mirror, Randi couldn't help but note the way her head had drifted companionably onto Jon's shoulder.
So it hadn't been Randi's imagination back in Seattle. Valentina Metrace obviously was not averse to combining business with pleasure, and she was also obviously interested in Smith.
Well, she was more than welcome to the man. But, damn it, did the theoretical "historian" have to be so flagrant about it? And did she always have to go around looking like a James Bond heroine?
Randi glanced down at herself and her comfortably worn jeans and denim jacket and suppressed a soft feminine snort.
As for what Jon felt about it, Randi couldn't tell. But then, that had always been the problem with the man. Smith was one of the very few people Randi had ever met that she couldn't read. She could never be quite sure what was really going on behind those handsome, immobile features.
It had been that way even when he had been saying how sorry he was about her fiance or telling her about Sophia.
One thing she could sense was Smith's wariness. Even with that pleasantly scented seatmate nestled against him, his head was turning with slow, repetitive deliberation, those intent blue eyes moving constantly in a fighter pilot's scan.
Did he know something he hadn't passed on, or was he sensing something? Damn it, what was going on in there?
Maybe it was just the time and environment. If someone wanted to make trouble, now, over the open sea with the Kenai Peninsula and Kodiak Island mere hazy outlines on the horizons fore and aft, would present an excellent opportunity.
Suddenly the turning of Smith's head stopped, and he fixed on something off the port side, like a gun turret locking on target.
"Randi," he said quietly into the lip mike of his headset, "we have traffic paralleling us. Eight o'clock high."
Randi swore at herself for letting her own situational awareness slip. Twisted around in the pilot's seat, she looked down the bearing. There was something out there. A glint of sunlight heliographing off the windshield of another aircraft. "I've got him."
Everyone in the Long Ranger's cabin snapped alert, Valentina straightening up, clear-eyed and in a way that made Randi wonder if she'd been asleep at all. The team looked on as the intruder edged closer, a large, high-winged, single-engined monoplane.
"This is the direct flight path between Anchorage and Kodiak Island," Smyslov commented, playing the devil's advocate. "It is logical there would be other aeroplanes."
"Maybe," Randi replied, "but that looks like a Cessna Turbo Centurion. He has a way higher cruising speed than we do. Why would he be station keeping on us like that?"
"Randi," Smith said, not taking his eyes off the shadowing aircraft, "angle us off the direct bearing to Kodiak."
"Right. Doing it."
She rocked the cyclic, and the Long Ranger paid off onto a slightly divergent course. Half a minute later Smyslov spoke quietly. "He turns with us."
The Russian tightened his seat belt, a combat aviator's instinctive ready alert gesture.
"Again, Randi," Smith's voice sharpened. "Turn away from him!"
She obeyed without question. She snapped the tail of the helicopter toward the Cessna. Veering away to the northwest, she tried to open the range.
The Cessna fell away astern. For over a full minute the sky around the helicopter remained clear. Then the light plane reappeared, crawling back into view half a mile to their left. Accelerating, it climbed into a dominant position off the Long Ranger's port bow, a dark silhouette against the piercing blue sky. Once more it began to sidle closer.
"He must like our company," Valentina Metrace said, removing a small, flat pair of folding sports binoculars from her inside jacket pocket. Popping them open, she focused on their stalker. "The starboard cargo door has been removed," she reported. "There's one pilot aboard and what looks like one passenger kneeling in the open doorway. The registration numbers are November...nine...five...three...seven...foxtrot."
"That's it, then." Smith's voice returned to its usual steady state. "That's the same plane that was parked across from the leasing agency when we picked up the helicopter. Randi, put in a call to the Kodiak Coast Guard base. Tell them we may need some help out here."
"Right." Randi reached up to the overhead communications panel, switching her headset from intercom to radio. "Coast Guard Kodiak, Coast Guard Kodiak, this is Nan one niner six alpha six squawking emergency, squawking emergency, over."
She lifted her finger from the transmit key. Abruptly, electronic ice picks were driven into her ears, her headset filling with a piercing electronic warble.