Radclyffe - Homestead

The intercom hissed and the voice of Ron Arnold, the pilot, filled the cabin. “We’ll be on the ground in just a few minutes, Ms. Sutter. Local time is three twenty. Sunny and eighty-nine degrees.”

Clay pressed the intercom button on her seat arm, said, “Thank you,” and buckled her seat belt.

Across the aisle from her, Ella Sorenson, a tall, leggy blonde who might have been a postcard model of the voluptuous Swede, buckled hers and said, “A car is waiting. We’ll be ready to leave as soon as the luggage is off-loaded.”

A former Secret Service agent, Ella was a vast improvement over Manny in terms of security, although much harder to ditch, and she was also the best assistant Clay had ever had. Ella should have been running a division at Sutter Industries, and Clay had told her father that a dozen times in the last five years, but Ella chose to stay on as Clay’s right hand. Ella was the closest thing she had to a friend, other than Millie. They’d never slept together. Ella had a strict rule about not sleeping with colleagues, and Clay had never pushed. Ella was just about the perfect assistant and bodyguard, other than her annoying habit of insisting that Clay keep her phone on at all times. GPS tracking. At least it didn’t have video.

“I’ll need field clothes,” Clay said. “Can you have—”

“Doris is sending up another suitcase and your gear today. Should arrive in the morning.”

“Your efficiency is scary.”

Ella smiled. “I should think by now you’d be immune to my greatness.”

“Nope. Still impressed.”

Ella laughed softly and Clay turned to the view out the window. The rolling hills of eastern New York, an artist’s palette of green splashed across a canvas of brilliant blue sky and rich dark fields, rose to the distant mountains of Vermont. From the air, not much appeared to have changed. Albany crouched along the Hudson across the river from Rensselaer and Troy, its capital complex towering over older neighborhoods of brownstones. Tracts of urban sprawl—developments divided into one- to two-acre lots with McMansions squatting beside unnaturally blue swimming pools and serpentine drives—ringed the city. A few miles farther out, the countryside emerged relatively unscathed. Clusters of small villages that hadn’t changed much in two hundred fifty years lay scattered amidst acres of farmland.

Gazing over some of the richest soil in the Northeast with her engineer’s second sight, Clay imagined the layers of shale and compressed rock deep beneath the surface, containing the pockets of natural gas that waited to be liberated by her drills. Nearly five hundred trillion cubic feet of natural fuel waiting to be harvested—enough to meet the nation’s gas needs for three thousand years at the current rate. Fuel, an essential commodity for an industrialized nation, was as powerful as military might in redistributing the international balance of power. That wasn’t a fact that carried much weight with the people who were opposed to the concept of fracking, or who just wanted to keep industrialization from infringing on the rural landscape, but Clay didn’t plan on making some vague political arguments as to why the locals should welcome NorthAm and her drills. Creating independence from foreign fuel sources would bolster not only the national economy but the local one as well. The influx of money and new jobs was something most people could get behind.

Her father’s goal had always been power and money, and fuel was both. She couldn’t pretend her work wasn’t part of that quest for dominance in the industrial realm, but her company created hundreds if not thousands of jobs and revitalized local economies in areas of the country where poverty had been a way of life for decades. The men and women who poured in to maintain a drilling operation needed housing, food, entertainment, and medical services. Villages that had been little more than ghost towns were suddenly booming. She was proud of that.

The wheels touched down with barely a whisper and the jet slowed to a stop. Clay unbuckled, rose, and stretched. The cockpit door opened and the first officer, Gloria, a tight-bodied short-haired redhead in a well-tailored navy-blue uniform, stepped through. Gloria smiled at Clay. “Enjoy the flight?”

“I did, yes.”

“Plans for dinner?”

Across the aisle Ella closed her iPad, stood, and took her briefcase out of an overhead compartment. She murmured, “Seven a.m. site review.”

“Uh-huh,” Clay said, contemplating inviting Gloria for dinner and perhaps some after-dinner recreation, when Ron exited the cockpit and pushed open the cabin door. A sultry breeze blew in, carrying a wave of nostalgia that catapulted Clay back in time. The pine scent of the forest mixed with the crystalline clarity of the wind off the lake flooded over her, filling her with a longing so intense she reached out to grip the seat beside her to steady herself.

“Everything all right?” Gloria asked with a quizzical look.

“Fine,” Clay said abruptly. The question in Gloria’s eyes changed to surprise and a little bit of hurt, and Clay added quickly, “Sorry. Long day—short night. I’m a little tired. Rain check?”

“Of course.” Gloria’s expression softened. “We’ll be at the Airport Marriott overnight if you change your mind.”

“Thanks.” Gloria and Ron disappeared back into the cockpit to complete their post-flight check, and Clay turned to Ella, who had her cell to her ear. “What’s the plan?”

“The car is coming around now. We’ll get your luggage loaded and—”

“You know what?” Clay said, suddenly unable to face one more hour scheduled by someone else. “You take my things to—where are we going?”

Ella flipped open her iPad, although Clay doubted she actually needed to refer to it. “It looks like Millie has us in a B and B somewhere near the job—the Rice Mansion in…Cambridge? That’s about forty—”

“I know where Cambridge is,” Clay said. What was Millie thinking? “I’ll be there later.”

“Do you want me to arrange for another car—”

“Yes. Wait, no.” Clay grabbed her briefcase and handed it to Ella. “Put this with my luggage, will you.” She took off her suit jacket and handed that over also. “Take this too.”

“All right, but—”

“Don’t worry,” Clay muttered. “I’ll make the meeting.”

“Keep your phone on,” Ella called as Clay brushed by her and took the steps two at a time down the airstairs that had been pushed up against the body of the jet. Ignoring the black company SUV, she hurried the other way into the terminal and over to the information counter.

A matronly woman in her sixties looked up with an open smile and twinkling blue eyes. “Welcome to Albany. Can I help you?”

“You can,” Clay said, leaning on the counter. “Where’s the closest motorcycle dealer?”

Tess listened to the phone ring, unsurprised when the answering machine clicked on. Finding someone home seemed to be a rare occasion these days. She listened to the message, on the verge of hanging up, when the beep to record came on and she suddenly felt like a coward—like history was repeating itself—something she swore she’d never let happen. She took a breath, willed her voice to be steady. “Leslie, I know this is going to seem like a strange request, and you probably don’t even remember me, but this is Tess Rogers and I—”

“Tess!” Leslie sounded out of breath. “Sorry, I was down at the dock when I heard the phone ring. That hill seems to be getting bigger and bigger all the time.” She laughed, sounding the way she had when she was seventeen—full of energy and joy.

Tess’s chest tightened, remembering the last time she’d seen Leslie Harris.

“Hey, Les!” Tess set down the square blue plastic cleaning caddy filled with solutions and paraphernalia and waited while Leslie climbed the narrow dirt path up the hill from the boathouse at the edge of the lake.

“Oh my God, it’s so hot! You want to go swimming?” Leslie pushed blond hair out of her eyes, her smooth, even complexion tanned from a summer spent on the water, or in it. She wore a navy-blue halter top that showed off her lean belly above denim shorts and long tanned legs. She wasn’t even conscious of how attractive she was, and Tess liked her for that. It seemed that all the girls, or most of them, who came to the lake for the summer were beautiful, or wealthy, or, most often, both. Sometimes, Tess felt like the ugly duckling surrounded by swans, even though she knew there was nothing wrong with her. It was just hard not to feel less when she was so different. Leslie never made her feel that way, even though Leslie was the boss’s daughter.

“Sure,” Tess said. “Anything I can do to help you get ready for the party?”

“I think just about everything is all set.” Leslie looked around, probably checking for her parents, and said in a stage whisper, “Except the beer. Mike is taking care of that.”

Leslie reached for one of the mop buckets Tess was about to carry up to the shed in back of the main lodge, and Tess protested. “You don’t have to—”

“I’ve got it.” Leslie grinned at her. “Come on. You’re done for the day, right? I have to get in the water.”

“Just a sec.” Tess took her work list out of the back pocket of her khaki shorts and double-checked her room assignments. She’d done all the single rooms in the lodge first thing in the morning, and the lakeside cabins in the afternoon. Once she’d changed the sheets and towels, washed whatever dishes had been left in the sink, vacuumed, dusted, and cleaned the bathrooms, she’d checked off each room as having been completed. After two months, she was fast and efficient and hardly thought of her job as work.