Chapter 10
One monthlater
Fire Peak Lodgeturned out to be the perfect hideout. In the past month, Charlie had seen no hint of Nick Perini or anyone else nefarious. Also, the manager’s office had a view to die for. Midsummer wildflowers carpeted the southern-facing slope of Fire Peak in shades of rust and violet and sunshine yellow. Charlie could lose herself in that view and imagine her troubles had never existed. On this late June day, the window was propped half open to allow in the pure mountain air, which was spiked with the scent of spruce sap and yarrow flowers.
Divine.
And…divine intervention?
“Say that again, Daddy?”
“Early release, bunny! It’s really happening! They’re calling it compassionate early release because of my emphysema. Next week, I’ll be out!”
She could hardly believe it. After Nick had left town, she’d contacted Gomez at the prison. He’d told her they needed to wait at least until the end of summer thanks to a recent escape attempt by another inmate. She’d decided to stay at Fire Peak Lodge because Nick would assume that she’d skip out as soon as possible. And because she liked it here. But she’d fretted constantly over her father.
His amazing news brought tears to her eyes and made the glorious vista of blueberry bushes and alder groves blur into an Impressionist painting. Was this actually Heaven? Had she crashed Molly’s car on that drive into town and was now, in fact, dead?
She made a sound that was half sob, half cry, and that brought her back to reality.
“I’m going to come pick you up.”
“No, bunny, you’re going to stay where you are. They’re taking me straight to a hospital in an ambulance. You can pick me up from the hospital when they release me, how about that?”
“But I should be with you. I can’t believe it! You’re getting out! Is this really real?”
“My lawyer says it is. She was practically crying at the news. You ever seen a lawyer cry?”
“I’m going to fly down as soon as you say it’s okay.”
“Or maybe I’ll fly to Alaska.”
The idea of her father being surrounded by stunning natural beauty after his long years behind bars brought more tears to her eyes. “That would be amazing. I’ll get you the best suite in the lodge, the one with the view all the way to Ice Falls. Can you call me from the hospital?”
“Will do!” He signed off with his usual, “Chin up, bunny!” and was gone.
Charlie slumped back in her chair. She felt as if she’d just crossed the finish line of a marathon. Her entire life had been shadowed by the fact that her beloved father was in prison. Incredible that after all her scheming and planning, he was just…getting out.
Not because of anything she’d done, even though she’d tried so damn hard. But because he was sick. Because sometimes the system gave you a break.
Her natural wariness surfaced. Was it suspicious that he was getting released even though Gomez had said the prison was on alert?
Stop being paranoid.This is a good thing. Compassionate release was legit, and her dad had already done so much time in prison, he certainly deserved it.
Charlie looked up as April hurried into the office. The owner of the lodge was a slender sixty-six-year-old dynamo who alternated between dashing around the lodge fixing plumbing leaks and meditating in her specially built gazebo. Even though she wore standard Alaska gear—Carhartts, paint-speckled shirt, work boots—she added her own stylish touches. Today she wore earrings made of iridescent blue feathers.
Charlie found April fascinating. Apparently she’d come to Firelight Ridge at the age of eighteen on a gap year between high school and college. April was a genius, in Charlie’s opinion. She’d used her inheritance to build the lodge, against the advice of every financial advisor her family sent to talk her out of it. She’d secured the parcel of land just before the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park was established, and immediately gotten to work getting permits and digging a well and hiring construction crews. Most of the materials had been brought in by helicopter. Charlie had seen the photos; it was an incredible operation. Only a visionary could have seen it through.
Now it was worth millions of dollars.
If April had experienced some tragic heartbreak, as Lila had mentioned, she never spoke about it. Not even to Charlie, who had quickly become her right-hand woman.
“Charlie Santa Lucia, you are a goddess.”
“Excuse me?”
“A fucking goddess.”
Also, April swore a lot. She claimed that the only way to make the old-timers respect her was if she cursed and drank as much as they did. She called it “frontier feminism.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Your new inventory software just saved us fifty thousand bucks. And your new reservations system reduced our double-bookings to zero, which means we no longer have to comp any of those rich-bitch Karens, I mean guests.”
Charlie grinned. April’s love-hate relationship with the lodge’s clientele always amused her. “Then you could comp me. I might need one of those extra-fancy suites later in the summer. My father might come.”
Just saying those words out loud seemed surreal.
“Only full-time staff members get their suites comped. And I mean next year, the year after that, you get the idea.”
“I’m not a long-term commitment type.”
“Oh, save that shit for your relationships. We pay well, it’s basically a summer job, you have to admit you love it here. You should think about it.”
Charlie stretched her arms overhead and breathed in a lungful of sweetly scented air wafting through the window. She did love it here. It often felt like her first chance to stop and breathe in years.
“I could also just book a suite every summer and complain to the manager when there’s no mint under my pillow.”
April snapped her fingers. “That reminds me. One of the cleaners found this near one of the suites. You’re so good at all that electronic shit, thought you might have an idea what it was all about.”
She dropped a small piece of electronics into Charlie’s cupped hand. At a glance, Charlie knew exactly what it was, and it gave her a chill down her spine. “It’s a listening device.”
“Really?” April drew back as if it was a snake. “Is it listening to us right now?”
“I don’t know. Where did she find it?”
“In the corridor outside the Fireweed Suite. It could have been there a while. She found it during the deep cleaning we do every two weeks.”
Charlie opened up the reservations program. Six different parties had stayed in the Fireweed Suite over the past two weeks. They were all long-time guests with no history of causing trouble.
“I can call all these guests and ask if they left any electronics behind. I can play dumb and pretend I don’t know what it is.”
April shook her head. “I don’t want to bother the guests. No one has called about it.”
Charlie looked at her more closely. She got the sense that wasn’t April’s real reason. Did she know more about this than she was letting on?
“Can you find a serial number or something and trace it to whoever purchased it?” April asked.
“That would be a ninja move for sure. But I can guarantee it’s not traceable. The most we could find out would be who manufactured it, and there are only a few options for that anyway.”
“Well, we certainly can’t have it listening to our guests.” April dropped it onto the polished wood floor and ground it under the heel of her boot. Then she tossed it in the trash. So much for learning more about it.
“You’re a woman of action,” Charlie told her.
“When it comes to my lodge, I’m a tiger.” April bared her teeth in a snarl, then smiled cheerfully and hurried off to another of the endless lodge chores.
For the rest of the day, Charlie kept thinking about that bug. Was that device meant for her?
And…was it the only one? Were there more that hadn’t been discovered yet?
It screamed of something Nick Perini would have used. She was certain he had put a tracker on her Buick. And then there were those cameras he’d set up. The man knew his way around spyware.
The lodge only had sixteen suites. As the office manager, she made it her business to know exactly who was checking in, how many were in their party, and their names and addresses. She looked up their photos before they arrived, and then she visually confirmed everyone’s identity because she also worked as the dinner hostess. From six to eight every evening, the lodge served dinner on the expansive covered deck overlooking the mountains. Her job was to show everyone to their tables.
In the early days, she’d braced herself every time the guests gathered in the foyer, waiting for the deck to be opened up for seating. She was fully prepared to duck out if she spotted Nick, and ask a server to replace her.
On the chance that it might not be Nick, but some other investigator hired to replace him, she relied on her comprehensive pre-check-in check-ups.
No one suspicious had ever shown up. So she’d started to relax and enjoy herself here. Crap.
Was Nick back in the neighborhood?