by Nora Roberts
When he woke, the dream was fading, leaving only a bitter, salty taste in his throat. As if he'd swallowed tears. He could hear Meg breathing beside him, soft and steady. Some part of him, struggling under the weight of despair, wanted to turn to her. For the comfort and oblivion of sex.
She'd be warm, and she'd come to life around him.
Instead, he turned away. And he knew, he knew it was indulgent; it was self-defeating to choose to embrace the misery. But he got out of bed alone in the dark, found his clothes. He dressed and left her sleeping.
In the dream, he'd been climbing the mountain. He'd fought his way up ice and rock, thousands of feet above the world. In the airless sky, where every breath was agony. He had to go up, was compelled to claw his way up another inch, another foot, while below him was nothing but a swirling, white sea. If he fell he would drown in it, soundlessly.
So he climbed until his fingers bled and left red smears on the ice-sheathed rock.
Exhausted, exhilarated, he dragged himself onto a ledge. And saw the mouth of the cave. Light pulsed from it and lit hope in him as he crawled inside.
It opened, it towered, like some mythical ice palace. Huge formations speared down from the roof, up from the floor to form pillars and archways of white and ghostly blue where ice glinted like a thousand diamonds. The walls, smooth and polished, gleamed like mirrors, tossing his reflection back at him a hundred times.
He gained his feet, circling the splendor of it, dazzled by the sheen and the space and the sparkle.
He could live here, alone. His own fortress of solitude. He could find his peace here, in the quiet and the beauty and the alone.
Then he saw he was not alone.
The body slumped against the gleaming wall, fused to it by years of relentless cold. The ax handle protruded from its chest, and the frozen blood shone red, red, red, over the black parka.
And his heart tipped when he understood he hadn't come for peace after all, but for duty.
How would he carry the body down? How could he bear the weight of it on that long, vicious journey back to the world? He didn't know the way. He didn't have the skill or the tools or the strength.
As he walked toward the body, the walls and columns of the cave hurled the reflections at him. A hundred of him, a hundred dead. Everywhere he looked, death joined him.
The ice began to crackle. The walls began to shake. A thunderous sound roared as he pitched to his knees at the foot of the body. The dead face of Galloway turned up to his, teeth bared in a bloody grimace.
And it was Jack's face—and Jack's voice that spoke as the ice columns tumbled, and the floor of the cave heaved. "There's no way out, for either of us. We're all dead here."
He'd wakened as the cave swallowed him.
* * *
Meg wasn't surprised to find Nate gone. It was after eight when she surfaced, so she imagined he'd
gotten bored or hungry waiting for her to wake up.
She was grateful to him, for the companionship and the straightforward manner wrapped around compassion. He'd let her deal with shock and grief—and whatever else she was feeling—on her own terms. She considered that a valuable asset in a friend or a lover.
She was pretty sure they were both.
She was going to have to keep dealing—with herself, her mother, with everyone in town. With the cops.
She didn't see the point in dwelling on it now. There'd be enough dwelling when she got back to Lunacy.
She figured she'd find Nate or he'd find her before it was time to head back. Meanwhile, she wanted coffee.
The dining room was set for breakfast, with plenty of takers. Cheap lodgings, good food appealed to a lot of the pilots and guides who used Anchorage as a launch pad. She saw a scatter of familiar faces.
Then she saw Nate.
He sat alone at a rear corner booth. Since that was a prized spot, it told her he'd been there for some time. He had a mug of coffee and a newspaper. But he wasn't drinking; he wasn't reading. He was off somewhere, in his own thoughts. Bleak and sorrowful thoughts.
Looking at him from across the busy room, she knew she'd never seen anyone so alone.
Whatever his long, sad story was, she thought, it was going to be a killer.
As she started toward him, someone called her name. While she answered it with a wave, she saw Nate draw in. She watched him bring himself back, deliberately pick up his coffee and settle himself before he looked over. Smiled at her.
An easy smile, secret eyes.
"You got a good night's sleep."
"Good enough." She slid in across from him. "You eat?"
"Not yet. Did you know people used to commute from Montana to work in the canneries around here?"
She glanced down at the newspaper and the article. "Actually, I did. It's good pay."
"Yeah, but not exactly a daily battle with rush hour. I figured you lived in Montana because you wanted to raise horses or cattle. Or maybe start a paramilitary camp. Okay, gross generalization, but still."
"You're a real East Coast boy. Hey, Wanda."
"Meg." The waitress who looked to be about twenty, and perky, set down another mug of coffee, pulled out her pad. "What can I get you?"
"Couple eggs, over easy, Canadian bacon, hash browns, wheat toast. Jocko?"
"Ditched him."
"Told you he was a loser. What do you want, Burke?"
"Ah . . . " He searched around for his appetite, then decided the sight and smell of food might help him locate it. "Ham-and-cheese omelette, and the wheat toast."
"Gotcha. I'm dating this guy named Byron," she told Meg. "He writes poetry."
"Can only be an improvement." Meg turned back to Nate as Wanda walked away. "Wanda's parents were one of the seasonals when she was a kid. Used to spend her summers here when they worked in the canneries. She liked it, moved up permanently last year. Habitually dates assholes, but other than that, she's okay. What were you thinking about before I came over?"
"Nothing, really. Just passing the time with the paper."
"No, you weren't. But since you did me a favor last night, I won't push it."
He didn't deny, she didn't press. And she didn't, though the urge scraped at her, reach over and stroke his cheek. When she had a brood going, she didn't want comfort. So she gave him the same courtesy she expected for herself.
"Is there anything else we have to do here before we head back? If we're going to be a while, I want to have someone go out and check on my dogs."
"I called the State cops. A Sergeant Coben's in charge of the case, for now anyway. He'll probably want to talk to you—and your mother at some point. There's not likely to be much movement on this until they can get a team up there and bring him back down. I called the hospital. All three boys are in satisfactory condition."
"You've been busy. Tell me, chief, do you take care of everybody?"
"No. I just handle details."
She'd heard bigger bullshit in her life, but then she lived in Lunacy. "She do a number on you? The ex-wife?"
He shifted. "Probably."
"Want to spew? Trash her over breakfast?"
"Not so much."
She waited while Wanda served the meal, topped off the coffee. Meg cut into the eggs, letting the yolk run where it liked. "So I slept with this guy in college," she began. "Great looker. Kind of stupid, but he had tremendous staying power. He started playing this head game on me. How I should think about wearing more makeup, dressing better, maybe I shouldn't argue with people so much. Blah blah. Not," she said with a wag of her fork, "that I wasn't gorgeous and sexy and smart, oh no, but if I just fixed up a little more, went along a little more."
"You're not gorgeous."
She laughed, her eyes dancing, and bit into her toast. "Shut up. This is my story."
"You're better than gorgeous. Gorgeous is just lucky DNA. You're . . . vivid," he decided. "Compelling. That's the sort of thing that comes from inside spaces, so it's better than gorgeous. If you want my
opinion."
"Wow." She sat back, surprised enough to forget her breakfast. "If I was anybody else, I'd be speechless after a comment like that. As it is, I've lost my trend. What the hell was I talking about?"
This time when he smiled, it reached his eyes, warmed up the gray. "Asshole college boy you slept with."
"Right. Right." She dived into the hash browns. "There was more than one, but anyway, I was twenty and this dude's passive-aggressive insults were starting to get under my skin—especially when I found out he was boffing this brain-dead bimbo with pots of money and breast implants*
She fell silent, concentrating on her breakfast.
"So, what did you do?"
"What did I do?" She drank some coffee. "Next time we went to bed, I screwed his brains out, then slipped him a couple of sleeping pills."
"You drugged him?"
"Yeah, so?"
"Nothing. Nothing."
"I paid a couple of guys to carry him down to one of the lecture halls. And I dressed his sorry ass in sexy women's underwear—bra, garter belt, black hose. That was challenging. I made up his face, curled his hair. Took some pictures to put up on the Internet. He was still sleeping when the first class started piling in at eight." She ate some eggs. "It was a hell of a show—especially when he woke up, got a clue and started screaming like a girl."
Enjoying her, appreciating the single-mindedness as much as the creativity of her revenge, Nate toasted her with his coffee. "You can bet I won't be commenting on your wardrobe."
"Point of the story. I believe in payback. For the little things, for the big ones. For everything in between. Letting people screw you over is just lazy and uncreative."
"You didn't love him."
"Hell, no. If I had, I wouldn't have just embarrassed him. I'd have caused him intense physical pain in addition."
He toyed with the rest of his omelette. "Let me ask you something. Are we exclusive?"
"I consider myself very exclusive, in every way."
"What we have going on together," he said patiently. "Is this an exclusive arrangement?"
"Is that what you're looking for?"
"I wasn't looking for anything. Then there you were."
"Uh-oh." She let out a long breath. "Good one. Seems like you've got a whole big pot of good ones.
I don't have a problem limiting myself to swinging from the chandelier with just you, for as long as we're both enjoying it."
"Fair enough."
"She cheat on you, Burke?"
"Yeah. Yeah, she did."
Meg nodded, continued to eat. "I don't cheat. Okay, sometimes I cheat at cards, but just for the hell of it. And sometimes I lie when it's expedient. Or when the lie's just more fun than the truth. I can be mean if it suits me, which is a lot."
She paused, reaching across to touch his hand for a moment so there was a connection between them. "But I don't kick a man when he's down, unless I'm the one who put him down in the first place. I don't put him down unless he deserves it. And I don't break my word if I give it. So I'll give you my word. I won't cheat on you."
"Except at cards."
"Well, yeah. It's going to be light soon. We should get going."
* * *
She didn't know how she was going to handle it with Charlene. Any angle she picked, the result was going to be the same. Hysteria, accusations, rage, tears. It was always messy with Charlene.
Maybe Nate read her mind, because he stopped Meg outside the door of The Lodge. "Maybe I should break this to her. I've had to give family members this kind of news before."
"You've had to tell people their lover's been dead in an ice cave for fifteen years?"
"The means don't change the impact that much."
His voice was gentle, in direct contrast to the jagged edge of hers. It calmed her. More than calmed her, she realized. It made her want to lean on him.
"Much as I'd like to pass this plate to you, I'd better handle it. You're welcome to pick up the pieces after I'm done."
They went inside. A few people were loitering over coffee or eating an early lunch. Meg flipped open her coat as she signalled to Rose.
"Charlene?"
"Office. We heard Steven and his friends are going to be okay. Roads were still too bad, but Jerk swung in to fly Joe and Lara down this morning. Get you some coffee?"
Nate watched Meg walk through a doorway. "Sure."
* * *
She went straight through the lobby area, skirted the counter and entered the office without knocking.
Charlene was at her desk, on the phone. She gave Meg an impatient, back-fingered wave.
"Now, Billy, if I'm going to get screwed like that, I expect to be taken out to dinner first."
Meg turned away. If her mother was haggling over the price of supplies, she had to let it run through.
The office didn't look efficient. It looked like Charlene—female and obvious and foolish. Lots of cotton-candy pink in the fabrics, armies of silly dust catchers. Paintings of flowers in gold frames on the walls, silk pillows mounded on the velvet settee.
It smelled of roses, from the room spray Charlene spritzed every time she entered the room. The desk itself was an ornate reproduction antique she'd bought from a catalog and paid too much money for. Curvy legs and lots of carving.
The desk set was pink, as were all her personal stationery and Post-its. All of them were topped with Charlene in fancy, nearly illegible script.
There was a pole lamp beside the settee—a gold wash with a pink beaded shade more suitable, in Meg's mind, to a bordello than an office.
She wondered, as she often did, how she could have come from anyone whose tastes, whose mind, whose ways, were so directly opposed to her own. Then again, maybe her own life was nothing more than an endless rebellion against the womb.
Meg turned back when she heard Charlene purr her good-byes.
"Trying a price hike on me." With a short laugh, Charlene poured herself another glass of water from the pitcher on her desk.