Northern Lights

by Nora Roberts

  climbing again.

  Maybe we should ease off the speed, but a couple of pops gives you a nice rush and helps beat off the cold and fatigue.

  There's nothing like this in the world. The blinding sparkle of snow, the sound of axes slapping ice, or squeaking through snow, the scrape of crampon on rock, the free-falling wonder of the rope, and watching the ice fire with sunset.

  Even now, huddled in the tent as I write this, my belly roiling from our dinner of freeze-dried stew, my body aching from the abuse, and fear of frostbite and death gnawing like a rat at the back of my brain, I wouldn't be anywhere else.

  * * *

  By seven, Nate figured he'd put in a long enough day. He carried a radio phone with him.

  If anyone called the station after hours, the call would be bounced to his phone.

  He'd have preferred eating in his room, alone, in the quiet, so his brain could unclog from all the details jammed into it throughout the day. And because he'd prefer alone.

  But he wasn't going to get anywhere in this town by secluding himself, so he slid into an empty booth in The Lodge.

  He could hear the crack of pool balls, and the whining country on the juke from the next room. Several men were hoisted on bar stools, downing beers while they watched a hockey game on television. The eating area was more than half full with a waitress he'd yet to meet serving and clearing.

  The man Hopp had introduced as The Professor wound his way through tables to Nate's booth.

  He wore his tweed jacket with Ulysses tucked in the pocket, and carried a mug of beer. "Mind if I join you?"

  "Go ahead."

  "John Malmont. You're after a drink, you'd get it faster going to the bar. You're after food, Cissy'll work her way around here in a minute."

  "Food's what I want, no hurry. Place is busy tonight. Is that usual?"

  "Only two places you can get hot food you don't have to cook yourself. Only one you can get hard liquor."

  "Well, that answers that."

  "Lunatics are a fairly social lot—with each other, in any case. Add the holidays, you get full tables. Halibut's good tonight."

  "Yeah?" Nate picked up the menu. "You lived here long?"

  "Sixteen years now. Pittsburgh, originally," he said, anticipating the question. "Taught at Carnegie Mellon."

  "What did you teach?"

  "English literature to ambitious young minds. Many of whom enjoyed the smug position of dissecting and critiquing the long-dead white men they'd come to study."

  "And now?"

  "Now I teach literature and composition to bored teenagers, many of whom would prefer to be groping one another rather than exploring the wonders of the written word."

  "Hey, Professor."

  "Cissy. Chief Burke, meet Cecilia Fisher."

  "Nice to meet you, Cissy." She was skinny as a broomstick with short, spiky hair in several shades of red, and a silver ring pierced into her left eyebrow.

  She offered him a sunny smile. "You, too. What can I get for you?"

  "I'll have the halibut. I hear it's good."

  "Sure is." She started scribbling on her pad. "How do you want it cooked?"

  "Grilled?"

  "Fine. You get a house salad with that, choice of dressing. House dressing's real special. Big Mike makes it himself."

  "That'd be fine."

  "Got your choice of baked potato, mashed potato, fries, wild rice."

  "I'll take the rice."

  "Get you a drink?"

  "Coffee, thanks."

  "I'll be right back with that."

  "Nice girl," John commented, giving his glasses a quick polish with a snowy white handkerchief. "Came into town a couple years ago, hanging out with a bunch here to do some climbing. Boy she was with slapped her around, dumped her out with nothing but her knapsack. She didn't have the money to get home—said she wasn't going back anyhow. Charlene gave her a room and a job."

  He sipped his beer. "Boy came back for her a week later. Charlene ran him off."

  "Charlene?"

  "Keeps an over-and-under back in the kitchen. The boy decided to leave town without Cissy after looking down those barrels for a minute." John turned his head, and the amusement in his eyes turned to longing—just for an instant.

  Nate saw the object of it gliding across the room with a coffeepot.

  "Look at this. The two handsomest men in Lunacy at the same table." Charlene poured Nate's coffee, then slid cozily into the booth beside him. "And what would you two be talking about?"

  "A beautiful woman, naturally." John picked up his beer. "Enjoy your dinner, chief."

  "So . . . " Charlene angled her body so her breast brushed Nate's arm. "What woman would that be?"

  "John was telling me how Cissy came to be working for you."

  "Oh?" She traced her tongue over her freshly slicked bottom lip. "You got your eye on my waitress, Nate?"

  "Only with the hope she brings my dinner out soon." He couldn't scoot away without looking, and feeling, like an idiot. He couldn't move without bumping up against some part of her body. "The Mackie brothers pay you damages yet?"

  "They came in about an hour ago, made it good. I want to thank you for taking care of me, Nate.

  Makes me feel secure knowing you're just a phone call away."

  "Having an over-and-under in your kitchen ought to make you feel pretty secure."

  "Well." She dipped her head, smiled. "That's really just for show." She angled her body closer, so that the come-get-me perfume seemed to rise out of her cleavage. "It's hard being a woman alone in a place like this. Long winter nights. They get cold. And they get lonely. I like knowing a man like you's sleeping under the same roof. Maybe you and I could keep each other company later."

  "Charlene. That's. . . That's an offer, all right." Her hand slid up his thigh. He grabbed her hand, pressed it on top of the table, even as he went hard and hot. "Let's just take a minute here."

  "I'm hoping it'll take longer than a minute."

  "Ha ha." If she kept rubbing that body against him, reminding him how long he'd been celibate, he might not make the full sixty seconds. "Charlene, I like you, and you're a pleasure to look at, but I don't think it'd be a good idea for us to . . . keep each other company. I'm just feeling my way around here."

  "Me, too." She twined a lock of his hair around her finger. "You get restless tonight, you just give me a call. I'll show you what I mean about this being a full-service establishment."

  She kept her baby blues on him as she wiggled out of the booth— and managed to slide her hand suggestively along his thigh again. Nate waited until she'd crossed the room in that hip-rolling gait before he let out a hoarse whistle of breath.

  * * *

  He didn't sleep well. The mother-daughter tag team kept him churned up and edgy. And the dark was endless and complete. A primitive dark that urged a man to burrow in a warm cave—with a warm woman.

  He kept a light burning late—read through town ordinances by it, brooded by it, and ultimately slept by it until the alarm shrilled.

  He started off the day as he had the one before, breakfasting with little Jesse.

  It was routine he wanted. More than routine, he craved a rut where he wouldn't have to think, one that got deeper and deeper so he didn't have to see what was beyond it. He could go through the motions here, handling minor disputes, easing through the day with the same faces, the same voices, the same tasks repeating like a loop.

  He could be the mouse on the wheel. And maybe the ridiculous cold would keep him from decomposing. That way no one would know he was already dead.

  He liked sitting in his office, hours on end, juggling among Otto, Peter and himself the scatter of calls that came in. When he went out on one, he took one of the deputies with him to let him fill in background and set the rhythm.

  He was getting a handle on his staff, in any case. Peter was twenty-three, had lived in the area all of his life, and appeared to know everyone. He also appeared to be liked
by everyone who knew him.

  Otto—staff sergeant, USMC, retired—had come to Alaska for the hunting and fishing. Eighteen years before, after his first divorce, he'd decided to make it his permanent home. He had three grown children in the Lower 48, and four grandchildren.

  He'd married again—some blonde with a bustline bigger than her IQ, according to Peach—and had divorced again in under two years.

  Both he and Bing had considered themselves qualified for the position Nate now held. But while Bing had gotten pissy about the town council's decision to bring in an Outsider, Otto—perhaps more accustomed to taking orders—had accepted the job as deputy. As for Peach herself, the source of most of his information, she'd lived more than thirty years in Alaska, ever since she'd eloped with a boy from Macon and hightailed it with him to Sitka. He'd died on her, poor lamb, lost at sea on a fishing trawler less than six months after the elopement.

  She'd married again and had lived with husband number two—a strapping, handsome grizzly bear of a man who'd taken her into the bush where they'd lived off the land, with occasional forays into the fledgling town of Lunacy.

  When he'd died on her, too—went through the overflow on the lake and froze to death before he could get back to their cabin—she'd packed up and moved to Lunacy.

  She'd married again, but that was a mistake, and she kicked his drunk, cheating ass all the way back to North Dakota, where he'd come from.

  She'd consider husband number four, should the right candidate come along.

  Peach gave him tidbits on others. Ed Woolcott would've liked the job of mayor, but he'd have to cool his heels until Hopp decided she'd had enough. His wife, Arlene, was snooty, but then she came from money, so it wasn't surprising.

  Like Peter, Bing had lived here all of his life, the son of a Russian father and a Norwegian mother. His mother had run off with a piano player in '74, when Bing had been about thirteen. His father—and that man could down a pint of vodka at one sitting—had gone back to Russia about twelve years later and taken Bing's younger sister, Nadia, with him.

  Rumor was she was pregnant, and there'd been whispers the father had been married.

  Rose's husband, David, worked as a guide, a damn good one, and did odd jobs when he had time on his hands.

  Harry and Deb had two kids—the boy was giving them some trouble—and Deb ruled the roost.

  There was more. Peach always had more. Nate figured in a week, maybe two, he'd know whatever he needed to know about Lunacy and its population. Then the work would be another routine digging itself into a comfortable rut.

  But whenever he stood at his window, watched the sun rise over the mountains, sheening it with gold, he felt that spark simmer inside him. The little flare of heat that told him there was still life in him.

  Afraid it would spread, he'd turn away to face the blank wall.

  On his third day, Nate dealt with a vehicular accident involving a pickup, an SUV and a moose. The moose got the best of the bargain and stood about fifty yards from the tangle of metal as if watching the show.

  Since it was the first time Nate had seen an actual moose—bigger and uglier than he'd imagined—he was more interested in it than the two men currently bitching at each other and passing blame.

  It was eight-twenty a.m. and black as pitch out on the road the locals called Lake Drive.

  He had the deputy mayor and a mountain guide named Hawley going nose to nose, a Ford Explorer tipped into a ditch with its wheelbase buried in the snow, its hood crinkled like an accordion, and a Chevy pickup lying on its side as if it had decided to take a nap.

  Both men had blood on their faces and mayhem in their eyes.

  "Settle down." Deliberately, Nate shined his flashlight into the eyes of each man in turn. Both, he noted, were going to need stitches. "I said settle down! We'll sort this out in a minute. Otto? Anybody got a tow truck?"

  "Bing's got one. He's the one handles this sort of thing."

  "Well, give him a call. Get him out here to haul these vehicles into town. I want them off the road ASAP. They're a hazard. Now . . ."

  He turned back to the men. "Which one of you can tell me what happened in a calm, coherent manner?"

  They both started to rant at once, but since he smelled the whiskey fumes on Hawley, he held up a hand, then pointed at Ed Woolcott. "You start."

  "I was driving into work, in a reasonable and safe manner—"

  "Load of bullshit," Hawley commented.

  "You'll get your turn. Mr. Woolcott?"

  "I saw the headlights coming toward me, entirely too fast for safety."

  Even as Hawley opened his mouth, Nate stabbed a finger at him.

  "Then the moose came out of nowhere. I slowed and swerved to avoid collision, and the next thing I know, this, this heap is barreling down on me. I tried to cut over to the side of the road, but he, he aimed at me. Next thing I know, he ran me off the road, crashed my car. That car's only six months old! He was driving recklessly, and he's been drinking." With a sharp nod, Ed folded his arms and glowered.

  "Okay."

  "Bing's heading out," Otto announced.

  "Good. Mr. Woolcott, why don't you step over there, give your statement to Otto. Hawley?" Nate jerked his head, wandered over to the pickup. And stood there a moment exchanging baleful glances with the moose. "You been drinking?"

  Hawley stood about five-eight and sported a golden brown beard. The blood that had trickled down from the gash on his jaw had frozen.

  "Well, sure, I had a couple of belts."

  "It's shy of nine a.m."

  "Shit. Been ice fishing. I don't pay attention to what the hell the time of day is. I got some good fish in the cooler in my truck. I was heading home to store them, get something to eat and turn in. Then bankerman sees a damn moose in the road and goes into a tailspin. He's all over the damn road, doing doughnuts, and the moose is standing there— they're brainless animals, you ask me— and I have to swerve. Went into a little skid, and Woolcott spun right into me. We smashed, and this is where we ended up."

  It had been a long time since he'd been on Traffic, and he'd never had to do an accident reconstruction in the dark, in the snow, at somewhere under zero degrees. But when he played his light over the road, studied the tracks, Hawley's version hit closer to home.

  "Fact is, you've been drinking. We're going to have to do a sobriety test. You insured?"

  "Yeah, but—"

  "We'll sort it out," Nate repeated. "Let's get out of the cold."