Angels Fall

by Nora Roberts

  "Killing somebody takes ice or heat, depending. Getting away with it? Yeah, that takes cold blood. Seen enough?"

  She nodded. "More than."

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  AS THEY WALKED BACK. Reece uncapped her water bottle and drank. When Brody held out a hand, she passed it to him.

  "They always say there's no such thing as a perfect murder."

  He drank deep, handed her the bottle. "They say a lot of things, and they're wrong a good part of the time."

  "They really are. But still, whoever she was, she belonged somewhere. She came from somewhere. Odds are she had a job, a home. She might have had a family."

  "Might have, could have."

  Annoyed, Reece jammed her hands in her pockets. "Well, she was connected to at least one person. And he killed her. They had something between them."

  "Back to might have, could have. They could have met the day they ended up here, or been together for a decade. They could have come from anywhere. Traveling in from California, up from Texas, out from back East. Hell, they could've been French."

  "French?"

  "People kill in every language. The point is, the odds of them passing through are just as good as they are for them being from the area. Probably better. Fewer people live in Wyoming than live in Alaska."

  "Is that why you moved here?"

  "'Part of it. Probably. You work for a newspaper, a big-city paper. you're in people up to your eyeballs. The point is, the odds are better that whoever these people were, they came from somewhere else."

  "And they got into a fight to the death because they got lost and he wouldn't stop to ask for directions: It's a male plague worthy of some serious ass-kicking. I grant you. But I don't think so. They met there or went there because they had something to talk about. Or argue about."

  He liked the way she talked, Brody decided. Rarely in a straight line. Like when she cooked, juggling any number of dishes at the same time. "Supposition, not fact.

  "Fine, I'm supposing. And I'm supposing they weren't French."

  "Possibly Italian. Lithuanian isn't out of the question."

  "Fine, a Lithuanian couple gets lost because, like men across the globe, he values his penis—among other things—as a compass. So he's incapable of asking for directions and thereby disparaging the power of his penis."

  He frowned at her. "This is a closely guarded male secret. How did you crack the code?"

  "More of us know of this than you could possibly guess. In any case, they get out of their car, tromp through the trees toward the river, because sure, that's the way to figure out where they are. They argue, fight, he kills her. Then, being a Lithuanian mountain man, he expertly covers all tracks and takes the body back to their rented Taurus so he can bury her in their homeland."

  "You ought to write that down."

  "If that's the sort of ridiculous nonsense you write, I'm amazed you've been published."

  "I might've stuck with the French, just for that international scope. But it goes back, Slim, to they could have been anyone from anywhere."

  It helped to think of it as a puzzle. It gave it more distance somehow.

  "If he covered his trail the way he did, he knows something about hiking and tracking."

  "A lot of people do. On the 'could be' side, they may have been here before."

  Brody glanced around. He knew this type of terrain because he'd hiked in areas like it, and used areas like it in his work. There'd be columbine and money flowers spurting up before much longer. Honeysuckle blooming as it twined wherever it could reach. Shady spots, pretty spots.

  It would show off better toward June.

  "A little early in the season for tourists." he calculated, "but people come this time of year because they want to avoid the summer and winter crowds. Or they're heading somewhere else and stop for a short hike. Or the ones you saw live in the Fist and sampled your cooking."

  "That's a really happy thought. Thanks."'

  "You saw what he was wearing. Would you recognize it again?"

  "Orange hunter's cap, black all-weather jacket. Coat. No, jacket, I guess. I see that kind of thing every day. I just didn't get a good enough look at him. I could hand-feed him the soup du jour and not know the difference. I don't see how I'll ever… Oh my God."

  He saw it, too. In fact, he saw the bear a good ten seconds before she noticed it lumbering along. "He's not interested in you."

  "And you know that because you're a bear psychic?" It seemed so unreal she wasn't really scared. At least not actively. "God, he's really big."

  "I've seen bigger."

  "Good for you. Um, we're not supposed to run."

  "No. That would just entertain him until he caught up. Just keep talking, keep moving, just a little detour. Okay, he sees us."

  All right, she thought, starting to get really scared. Hello, bear. "And that's good?"

  She remembered the illustration in her guidebook of the suggested position for playing dead during a bear charge. It looked something like the child's pose in yoga.

  She could do that, no problem. She could easily fall right down on the ground, because if it charged, her legs were going to buckle anyway.

  Before she could test the guidebook's veracity, the bear gave them a long look, turned its tail and walked away.

  "Mostly they're shy," Brody commented.

  "Mostly. Excellent. I think I need to sit down."

  "Just keep moving. Your first bear sighting?"

  "That close up and personal, yeah. I forgot to think about them." She rubbed a hand between her breasts to make certain her abruptly drumming heart stayed where it belonged. "To be bear-aware, like it says in my guide. Kinda breathless," she said and tapped her fingers to her chest again. "I guess he was beautiful, in a terrifying sort of way."

  "One thing. If there was a dead body nearby that he could scent, he'd have been more aggressive. So that means it's either not around here, or buried deep enough."

  Now she had to swallow, hard and deep. "More pleasant images for me. I'm definitely having that wine. A really big glass of wine."

  SHE FELT SAFER when she was back in the car. Safer, and ridiculously tired. She wanted a nap as much as she wanted the wine. A dim, quiet room, a soft blanket, locked doors. And oblivion.

  When he started the car she closed her gritty eyes for just a moment. And slid off the edge of fatigue into sleep.

  SHE SLEPT QUIETLY. Brody thought, not a sound, not a movement. Her head rested in that nook between the seat and the window, and her hands lay limp in her lap.

  What the hell was he supposed to do with her now?

  Since he wasn't entirely sure, he drove idly, taking impulsive detours to extend the trip back to town.

  She handled herself better than she gave herself credit for. At least that was his opinion. A lot of people wouldn't have gone back through what she had. He figured most would consider their duty done and over by reporting the crime.

  She didn't.

  Maybe because of what she'd lived through before. Or maybe it was just the way she was built.

  Checked herself into a psych hospital, he mused. And from the tone of her voice, he understood she thought of that as a kind of surrender.

  He saw it as courage.

  He also figured she considered her travels since Boston a kind of flight. He thought of it more as a voyage. Just as he considered his time since leaving Chicago. A flight was just fear and escape. A voyage? It was a passage, wasn't it? He'd needed that passage to dig in and do what he wanted, to live by his own terms, his own clock and calendar.

  From his point of view. Reece Gilmore was doing pretty much the same thing. She just carried a lot more baggage with her on the trip.

  He'd never been in fear for his life, but he could imagine it. Imagining was what he did. Just as he could imagine the panic of lying in pain and confusion in a hospital bed. The despair of doubting your own sanity. Add it all up, it was a lot for one person to handle.


  And she'd roped him in, which, wasn't easy to do. He wasn't the type to try to mend the broken wing of a baby bird. Nature took its course, and the less people interfered with it. the better.

  But he was sucked in now, and not just because he was a degree of separation away from witnessing a murder. Though that would have been enough.

  She pulled at him. Not her weaknesses, but the strength she struggled to find and use to fight them back. He had to respect that. Just as he had to acknowledge the low simmer of attraction.

  He never would've said she was his type. The mending steel of spine under the fragile shell. It made her needy yet, and he had no patience for needy women. Usually.

  He liked them smart and steady, and busy with their own lives. So they didn't take too much time out of his.

  She'd probably been all of that before she was hurt, he decided. She might be that way again, but never exactly the same way. He thought it would be interesting to watch her finish putting herself back together, and get a good look at the results.

  So he drove while she slept, across the yellow grasses and washed-out green of the ubiquitous sage. And he watched the Tetons spring up out of the plate of land. No gentle rise, no softening foothills to detract from that sudden and awesome power.

  Snow still swirled on the peaks, and the slashes of white against the blue, the gray, added another layer of might as they knocked against the sky.

  He could still remember his first sight of them, and how he, who'd never call himself a spiritual man. had been struck with their rough and terrible magic. The Rockies were grander, he supposed, and the mountains of the East more elegant. But these, the mountains that ringed what was, for now, his home, were primal.

  Maybe he had come here because he didn't have to jam his elbows into people everywhere he went to get a little space. But those mountains were a hell of a bonus feature.

  He drove fast along the empty road across the sage flats where a small herd of bison grazed. Lumbering along, he noted, coats shaggy, big heads lowered. A couple of calves, probably brand-new, stayed close to their mothers.

  Though he imagined Reece would enjoy seeing them, he let her sleep.

  He knew the flats would erupt into bloom under the summer sun, blaze with impossible color among the sage. And he imagined that with all those acres of open, a grave could go unnoticed by man or beast. If the man had the patience to dig, long and deep.

  He wound toward Angel's Fist, and the stands of cottonwood and pine that bordered it. Reece moaned quietly in sleep. When Brody glanced at her, he saw she'd begun to quiver.

  He stopped in the middle of the road, then turned to give her arm a quick shake. "Wake up."

  "No!" She came out of sleep like a runner off the starting block. When her fist shot out, he blocked it with the flat of his hand.

  "Hit me," he said mildly. "I'll hit back."

  "What? What?" She stared blearily at her fist cupped firmly in his hand. "I fell asleep. Did I fall asleep?"

  "It you didn't, you gave a good imitation of it for the past hour."

  "Did I hit you?"

  "You gave it a shot. Don't try it again."

  "Check." She willed her heartbeat to steady. "Can I have my hand back?"

  He opened his fingers so that she drew her fist back and let it fall into her lap. "You always wake up like you just heard the bell for Round Two?"

  "I don't know. It's been a long time—I can't remember how long— since I slept when anyone's been around. I guess I feel comfortable around you."

  "Comforting, comfortable." That eyebrow winged up. "You keep using words like that, I'm going to feel honor-bound to change your mind."

  She smiled a little. "Your kind doesn't hurt women."

  "Is that so?"

  "Physically, I mean. You've probably shattered your share of hearts, but you don't rough the owner up first. You'd just stab her ego to death with words, which is—now that I think about it—just as bad as a pop on the jaw. Anyway. I appreciate you letting me sleep. I must've… Oh! Oh, just look at them."

  She'd shifted away, and the view that filled the windshield blew everything else out of her mind. Struck, she unhooked her seat belt, pushed open her door. The wind streamed over her as she stepped out of the car.

  "It's all so raw, so stunning and scary. All this open, and there they are, the—I don't know—fortress of them taking over everything. It's like they just shoved their way up, straight out of the ground. I love the suddenness of them."

  She walked to the front of the car, to lean back against the hood. "I look at them every day, out my window, or when I'm walking to or from work. But it's not the same as being out here without buildings, without people."

  "I'm people."

  "You know what I mean. Out here, faced with them, you feel so utterly human."

  She looked over, pleased he'd come around to join her. "I thought I'd pass through, pick up a little work, move on. And every morning I look out my window at the lake, and I see them mirrored in it, and I can't think of any reason to leave."

  "Gotta land somewhere, eventually."

  "That wasn't the plan. Well, I didn't really have a plan, so to speak. But I thought I'd end up winding my way back East sooner or later. Probably not Boston. Maybe Vermont. I went to school there, so it's familiar. I was sure I'd miss the green. That East Coast green."

  "'The meadows get green, and the flats bloom, the marshes. It's a picture."

  "I bet it is, but so is this. Better than that glass of wine." She tipped her head back, closed her eyes and just breathed.

  "You look like that sometimes when you're cooking."

  She opened her eyes again, the deep Spanish brown. "I do? Like what?"

  "Relaxed and calm. Happy."

  "I guess that's where I'm confident, and being confident makes me relaxed and happy. And I've missed it. I couldn't make myself go into a kitchen after what happened. It stole that from me, or I let it be stolen from me. Whatever, I'm getting it back. Listen to the birds. I wonder what they are."

  He hadn't noticed the birdsong until she mentioned it. Now she turned to look around, and her eyes went wide. She gripped his arm, pointed. "Look. Wow."

  When he did, he saw the small herd of bison, munching their way over the sage flats. "First sighting there, too?"

  "Like the bear, I've seen them. But I've never been standing out with them. It's more exciting. Oh look! Babies."

  She'd softened on the word, drawing it out like it was melting.

  "Why do women always say babies in just that tone?"

  She merely batted the back of her hand at his arm. "They're so sweet, and then they get so big."

  "Then you fry them up on the grill."

  "Please, I'm having a really nice nature moment here. Seeing them makes me wish I was riding a horse instead of riding in an SUV. More, you know, home on the range on a horse. I want to see an antelope," she decided. "Well, first I'd have to know how to ride