by Nora Roberts
“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?”
“Not sleeping very well. Yet.” John marked his page, set the book down. “Can’t get the image out of my head.”
“It’s tough. You knew Max pretty well. Wrote some articles for his paper.”
“Monthly book reviews, the occasional color piece. Didn’t pay much, but I enjoyed it. I don’t know if Carrie will keep the paper going. I hope she does.”
“Somebody told me Galloway wrote some pieces for The Lunatic. Back in its early days.”
“He was a good writer. He’d have been a better one if he’d focused on it.”
“I guess that’s true of anything.”
“He had a lot of raw talent, in several areas.” John glanced over his shoulder, toward Charlene. “But he never buckled it down. Wasted what he had.”
“Including his woman?”
“I’d be biased on that subject. In my opinion, he didn’t put much effort into his relationship or much of anything else. He had a couple of chapters of several novels, dozens of half-written songs, any number of abandoned woodworking projects. The man was good with his hands, had a creative mind, but no discipline or ambition.”
Nate weighed the possibilities. Three men, drawn together by location, avocation—the writing—and the climb. And two of the three in love with the same woman.
“Maybe he’d have turned that around, if he’d had the chance.”
John signaled for Jim to refill his glass. “Maybe.”
“You read his stuff?”
“I did. We’d sit around over a beer, or two, or some other recreational drug,” John added with a half smile. “And discuss philosophies and politics, writing and the human condition. Young intellectuals.” John lifted his glass in toast. “Who were going absolutely nowhere.”
“You climbed with him?”
“Ah, adventure. Young intellectuals don’t come to Alaska without needing to have them. I enjoyed those days and wouldn’t have them back for a Pulitzer.” Smiling the way a man does over past glories, he sipped at the fresh whiskey.
“The two of you were friendly?”
“Yes. We were friends, on that intellectual level, in any case. I envied him his woman; that was no secret. I think it amused him and made him feel a bit superior to me. I was the educated one. He’d tossed the prospect of a superior education away, yet look what he had.”
John brooded into his drink. “I imagine he’d still be amused that I continue to envy him his woman.”
Nate let that sit a minute, drank coffee. “Did you two climb with a group, or alone?”
“Hmm.” John blinked, like a man coming out of a dream. Memories, Nate thought, were just another kind of dream. Or nightmare. “Groups. There’s camaraderie in the insanity. The best I remember was a summer climb on Denali. Groups and solos picking their way up that monster like ants on a giant cake. Base camp was like a little town all of its own and a crazed little party.”
“You and Pat?”
“Mmm, along with Jacob, Otto, Deb and Harry, Ed, Bing, Max, the Hopps, Sam Beaver, who died two years ago from a pulmonary embolism. Ah, let’s see, Mackie Sr. was there, as I recall. He and Bing started to beat the snot out of each other for something, and Hopp—the deceased Hopp—broke it up. Hawley was there, but he fell over drunk and cracked his head. We wouldn’t let him climb. And there was Missy Jacobson, a freelance photographer with whom I had a short, intense affair before she moved back to Portland and married a plumber.”
He smiled at that. “Oh yes, Missy, with her big, brown eyes and clever hands. Those of us from Lunacy had put our party together like a holiday. We even had a little flag we were going to stick on the summit for photo ops for the paper. But none of us made it to the top.”
“None of you?”
“No, not then. Pat did later, as I recall, but on that climb we were plagued w
ith bad luck. Still, that night at base camp we were full of possibilities and goodwill. Singing, screwing, dancing under that wonderful, endless sunlight. As alive as I think any of us had ever been.”
“What happened?”
“Harry was sick. Didn’t know it, but by morning he was running a fever. Flu. He said he was fine, and nobody wanted to argue. He didn’t make it five hours. Deb and Hopp got him back down. Sam fell, broke his arm. Missy was getting sick. Another group coming down took her back to base. The weather turned, and those of us who were left pitched tents and huddled down praying for it to pass. It didn’t, got worse. Ed got sick, then I got sick. One thing after another until we had to call it and go back. Miserable end to our little town holiday.”
“Who got you back to town?”
“Sorry?”
“You have a pilot?”
“Oh. I remember being stuffed into that plane, everyone sick or pissed or sullen. Can’t remember the pilot. Some friend of Jacob’s, I think. I was dog sick, that I recall vividly. I wrote about it at some point. Tried for a little humor in a piece for The Lunatic.”
He polished off the whiskey. “I always regretted not hoisting that flag.”
Nate let it go and wandered to Charlene. “Can you take a break?”
“Sure. When Rose is back on her feet.”
“Five minutes. You’re not that crowded yet.”
She shoved her order pad in her pocket. “Five. We don’t keep things moving in here, people will start going to The Italian Place. I can’t afford to lose my regulars.”
She clipped her way out of the restaurant into the empty lobby. The sound of her heels made Nate think of the tango, and he wondered what sort of vanity would overcome a woman’s need for comfort when she was going to be hopping on her feet for a few hours.
“To your knowledge, Patrick Galloway was going to Anchorage to look for work.”
“We’ve been through this.”
“Indulge me. If he went there, and got a wild hair to do a climb, who would he most likely hire to fly him to Sun Glacier?”