Page 1 of Parker

Chapter 1

Parker

Five-twenty a.m. is anabsurdtime for a flight to leave.

(It’s even worse for a night owl, like me.)

And yet, every time I book a flight to the Lower 48—knowing what I know and who I am—Istillend up booking the earliest one available. Why? Because I live in Alaska, and it takes forever to get anywhere. From two or three months out, it always seems like a good idea.But on the morning of said flight after already traveling from Skagway to Juneau the night before? It feels like a major mistake.

I think Einstein said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different result.

“Maybe I’m insane,” I mutter, stumbling into the Juneau airport at four o’clock in the morning and sleepwalking to the ticket counter to check my bags.

One saving grace of early travel from a relatively small airport is that the security line is nonexistent, and I breeze right through. On the second level, I head to the small café, find a table in the far corner by the windows, and plop down with my backpack and laptop bag.

“Coffee?”

“Dear God, yes,” I say, looking up at the young waitress. “Thank you.”

She flips over the pre-set coffee cup on the table and pours me a cup. “Cream? Sugar?”

“Nope. Black’s good.”

“Need a menu?”

“No, thanks.” It’s too early for me to eat. “Just the coffee.”

“You got it,” she says, sauntering away to fill someone else’s cup.

I sit back in my chair, surveying the sparsely filled café. Since most of the in-state flights leave from downstairs, I assume almost everyone else here, like me, is headed to Seattle.

And from Seattle, I think,to Sin City.

Unzipping the side of my backpack, I pull out my phone and open the browser. I type inAdventure-Seekers Travel Convention Las Vegasand wait for the official website to load.

I think I hear a (loathed) familiar voice in the terminal, and my head whips up, scanning the café first, then the concourse beyond. When I don’t see the freakishly large body and scraggly beard that should accompany said voice, my shoulders, which are bunched around my ears, relax. I had the misfortune of seeing my brother’s best friend, Quinn, on Christmas Eve, and he informed me that he, too, was headed to Vegas for this conference. I try to put that revolting information out of my mind, but now that I’ve remembered, my gag reflex is almost triggered.

Quinn Morgan.

Ugh.

The first and forever bane of my existence.

After another quick scan of the terminal, I remind myself that there are several flights from Juneau to Seattle every day so there’s little chance we’re on the same one. And heck! Maybe I’ll luck out, and Quinn will decide not to attend the conference, after all. I glance down at my phone again, scrolling through the hundreds of participating vendors, grimacing when I note that Morgan E-Bike Rentals is still on the list.

Annoying!I’ve been going to this conference for two years now, and it’s my favorite—

“More coffee?”

I look up. “Yes, please.”

“You headed to Seattle?”

“Yep.”

“Same as those folks over there. They’re visiting their grandson.”

“I’m only connecting there. My final destination is Las Vegas.”