“Irrelevant. He’s my client.”
“Izzy, my stickler, what if you two just happened to…I don’t know…huddle for warmth? What happens in Captivity stays in Captivity.”
“Chuck would hand me my ass if he got wind of any huddling.”
“Hold on.” She heard him tapping keys, and pictured him at his desk, in a tailored shirt, looking like a young Matthew McConaughey. “I just pulled up the Captivity Air website. Which one is…? Oh. My. God.”
Though familiar enough with the website to know what picture Danny had found, Izzy loaded it on her screen. It was an informal shot, taken during a sunny summer month, beside the colorful wood-carved Captivity Air and Freight sign mounted on the front of the building. The picture captured Trace in all his blue-eyed, black-haired, broad-shouldered glory. The fact that he was clean-shaven in the photo only proved that there was a strong jaw and square chin beneath the beard.
“Holy Henry Cavill,” Danny breathed.
“He has a beard now,” Izzy supplied.
“Shut up. What kind of a beard?”
“More than stubble, less than Santa. A bear daddy beard.”
An “Aaaaaah,” sound like a movie moment when Indiana Jones finds the treasure filled her ear, followed by, “Isabelle Marcano, if you don’t climb that mountain while you’re there—climb it, conquer it, plant your flag at the summit—I swear on the ABA Code of Ethics you will get disbarred for being legally insane.”
She smiled, despite herself. “Between the two of us, I pit my sanity against yours any day.”
“Is he there? Can I speak to him?”
“No, and hell no.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know. He’s busy. He collected a bunch of files for me to start due diligence, he took a call, he plowed snow off the runway and checked for ice, he did some mechanical stuff to a plane, and then he snowshoed back up to town to get his truck. I snowshoed too, this morning, from the inn to the airfield, in case you’re interested in what I’ve been up to.”
“I’m more interested in what you ought to be getting up to.”
“Goodbye, Danny.”
“Climb!”
The line went dead. Still smiling, she looked back at the screen of her laptop. Though it was the kind of dry, time-consuming chore only a first-year associate would find interesting, she’d started with the inventory of assets. Chuck wanted Captivity Air to receive top-level expertise from start to finish, and she aimed to give Chuck what he wanted. Also, she could put together the inventory based on her powers of observation, plus a look through the small mountain of files Trace had built up for her on the desk, containing purchase contracts, title documents, or receipts for their planes and other major equipment. Once she created the inventory, she could present it to Trace to review and bless. And then—
“Hey, Captivity, it’s me. I’m 5 miles southwest, 1,000 feet, inbound for landing. Which runway did you plow? Over.”
Izzy swiveled in the chair and stared at the laptop perched on the hunk of equipment on the credenza. The female voice faded, waited, then repeated the information and question, followed by, “Trace? Mad? Anyone? Over.”
The voice seemed to be coming from the computer’s built-in speakers. Izzy touched the mousepad and the screen lit with a view of the runways—maybe from a camera mounted in the crow’s nest. “Um…hello?”
Silence followed. Shoot. Did she have to push something, or speak into something, or—
“Hi. Am I talking to Captivity Air? Over.”
“Yes. Sorry. That’s where I am, but nobody’s here right now.” She glanced at the time display along the top of the laptop screen. “I think Trace will be back soon.” She squinted at the picture on the screen. “It looks to me like both runways are clear, but if you need definitive information right away, I can walk over to the waiting area and look out the window.” She sat back to wait for a response, then realized she’d forgotten to conclude her transmission. She leaned toward the computer and said, “Over.”
“Is this Isabelle? Over.”
“Yep. Yes. That’s me. Over.”
“Oh. This is Bridget, Trace’s sister. I can’t wait to meet you. I’ve heard so much about… Well, actually, I’ve heard next to nothing about you, but I love surprises. Don’t worry about the runway. I have plenty of fuel. I’ll do a flyby and figure it out. Over.”
“Okay.” Flyby? Did that require her to provide some sort of clearance regarding the airspace? “Um…I don’t have any information on air traffic or anything. Over.”
Bridget laughed. “Landing in Captivity the day after a blizzard at the cusp of the off-season is sort of like parking at a football stadium the day after the Super Bowl. It’s wide open. But don’t worry, UNICOM will tell me anything I need to watch out for. Over.”
Her pulse slowed to a more normal pace. “Great. Good.” She took a deep breath. “Over.”
Her nervousness must have transmitted loud and clear because Bridget’s chuckle danced over the speakers. “See you soon, Isabelle. Over and out.”
“Over and out,” she repeated, unsure if that was proper protocol or not. But since she’d have company shortly, she powered down her laptop and slid it, plus a handful of files, into her messenger bag. Then she stood, and nearly gasped. Every muscle in her legs rebelled against being called to action. The short journey around the desk to hang her bag along the back of a guest chair confirmed the soreness and stiffness weren’t just going to be walked off. Gritting her teeth, she stacked the rest of the files on the top of one of the cabinets, grabbed her parka, and headed out to the main room to refill her HH&R water bottle and check the skies for a plane. By the time she made it to the big windows along the rear of the terminal, a little red plane much like the one she’d flown in on followed the curve of the cove, coasted past the airfield, and dipped a wing in what, to Izzy’s eye, looked like a wave. The craft turned, circled, and lined up for a landing on the runway most straight-on to the terminal. Surprisingly, a few minutes later it taxied to a stop practically at the door. Some brisk shutdown procedure followed, and then the cockpit door opened, and an unfairly tall, leggy woman jumped down to the tarmac with casual, loose-limbed grace.
The distance, and a pair of polarized sunglasses, prevented Izzy from scrutinizing features she’d only seen on the website and from identifying family resemblances, but even from many feet away she could tell Trace’s sister could have stepped off a page of one of those sporty, outdoorsy catalogues. If Patagonia, Athletica, and Nike Crossfit had gotten together to design the perfect model for a snug gray turtleneck topped by a shearling-lined black vest and paired with loose-fitting gray camouflage cargo pants—the whole ensemble firmly anchored by thick-soled black boots—it would have been Bridget Shanahan. Especially the pants. She knew from personal experience a woman had to be tall and lean to pull off all those pockets and still look like a runway model instead of a pack mule.