Northern Lights

by Nora Roberts

  "You're going to need to be debriefed. We'll get you back to control, get your statement on record."

  "We can't let them win."

  "We won't."

  The gun barrel angled toward the ground, and Nate stepped forward.

  It happened too fast. It always happened too fast. He heard Peter open the car door, say his name. He was watching the man's face, his eyes—and he saw it come into them. Panic, rage, terror all at once.

  He was already cursing, already ordering Peter to get down. Get down! as he cleared his weapon from the holster.

  The shotgun blast shook the air, sent some bird screaming in the trees. A second pumped out as Nate dived for cover under the car.

  He was set to roll out the other side when he saw the blood on the snow.

  "Oh, God. Oh, Jesus Christ. Peter."

  His body went to lead, and for an endless moment he shook under the weight of it. He could smell the alley—the rain, over-ripe garbage. Blood.

  His breath came too fast, the high edge of panic making his head light, the bitter wash of despair turning his throat to dust. He carried it all with him as he crawled through the snow.

  Peter was sprawled behind the open door of the car, his eyes wide and glassy. "I think . . . I think I'm shot."

  "Hold on." Nate clamped a hand over Peter's arm where his jacket was torn and bloody. He could feel the warm flow—and the anvil slam of his own heart in his chest. With one eye cocked toward the cabin, he dug out a bandanna.

  If there were prayers running inside his head, he didn't recognize them.

  "It's not too bad, is it?" Peter moistened his lips, angled his head down to look. And went white as bone. "Man."

  "Listen to me. Listen." Nate tied the bandanna tight over the wound, tapped Peter's cheek to keep him from passing out. "You stay down. You're going to be all right."

  Not going to bleed out on me. Not going to die in my arms. Not again. Please God.

  He pulled Peter's weapon out of the holster. Closed Peter's hand around it. "You got this?"

  "I. . . I'm right-handed. He shot me."

  "You can use your left. He gets by me, you don't hesitate. Listen to me, Peter. He comes out here, you shoot. Aim for body mass. And you shoot until he's down."

  "Chief—"

  "Just do it."

  Nate bellied back to the rear of the car, opened the door and slid in. He slid out again with both shotguns. He could hear the man inside the house, raving. The occasional blast of fire.

  He could hear the sounds of the alley merging with it. The rain, the shouts, the running footsteps.

  He bellied back to Peter, laid one of the shotguns over his lap. "You don't pass out. Hear me? You stay awake." Yes, sir.

  There was no one to call for backup. This wasn't Baltimore, and he was on his own.

  Crouched, the shotgun in one hand, his service revolver in the other, he dashed across the icy stream and into the trees. Bark exploded. He felt a knife-splice of a flying splinter hit his face just under his left eye.

  That meant the shooter's attention was on him now, and away from Peter.

  In the cover of trees, he plowed through the snow.

  His partner was shot. His partner was down.

  His breath whistled out as he tried to run through knee-deep snow, circling the cabin.

  Braced behind a tree, he studied the layout. No back door, he noted, but another window on the side.

  He could see the shadow of the shooter on the glass, knew he was waiting there, watching for movement.

  Nate pumped the shotgun one-handed and fired.

  Glass exploded, and with that sound, the screams, the return fire filling his ears, he used his own tracks to run back toward the front of the cabin.

  Shouts and shots sounded behind him as he cracked through the ice of the stream, scrambled through the frigid water and leaped toward the front of the house.

  He barreled onto the sagging porch and kicked open the door.

  He had both weapons pointed at his man—and part of him, most of him, wanted to cut loose with them. Drop him, drop him cold, as he had the murdering bastard in Baltimore. The murdering bastard who'd killed his partner and ripped his own life to pieces.

  "Red." In the shambles of the cabin, the man looked at him. His lips trembled into a smile.

  "Your blood's red." And dropping the gun, he fell to the filthy cabin floor and wept.

  * * *

  His name was Robert Joseph Spinnaker—a financial consultant from L.A., and a recent psychiatric patient. He had claimed multiple alien abductions over the past eighteen months, stated that his wife was a reproduction, and attacked two of his clients during a meeting.

  He'd been listed as missing for nearly three months.

  Now he slept peacefully in a cell, reassured by the color of the blood on Nate's face and Peter's arm.

  Nate had done little more than lock him up before he'd rushed back to the clinic so he could pace the waiting room.

  He went over the entire event a hundred times, and each time he saw himself doing something different, just a little different that kept Peter from being hurt.

  When Ken came out, Nate was sitting, his head in his hands.

  He jerked up immediately. "How bad?"

  "Getting shot's never good, but it could've been a hell of a lot worse. He'll be wearing a sling for a while. He's lucky it was bird shot. He's a little weak, a little groggy. I'm going to keep him a couple more hours. But he's good."

  "Okay." Nate let his knees give way and lowered to the chair again. "Okay."

  "Why don't you come back, let me clean those cuts on your face."

  "Just some scratches."

  "The one under your eye's more of a gash. Come on, don't argue with the doctor."

  "Can I see him?"

  "Nita's with him now. You can see him after I treat you." Ken led the way, gestured for Nate to get on an exam table. "You know," he said as he cleaned the cuts, "it'd be stupid for you to blame yourself."

  "He's green. He's grass, and I took him into an unstable situation."

  "That's not showing much respect for him or the job he signed on to do."

  Nate hissed in a breath at the sting under his eye. "He's a baby."

  "He's not. He's a man. A good man. And you taking on the weight lessens what happened to him today—and what he did."

  "He got up, broke cover and got to the door after me. He could barely keep his feet, but he came to back me up."

  Nate met Ken's eyes as Ken fixed on a butterfly bandage. "His blood was on my hands but he came through the door to back me up. So maybe I'm the one who can't handle himself."

  "You did handle yourself. I got most of it from Peter. He thinks you're a hero. If you want to pay him back for what happened, don't disillusion him. There." Ken stepped back. "You'll live."

  * * *

  Hopp was in the waiting room when Nate came out, along with Peter's parents and Rose. They all stood, began talking at once.

  "He's resting. He's fine," Ken assured them. And Nate kept walking.

  "Ignatious." Hopp hurried out after him. "I'd like to know what happened."

  "I'm walking back."

  "Then I'll walk with you, and you can tell me. I'd like to get it straight from you rather than the various accounts blowing around town at this point."

  He told her, briefly.

  "Would you slow down? Your legs are longer than my whole body. How'd your face get hurt?"

  "Tree shrapnel. Flying bark, that's all."

  "Flying because he was shooting at you. For God's sake."

  "The fact my face got cut up is probably why both Spinnaker and I are still standing. Fortunately I bleed red."

  So does Peter, he thought. He'd bled plenty of red today.

  "The State Police coming to get him?"

  "Peach is contacting them."

  "Well." She drew a breath. "He's been out and about being crazy for three months. Squatting out there God knows how long. H
e could be the one who killed poor Yukon. He could be the one who did that."

  Nate found his sunglasses in his pocket and put them on. "He could be, but he's not."

  "Man's crazy, and it was a crazy thing. He could've thought Yukon was some alien in a dog suit.

  It makes sense, Ignatious."

  "Only if you believe this guy happened to sneak into town, hunt up an old dog, brought the dog outside Town Hall and sliced his throat—having previously stolen the buck knife. That's a little too broad for me, Hopp."

  She took his arm so he'd stop. "Maybe because you'd rather believe otherwise. Maybe because believing otherwise is giving you something to get your teeth into. More than breaking up a few fights or keeping Drunk Mike from freezing his sorry ass. Did it ever occur to you that you're tying all this together, looking for a killer among us because you want it to be so?"

  "I don't want it to be so. It is so."

  "Damn stubborn . . . " She set her teeth, turned to the side until she controlled her temper. "Things won't settle down around here if you keep stirring them up."

  "Things shouldn't settle down around here until they're resolved. I've got to go write up my report on this."

  * * *

  Nate spent the night in the station, most of it listening to Spinnaker's earnest reports of his alien experiences. To keep him calm, if not quiet, Nate sat outside the cell, making notes.

  And was deeply thrilled to see the State Police arrive the next morning to relieve him of his prisoner.

  He was also surprised to see Coben on the detail.

  "Maybe you should consider renting a room down here, Sergeant."

  "I figured this would be an opportunity to touch base on other matters. If we could take a minute in your office."

  "Sure. I've got the paperwork on Spinnaker for you."

  He walked into his office, picked up the paperwork. "Assault with deadly on police officers, et cetera. The shrinks will soften that up, but it won't make my deputy any less shot."

  "How's he doing?"

  "He's okay. He's young, resilient. It caught him mostly in the meaty part of the arm."

  "Any time you walk away, it's a good day."

  "There's that."

  Coben walked over to the board. "Still pursuing this?"

  "Looks like."

  "Making any headway?"

  "Depends on where you're standing."

  Lips pursed, Coben rocked back on his heels. "Dead dog? You're linking that?"

  "Man's gotta have a hobby."

  "Look, I'm not fully satisfied with the resolution of my case, but I've got restrictions on me. A lot of it does depend on where you're standing. We can agree there was an unidentified third man on that mountain when Galloway was killed. Doesn't mean he killed Galloway or had knowledge thereof.

  Doesn't mean he's still alive, for that matter, as it's more logical that the individual who killed Galloway also disposed of this third man."

  "Not if the third man was Hawbaker."

  "We don't believe it was. But if it was," Coben continued, "it sure as hell doesn't mean this unidentified third man had anything to do with Hawbaker's death—or the death of some dog. I've got a little wiggle room, unofficially, to confirm the identity of the third man, but it's not taking me anywhere."

  "The pilot who took them up was killed in unexplained circumstances."

  "There's no proof of that. I've looked into it. Kijinski paid off some debts and made more during the period between Galloway's death and his own. So that's hinky, I'll give you that. But there's no one to confirm he took them up."

  "Because all but one of them's dead."

  "There are no records, no flight logs. No nothing. And nobody who knew Kijinski, or will admit to it, who remembers him booking that flight. He may very well have been the pilot, and if so, it's just as logical to assume Hawbaker disposed of him as well."

  "Might be logical. Except Max Hawbaker didn't kill three men. And he didn't come back from the grave and slit that dog's throat."

  "It doesn't matter what your gut tells you. I need something solid."

  "Give me time," Nate said.

  * * *

  Two days later, Meg strolled into the station, flipped a wave at Peach and went straight back to Nate's office.

  A glance at his board barely broke her stride. "Okay, cutie, I'm springing you."

  "Sorry?"

  "Even thoughtful, dedicated, hardworking cops get a day off. You're due."

  "Peter's on inactive. We're a man short."

  "And you're sitting here brooding about that and everything else. You need head-clearing time, Burke.

  If something comes up, we'll head back."

  "From where?"

  "It's a surprise. Peach," she called as she started back out. "Your boss is taking the rest of the day off. What do they call it on NYPD Blue Personal time."

  "He could use some."

  "You can cover it, can't you, Otto?"