Northern Lights

by Nora Roberts

  and going home.

  This time it was Charlene who caught her.

  "We're going to have another rush in an hour. People coming in to drink, to—"

  "Oddly enough, I don't care." She'd have closed the door in Charlene's face, but her mother was through the door and slamming it behind her.

  "You never did. I don't care that you don't care, but you owe me."

  Forget the shower, she'd just pack. "Bill me."

  "I need help, Megan. Why can't you ever just help me out without being so bitchy about it?"

  "I inherited the bitch from you. Not my fault." She ripped open a drawer and dragged whatever was in it out, tossed it on the bed.

  "I built something here. You benefited from that."

  "I don't give a rat's ugly ass about your money."

  "I'm not talking about money." Charlene grabbed clothes from the bed and hurled them into the air.

  "I'm talking about this place. It means something. You never cared. You couldn't wait to get away from it and from me, but it means something. We've been written up in the paper, in magazines, in tour guides. I got people working here who depend on their paycheck to put food on their table and clothes on their kids' backs. I've got customers who come in here every damn night because it means something."

  "You've got," Megan agreed. "It's nothing to do with me."

  "That's what he always said, too." Enraged, she kicked at a pair of jeans on the floor. "You look like him, you sound like him."

  "That's not my fault either."

  "Nothing was ever his fault. Bad run of luck playing poker, gee, guess there's no money this week. Need a little space, Charley, you know how it goes. I'll be back in a couple of days. Something'll turn up; stop nagging at me. Somebody had to pay the bills, didn't they?" Charlene demanded. "Somebody had to pay for medicine when you got sick or come up with the cash to get you shoes. He could bring me all the wild-flowers he could pick in the summer or write me pretty songs and poems, but they didn't put food on the table."

  "I put food on my table. I buy my own shoes." But she'd calmed a little. "I'm not saying you didn't work. You did plenty of scheming on top of it, but it's your life. You got what you wanted."

  "I wanted him. Goddamn it. I wanted him."

  "So did I, so we both lost out there. Nothing we can do about it." She'd come back for her things, Meg thought. Right now she just needed out. She walked to the door, hesitated.

  "I called Boston, talked to his mother. She's . . . she won't block you from claiming his body, from burying him here."

  "You called her?"

  "Yeah, it's done." She opened the door.

  "Meg. Megan, please. Wait a minute." Charlene sat on the side of the bed, clothes strewn on the floor around her. "Thank you." Hell. Oh, hell. "It was just a phone call."

  "It matters." Charlene gripped her hands together in her lap and stared at them. "It matters so much to me. I was so mad at you for going to Anchorage to . . . to see him. For cutting me out."

  Meg closed the door, leaned back against it. "That's not what I was doing."

  "I wasn't a good mother. I wanted to be at first. Tried to be. But there was always so much to do.

  I didn't know there'd be so much to do."

  "You were pretty young."

  "Too young, I guess. He wanted more." She looked up then, shrugged. "He just loved you to pieces, and he wanted more kids. I wouldn't let it happen. I just didn't want to go through it all again, getting fat and tired, going through that pain. Then having all that to do. And the money that was never there when you needed it or just wanted it. He pushed for it, and I pushed back with other things, until it seemed we spent half the time pushing each other. And I was jealous because he doted on you, and I was always the outsider, always the one saying no."

  "I guess somebody had to."

  "I don't know if we'd have made it. If he'd come back, I don't know if we'd have stuck it out. We started wanting such different things. But I know if we'd split, I know he'd have taken you."

  As if to keep her hands busy, she smoothed the bedspread on either side of her. "He'd have taken you," she repeated. "I'd've let him. You should know that. He loved you more than I could."

  It was hard, harder than anything she could remember, to walk to the bed and sit. "Enough to scrape the money together to buy me shoes?"

  "Maybe not, but enough to take you camping so you could look at the stars. Enough to sit at the fire and tell you stories."

  "I like to think you'd have made it if he'd come back."

  Charlene looked over, blinked. "Really?"

  "Yeah. I like to think you'd have found a way to make it work. You'd already stuck together a long time. Longer than a lot of people do. I want to ask you something."

  "This seems like the time."

  "Was there a big, hot blast the first time you met him? When you fell for him?"

  "Oh God, yes. Nearly burned me up. And it never stopped. I'd think it was dead, cold and dead, when I got mad enough or tired enough. But then he'd look at me, and it was back. I never had that with anyone else. I keep waiting for it, but I never get it."

  "Maybe you should be looking for something else this time. Somebody told me recently about the benefits of a good, steady warmth."

  She rose, picked up scattered clothes. "I can't go back down there and work tonight."

  "Okay."

  "I'll work breakfast for you, but I need you to get somebody else to cover for Rose. I've got to get back to my place, my life."

  Charlene nodded, pushed to her feet. "You gonna take the sexy cop with you?"

  "Up to him."

  * * *

  She packed up, tidied the room. Meg considered leaving Nate a note but decided that was a little too rude, a little too wrong, even for her.

  Didn't have her car anyway, she remembered, not that she was above "borrowing" his. Or someone else's. And telling them about it later.

  In the end, she slung her knapsack over her shoulder and hoofed it to the station, after a detour by The Italian Place.

  He'd said he'd be working late, covering the desk. Whatever. Since his car was locked, she debated briefly. She could dig out her handy set of keys, probably find one that would work. But he wouldn't appreciate it if he'd set the car alarm.

  Which, being city bred, he might have done. She carried her pack, and the large pizza, into the station. Awfully damn quiet, was her first thought. How did the man work without music? She tossed her pack aside, started to call out, but he appeared in the doorway.

  If she hadn't been looking, she wouldn't have seen the way his hand rested on the butt of his holstered weapon—or the way it drifted away is when he smiled at her.

  "I smell food—and woman. Gets my caveman instinct going."

  "Pizza, pepperoni. Figured you could use something hot, which includes me, about this time."

  "That's a big affirmative to both. What's the knapsack for?"

  She hadn't seen him look at it. "I'm running away. Want to come with?"

  "Fight with Charlene?"

  "Yes, but that's not why. We sort of made up, actually. I just have to get the hell out of here, Burke.

  Too many people for too long. Gets me edgy I thought pizza, then some sex back in my place would scratch that itch before I hurt someone and you had to arrest me."

  "That's a plan."

  "I was going to just go, but I didn't. I want the points for doing it this way."

  "Scoreboard's adjusted. Why don't you bring that back? I'll dig up something to wash it down with."

  "Got that." She dug one-handed into her duffel, pulled out a bottle of red. "Liberated it from the bar at The Lodge. We'll have to drink it all, to dispose of the evidence."

  She passed him the bottle as she walked past him, then turned into his office and set the pizza on his desk.

  He'd closed his files, both hard copy and computer, and had tossed the blanket over the board when he heard the outer door open.

 
"Napkins?" she asked.

  It wasn't gentlemanly, but he couldn't leave her alone in the office. "Under Peach's counter." He pulled out his Swiss Army knife, levered out the corkscrew. "Never actually used this one before. Lot of damn work, but hey." He muscled out the cork as she came back in. "Success."

  She tossed down the napkins, got two mugs from beside his cof-feemaker. "What's this?" she tugged the side edge of the blanket with a finger.

  "Don't." At her look of surprise, he shook his head. "Just don't. Let's eat."

  They sat, divvied up wine and pizza. "Why are you working so late, and alone? Are you killing time until I finish my moonlighting for the night?"

  "That's one part. But tell me, what did you fight with Charlene about?"

  "You're changing the subject."

  "Yes, I am."

  "Her being demanding, me being ungrateful, and so on and so forth. Then we came around to my father, and . . . other things, and some of it made sense to me. Enough for me to be able to admit he wasn't the easiest guy to be with, as a partner, and that she, in her own strange and annoying way, probably did the best she could. That we both loved him, more than we can love each other."

  She poured more wine, deliberately picked up a second slice of pizza though her stomach had gone knotty. "Under that blanket's about my father, isn't it? I've seen enough cop movies, enough cop TV, Burke, to know you people stick up photographs and reports and what have you when you're investigating."

  "I'm not investigating anything, officially. Yes, it has to do with your father, and I want you to leave that blanket where it is."

  "I told you before, I'm not delicate."

  "And I'm telling you now, there are some things I don't share. Won't ever."

  She was silent, studying her pizza. "That the sort of statement that had your wife doing another man?"

  "No," he said evenly. "She couldn't have cared less about my work."

  She closed her eyes a moment, then made herself open them and meet his. "That was a cheap shot. I'm not above a cheap shot." She tossed the pizza down. "I don't like myself very much tonight. That's why I have to get out, get away, get back to who I am when I like me."

  "But you came here first, to bring me pizza and wine."

  "You've got a little hook in me somewhere. I don't know if it's going to stick, but it's there for now."

  "I love you, Megan."

  "Oh, Jesus, don't say that now!" She sprang up, pulling at her hair as she paced. "When I'm in this pissy, bitching mood. Do you look to be kicked in the face by women, Ignatious? Are you just itching for somebody else to smack your heart around?"

  "It was that big blast for me," he went on calmly. "It took a big blast to break through, I'd guess, since I've been pretty busy wallowing for the last year. Most of the time, lately, it banks down to a nice simmer. Easier to live with the simmer than the blast. Now and then it kicks up again though. Goes right through me like a fireball."

  She stopped, dropped down again because her knotty stomach was busy doing flips. "God help you."

  "Yeah, I thought the same myself. But I do love you, and it's different than it was with Rachel. I had all this stuff planned out then, a nice, steady, sensible, normal kind of step and stage."

  "And you're not looking for sensible and normal with me."

  "Be a waste of time."

  "Don't give me that. You've got home and hearth tattooed on your butt."

  "Do not. You're the one with the tattoo, which I find incredibly erotic, by the way. Maybe when you decide you're in love with me, we can think about what happens next, but for now—"

  "When I decide."

  "Yeah, when. I'm patient, Meg, and relentless in my way. I'm starting to get my edge back. It's been blunted a long time, but it's coming back. You'll just have to deal with that."

  "Interesting. A little scarier than I expected, but interesting."

  "And it's because I love you, and I trust you, that I'm going to show you this."

  He opened the file on his desk. Taking the copied pages of Patrick Galloway's journal, he handed them to her.

  He saw the instant she recognized the handwriting, the way her body went stiff and still, the quick, almost inaudible drawing in of breath. Her gaze flicked up to his once, briefly, then riveted on the pages in her hand.

  She said nothing as she read them. She didn't weep or rage or tremble as another woman might have done. Instead, she picked up her wine again, sipped slowly, and read the pages straight through.

  "Where did these come from?"

  "They're copies from the pages out of a notebook he had inside his parka. Coben gave them to me."

  "How long ago?"

  "Few days."

  There was a little burn in the center of her belly. "And you didn't tell me. You didn't show me."

  "No."

  "Because?"

  "I needed to evaluate, and you needed to settle."

  "Is that part of your edge, chief? Making unilateral decisions?"

  "It's part of my professional responsibilities, and my personal feelings. You can't discuss this with anyone, until I determine otherwise."

  "You've shown them to me now because in your professional opinion you've evaluated and I've settled."

  "Something like that."

  She closed her eyes. "You take care, don't you? Professionally, personally. It's pretty much the same to you, the caring."

  He said nothing, and she opened her eyes. "No point in tossing a bunch of bullshit out at you when you did what you thought was right. Probably was right."

  Knowing it wouldn't go down easy now, she set the wine aside. "What does Coben think?"

  "It's more what his superiors think at this point. The theory is Max killed Galloway, then killed the third man. When your father's body was discovered, fear of discovery and remorse drove him to suicide."

  "That's how they'll write it up, close it down, whatever the cop-speak for it is."

  "I think so, yes."

  "Poor Carrie." She leaned forward, laid the pages back on his desk. "Poor Max. He never killed Patrick Galloway."

  "No," Nate said and closed the file again. "He didn't."