tops of trees.

  How in the hell can he land here?

  Looking down at the spot where I’m assuming he intends to land, it looks way too narrow—a knife-edge of ridgeline that simply isn’t wide enough to hold something as big and heavy as a helicopter. I have a fleeting notion we’ll have to straddle the ridge, the helicopter precariously balanced on it like a seesaw.

  A moment later, when Gideon sets down, I realize how wrong I was. What looked to be no more than two or three feet from the air is more than ample for landing, and I can feel the sureness of the earth beneath us as he sets down. The mismatch between my perception and reality makes me feel disoriented…and it makes me realize that I am totally and completely out of my depth.

  “Do you want to get out and look around?” he asks me.

  Blinking back tears as I look out over the vastness of the Alaskan mountain range that surrounds me, I clench my jaw painfully. This entire journey has been a fool’s errand, except for that now I have a more accurate idea of what I’m up against.

  Somewhere in these mountains, my brother was alive twenty-four hours ago. He called me. I heard his voice. Whether or not he’s still alive remains to be seen, but my twintuition tells me he is, tells me he’s holding on somewhere, a tiny white needle in this massive, all-white haystack, but still…as long as my heart tells me he’s alive, I won’t give up. I’ll keep looking. I just need a better plan.

  “Addison?” prompts Gideon, his voice tinny over the headphones. “Do you want to get out or not?”

  I need to think. I need to research. I need to figure out a better way to find him, and once I do, I need to find the people who can rescue him. And for that, I need sleep and a charged laptop.

  “No,” I tell him. “There’s no point.”

  I turn to him and find Gideon’s beautiful eyes, so icy and clear, looking sorry for me.

  Fuck that, I think, lifting my chin in defiance of his sympathy.

  “As soon as we get back, I’ll need that ride to the Best Western.”

  He nods at me, his expression tight as he lifts us off the mountaintop and flies us back to civilization.

  Chapter 3

  Gideon

  Addison’s hand was like ice when I helped her out of the helicopter back in Valdez, so I walked her to the van, turned on the heat, and told her to wait for me while I got Agrippina situated back in the hangar.

  In a minute, I’ll give her a ride to the Best Western and I guess that’s where our adventure together will end.

  It surprises me to discover I’m sorry about that.

  It goes without saying that the memory of her sweet ass will haunt my dreams into eternity. But more importantly, I think I might have misjudged her.

  (I definitely misjudged her.)

  I’m starting to think that the DeWitt in Tanner, Fillow & DeWitt is all her, because the more I get to know her, the more she doesn’t seem like the type to ride someone else’s coattails. She’s smart, and she’s obviously been well educated, but there was something about watching her face while we were perched up on Berlin Wall that affected me on a gut level.

  I could see it pass over her features—the realization that she’d wildly underestimated the mission of finding her brother—quickly chased by a look of iron-willed determination: she wasn’t anywhere close to giving up on him.

  What astounded me—especially after five mostly horrible years married to my ex-wife, Tamra—was the fact that she didn’t break down into sobs or curse a streak. No dramatics. No falling apart. No recriminations or useless blaming or tantrums. She barely bent, and she didn’t break. She lifted her chin and told me she’d need a ride to the hotel.

  There was something seriously badass about it.

  I’m not wrong about people a whole lot, but I was wrong about her. I decided she was urban and shallow without giving her a chance to show me who she is. Not that I know her very well after a few short conversations and a quick flight, but I’m positive she’s a hell of a lot stronger than she looks.

  After Agrippina is settled, I turn off the hangar lights and lock the door.

  As I walk across the parking lot, back to the van, I have to admit there’s something very intriguing about Addison DeWitt.

  I think it’s this: I sense that she’s still, regardless of all her bling.

  I mean to say that she may look flashy, but I suspect that’s a costume she’s adopted for her role as an LA lawyer. From what I’ve seen so far, she keeps her own council. She doesn’t lean on her wiles, nor on theatrics, and in a situation where she deserves sympathy, she d
oesn’t act out to receive it or even accept it when offered. She loves hard, and her actions prove it. She’s still. And from my experience, still waters run deep.

  Sexy, strong, and deep? Fuck, but that’s a dynamite combination.

  If she was sticking around for a while, I might even make a move on her.

  Since Tamra and I broke up, I’ve been lonely. Wicked lonely. So lonely, in fact, that I recently placed a personal ad in The Odds Are Good, which markets itself as a matchmaking magazine for men from Alaska and women from the Lower 48. I’ve gotten some interesting responses too, though none of them can hold a candle to Addison.

  Those ladies are just words on paper. She’s hot and alive and sitting in my van right this second. I slide into the driver’s seat and close my door.

  “Best Western?”

  She looks up from her phone, her fake green eyes finding my true blue in the rearview mirror. “Yes, thanks.”

  When she doesn’t offer any further conversation, I can’t help asking, “Then what?”

  “I need some sleep,” she says, looking out the window to the right where the Chugach’s rise up behind the airport. “I hate to admit that I’m tired when my brother’s somewhere out there freezing to death, but I’ve been awake for over thirty hours now. If I don’t sleep, I won’t think clearly.”

  See? She’s smart. She’s practical. Qualities I admire in a person.

  “After that, I’ll figure out how to find him. I’ll go to the Valdez Police Station and talk to them.”

  “SAR—that’s Search and Rescue—is headquartered in Palmer. About a four-hour drive from here. But they work exclusively on the request of the Alaska State Troopers.”

  “And where are they located? The troopers?”

  “Locally? You got an office in Cordova and another west of Glennallen.”

  “Which is closest?”

  “Cordova. But it’s not drivable. You could drive a little under three hours to the one outside of Glennallen, though.”

  “I see,” she says, nodding slowly. “I suppose I’ll need to file a report with the Valdez police either way?”