Excerpt of Missing Incorporated by Tess Pendergrass

Max Riley adjusted the optical zoom of her digital camera. Her subject telescoped closer across the shallow river valley below. Shaggy hair and several months' growth of beard couldn't hide his arching cheekbones and thin lips, or the faint scar across his nose from a close encounter with some ClassV rapids in SouthAmerica three years before.

Max's pulse pumped up a notch as she clicked a rapid succession of photos from behind her screen of low-lying arctic shrubs, their autumn shades of russet and saffron providing her ample camouflage.

Her quarry knocked his boots against the rough-timbered porch of the valley's small cabin before entering with his morning's catch of rainbow trout and Dolly Varden.

Max edged backward on knees and elbows until she dropped out of the cabin's line of sight, below the ridge.

"What did you see?" Lionel, her assistant, demanded as she scrambled to where he waited with their packs in a stand of spruce trees. His blue eyes flashed with eagerness beneath unkempt black bangs. At twenty-four, he was only five years younger than Max, but sometimes his youthful enthusiasm made her feel ancient.

"Did you see him? Is it Dantell?"

"It's him." Max flicked on the camera's view screen to give Lionel a look.

Lionel's breath hissed through his teeth. "I wouldn't have recognized him if I'd passed him on the street. He looks like shit."

Max took another glance at the tiny figure on her camera screen. He wasn't just shaggy, he was gaunt. Atchison Dantell's overalls sagged on his spare frame. Max guessed he was finding feeding himself off the land a lot harder than trekking the Andes with a world-class film crew or climbing Kilimanjaro with a bevy of local porters to pack his supplies.

He was sticking it out, though. She had to give him that. He'd disappeared into this Alaskan wilderness after his plane crashed nearly four months before, and, as far as she knew, had received only minimal supplies, flown in less than once a month.

"This guy's serious," Lionel said. This was his first

"find," but even the excitement of success couldn't disguise the doubt in his voice. "I don't think he's going to be too happy to see us."

"Probably not." It wouldn't be the first time Max had tracked down a missing person who didn't want to be found. She checked the knife sheath hooked to her belt. She didn't expect violence, but it was best to be prepared.

"I thought he was dead," Lionel admitted, as Max packed her camera into her daypack. "I mean, why would a guy like that run out on the life he had? One of the world's most famous adventure photographers. Heir to a fortune. Did you see that Maserati in his garage? A supermodel wife. I don't get it."

The wife hadn't gotten it, either, Max thought. Yvonne Dantell had displayed more anger than grief when she'd begged for Max's help finding her missing husband, but she'd been certain he was dead.

"Why would he walk out on all of this?" Yvonne had demanded, striding ahead of Max and Lionel through the Dantells'Pacific Heights mansion in San Francisco. Despite the airy feel of the raised ceilings, comfortable oak furniture and Ansel Adams prints, Max estimated the value of the living room's furnishings alone to be worth more than her entire condo.

"Those idiots up in Alaska couldn't find a grizzly bear if it walked up and bit them in the ass." Yvonne had gestured them impatiently toward the leather sofa.

"Maybe there was no body in the plane wreckage, but it's got to be somewhere."

Yvonne had thrown herself into a matching dove gray leather recliner, but her long, slender fingers paced the chair's arms restlessly. "They're telling me that without definitive evidence that he was killed, I might have to wait seven years to have him declared dead. Seven years before Alex can inherit his father's money. Don't they understand that Atch is a man who had everything? He just inherited his father's media empire, for God's sake. He was going to be company president. Could anyone give up all of that?"

Seeing the bitterness frozen into Yvonne Dantell's stunning bone structure, listening to the story of a man about to lose his world-hopping freedom to assume leadership of a company he had by all accounts never shown any interest in, Max began to wonder if maybe someone could. And she had felt the first niggling doubt about Atchison Dantell's death.

"I don't think finding him alive is going to give Mrs. Dantell the closure she was hoping for."

Lionel's voice snapped Max back to the wilds of Alaska, to a cool breeze that filled her suddenly tight lungs with all the expanse of a thousand miles of near-empty mountains.

"I didn't take this on to get closure forYvonne Dantell." She had been about to turn down the search when Yvonne had called in the Dantells' son, Alex. Tall for his twelve years, blond like his mother but with his father's thin nose and wiry frame, the boy's blue eyes had filled with desperate hope when his mother had told him Max was going to look for his father.

Max had told herself the kid would survive not knowing what had happened to his dad. He would survive the wild beating of his heart at every ring of the telephone, every knock at the door, every glimpse of a familiar curve of jaw through a crowd, an expectancy that would last for agonizing years, long after any real hope had died. He would survive the sudden, choking grief that would swamp him when he least expected it — blowing out birthday candles or using his learner's permit for the first time.

Alex Dantell would survive the pity and the guilt, the anger and the bursts of gut-hollowing terror. He would survive it all.

Max had. Without so much as a plane crash for explanation.

Maybe if Alex had been a couple of years older, she could have turned her back on him. Maybe if he hadn't been so open, so eager to help.

The raw love and hope and fear that she'd seen inAlex Dantell's eyes had driven her out into this Alaskan wilderness and now it prevented her from leaving Atchison Dantell to his hardscrabble life in this breathtaking valley.

She could understand his walking away from a loveless marriage, from money, from fame, from a life he didn't want. She couldn't understand, or forgive, his walking away from a son who adored him.

"It's time for a little chat with Mr. Dantell." She led Lionel back up to the top of the ridge, crawling once more to her spot behind the bushes. Smoke curled from the cabin's stovepipe chimney.

"What are we going to do?" Lionel whispered, excitement radiating from him. "Break down his door?"

"I think I'll try knocking," Max said dryly, her own tension under tight control. "You head to the river and wait by his canoe. We don't want him skipping out on us before we get a chance to talk."

"Don't you want me to stick close?" Lionel asked.

"In case he gets angry?"

Max glanced at her assistant. She hadn't hired Lionel for his physical prowess, but for his skill with computers and gadgets. With his tall, skinny frame and wide, slightly myopic gaze, Lionel looked every inch the computer geek.

She knew he ran three or four miles a day and that his minor in marine biology at UC Santa Cruz had sent him scrambling around ocean cliffs studying sea lions, so she had expected him to be able to keep up with her on this trip, trekking over rough terrain. But she had agreed to his accompanying her only because he had his pilot's license.

Normally, she preferred working alone so she would only be responsible for herself. But she'd brought Lionel with her on this search because she'd known they'd need to hire some minuscule, bone-rattling excuse for an airplane to fly them out into the wilderness, and she'd wanted a backup in case the pilot had a heart attack.

So her fear of flying wasn't completely rational — that was why they called it a phobia.

"Atchison Dantell isn't the violent type," she said. He would have a rifle — he was roughing it in the Alaskan wilderness, after all. But she doubted he would use it on another human being. He wasn't a dangerous criminal. But if things did get ugly, she wanted Lionel out of the way. "I'm more worried about him running than shooting. You've got the longest legs. Stay by the boat until I call for you."

Lionel nodded, satisfied. "Roger."

"Let's do it."

Max pushed herself to her feet and started down the ridge toward the cabin, Lionel skidding close at her heels. She wasn't eager for the coming confrontation, but it wasn't fear of Atchison Dantell that bothered her.

The end of the chase, she thought. And regret, too. Not pity for Atchison Dantell, but nagging doubt that the answers she found would give young Alex any more peace of mind than not knowing gave her.

Or maybe it was neither of those things. Maybe it was the thought of returning to San Francisco, to her office and her solitary condo and the two travel articles she had to finish for her freelance day job for the San Francisco Sentinel by the end of next week.

Maybe she had found Atchison Dantell so quickly not because she was such a talented hunter, but because she understood all too well the restlessness that drove him to escape. Maybe she thought too much like her quarry — maybe all the best hunters did.

Lionel struck upriver toward the rocky beach where Dantell had left his canoe. Max strode straight for the cabin's front door.

As she neared the cabin, she braced herself for the possibility that Atchison Dantell had seen her coming and might greet her at the door with rifle in hand. Doubt, fear, second-guessing — they could only hinder her now. Focus and quick thinking were what had kept her alive through dozens of risky encounters in the past.

Her sharp rap on the door brought a crash and grunt from the cabin's interior, confirming that she'd caught Dantell by surprise.

"Hello?" she called out. "Is someone there?" She'd hoped a feminine voice would allay his panic that his hideaway had been discovered, but there was no answer at the door.

"Max!" Lionel's shout turned her toward the river, where Lionel was already in motion, long legs carrying him diagonally across the shrubby meadow away from her. "He's on the move!"

Max dodged around the side of the cabin. Damn! The window. Dantell had a hundred-yard head start on her, maybe fifty on Lionel, heading for the ridge opposite her old lookout.

Max raced after them. Despite his gaunt appearance, Dantell's lifelong conditioning kept him ahead of Lionel as they started up the ridge. Max's shorter stride put her at a disadvantage on the level ground. She hit the slope hard, her breath coming sharp from the sprint and the unfamiliar altitude, but she was used to running up stairs. As her legs pumped the incline, she outpaced the men, gaining ground.

Dantell reached the ridge top first, turning to run along it. Lionel paused at the top and shouted something before following.