Northern Lights

by Nora Roberts

  plane up again.

  "You got a death wish?" he shot out.

  "No. You?"

  "I did, but I got over it. You pull that again, Galloway, and when we're on the ground, I'm going to knock you on your crazy ass."

  "You wouldn't. Guys like you don't hit women."

  "Oh, just try me."

  She was tempted, was feeling just crazed enough to be tempted. "You ever knock the cheating Rachel around?"

  He looked over. There was a wildness about her, in her eyes, vivid on her face. "Never even considered it, but I'm forging new territory every day."

  "You're pissed off at me. All mopey and hurt because I didn't radio in every hour to make kissy noises."

  "Just fly the plane. My ride's at your place. That's where Jacob picked me up."

  "I didn't need you there. I didn't need you coming in to hold my hand."

  "I don't believe I offered to hold your hand." He waited a beat. "Rose and David had a girl. Eight pounds. Named her Willow."

  "Oh?" Some of that wild temper eased out of her face. "A girl? They're okay?"

  "Fine and dandy. Peach says she's beautiful, but when I went to see, she looked like a really irritated guppy with black hair."

  "Why are you talking to me conversationally when you're mad enough to pop me between the eyes?"

  "I prefer to keep things neutral as Switzerland until you land the damn plane."

  "Fair enough."

  Once she had, she grabbed gear, hopped out. Slinging what she could over her shoulders, she bent to greet her excited dogs. "There you are, there's my guys. Miss me?" She shot a glance up at Nate.

  "Going to deck me now?"

  "If I did, your dogs would rip my throat out."

  "Sensible. You're a sensible man."

  "Not always," he said under his breath as he followed her to the house.

  Inside, she tossed her gear aside then went directly to the fire to stack logs and kindling. She needed to deal with the plane. Drain the oil and haul it to the shed to keep it warm. Cover the wings.

  But she wasn't feeling practical and efficient. She wasn't feeling quite sane.

  "Appreciate you looking out for Rock and Bull while I was gone."

  "No problem." He turned his back, carefully laying the file under his parka. "Busy were you?"

  "Making hay." She got the fire started. "Jobs fall into my lap, I take them. Now I've got a couple of nice fat fees to bank."

  "Good for you."

  She dropped into a chair, hooked a leg over the arm. All insolence now. "Back now, and it's good to see you, lover. You got time, we can go upstairs for some welcome-home sex." She smiled as she began unbuttoning her shirt. "Bet I could get you up for it."

  "That's a poor imitation of Charlene, Meg."

  It wiped the smile off her face. "You don't want to fuck, fine. No need to insult me."

  "But there seems to be a need for you to hurt me, make me mad. What is it?"

  "Your problem." She pushed up, started to shove by him, but he gripped her arm, swung her back.

  "Nope," he said and ignored the warning growl from the dogs. "It appears to be yours. I want to know what it is."

  "I don't know!" The distress in her tone turned the growls into snarls. "Rock, Bull, relax. Relax," she said more calmly. "Friend."

  She knelt down, hooked an arm around each of them, nuzzled.

  "Damn it. Why don't you yell or storm out or tell me I'm a cold, heartless bitch? Why don't you give me a damn break?"

  "Why didn't you bother to contact me? Why have you been spoiling for a fight since you saw me?"

  "Hold on a minute." She got up, snapped her fingers for the dogs to follow her into the kitchen. After digging out Milk Bones, she tossed one to each dog. Then she leaned back against the counter and looked at Nate.

  Not quite gaunt anymore, she thought. He'd put on a little weight in the last month or so. The kind that looked good on a man, the sort that spoke of muscles toning. His hair looked wild and sexy and a little past trimming time. And those eyes, calm and wrenchingly sad and irresistible, stayed level and patient on hers.

  "I don't like being accountable to anyone. I'm not used to it. I built this place, built my business, built my life a certain way because they suit me."

  "Are you worried I'm going to start holding you accountable? Expecting you to change the order of things for me?"

  "Aren't you?"

  "I don't know. Maybe I see a difference between accountability and caring. I was worried about you.

  For you. And your dogs weren't the only ones who missed you. As to the order of things, I'm still working on my own. A day at a time."

  "Tell me something. No bullshit. Are you falling in love with me?"

  "Feels like it."

  "What does it feel like?"

  "Like something coming back inside me. Warming up and trying to find its rhythm. It feels scary," he said, crossing to her. "And good. Good and scary."

  "I don't know if I want it. I don't know if I've got it."

  "Me, either. But I do know I'm tired of being tired, and empty, and just going through the motions so I can get by. I feel when I'm with you, Meg. I feel, and some of that's painful. But I'll take it."

  He cupped her face in his hands. "Maybe you should try that for now, too. Just take it."

  She closed her hands over his wrists. "Maybe."

  Eighteen

  JOURNAL ENTRY • February 19, 1988

  He's gone crazy. Out of his freaking mind. Too much Dex, and Christ knows what else. Too much altitude. I don't know. I think I've calmed him down. Storm came up so we've taken shelter in an ice cave. Hell of a place. Like some sort of miniature magic castle with ice columns and arches and sudden drops. Wish all of us had gotten here. I could use a little help bringing old Darth back to earth.

  He's got some whacked-out idea that I tried to kill him. We had some trouble on the rappel, and he's screaming at me, into the wind, that I want to kill him. Came at me like a maniac, and I had to knock him flat. Calmed him down though. Got him calm. He apologized, laughed about it.

  We'll just take a breather here, pull ourselves together. We've been playing the first-thing-I'll-do-when-I'm-back-in-the-world game. He wants a steak; I want a woman. Then we both agreed we wanted both.

  He's still jittery; I can see it. But hell, the mountain does that to you. We need to get back to Han, get moving down. Get back to Lunacy.

  Weather's clearing, but there's a feeling in the air. Something's coming down. It's time to get the hell off the mountain.

  * * *

  In his office, with the door shut, Nate read the last entry in Patrick Galloway's climbing journal.

  Took you another sixteen years to get off the mountain, Pat, he thought. Because something sure as hell came down.

  Three went up, he thought, and two came down. And two kept silent for sixteen years.

  But there were only two in that cave, Galloway and his killer. Nate was more certain than ever that the killer hadn't been Max.

  Why had the killer let Max live for so long?

  If Han equaled Max, Max had been injured, not seriously, but enough to make the descent difficult.

  He'd been the least experienced and hardy of the three if he was reading correctly between the lines of Galloway's journal.

  But the killer had brought him down, let him live another sixteen years.

  And Max had kept the secret.

  Why?

  Ambition, blackmail, loyalty? Fear?

  The pilot, Nate decided. Find the pilot and the story he had to tell.

  He locked the copy of the journal in a desk drawer along with his murder book, pocketed the keys.

  When he went out, he found Otto just coming in from patrol. "Ed Woolcott said somebody broke the lock on his ice-fishing shack and took off with two of his rods, his power auger, a bottle of single-malt scotch, and defaced the shack with paint."

  His face pink from the cold, Otto headed straight to the
coffeepot. "Kids most likely. I told him he's the only one around here who locks his shack, and that just makes kids want to break in."

  "How much is it worth. Altogether?"

  "He says about eight hundred. StrikeMaster power auger runs about four hundred." Both disgust and derision covered his face. "That's Ed for you. You can pick up a good hand auger for maybe forty, but he's gotta fly first class."

  "We have a description of the property?"

  "Yeah, yeah. Any kid stupid enough to show off a rod that has Ed's name brass-plated on it deserves to get busted. Scotch? They likely drank themselves sick on it. Probably just drilled a hole through the ice somewhere with the auger, did a little fishing and drinking. I expect they'll ditch the gear somewhere or try to sneak it back to the shack."

  "It's still breaking and entering and theft, so let's follow it through."

  "You can bet they're insured, and for more than he paid for them. You know he talked to a lawyer about suing Hawley for running him off the road back around the "first of the year? A lawyer. Jesus H. Christ."

  "I'll talk to him."

  "Good luck." Otto sat at his desk with his coffee and scowled at his computer screen. "Gotta write this up."

  "I'm heading out, doing a follow-up on something." He paused. "You do much climbing these days?"

  "What do I want to go up a damn mountain for? I can see them fine from here."

  "But you used to."

  "Used to tango with loose women, too."

  "Yeah?" Amused, Nate sat on the corner of Otto's desk. "You're a deep pool, Otto. These women wear tight dresses and skinny high heels?"

  Humor battled grouchiness. "They did."

  "With those sexy slits in the skirt, on the side so their legs slid out like a slice of heaven when they moved?"

  Otto's glower lost its war with a smile. "Those were the days."

  "Bet they were. I never learned to tango, or climb. Maybe I should."

  "Stick with the tango, chief. Surer to live through that."

  "The way some people talk about climbing, it's like a religion. Why'd you give it up?"

  "Got tired of flirting with frostbite and broken bones." His eyes darkened as he looked down into his coffee. "Last time I went up was on a rescue. Party of six, avalanche took them. We found two. The bodies. You've never seen a man taken out by an avalanche."

  "No, I haven't."

  "Count your blessings. That was nine years back next month. I never went up again. Never will."

  "You ever climb with Galloway?"

  "Couple times. He was a good climber. Damn good for an asshole."

  "You didn't like him?"

  Otto began to play hunt-and-peck with the keyboard. "If I disliked every asshole I met, there wouldn't be many left. Guy got himself stuck in the sixties. Peace, love, drugs. Easy way out, you ask me."

  In the sixties, Nate thought, Otto had been sweating in a jungle in Nam. That sort of friction—soldier and hippy—could blow up under less stress than a winter climb.

  "You yammer about living the natural life and save the frigging whales," Otto went on as he jabbed at keys, "and what you're doing is sitting on your ass living on the government you bitch about all the time. Got no respect for that."

  "I guess you wouldn't have had a lot in common, what with you coming from the military."

  "We weren't drinking buddies." He stopped typing, looked up at Nate. "What's all this about?"

  "Just trying to get a full picture of the man." As he rose, he asked, casually, "When you did climb, who'd you use as a pilot?"

  "Mostly Jacob. He was right here."

  "I thought Jacob did some climbing, too. You ever go up with him?"

  "Sure. Get Hank Fielding maybe, out of Talkeetna to fly us, or Two-Toes out of Anchorage, Stokey Loukes if he was sober." He shrugged. "Plenty of pilots around to take up a party if you got the money to pool. If you're really thinking of going up, you get Meg to take you and get yourself a professional guide, not some yahoo."

  "I'll do that, but I think I might settle for the view from my office."

  "Smarter."

  Interrogating his own deputy didn't give him any pleasure, but he'd write up the conversation in his notes. He couldn't picture Otto going berserk on speed and attacking a man with an ax. But he couldn't picture him doing the tango'with a woman in a tight dress either.

  People did a lot of changing in sixteen years.

  He went to The Lodge and found Charlene and Cissy serving the early dinner crowd. Skinny Jim worked the bar. And The Professor manned his stool, nursing a whiskey and reading Trollope.

  "Got a pool starting on the Iditarod," Jim told him. "You want in?"

  Nate sat at the bar. "Who do you like?"

  I'm leaning toward this young guy, Triplehorn. An Aleut."

  "He's gorgeous," Cissy commented when she stopped by with empties.

  "Doesn't matter what he looks like, Cissy."

  "Does to me. Need a Moosehead and a double vodka rocks."

  "Sentimental money's on this Canadian, Tony Keeton."

  "We're sentimental over Canadians?" Nate wondered as Jim poured the vodka.

  "Nah. The dogs. Walt Notti bred his dogs."

  "Twenty then, on the Canadian."

  "Beer?"

  "Coffee, thanks, Jim." While Jim and Cissy dealt with drinks and continued to argue over their favored mushers, Nate turned to the man beside him. "How you doing, John?"