Northern Lights by Nora Roberts

  occurred to her.

  "Sixteen years ago Pat Galloway disappeared. I bet if you put your mind to it, you could remember a lot of details about those weeks."

  "I was scrambling to pay the rent, just like I was more than half the time. I had to ask Karl for more hours work at The Lodge. I was a hell of a lot more worried about myself than what other people were up to."

  But she leaned back, closed her eyes. "I don't know. Jacob left about the same time. I remember because he came by to see Pat, the day Pat left, and said he'd have flown him into Anchorage if he'd known he was going. He was flying Max down, and a couple others, I think. Harry. Harry was hitching a ride to Anchorage to look into a new supplier or something. Or maybe that was the year after, or before. I don't know for sure, but I think it was then."

  "Good." He made notes on his yellow legal pad. "Anyone else?"

  "It was a slow winter. Hard and slow. That's why I wanted Pat to find some work. Town was dead;

  we couldn't get the tourists in. The Lodge was damn near empty, and Karl gave me busy work just to tide me over, help me out. He was a sweet man; he looked out for me. Some people went hunting, some holed up and waited for spring. Max was trying to get the paper off the ground and was hunting up advertisers, pestering people for stories. Nobody took him seriously back then."

  "Was he in town the whole month?"

  "I don't know. Ask Carrie. She was chasing him like a hound chases a rabbit, back then. Why do you care?"

  "Because I'm in charge of this office, of this town, of you."

  "You didn't even know Pat. Maybe it's like some people are saying. You just want to make a big stir, get some press before you go back where you came from."

  "I'm from here now."

  * * *

  He answered a couple of calls, including another residential chimney fire and a complaint about the Mackie brothers blocking the road with an overturned Jeep Cherokee.

  "It wasn't like we did it on purpose." Jim Mackie stood in the thickly falling snow, scratching his chin and scowling at the Jeep that lay on its side like a tired old man taking a nap. "We got it cheap, and we were hauling it home. Gonna rebuild the engine, paint her up and sell her again."

  "Less we decided to keep her," his brother put in, "hook a plow up to her and give Bing some competition."

  Nate stood in the snow, in the miserable cold, and studied the mess. "You don't have a trailer hitch, a tow bar or any of the standard towing equipment. You just figured you'd haul this heap twenty miles with a couple of rusted chains hooked onto your truck with, what is this, baling wire?"

  "It was working." Bill furrowed his brow. "Till we hit that rut and she rolled over like a dog playing dead, it was working fine."

  "We were working out how to get her up again. No cause for everybody to go crazy about it."

  He heard the howl of what had to be a wolf, eerie and primal in the ghostly gloom. It served to remind him he was standing on a snowy, rural road on the edge of the Alaskan Interior with a couple of lamebrains.

  "You're blocking traffic and obstructing the town plow from clearing the road for people who have enough sense to drive responsibly. If this had happened five miles the other way, you'd have hampered the fire department on a call. Bing's going to get this thing upright and tow it to your place. You're going to pay his standard fee—"

  "Son of a bitch!"

  "And the fine for towing a vehicle without proper equipment or signage."

  Bill looked so pained that Nate wouldn't have been surprised to see tears run from his eyes. "How the hell are we supposed to make a profit on this if you go around fining us and making us pay that penny-pinching Bing's towing fee?"

  "That's a puzzle, all right."

  "Hell." Jim kicked the bald rear tire of the Jeep. "Seemed like a good idea at the time." Then he grinned. "We'll fix her up good. Maybe you'll want to buy her for the police department. Hook a plow to her cheap enough. Be useful."

  "Take it up with the mayor. Let's get this off the road."

  It took Bing, his helper Pargo, both Mackies and Nate to get the job done. When it was over, and Bing was towing the Jeep away, Nate tried to roll the kinks out of his back.

  "How much you pay for it?"

  "Two thousand." Bill got a gleam in his eye. "Cash."

  He calculated, loosely, what it would cost to make it roadworthy, how much Bing would skin them for over the towing. "I'm going to let this go with a warning. Next time you boys decide to be enterprising, get a tow bar."

  "You're all right, chief." Both Mackies slapped him on the back and nearly sent him pitching face-first in the snow. "Pain having cops around, but you're all right."

  "Appreciate that."

  He drove the short distance back to town and swung to the curb when he saw David helping Rose out of their truck in front of the clinic.

  "Everything okay?" he called out.

  "Baby's coming," David yelled back.

  Nate jumped out and took Rose's other arm. She continued to take slow, steady breaths, but she smiled at him with those melted chocolate eyes.

  "It's okay. Everything's fine." She leaned against her husband as Nate opened the door. "I didn't want to go to the hospital in Anchorage. I wanted Doc Ken to deliver. Everything's fine."

  "My mother has Jesse," David told him. He was looking a little pale, Nate thought. And he felt considerably pale himself.

  "Do you want me to stay, do anything?" Please say no. "Call anyone?"

  "My mother's coming." Rose let David help her out of her coat. "Doc said I could go anytime when I saw him last checkup. Looks like he was right. Four minutes apart," she told Joanna, who hurried over. "Steady and strong now. My water broke about twenty minutes ago."

  And that, Nate decided, was about all a man, even one with a badge, needed to hear.

  "I'll let you get to it." He took Rose's coat from David, hung it up. "Call if. . . whatever. Peter's out doing something for me, but I'll call him in if you want."

  "Thank you."

  They disappeared into the back, to do things he didn't care to think about. But he dug out his phone.

  It rang in his hand.

  "Burke."

  "Chief? It's Peter. We didn't find any traps, any sign of them either. If you want, we can extend the search, um, widen the parameters."

  "No, that'll do. Head on back. Your sister's in the process of making you an uncle again."

  "Rose? Now? Is she okay? Is she—"

  "She looked fine to me. She's here at the clinic now. David's with her. His mom has Jesse, and your mom's on her way."

  "So am I."

  Nate stuffed the phone back in his pocket. He should probably stand by, at least until more of the family arrived. The waiting room of the clinic was as good a place as any to sit and think about tracks in the snow.

  And what he would tell Meg when she returned to Lunacy.

  Seventeen

  It was a girl, eight full pounds of one, with the requisite complement of digits and a thatch of black hair. Her name was Willow Louise, and she was beautiful. This information came from Peter, who rushed into the station four hours after he'd rushed into the clinic.

  Knowing his job, Nate had stopped by The Corner Store and picked up cigars. And while he was there found a sturdy five-ring binder. It was army green rather than the black he would have preferred but he bought it, charged it to the Lunacy PD account.

  It would hold his notes, copies of all the reports and photos. It would be his murder book.

  He passed the cigars out with some ceremony to Peter, Otto and an amused Peach. The gesture warmed the cold shoulder she'd given him since he'd snapped at her that morning.

  After some backslapping and smelly smoke, he gave Peter the rest of the day off.

  Nate hunkered back in his office, spent some time with the hole punch and the copier. He put his murder book in order. Having it and the board gave him that tangible foundation. It was cop work.

  It was his work.
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  He intended to spend the next part of his shift harassing Anchorage with more calls, but Peach came in. She shut the door, sat down and folded her hands in her lap.

  "Problem?"

  "You think those tracks back at Meg's place are something to worry about?"

  "Well. . ."

  "Otto told me, since you didn't. I, ah—"

  "If you told me what's what around here, I wouldn't get irritable."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  Her lips twitched at that. "And don't think I'm not onto you, Ignatious. You use that agreeable tone when you want to change the subject or make someone think you're agreeable when you're not."

  "Busted. I thought it was worth checking out, that's all."

  "And you don't mention it to your dispatcher because maybe you don't think she's smart enough to know you're spending as much free time as you can manage out there snuggled up with Megan Galloway?"

  "No." Watching her, he tapped the corner of his murder book right, tapped it left. "But maybe I didn't want to discuss said snuggling with the woman who brings me sticky buns. Because she might get the wrong idea."

  "And Peter and Otto wouldn't?"

  "They're guys. Mostly guys only have one idea about. . . snuggling, so it didn't apply. I'm sorry I was short with you this morning, and I'm sorry I didn't keep my valued and respected dispatcher in the loop."

  "You've got a smooth way about you," she said after a minute. "You worried about Meg?"

  "I'm wondering what business anybody had sneaking around there, that's all."

  "She'd be the first to tell you she can handle herself and always could. But I'm of the opinion it never hurts a woman to have a good man looking out. People around here, they don't hurt each other. Oh, some fist-fights now and then or some backbiting, what have you. But it's a place you feel safe, where you know if you had trouble, somebody'd lend a hand."

  She drew the pencil out of her bun, ran it through her fingers. "Now this happens, and you wonder if feeling safe was just an illusion. People get worked up. Get scared and spooked."

  "And a lot of those people are armed and territorial."

  "And a little bit crazy," she added with a nod. "You're going to want to be careful."

  "Who did Max trust enough to let get that close, Peach? Close enough to put a bullet in his head?"

  She played with the pencil another moment, then stuck it firmly back in her bun. "You're not going to let it be suicide."

  "I'm not going to let it be what it's not."

  She sighed, twice. "Can't think of anybody he wouldn't have trusted. Same goes for me, and just about everyone in Lunacy. We're a community. We may argue and disagree and kick some ass now and then, but we're still a community. And that's next door to family."

  "Put it this way. Who would Max have climbed with back when Galloway went missing that he'd trust well enough today?"

  "God Almighty." Staring at him, she pressed a fist to her heart. "You're scaring me some. Putting it that way, you're making me think which one of my neighbors, my friends, might be a cold-blooded killer."

  "I don't know that it's cold."

  But you are, she realized suddenly. When it comes down to this, you are. "Bing, Jacob, Harry or Deb. Lord God. Ah, Hopp or Ed, though Hopp was never too keen on climbing. Mackie Sr., Drunk Mike if he was sober enough. Even The Professor went up a couple times. Short, summer climbs as far as I know."

  "John always had a thing for Charlene."

  "Holy hell, Nate."

  "Just getting a picture, Peach."

  "I guess so. Long as I can remember anyway. Not that she looked twice at him—well, anymore than she looked twice or three times at any man when she was with Pat. Then she married Karl Hidel, what, about six months after Pat left. Everybody knew, including Old Man Hidel, that she married him for his money, for The Lodge, but she was good to him."

  "Okay."

  Her gaze flicked to his board, away again. "How am I going to look at these people straight on now?"

  "Downside of being a cop."

  She looked a little dazzled, and a little chagrined, at being termed a cop. "Guess it is." She pushed to her feet, stood in her red sweater with pink Valentine hearts around the hem. "I want you to know before I say this last thing that I like Meg. I've got a lot of affection and respect for her. But I've got a lot of affection and respect for you, too, and I'm hoping she doesn't break your heart."

  "Noted."

  He waited until she'd gone out to swivel around in his chair and stare out at the snow. A few weeks before, he hadn't thought there was enough left of his heart to break. Now he didn't know whether to be pleased or annoyed to realize there was.

  Recovery? he wondered. Or stupidity? Maybe they were the same thing.

  He swiveled back and made the calls.

  * * *

  She didn't come back that night. Nate spent it at her place, with her dogs. He worked off some frustration, and a growing anger, in her weight room. In the morning, when the snow had slowed to a thin drizzle, he drove back to Lunacy and the job.

  * * *

  She hadn't contacted him, and that was deliberate. Inconsiderate, Meg admitted when she settled back in the cab at Anchorage Airport. He'd probably worry some. He had worry-about-the-woman genes if she was any judge. He'd be hurt and he'd be mad, and that was also deliberate on her part.

  The man had spooked her.

  There'd been a look in his eye when he'd watched her climb into her plane. More than that was the sensation that look had caused to roll around inside her.

  She wasn't after that sort of depth and feeling and contact. Why the hell couldn't people just enjoy some good, simple sex without mucking it up with . . . whatever. Loyalty was one thing, and she'd give and get that—as long as the blood ran hot. She