Northern Exposure

by Debra Lee Brown

  He was punishing himself.

  As he knelt and laid the small bouquet of flowers on Cat’s grave, he faced the fact that he’d been punishing himself for years—not for his mistakes, but for his sister’s. Her death had been the catalyst that had finally driven him over the edge.

  He knew now that no amount of penance in the world would bring her back, nor would it ever absolve his guilt, because that guilt was grossly misplaced.

  He’d made himself responsible for her actions, while, in fact, he wasn’t. He hadn’t been her keeper, though he’d tried to be. He’d simply been her brother. And as a whole, when he looked back on their years together, he thought he’d been a damned good one.

  “Rest easy, kid.” He rose from the half-frozen ground and imagined what her response would be. “You, too, Joe,” she’d have said.

  On impulse, as he drove away from the small graveyard outside town, on his way back to the station, Joe turned off the road onto Elkhorn Drive. Steam wafted off the damp roof shingles of the house he’d built with his own hands as the sun, rising higher in the clear sky, struck it.

  Once, he couldn’t wait to move into it. It had been a long time since he’d thought about living here—more than a year—but he thought about it now. Standing on the wide covered porch last night with Wendy, watching as she’d run a hand along the rough-hewn timbers, he’d thought about living here with her.

  She’d thought about it, too. He’d read it in her eyes and in her face when, together, hand in hand, they’d crossed the threshold and had gone inside.

  It only took him a few minutes to get the heat going and prime the well. Though the house had been vacant since he’d finished it last summer, had weathered one hard winter and a wet spring, everything worked just fine. It ought to. The place was new.

  Walking across the expanse of hand-laid hardwood flooring in the great room, he looked at the stone fireplace and pictured Wendy’s wildlife photos flanking it. Hell, he could see a whole wall of them.

  Opening the door to the storage area under the stairs, he envisioned it as her darkroom. He thought about what it would be like to come home from work each day and find her here.

  “Yeah,” he said to himself, walking from room to room, imagining feminine touches, picturing Wendy sitting at the kitchen table or curled up in bed.

  His bed. Their bed.

  By the time he slammed on the brakes in the gravel parking lot of the Department of Fish and Game offices in town, he was imagining all kinds of things. Wonderful things, impossible things.

  “Possible,” he told himself, and bounded up the stairs into the building.

  It was Sunday, but the lights were on in the office, the door unlocked. He jerked it open and raced down the hall toward the coffee room.

  “Hey!” a voice called from one of the offices as he passed. He glanced back, not breaking his stride, and saw Barb’s springy curls as she poked her head out of her office. A pair of reading glasses, perched low on her nose, accentuated her raised brows. “What’s up?”

  “Everything,” he said, and turned the corner into the coffee room, Barb on his heels. His gaze zeroed in on the bulletin board on the wall, plastered haphazardly with official department memorandums.

  He ripped them off the board, one by one, until he got to the one he wanted—the year-old posting for the job the department had never refilled. His job.

  “Oh, my God.” Barb watched, her eyes big brown saucers, as he folded the paper and stuffed it into his pocket. “You’re coming back!”

  “Yeah. Get ready.” Turning on his heel, he retraced his steps down the corridor to the corner office that had once been his.

  “This is great! Stan’s gonna have kittens!”

  “Tell him not to have them yet,” he said, and grabbed the phone. He hitched a hip on the side of his old desk and punched in numbers. It felt good, damned good. He’d been away far too long and hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it.

  “Are you calling the boss? He refused to hire anyone else, you know. He said you’d come back when you were ready. That it was only a matter of time before—”

  “Reservations,” he said into the receiver.

  Barb’s mouth dropped open. “You’re doing it! You’re going after her, aren’t you?”

  He shot her a pithy look, then turned his attention to the phone call. “Yeah, one way—for now. Anchorage to New York.”

  Chapter 17

  The food at her favorite SoHo bistro seemed bland and tasteless. Wendy toyed with chunks of seared ahi and the vinaigrette-dressed arugula on her plate, and thought about the deluxe moose burger she and Joe had shared at the little café in Retreat.

  “You’re a million miles away. What gives?” Her college friend and soon-to-be editor, Crystal, arched a perfectly plucked brow at her.

  “I don’t know. I just can’t stop thinking about it.”

  She’d arrived in New York after midnight last Thursday and had spent most of Friday and half of Saturday with the police. The authorities had reopened Billy Ehrenberg’s case, now that the truth was known, and fortunately for her she hadn’t been charged with anything more serious than stupidity, and was free to go.

  On Saturday afternoon she’d attended Blake’s funeral, a huge, elegant affair. Despite the ugly truth of his dealings with mob loan sharks and his culpability in Billy Ehrenberg’s death—which the tabloids had publicized the second they’d found out—everyone who was anyone in the business had been there.

  She’d spent a little time afterward with Vivian Barrett, who, to Wendy’s surprise, seemed in amazingly good spirits, almost as if she was relieved that Blake was out of her life. Wendy shuddered, not wanting to think about what that said about their marriage.

  Yesterday, Sunday, she’d spent the entire day in the lab at Wilderness Unlimited headquarters around the corner from where she and Crystal were having lunch. The caribou photos were everything she’d hoped they’d be, and the editorial director of the magazine had come through on the spot with the promised offer of permanent employment.

  Through it all she’d had a hard time focusing on anything or anyone except Joe. Five days and he hadn’t called her—not that she’d left him her phone number. She reminded herself that she hadn’t called him, either.

  She’d told him she needed to sort things out on her own, in her own time. Alone, without him. He’d respected that choice, even though she knew it went against his nature, and for that she loved him.

  “Hello-o-o.” Crystal waved a hand in front of her face. Wendy snapped to attention. “You mean you can’t stop thinking about him. Joe Forest Ranger.”

  “Game warden,” she said. “And you’re right. I can’t.”

  Crystal pushed her plate aside and flipped open the portfolio of proofs Wendy had brought with her to their luncheon. Crystal blew by the caribou photos and went right to the last page. A photo of Joe, his face half in shadow, half in light, stared up at them.

  “Wow.” Crystal ran a bright-red fingernail over the proof and sighed. “I can see why. He’s gorgeous.” She tilted her head and examined the composition. “In an unkempt, rugged sort of way, of course.”

  “We’d hiked nearly forty miles in bad weather when I took that. Of course he’s…rugged looking.”

  “Mmm, nice. He’d make a great model.”

  “Don’t even think about it.” That was the last thing Joe Peterson would ever do.

  Crystal closed the portfolio and handed it back to her. “You’re sure about WU? That this is what you want?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I’ve had calls from some of your friends at Esquire and GQ,” Crystal said. “They want you.”

  She recalled the catered party Vivian Barrett had thrown after Blake’s funeral. Wendy had received three offers of work back in fashion photography, the industry that barely six weeks ago had blackballed her. The sensationalized publicity around the murders was now perceived to be some kind of macabre benefit.

  Wen
dy shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s just not me anymore.”

  “It never was, kiddo.” Crystal eyed Wendy’s short fingernails, her simple khaki pants and forest-green tank top. “You were never really a New Yorker.”

  She regarded Crystal’s chic black dress, impeccable makeup and gaudy jewelry. “How on earth did you ever end up at a wildlife magazine?” Crystal was the stereotypical hip New Yorker.

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s different. Not for you, though. For you it seems like home.”

  Home.

  She sighed, recalling the log house in Retreat, remembering Joe kissing her in the storage area under the stairs, and their lovemaking the night before she left him. “I don’t know where that is anymore.”

  “You know some of our staff photographers live in the field.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. They live where they work. Rather than traveling all the time, they’re assigned to a region and live there. In the case of Alaska, it would just be the state.”

  Wendy had already thought of that, the day she left Joe’s station before dawn.

  “Think about it,” Crystal said. “WU doesn’t have anyone living in Alaska right now. It could work.”

  Not wanting to think about it, she grabbed the bill when the waiter brought it and tried to calculate the tip in her head. She couldn’t. Her brain was buzzing.

  “This is on the magazine.” Crystal snatched the bill out of her hand and set it on the table along with a crisp fifty-dollar bill. “I’ve got to get back.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.” Movers were coming tomorrow. Wendy had to be out of her apartment by the end of the week. She wasn’t sure where she was going yet, but knew she couldn’t afford to keep the pricey Upper West Side flat on the salary the wildlife magazine promised to pay her.

  “You okay?”

  She smiled at her friend. Crystal had known her since their first day at college, long before she’d taken the name Willa. It seemed so foreign to her now, as if she’d never used the pseudonym.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m okay.”

  “You’re in love with him.”

  “What?” She shook her head and rose from the hard-backed restaurant chair. “No. It’s just…”

  “Love.” Crystal slung an arm around her, and they walked out together into the muggy lunchtime bustle of Spring Street. “I know it when I see it, and you’ve got it, kiddo. You’ve got it bad.”

  They parted at the corner, promising to talk tomorrow, then Wendy caught a cab back to her apartment. The traffic was bad, the heat stifling, and on the way she thought about what Crystal had said.

  Manhattan didn’t seem the same to her anymore. She used to love the excitement, the diversity. Now it just seemed drab and hot—ungodly hot. What she wouldn’t give for a breath of cool Alaskan air. She supposed she’d have the opportunity to experience it again at some point. A magazine like Wilderness Unlimited did lots of photo essays there, nearly one a month. Plenty, she thought, to keep a full-time photographer busy. Or even a part-time photographer—one with a husband and kids.

  Oh, stop it!

  After she paid the cabbie and jogged up the two flights of stairs to her apartment, the first thing she noticed when she opened the door was the message machine blinking at her. That, and the phone, were the few remaining things she hadn’t packed. As she snaked through stacks of moving boxes, her pulse began to quicken.

  Maybe Joe had called.

  She punched the play button and spent the next few minutes listening to the pleas of two fashion photography houses and three more magazines that wanted her to work for them. She couldn’t even muster up a smile, not one shred of excitement. She should at least be happy her professional reputation had been restored.

  Erasing the messages, she kicked her shoes off and plopped down on her bed, wondering what Joe was doing right now, four thousand miles away.

  The phone rang four more times that afternoon and evening. Four more job offers. Wendy turned them all down. She unplugged the message machine and put it in a half-packed box. She was exhausted but couldn’t sleep, still hungry but couldn’t eat.

  At eleven-thirty that night, the phone rang again. This time she ripped it out of the wall.

  Joe tried the number again and let it ring a couple of dozen times before he gave up, replacing the sticky receiver of the pay phone and stepping out of the booth onto Seventy-Second Street.

  He’d snagged Wendy’s phone number from directory assistance, but her address was unlisted, and he had no idea where she lived except that it was somewhere in Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

  For all he knew, he could be standing right in front of her building. He half thought about checking the names on the long metal rows of doorbells and mailboxes some of the older buildings sported.

  “Give it up for tonight,” he said to himself.

  He knew enough about the city from the week he’d spent here last year after Cat’s death, to know where things were and how to get around. It had taken him all day to get here from Anchorage, and he was exhausted. Not from the travel, but because he hadn’t slept the night before. Christ, he hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since Wendy left.

  He needed sleep now, desperately. Before hopping a cab back to the modest hotel that had been recommended to him by one of those Information people at the airport, he plucked a scrap of paper out of his pocket and fished around for more change.

  He still had the home phone number of Wendy’s editor. He remembered Wendy had told him the woman was a night owl, so he didn’t hesitate to make the call. Again, there was no answer.

  “Damn!”

  He didn’t like giving up, but it was nearly midnight on a Monday, and finally he had to concede that there was no way to find Wendy’s address until tomorrow.

  Now that he was here, had made the decision to come after her, he couldn’t wait to see her, hold her, tell her again that he loved her. But he would have to wait—one more night.

  Frustrated, he caught a cab to his hotel.

  Joe was standing outside the locked door of Wilderness Unlimited headquarters in SoHo, when the receptionist arrived at work the next day at eight-thirty.

  “I’m looking for Wendy Walters,” he said, following the young woman into the suite of offices that occupied the lower floor of what once must have been a warehouse.

  “Uh, she’s new, right?”

  “Yeah. Just started. She’s a photographer.” He stood at the receptionist’s desk and drummed his knuckles on the wood as she leisurely checked her makeup, then stashed her purse in a drawer. “Maybe you could just give me her address.”

  “Oh.” The receptionist frowned at him, noting for the first time his rumpled-looking clothes. He’d left Alaska in a hurry and hadn’t packed more than an extra shirt and his shaving kit. “I couldn’t do that even if I knew it.”

  “Why not?”

  She looked at him with suspicion, as if she thought he might be a serial killer or a kook. “Because I just couldn’t. I could get fired if—”

  “Well, well, well,” a feminine voice quipped from the reception area behind them. Joe turned to see a tall, smartly dressed woman breeze into the office. She was carrying two cups of coffee in foam containers and a portfolio the size of a small state. “You’re him.”

  “Him who?” Joe absently accepted the foam cup she thrust in his direction.

  “Joe Peterson, right? Crystal Chalmers, Wendy’s editor.”

  He was so stunned that she knew him, he just stood there like an idiot when she offered him her elegantly manicured hand.

  “Sorry, hon,” she said to the receptionist, ignoring his bad manners. “You’ll have to get your own latte this morning. This guy looks like he needs it more than you do.”

  Without waiting for either of them to respond, Crystal started down the hall. Joe followed her. Her office was huge, the walls decorated with framed photographs of wildlife and scenery.

  “Have a se
at.” She dropped the portfolio on her desk and popped the lid off her coffee. Latte, Joe reminded himself, and did as she asked him, easing into the comfortable guest chair in front of her desk.

  He sipped at the hot drink. “Thanks.”

  “My pleasure. Now, Joe Peterson, game warden and self-appointed protector of the hottest photographer in town, I suppose you’re here to find Wendy.”

  His head was spinning. “How do you know me?”

  She arched a brow at him. “Come on. You barrel in here at the crack of dawn, looking as if you hadn’t had a wink of sleep in days—mind you, Wendy looked like that, too, when I saw her yesterday—and practically maul our receptionist trying to get your girlfriend’s address. Who else could you possibly be?”

  “She’s not my girlfriend. She’s—”

  “Well, she ought to be. Looks to me like she ought to be more than that. But that’s another story. Right now I suspect you just want to find her.”

  “Yeah, I do. But how—”

  “Calm down. I’m not telepathic or anything. I saw some photos of you. Nice shots, too.” She smiled at him.

  He remembered that Wendy had taken some photographs of him when they were in the reserve. He also remembered blowing his stack at her for taking them. That was before he knew her, before he loved her. It was barely a couple of weeks ago but seemed like a lifetime.

  He’d changed a lot in the past two weeks and envisioned even more changes in his life before he was done. Good ones, and they all started today.

  “Before I give you her address, I’d like you to see something.”

  “What?”

  Crystal opened the portfolio. “Some eight-by-tens of the caribou shots Wendy brought back from Alaska. Here.” She handed him the portfolio. “Take a look.”

  Joe studied the photographs, awed. Wendy had managed to capture on film what so many had missed over the years—the raw emotion of the setting, the power and majesty of the animals he’d worked with all his years in the department.

  “These are wonderful.”

  “Wendy’s a powerhouse. Real talent.”