Finally, her parka hood appeared in the snow in front of him.
By the time he reached her, she'd collapsed. Placing the mask over her frostbitten face, he ordered her to breathe. Then he pushed her goggles up on her forehead and watched as her eyes fluttered open. A weak smile curled the corners of her lips. "Are you real?" she croaked.
Joe gave the woman his most charming smile, but it was hidden behind the flap of his down jacket. Even her frostbitten cheeks and nose didn't obliterate her pretty face. "Yeah, I'm real. And you're lucky to be alive."
"I didn't think I'd ever get out of that crevasse," she murmured with her lilting accent "I spent the night there just barely hanging on."
"Can you stand?"
She nodded and he helped her to her feet, holding the oxygen mask over her face. Wrapping her arm around his shoulders, he pulled her toward the plane.
"I owe you my life," she said, gasping for breath as she placed one foot in front of the other.
Joe smiled inwardly, his mind anticipating the reaction he'd get back at the lodge. Both Hawk and Tanner had marveled at his particular talent with women. To the amazement of both of his buddies, he always managed to find himself in the company of the most beautiful women Alaska had to offer. And now he'd done it again, finding a beautiful blonde in a crevasse on the Kahiltna Glacier.
"No problem," he said. "It's my mission in life to rescue damsels in distress."
She stopped to draw a few deep breaths then looked up at him. "I don't know how I can ever repay you."
Joe grinned. He was a lucky man, in more ways than one. "How about dinner? I mean, after you've had a chance to thaw out. I know this nice little place in Talkeetna that serves great pasta."
Perrie Kincaid pulled the collar of her jacket up around her neck and cursed at the cold, unrelenting drizzle. Her eyes scanned the dark street from her spot in the shadow of a deserted building, then came back to the black Mercedes parked next to the loading dock. A bare lightbulb swung slowly in the salt-tanged breeze, sending an eerie wavering light over the battered steel door of the abandoned brick warehouse.
Inside the car, the glow of a cigarette illuminated the profile of the driver. Mad Dog Scanlon. She'd been following Mad Dog's boss so long, Perrie felt as if she and the goon were old friends. She squinted at her watch, then drew a deep breath and cursed again. "Come on, what's taking them so long? It's a simple deal, in and out. All I need is a good look at their faces, just confirmation, and then this story is front-page news."
The smell of salt water surrounded her, drifting inland from the sound with the constant damp that seemed to hang over the city of Seattle in the wintertime. She shifted on her feet and rubbed her hands together, trying to warm her icy fingers. If she had to wait much longer, she might just start to mildew, right along with everything else in this seedy neighborhood.
She should be used to the weather by now. Seattle had been her home ever since she'd left grad school ten years ago. She'd come west, from the University of Chicago, to take a job at the Seattle Star. At first she had written obituaries, then moved up to a job in the Lifestyles section. She'd almost been stuck writing fluff for the rest of her career, when the city desk put out a call for a staff writer.
Perrie had begged Milt Freeman, the city editor, to take her on, to give her a chance with hard news, even though she'd been writing gardening and cooking articles for the previous three years. After a week of constant appeals and a case of his favorite scotch, he had finally relented and offered her the job.
Milt had told her afterward that he'd been worn down by her tenacity-not the scotch-the same tenacity that she'd used to become the Star's top investigative reporter. The same stubborn determination she was drawing on this very minute. A good reporter would long for a hot bath and a warm bed right about now. But Perrie considered herself a great reporter, and she was exactly where she wanted to be. Right in the thick of things.
Perrie Kincaid's byline was hot. She had broken four major stories in Seattle in the past two years, and three of them had been picked up by the national wire services. Her peers in the broadcast industry were in awe of her, unable to snatch even the smallest scoops from under her perceptive gaze. And drizzle or none, she was going to break this story, too.
The seemingly abandoned warehouse was actually the nerve center of a major smuggling ring that dealt in stolen luxury autos, cars that had probably been parked in front of one of Seattle's trendy restaurants just hours before. Once stolen, they were loaded into containers and shipped to the Far East, where they were traded for uncut heroin, which was then loaded on the boat for the return trip to Seattle.
The smuggling ring was only a small part of the story. There had been blackmail and attempted murder. But the part that would nab her the Pulitzer was the trail that led right to the floor of the U.S. Congress, to the dishonorable congressman from the great state of Washington, Evan T. Dearborn.
Somewhere inside the warehouse, Dearborn's chief of staff was meeting with Mad Dog's boss, the man in charge of this little operation, Seattle businessman and resident sleazeball, Tony Riordan. For ten years, Riordan had been living on the edge of the law, always involved in something illegal but careful enough not to get caught-and using the profits from his "business" dealings to buy a politician or two. He'd snagged a big one when he'd snagged Dearborn.
Well, Riordan was about to go down, and he was going to take a whole host of his slimy friends with him, including the congressman. The police had been on Riordan's tail for almost as long as Perrie had. Perrie reached into her pocket and fingered her cell phone. Sooner or later she'd have to call in the cops. But not until she had the final piece of the puzzle, hard evidence that would link the congressman's office to Tony Riordan. And not until her story was in black and white for all to see.
The sound of a car door opening brought her attention back to the Mercedes and she watched as Mad Dog stepped out of the car. With nervous hands, she reached for the camera that was slung over her shoulder, praying the shutter hadn't rusted tight in the two hours she'd been standing in the rain. She pulled off the lens cover, then held the camera up to her eye and focused the telephoto lens on the doorway.
A moment later two figures emerged, flanked by a pair of Tony's hulking bodyguards. Perrie smiled to herself as she recognized Tony and the congressman's chief of staff in the viewfinder. Calmly, she refocused and slid her finger to the shutter. But just as she was about to snap her first photo, the sound of a ringing cell phone fractured the quiet of the night.
Startled, Perrie looked over the top of the camera, wondering who would be calling Riordan at two in the morning. But as the phone rang again, she realized that the group on the loading dock was looking in her direction. The sound was coming from her coat pocket! In a flash, the two goons on the dock pulled guns and all hell broke loose.
Perrie dropped the camera and fumbled for her cell phone just as the first shot whizzed past her head and careened off the building behind her. She slid deeper into the shadows and flipped open the phone, wincing as another bullet hissed a little too close.
"Perrin? Perrin, is that you?"
Perrie groaned at the sound of her mother's voice. "Mom, I can't talk right now. I'll call you back." She ducked her head as another shot hit the brick wall above her.
"Perrie, this will just take a minute."
"Mom, it's two in the morning!"
"Honey, I know you don't sleep soundly and I figured you were up anyway. I just wanted to let you know that Mrs. Wilke's son is coming home for a visit. He's a dentist, you know, and a bachelor. I think it would be nice if-Perrin? Is that a gunshot I heard?"
Perrie cursed out loud, then slowly worked her way along the base of the wall. "Mother, I really can't talk now! I'll call you back in a few minutes." She flipped off the phone, then dialed 911, her fingers trembling.