The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 3

by Nora Roberts

  People died crossing the street all the time, he reminded himself. Life was full of nasty risks, nastier surprises. A couple of guys could walk out of a bar and grill, and one of them could end up dead in an alley.

  An idiot could walk into a blizzard, try to cross the street and end up wandering aimlessly for hours until he dropped dead of exposure three feet from shelter.

  He was cursing when his boots bumped something solid. Picturing the curb, Nate waved his arms out like a blind man, and found the guide.

  “For our next amazing feat,” he muttered, hauling himself onto the buried sidewalk. He dragged himself along until he found the cross rope, then changed angles and plowed his way to the outer door of the station.

  Wondering why he’d bothered to lock up, he fished out his keys, used his flashlight to help him find the locks. In the entry, he shook himself off, but kept his gear on. As he’d suspected, the station was frigid. Frigid enough, he noted, that the windows were frosted on the inside.

  Someone with more forethought than he had stacked wood by the stove. He fired it up, stood holding his hands, still gloved, to the flame. When he had his breath back, he closed the stove door.

  He got candles, a battery-operated lamp, and considered himself in business.

  He found the battery radio, tuned in to the local station. As promised, they were on the air, and someone with a twisted sense of humor was spinning the Beach Boys.

  Seated at his desk, he kept one ear on KLUN, the other on Peach’s call radio and, mourning the lack of coffee, ate his muffin.

  By eight-thirty, he was still on his own. A reasonable hour, he decided, and settled down at the ham radio. He’d gotten a basic lesson from Peach on operation and decided to take his first flight.

  “This is KLPD calling KUNA. Come in, KUNA. Meg, you there? Pick up or sign on or whatever you call it.” He got static, buzzing, a couple of squeals. “This is KLPD calling KUNA. Come on, Galloway.”

  “This is KUNA responding. You got a license to operate that radio, Burke? Over.”

  He knew it was ridiculous, but relief simply blew through him at the sound of her voice. Right on its heels was pleasure. “I’m C of P. Comes with the badge.”

  “Say over.”

  “Right, over. No, you okay out there? Over.”

  “That’s affirmative. We’re nice and cozy. Tucked up here listening to the taku. You? Over.”

  “I survived a hike across the street. What’s taku? A rock group? Over.”

  “It’s a mean bastard wind, Burke. The one shaking your windows right now. What the hell are you doing in the station? Over.”

  “I’m on duty.” He glanced around the room, noted he could see his own breath. “Your power out?”

  She waited a beat. “I’ll say ‘over’ for you. In this, sure it’s out. Generator’s up. We’re fine, chief. You don’t have to worry. Over.”

  “Check in once in a while, and I won’t. Hey, you know what I had yesterday? Over.”

  “Besides me? Over.”

  “Ha.” God, this felt good, he thought. He didn’t care if it was cold as the ice of hell. “Yeah, besides. I had horse turd whiskey and moose stew. Over.”

  She laughed, long and loud. “We’ll make a sourdough out of you, Burke. Gotta go feed my dogs and my fire. See you around. Over and out.”

  “Over and out,” he murmured.

  It was warm enough now to shed the parka, though he kept on his hat and thermal vest. He was poking through the files, looking for busy work when Peach pushed through the door.

  “Wondered if anyone was crazy enough to come in today,” she said.

  “Just me. How the hell did you get here?”

  “Oh, Bing brought me in on the plow.” She dusted one hand over the baby-blue fleece of her sweater.

  “Snowplow as taxicab. Here, let me get that.” He hurried over to take the big sack she carried. “You didn’t have to come in.”

  “Job’s a job.”

  “Yeah, but . . . coffee? Is this coffee?” He dug the thermos out of the sack.

  “Wasn’t sure you’d have the generator up yet.”

  “Not only don’t I have it up, I don’t know if I can find it. And since mechanics aren’t my strong point, I wasn’t sure I’d know what to do with it if I did find it. This is coffee. Marry me, have many, many children with me.”

  She giggled like a girl, slapped at him with her hand. “You be careful, throwing out offers like that. Just because I’ve been married three times already doesn’t mean I won’t go for four. You go ahead and have some coffee and a cinnamon bun.”

  “Maybe we could just live together in sin.” He set the sack on the counter, and immediately poured coffee into a mug. The scent hit him like a beautiful fist. “Forever.”

  “You smile like that more often, I might just take you up on it. Well, look what the taku blew in,” she added when Peter stumbled in.

  “Holy cow. That’s a whopper out there. Talked to Otto. He’s on his way.”

  “Bing bring you in, too?”

  “No, me and my dad mushed it.”

  “Mushed.” Another world, Nate thought. But Peach was right, a job was a job. “All right then. Peter, let’s get the generator going. Peach, get ahold of the fire department. Let’s get a crew together and clear off the sidewalks as soon as it’s light enough, so people can get around if they need to. Priorities are around the clinic and the station. When Otto gets here, tell him the Mackies are passed out on the pool table at The Lodge. Let’s make sure they get home in one piece.”

  He pulled on his parka as he worked down his mental checklist. “Let’s see if we can get an ETA on when power’s going to be back on. People are going to want to know. Phones, too. When I get back in, we’ll work up an announcement, have the radio run it, about what we know when we know it. I want people to know we’re here if they need help.”

  And that, too, Nate discovered, felt good.

  “Peter?”

  “Right behind you, chief.”

  JOURNAL ENTRY • February 18, 1988

  Nearly lost Han in a crevice today. It happened so fast. We’re climbing, pumped up, a few hours from the summit. Cold, hungry, edgy, but pumped. Only a climber understands the juice of that combination. Darth’s in the lead, the only way to keep him from pitching another shitfit, then Han, and I’m bringing up the flank.

  But I forgot yesterday. The days are starting to blur now, one cold, white door opening to the next cold, white door.

  I was lost in the rhythm of my own pounding head, in the spell of the climb, in the rise of white. We crawled and grunted our way up a rock pitch, moving well, aiming for heaven.

  I heard Darth shout, Rock! And the cannonball of the boulder he’d dislodged spat out from that long chimney, whizzing by Han’s head. I had an instant to think, no, I don’t want to go this way, smashed by some fist of God, sucker punched off the mountain. It missed me, as it had Han, by inches, flying by in a finger snap of time, and crashing, bringing a quick and jagged rain of other rocks with it.

  We cursed Darth, but then we curse one another over anything and everything now. Most of it in companionable good humor. It helps surge the adrenaline as we get higher, and the air’s so thin that breathing is an exercise in pain and frustration.

  I knew Han was flagging, but we pushed on. Pushed on, driven by obsession and Darth’s relentless insults.

  His eyes look mad behind his goggles. Mad and possessed. While I think of the mountain as a bitch when I’m driving into her belly with ax and frozen fingers, she’s a bitch I love. I think for Darth she’s a demon, and one he’s hell-bent to conquer.

  We bedded down that night by tying ourselves into pitons with the black world beneath us and the black sky above.

  I watched the lights, a dazzle of liquid jade across that mirror of black.

  Again today Darth took the lead. Being first seems to be another obsession, and arguing wastes time. In any case, I was concerned enough about Han to see the va
lue of taking the flank, keeping the weakest of us in the middle.

  So it was Darth’s need to be first, and my position in the rear, that saved the life of one of our trio.

  We’d packed the rope away. I’d said already that it was too cold for rope, didn’t I? Again, we were moving well, moving up in the bright sparkle of the short day with even our curses whipped away by the roar of the wind.

  Then I see Han stumble and start to slide. It was like the ground disappeared under him.

  A moment’s carelessness, a patch of windslab snow, and he was tumbling toward me. I don’t know, I swear, if I caught him or if he sprouted wings and flew. But our hands locked, and I slapped my ax into the ice, praying it would hold, praying the bitch wouldn’t belch us both into the void. For eternity I was on my belly, holding his hands while he dangled over the edge of nothing. We’re screaming, both of us, and I’m trying to dig in with my toes, but we’re slipping, sliding. Another few seconds and it would’ve been let him go or both of us are gone.

  Then Darth’s ice ax cleaved into the ground beside me—an inch from my shoulder, and the pistoning of my heart cranked up to jackhammer. He used it for purchase, and reached down to grab Han’s arm. Some of the weight lifted from my screaming muscles, and I was able to dig in, belly back. Bellying back, the two of us, pulling Han up with the blood boiling in our ears and our hearts slamming in our chests.

  We rolled back from the edge, lay there on the snow, shaking under that cold, yellow sun. Shaking for what seemed hours, feet away from death and disaster.

  We can’t laugh about it. Even later none of us have the energy to make that short nightmare into a joke. We’re too shaken up to climb, and Han’s ankle is messed up. He’ll never make the summit, and we all know it.

  We have no choice but to chop out a platform and camp, divvy up food from our dwindling supplies while Han pops painkillers. He’s weak, but not so weak his eyes don’t roll with fear as the wind slams its killing fists at the thin walls of our tent.

  We should go back.

  We should go back. But when I floated that trial balloon, Darth went off, berating Han, shrieking at me in a voice shrill as a woman’s. He looks half mad—maybe more than half—hulking in the dark, ice clinging to his stubbly beard and eyebrows, bitter lights in his eyes. Han’s accident has cost us a day, and he’ll be damned if it’ll cost him the summit.

  He has a point, I can’t deny it. We are within striking distance of the goal. Han may be able to make it after a night’s rest.

  We’ll climb tomorrow, and if Han can’t manage, we’ll leave him, do what we came to do, and pick him up on the way back.

  It’s insanity of course, and even with the drugs, Han looks wrecked and scared. But I’m caught in it. Past the point of no return.

  The wind’s howling like a hundred rabid dogs. That alone could drive a man mad.

  EIGHT

  FOR THIRTY HOURS, the snow fell and the wind howled. The world was a cold, white beast that rampaged day and night, fangs bared, claws extended to bite and rake at anyone brave or foolish enough to go out and face it.

  Generators hummed or roared, and communications were reduced to radios. Travel was impossible as that beast stalked its way across the Interior and over southeast Alaska. Cars and trucks were buried, planes grounded. Even the sled dogs waited for it to pass.

  The little town of Lunacy was cut off, a frozen island in the midst of a blind, white sea.

  Too busy to brood, too astonished to curse, Nate dealt with emergencies—a child who’d toppled onto a table and needed to get to the clinic for stitches, a man who’d had a heart attack while trying to dig out his truck, a chimney fire, a family brawl.

  He had Drunk Mike—as opposed to Big Mike the cook—in an unlocked cell sleeping off a bender, and Manny Ozenburger in a locked one, rethinking his position on driving his Tundra pickup over his neighbor’s Ski-doo.

  He kept crews hacking away at the snow on the main streets and pushed his way through the canyons of it to The Corner Store.

  He found Harry and Deb sitting at a card table in front of the canned goods, playing gin while Cecil snuggled in his basket.

  “Hell of a blow,” Harry called out.

  “No, it’s just hell.”

  Nate pushed back the hood of his parka, stopped to give Cecil a quick rub. He was out of breath and vaguely surprised to still be alive. “I need some supplies. I’m going to bunk at the station until this is over.”

  Deb’s eyes gleamed. “Oh? Something wrong at The Lodge?”

  “No.” Yanking off gloves, Nate began to hunt up basics to keep body and soul together. “Somebody needs to man the radio—and we’ve got a couple of guests.”

  “I heard Drunk Mike tied one on. Gin.”

  “Gin? Damn you, Harry.”

  “Tied one on,” Nate agreed, dumping bread, lunch meat, chips on the counter. “And staggered around singing Bob Seger songs. Snow removal crew spotted him and hauled him up when he fell facedown in the middle of the damn street.” Nate picked up a six-pack of Coke. “They hadn’t seen him, brought him in, we might’ve found him by April, dead as Elvis.”

  “I’ll just run a tab for these, chief.” Harry got out his book, noted down the purchases. “And I’m not convinced Elvis is dead. This going to be enough for you?”

  “It’ll have to be. Getting it back’s going to be an adventure.”

  “Why don’t you sit a minute, have some of this coffee?” Deb was already getting up. “Let me fix you a sandwich.”

  Nate stared at her. It wasn’t the way people usually treated cops. “Thanks, but I need to get back. If you need anything, hell, send up a flare.”

  He pulled on his gloves, resecured his hood, then hefted his bag of supplies.

  It wasn’t any more hospitable out than it had been five minutes before. He felt the teeth and claws slice at him as he used the rope and instinct to drag his way toward the station.

  He’d left every light burning, to give himself a beacon.

  He could hear the muffled rumble of Bing’s plow and hoped to sweet God that Bing didn’t head his way, running over him accidentally—or purposely. The beast, as he thought of the storm, was doing its best to mock the efforts of the crews, but they’d made a difference.

  Instead of swimming through the snow, he was wading through it.

  He heard gunshots. Three quick reports. He paused, strained to make out the direction, then shook his head and kept going. He sincerely hoped no one was lying in the snow with a gunshot wound, because he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

  He was about ten feet away from the station, concentrating on the haze of light, cheering himself on with the thought of heat when Bing’s plow rolled out of the white.

  His heart stopped. He actually heard the thunder of it click off, and the swishing sensation of his blood draining. The plow looked enormous, a mountain of machine avalanching toward him.

  It stopped, maybe a breathless foot from the toes of his boots.

  Bing leaned out, his snow-caked beard making him resemble an insane Santa. “Out for a stroll?”

  “Yeah. Can’t get enough of it. You hear those gunshots?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Nothing. You need a break. The heat’s on. We’ve got sandwich makings.”

  “Why you got Manny locked up? Tim Bower drives that damn pissant snowmobile around like a goddamn crazy teenager every chance he gets. Public fucking nuisance.”

  Since he was freezing, Nate decided to skip the part about destruction of private property and reckless driving. “Tim Bower was on the damn pissant snowmobile at the time Manny flattened it.”

  “Got off quick enough, didn’t he?”

  Despite everything, Nate found himself grinning. “Dived headfirst into a snowbank. Skinny Jim saw it. Said it looked like a double gainer.”

  Bing merely grunted, pulled his head in and backed the plow away.

  Inside, Nate made sandwiches, took one to the disgruntled Ma
nny and checked on Drunk Mike.

  He decided to take his own meal at the radio. He liked hearing Meg’s voice, feeling that strange, sexy connection. It had been a long time since he’d had anyone to talk to about his day, since he’d had anyone he’d wanted to talk to. The conversation added a little spice to his plain meal and some comfort to the solitude.

  “Tim’s wrecked that snowmobile more times than I can count,” she said after he’d told her about its final destruction. “Manny did everyone a favor. Over.”

  “Maybe. I think I can talk Tim out of pressing charges if Manny pays for it. You planning on coming into town once this is cleared up? Over.”

  “I’m not big on plans. Over.”

  “Movie night’s coming up. I was hoping to sample your popcorn. Over.”

  “It’s a possibility. I’ve got some jobs lined up once I’m cleared to fly. But I like movies. Over.”

  He drank some Coke and pictured her sitting at the radio, the dogs at her feet and the fire glowing behind her. “Why don’t we make it a date? Over.”

  “I don’t make dates. Over.”

  “Ever? Over.”

  “Things happen if they happen. Since we both liked the sex, things will probably happen.”

  Since she didn’t say “over,” he assumed she was giving it some thought. He certainly was.

  “Tell you what, Burke, next time things happen, you can tell me your long, sad story. Over.”

  He was imagining the red tattoo at the small of her back. “Why do you think I’ve got one? Over.”

  “Cutie, you’re the saddest man I’ve ever seen. You tell me the story, and we’ll see what happens next. Over.”

  “If we . . . damn it.”

  “What’s that noise? Over.”

  “Sounds like Drunk Mike’s awake and puking it up in the cell. Manny’s finding that understandably objectionable,” he added as the sounds of sickness and outrage spiked out of the cells. “I have to go. Over.”

  “Boy, a cop’s life is fraught with danger. Over and out.”