CROOKED VALLEY AIRPORT, the sign read. Well, Crooked Alley. The V had fallen off the line of letters spaced along the roof of the squat hangar that passed for a terminal. The Y was on its side, the T just hanging in there. Way out here at the end of the world, if you needed a sign to tell you where you’d wound up, you were crazy lost.
He’d been to plenty middles of nowhere—Marfa in Texas, the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia, Camopi in French Guiana... Like this, they weren’t the kinds of places you happened upon, pit stops on a road trip, derelict stations on a train line. Nope, it took full commitment to get nowhere. For him, in this case: a ride in a rattly legion Peugeot 4WD from his base at Calvi to Bastia, a ferry from Corsica to Nice, a flight to Paris and then Auckland, via Hong Kong. That sucked up the first forty-eight hours of his leave. Then to Christchurch and a two-day wait for a flight over the Southern Alps aboard a five-seater Cessna piloted by a farmer who might have learned to fly in World War II, going by his age and the way he dipped and dived like he was still dodging the Luftwaffe. Just one journey left—a chopper ride to the source of the legendary Awatapu River—and then he was on his own steam.
Cody laid the kayak on the deserted tarmac, grit scraping the hull. Yep, Crooked Valley/Alley was his kind of airport, where the arrival of a plane seemed to baffle the skeleton staff. No baggage carousels—just the cart pulled by a quad bike, driven by the ace pilot himself, once he’d shut down the plane. “Security” was a ninety-year-old unarmed guard in a uniform she might have worn for half a century, shrinking into it every year until it hung off her like a kid’s costume. No gates, no announcements—more a bus stop than an airport.
The helicopter began to descend, surfing the clouds sloshing over the range. Ah, New Zealand. A throwback to the days when the biggest threat to aviation was a Canada goose. One-third the size of home—
One-third the size of Texas. A long time since Texas had been home.
As it neared, the chopper mutated from insect to bird to machine, the blades beating a different note from the engine. An older model Eurocopter. Not the armored, camo-painted Puma or Tigre he usually rode but a tidy little Écureuil. A squirrel. He shaded his eyes as the chopper kissed the tarmac and settled, late-afternoon sun bouncing off the windshield. The rotors slowed until the disc dissolved and the blades became distinguishable—twelve, nine, six, then the regular three as they whined to a stop. What was the pilot’s name again? Cody squinted, trying to picture the address on the confirmation email. Tia, right? Tia Kupa.
The pilot’s door hinged back and he stepped out. No, not he, not with those curves rounding out the tight blue jeans and that thick black hair swaying to her shoulders. She, and one hell of a she.
She swiveled and walked his way, shoving her hands in the pockets of a black leather flight jacket. The kind of woman his mom would call handsome rather than pretty. Statuesque. Square jaw, cut cheekbones, smooth skin a little darker than his own, dark brown freckles splattered across her nose and cheeks. Maybe thirty, so about his age. She had the commanding aura of an officer, someone who quietly assumed she’d be respected, and thus was respected. Māori, he guessed.
“You’re my guy?” She pushed sunglasses off her face and looked him down and up. Her eyes weren’t the brown he’d expected—not that he’d stopped to think about it—but a blazing green, almost hard to look at with the sun striking them. “The kayaker?”
“Yes, ma’am. Tex—I mean Cody.” It felt weird to be that guy again—no one called him Cody anymore. But introducing himself as “Texas” felt off. His commando team had inflicted the nickname on him years ago but he didn’t offer it around.
She assessed his shiny orange kayak, nose to stern. “You might want to ditch the price tag.” She nodded at the ticket attached to a grab loop.
“Yeah. Easier to buy a new kit than transport it.” Not that he needed to explain.
“If you have the money, sure, why not?” There was a bite in her voice. Yep, she had him all figured out. The kind of adventure tourist who bought new gear and chartered a helicopter? He wouldn’t take kindly to that guy, either. But hey, who cared what she thought, as long as she dropped him somewhere remote and deserted. “I’m busting for a wee. Keep an eye on her for me.” She waved vaguely at the chopper.
He looked left and right. Apart from the security guard, who was sitting slumped at a graying bench dragged up against the hangar wall, there was no life for several dead-flat miles. “You expecting a hijacking or a parking ticket?”
“Funny,” she said, her tone indicating it wasn’t. “Don’t go any closer till I get back.”
She flicked her sunglasses onto her nose and walked away, ruffling her hair, her stride lithe and confident. Owning it.
He knelt over his kayak and pulled a water bottle from one of the dry bags stashed in the hull. He’d been crazy thirsty since Hong Kong, like the flight had sucked the water from his body.
“Hey, Cody,” Tia called from the hangar a couple of minutes later. “Give me a hand with these.”
He stowed the bottle and strolled over, the sun warming one side of his face. She waited by a roller door. Two single kayaks were lined up in front of her, faded and scratched, one yellow, one green, paddles balanced on top. As he neared, she nodded at the nose grab loops while she grasped the stern ones.
“It’s not meant to be a group tour,” he said as they lifted. They better not be taking anyone else.
“They’re for a couple of tourists who are climbing the glacier and crossing the peaks before doing the Awatapu. The conventional route.”
Right. Because he hadn’t earned the downriver kayak without first hauling ass uphill? Whatever.
“Glaciers are too slow,” he said, walking. The kayaks were lighter than he’d expected—but then, the climbers would be carrying a lot of their gear. “When are these guys due at the river?”
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
Extra incentive not to mess around. Not that people usually caught up to him on any river, let alone a fast one. They dropped the boats near the chopper and in silent accord returned for his kayak.
“You’ve kayaked before, right?” She knelt before the port skid and began fitting heavy-duty straps to it.
“Yep,” he said, yanking off his boat’s price tag. The elastic gave with a snap that made her head turn. He caught a hint of a smile. He’d taken it off so it wouldn’t flap during the ride, but he stopped short of explaining.
“You know the Awatapu is a grade six? Messy rapids, waterfalls, boulder gardens, sieves that’ll suck you under and keep you forever, snags to lose a battleship in...”
Tremendo. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You know no one does it solo?”
“I do a lot of things solo. I like it that way.” Not quite true. Not a lie. In a parallel life where things hadn’t gone to shit, he’d have been standing here with his brother, racing to be first into her good books and maybe even her bed. In this life, yeah, he was a loner, outside the legion. The shine had gone out of chasing women, like it had a lot of things.
“You know there’s no mobile reception, and no one passes by? These climbers are the only others up there.” Her lips tightened. “The only ones presumed alive.”
“You didn’t think of talking me out of it before I paid you?”
“Hell, no. I need the money. But we’ve already lost four tourists on the river this spring and it’ll be bad for business to lose a fifth. So just...don’t die.” Her tone caught somewhere between dry humor and genuine concern.
“Wait, four tourists? I heard about two, a month or so back.”
“Another couple went missing a fortnight