Northern Lights

by Nora Roberts

  scooped a hand through his hair. "Rescue team didn't go into the cave?"

  "Boys dragged themselves out when they heard the air support." She scooped up cheese, meat, salsa with a chip. "Priority was to get them down for medical assistance. Somebody'll go up, eventually, for the gear they left behind."

  "And the dead guy."

  She lifted her eyebrows. "You bought that story?"

  "Yeah, I did. Added to that, the kid took pictures."

  She pursed her lips, then pried up another loaded chip. "No shit?"

  "Beer's up," came the call from the bar.

  "Hold on," she said to Nate. "I'll get it."

  "You want another round, Meg?" Stu asked her.

  "We'll let him catch up some first." She snagged the brown bottle, brought it back to the table.

  "He took pictures?"

  Nate nodded, took a gulp of beer. "Digital camera, which he had in his pocket. I talked this guy at the hospital into printing them out for me." He tapped his fingers on the manila envelope he'd tossed on the table. "I had to turn the camera over to the State boys. Maybe they'll keep me in the loop, maybe not." He shrugged.

  "You want to be in the loop?"

  "I don't know." He shrugged again, tapped his fingers again. "I don't know."

  Oh, he wanted to be in the loop, she thought. She could all but see him making some sort of mental list. Some sort of cop list. If that's what it took to turn those sad, gray eyes sharp, she hoped the State boys let him play.

  "He probably hasn't been up there very long."

  She lifted her glass. "Why do you say that?"

  "Somebody would've found him."

  She shook her head, sipped whiskey. "Not necessarily. Cave like that can get buried in a storm, drowned under in an avalanche or overlooked by climbers. Another avalanche, oh look, there's a cave. Then it depends on where he was in the cave. How deep. Could've been up there for a season or for fifty years."

  "They'll get forensics either way. They'll be able to date him, hopefully ID him."

  "Already working on solving the case." Amused, she gestured toward the envelope. "Let me see. Maybe we'll be like Nick and Nora Charles."

  "It's not the movies, and it's not pretty, Meg."

  "Neither is gutting a moose." She chomped another nacho, then drew the envelope over to open it. "If he's a local, maybe somebody'll recognize him. Though you get plenty of Outsiders on No Name in any given year. The kind of gear he's wearing should . . ."

  He saw her color drain, her eyes glaze—and cursed himself. But when he started to take the printout from her, she jerked back, shoved at his arm with her free hand.

  "You don't need to look at that. Let's just put it away."

  She needed to look. Maybe the air was trapped in her lungs, and maybe her stomach had pitched down to her feet. But she needed to look. Deliberately she took the rest of the photos out, lined them up on the table. Then she picked up the whiskey, downed it.

  "I know who this is."

  "You recognize him?" Without thinking, Nate scooted his chair closer to hers so they stared at the photos together. "You're sure?"

  "Oh, yeah. I'm sure. It's my father."

  She shoved away from the table. Her face was very pale, but she didn't quiver. "Pay for the drinks, will you, chief? I'm going to have to put a hold on that steak dinner."

  He moved fast, scooping the printouts back in the envelope, digging out bills to drop on the table, but she was already through the lobby and at the top of the steps when he caught up.

  "Meg."

  "Back off a minute."

  "You need to talk to me."

  "Come up in an hour. Room 232. Go away, Ignatious."

  She kept climbing, didn't allow herself to think, didn't allow herself to feel. Not yet, not until she was behind a locked door. There were things she didn't believe in sharing.

  He didn't follow. Part of her brain registered that, and gave him points for restraint and maybe sensitivity. She went into the room where she'd already dumped spare gear, locked the door, added the chain.

  Then she walked directly into the bathroom and was miserably and violently ill.

  When she was done, she sat on the chilly floor, her forehead braced on her knees. She didn't weep. She hoped she would, hoped she could cry at some point. But not now. Now she felt raw and shaken and— thank God—angry.

  Someone had killed her father and left him alone. For years. For years when she'd lived without him. When she'd believed he'd walked away from her without a second thought. That she wasn't good enough or important enough. Smart enough, pretty enough. Whatever enough seemed to fit at any given time when the missing of him was a hole in her belly.

  But he hadn't walked away from her. He'd gone to the mountain, something as natural for him as breathing. And died there. The mountain hadn't killed him. She could have accepted that as fate, as destiny. A man had killed him, and that couldn't be accepted. Or forgiven. Or left unpunished.

  She rose, stripped, and running the water cold, stepped into the shower. She let it stream over her until the fuzziness in her head cleared. Then she dressed again to lie down on the bed, in the dark, and think about the last time she'd seen her father.

  He'd come into her room where she'd been pretending to study for a history test. As long as she was pretending to study, she didn't have to do her chores. She'd been sick of chores.

  She remembered, even now, that quick lift in the heart when she saw it was her father rather than her mother coming to check on her. He never nagged about chores or studying.

  She thought he was the most handsome man in the world, with his long dark hair and his fast grins.

  He'd taught her everything she believed really important. About the stars and climbing, about survival in the wild. How to build a campfire, how to fish—and clean and cook the catch.

  He'd taken her flying with Jacob, and it was their secret that Jacob was teaching her to fly.

  He looked at the book open on her bed where she was flopped on her belly. And rolled his eyes. "Boring."

  "I hate history. I have a test tomorrow."

  "Bummer. You'll do okay. You always do." He sat on the bed, gave her ribs a quick tickle. "Hey, kid, I gotta take off for a while."

  "How come?"

  He lifted a hand, rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.

  "How come we need money now?"

  "Your mom says we do. She's the one who knows."

  "I heard you fighting this morning."

  "No big deal. We like to fight. I'll pick up a couple of jobs, make some moola. Everybody'll be happy.

  A couple of weeks, Meg. Maybe three."

  "I don't have anything to do when you're gone."

  "You'll find something."

  And she could tell, even as a girl of thirteen she could tell, he was already gone in his head. His pat on the head was absent, like an uncle's. "We'll go ice fishing when I get back."

  "Sure." And she was sulking, ready to shrug him off before he could shrug her off.

  "See you later, cupcake."

  She had to force herself not to spring up, to rush after him, hold tight before he strolled away.

  A hundred times since that afternoon, she'd wished she'd given in, given them both that one last contact.

  She wished it now, even as she rode that last memory in the dark.

  She stayed where she was until she heard the knock on the door. Resigned, she got up, switched on lights, ran her hand through the hair that hadn't quite dried from the shower.

  When she opened the door to Nate, he was carrying a tray and had another sitting on the floor outside the door.

  "We need to eat." Maybe he'd hated it when people had pushed food or whatever cure or comfort on him during the worst of his own misery. But it worked, and that was the bottom line.

  "Fine." She gestured toward the bed, the only surface big enough in the room to double as a dining table. Then she bent and hefted the second tray.

  "
If you want to be alone after, I can get another room."

  "No point." She sat cross-legged on the bed and, ignoring the salad on her tray, cut into the steak.

  "That one's mine." He switched trays. "They said you went for bloody. I don't."

  "Don't miss a trick, do you? Except you brought up coffee instead of whiskey."

  "You need a bottle, I'll get you one."

  She sighed, cut into the meat. "Bet you would. How'd I end up sharing a steak dinner in Anchorage with a nice guy?"

  "I'm not, particularly. I gave you an hour so you could pull yourself together. I brought you food so you'd keep yourself together while you tell me about your father. I'm sorry, Meg, it's a hard hit. After you talk to me, we're going to have to take this to the detective in charge."

  She cut another bite, forked down into one of the soggy steak fries. "Tell me something. Back where you came from, you were a good cop?"

  "It's about the only thing I was ever good at."

  "You handle murders?"

  "Yeah."

  "I'll talk to whoever's in charge, but I want you looking into this for me."

  "There's not that much I can do."

  "There's always something. I'll pay you."

  He ate contemplatively. "A hard hit," he repeated. "Which is why I'm not going to slap at you for that insult."

  "I don't know that many people who find money insulting. But fine. I want someone I know looking for the son of a bitch who killed my father."

  "You barely know me."

  "I know you're good in bed." She smiled a little. "Okay, a guy can be an asshole and still be a stallion.

  But I also know that you keep your head under pressure and are dedicated or stupid enough to climb out on a glacier to save a kid you've never met. And you think ahead enough to remember to ask down in the restaurant how Meg likes her steak. My dogs like you. Help me out here, chief."

  He reached out and touched her hair, a little stroke over the damp black. "When's the last time you saw him?"

  "February 1988. February sixth."

  "Do you know where he was going?"

  "He said to pick up some work. Here in Anchorage, I figured, or up in Fairbanks. He and my mother had been fighting about money and a variety of other things. That was typical. He said he'd be gone a couple weeks or so. He never came back."

  "Your mother file a missing person's report?"

  "No."Then her brow creased. "At least I don't think so. We assumed, everyone assumed, he'd just taken a hike. They'd been fighting," she continued, "maybe more than usual. He was restless. Even I could see it. He wasn't the salt of the earth, Nate. He wasn't a responsible sort, though he was always good to me, and we never went without anything important. It wasn't enough for Charlene, and they argued."

  She steadied herself, kept eating because it was there. "He drank, he smoked dope, he gambled when he felt like it, worked when he felt like it and fucked off when he felt like it. I loved him—maybe because of all that. He was thirty-three when he left that afternoon—and using the wisdom of hindsight and maturity, I can see it was freaking him out to be thirty-three. To be the father of a half-grown girl and hooked up with the same woman year after year. Maybe he was at a kind of crossroads, you know? Maybe he decided to take that winter climb as a kind of last idiocy of youth—or maybe he was never coming back anyway. But somebody made the decision for him."

  "He have enemies?"

  "Probably, but nobody I could say would cause him harm. He'd piss people off, but nothing major."

  "What about your stepfather?"

  She gave her salad a couple of pokes with her fork. "What about him?"

  "How soon after your father disappeared did Charlene get married? How'd she work the divorce?"

  "First, she didn't need a divorce. She and my father weren't married. He didn't believe in the legal boundaries of marriage, and blah blah. She married Old Man Hidel about a year after—a little less. If you're thinking Karl Hidel climbed up No Name and carved an ice ax in my father's chest, you can forget it. He was sixty-eight and fifty pounds overweight when Charlene hooked him."

  As an afterthought she picked up the salad bowl and ate. "Smoked like a chimney. He could barely climb the stairs much less a mountain."

  "Who would have climbed with your father?"

  "Jesus, Nate, anybody. Anybody who wanted the rush. You know those kids today? Give them a little time, and they'll talk about what happened up there as if it was one of the most exciting events of their lives. Climbers are crazier than bush pilots."

  When he said nothing, she let out a little breath, ate some more salad. "He was a good climber, had a solid rep there. Maybe he had taken a job guiding a group up on a winter climb. Or he hooked up with a couple of buddies and like-minded morons and decided to fart into the face of death."

  "He ever do anything stronger than pot?"

  "Maybe. Probably. Charlene would know." She rubbed her eyes. "Shit. I have to tell her."

  "Meg, were either one of them involved with anyone else while they were together?"

  "If that's a delicate way of asking if they screwed around, I don't know. Ask her."

  He was losing her. Her anger and impatience would make questioning impossible in another minute or two. "You said he gambled. Seriously?"

  "No. I don't know. Not that I've ever heard. He'd blow a paycheck if he had one. Or pile up some IOUs, because he didn't win very often. But nothing heavy. At least not locally. I never heard about him being into anything illegal other than recreational drugs. And there are plenty of people who'd be happy to tell me if he had been. Not because they didn't like him. People did. Just because people like to tell you that kind of thing."

  "Okay." He rubbed a hand on her thigh. "I'll ask some questions, and I'll make nice with whoever catches the case so they'll keep me updated."

  "Well. Let's get out of here." She rolled off the bed, leaving her half-eaten dinner. Her hands rapped a beat against her legs. "I know this place. The music's good. We can have a couple of drinks, then we'll come back and have some chandelier-swinging sex."

  Instead of commenting on her change of mood, he merely glanced up at the old and dingy ceiling light. "That doesn't look all that sturdy."

  It made her laugh. "We'll live dangerously."

  Ten