Northern Lights

by Nora Roberts

  There was nothing on the knife but blood. He bagged it, then dug up a plastic sack. He put the knife and the photographs inside. And went out to speak to the Wises.

  The rain had turned to a thin, wet snow by the time Nate tracked down Bing. He found him in his enormous garage by his log house. His weather radio was on as he tinkered under the hood of his truck.

  There were a couple of other vehicles inside and what looked like a small engine or a motor up on blocks. One of the drawers on a huge, rusted, red toolbox was open. Above a long counter was a peg-board holding more tools, with a calendar beside it featuring a mostly naked blonde with enormous breasts.

  A muscular-looking sewing machine—sewing machine?—sat on a wood table in the far corner. And over that was a moose head.

  The place smelled like beer stirred with smoke and grease.

  Bing squinted over at Nate, one eye closed against the smoke that drifted up from the cigarette clamped in his lips. "We get more rain tomorrow, the river's going to come up and kiss Lunatic Street. Gonna need the sandbags I got back of the truck."

  Sandbags, Nate thought with a glance at the sewing machine. He couldn't quite picture Bing sewing up sandbags, but he supposed there were bigger wonders in the world.

  "You left the movie early."

  "Seen enough. Gonna be busy by morning. What's it to you?"

  Nate stepped forward, held out the bagged knife. "Yours?"

  Bing drew the cigarette out of his mouth as he turned. He'd have to have been blinded by more than a little smoke to miss the blood on handle and blade.

  "Looks like it." He tossed the cigarette down, heeled it to pulp on the oil-stained concrete. "Yeah, it's my knife. Looks like it's been used some, too. Where'd you find it?"

  "In Joe and Lara's dog, Yukon."

  Bing took one step back. Nate saw it, the quick, jerking step of a man who'd been sucker punched. "What the hell you talking about?"

  "Somebody used this to slit that dog's throat, then jammed it in his chest so I wouldn't have any trouble finding it. What time did you leave the movie, Bing?"

  "Somebody killed that dog? Somebody killed that dog?" Awareness slid over the shock in his eyes. "You're saying I killed that dog?" His fist tightened over the wrench still in his hand. "Is that what you're saying?"

  "You take a swing at me with that, I'll take you out. You want to spare yourself that humiliation, because believe me, I can do it. Put it down. Now."

  Rage trembled over his face, quaked visibly through his body. "You've got yourself a big, bad temper, don't you, Bing?" Nate said softly. "The kind that's earned you some assaults on your record, had you spending a few nights here and there behind bars. The kind that's pushing you right now to crack my skull like an egg with that wrench. Go ahead, try it."

  Bing heaved the wrench across the room where it smashed a chip out of the cinder-block wall. He was breathing like a steam engine, and his face was red as brick.

  "Fuck you. Sure I punched a few faces, cracked a few heads, but I'm no goddamn dog killer. And if you say I am, I don't need a wrench to bust your head open."

  "I asked you what time you left the movie."

  "I went out to catch a smoke at intermission. You saw me. You started in on how we had to prep for possible flooding. I came back here. Loaded those damn sandbags." He jerked a thumb toward the bed of his truck where at least a hundred sandbags were stacked. "Figured I'd tune up the engine while I was at it. I've been here ever since. Somebody went to Joe's place and killed that dog, it wasn't me.

  I liked that dog."

  Nate took out the bagged gloves. "Are these yours?"

  Staring at them, Bing rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth. The red was dying out of his cheek, with clammy white rising. "What the hell's going on here?"

  "Is that a yes?"

  "Yeah, they're mine, I'm not denying it. I told you somebody took 'em, took my spare gloves and my buck knife. I reported it."

  "Just this morning, too. A cynical person might wonder if you were covering yourself."

  "Why the hell would I kill a dog? Damn, stupid old dog?" Bing scrubbed at his face, then shook another cigarette out of the pack in his breast pocket. His hands shook visibly.

  "You don't have a dog, do you, Bing?"

  "So that makes me a dog hater? Christ. I had a dog. He died two years ago this June. Got cancer."

  Bing cleared his throat, drew hard on his cigarette. "Cancer took him."

  "Somebody kills a dog, you have to wonder if he had problems with the dog or the people who owned it."

  "I didn't have any problem with that dog. I got no problem with Joe or Lara or that college boy of theirs. You ask them. You ask them if we had any problems. But somebody's got problems with me, that's for damn sure."

  "Any idea why that might be?"

  He shrugged, jerkily. "Only thing I know is I didn't kill that dog."

  "Keep available, Bing. If you plan on leaving town for any reason, I want to know about it."

  "I ain't going to stand by while people point the finger at me."

  "Stay available," Nate repeated, and went out the way he'd come in.

  * * *

  Meg nursed a beer and her temper as she waited. She didn't like waiting, and Nate was going to hear about it when he got back. He'd snapped orders at her like she was some sort of half-wit, green recruit and he was the general.

  She didn't like orders, and he was going to hear about that, too.

  He was going to get both ears full when he got back.

  Where the hell was he?

  She was worried sick about her dogs—no matter how the sensible part of her insisted they were fine, that Nate would keep his word and get them for her. She should have been allowed to get them herself instead of being under some sort of half-assed house arrest.

  She didn't want to be here, worrying, helpless, sipping beer and playing poker with Otto, Skinny Jim and The Professor to pass the time.

  She was up twenty-two dollars and change, and she didn't give a damn.

  Where the hell was he?

  And who the hell did he think he was, telling her what to do, threatening to lock her in jail? He'd have done it, too, she thought as she drew the eight of clubs to fill out a very pretty full house.

  He hadn't been sweet, sad-eyed Nate when he'd stood out in the rain beside that dog. Beside poor, dead Yukon. He'd been something else, someone else. Someone she imagined he'd been back in Baltimore before circumstances had cut him off at the knees. Cut him off at the heart.

  She didn't give a damn about that either. She wouldn't give a damn.

  "See your two dollars," she said to Jim. "Raise it two." And tossed her money into the pot.

  Her mother had given Jim an hour break and was working the bar. Not that there was a lot of business, Meg thought as The Professor folded and Otto bumped her raise another two. Other than their table, there was a booth of four—Outsiders. Climbers waiting out the weather. The two old farts, Hans and Dex, had another booth, whiling away a rainy evening with beer and checkers.

  And waiting, she knew, for whatever gossip might come in the door.

  There'd be more in and out if the river rose. People coming in for a few minutes of dry and warm, ordering up coffee before they went out to sandbag again. When it was done, there'd be more. Piling in, wet and tired and hungry, but not ready to go home alone, not ready to break the camaraderie of bucking nature.

  They'd want coffee and alcohol and whatever hot meal was put in front of them. Charlene would see they got it; she'd work until the last of them were gone. Meg had seen it before.

  She tossed in two dollars to call when Jim folded.

  "Two pair," Otto announced. "Kings over fives."

  "Your kings are going to have to bow to my ladies." She set down two queens. "Seeing as they're cozied up with three eights."

  "Son of a bitch!" Otto watched the nice little pile of bills and coins as Meg swept them away. Then he lifted his chin, pushed back his c
hair as Nate stepped in from the lobby. "Chief?"

  Meg jerked around. She'd sat facing the outside door, waiting to pounce the minute he opened it.

  Instead, she thought sourly, he'd snuck in behind her.

  "Could use some coffee, Charlene."

  "It's good and hot." She filled a large mug. "I can fix you a meal. That'd be good and hot, too."

  "No, thanks."

  "Where are my dogs?" Meg demanded.

  "In the lobby. Otto, I ran into Hopp and some others outside. Consensus is the river looks like it's going to hold, but we'll need to keep an eye on it. No more than a light snow coming down now. Forecasters say this system's going to head west, so we're probably in the clear."

  He drank down half the coffee, held the mug out to Charlene for a refill. "It's flooded over on Lake Shore. Peter and I put hazard markers up there and across from the east edge of Rancor Woods."

  "Those two spots are a problem if too many people piss on the side of the road," Otto told him. "The system goes west, we won't have a problem in town."

  "We'll keep an eye," Nate repeated and turned toward the stairs.

  "Just one damn minute. Chief." Meg stood in the doorway, a dog on either side. "I've got some things to say to you."

  "I need a shower. You can say them while I'm cleaning up, or you can wait."

  Her lips peeled back into a snarl as he carried his coffee up the steps. "Wait, my ass."

  She stomped up behind him, the dogs in her wake.

  "Who do you think you are?"

  "I think I'm chief of police."

  "I don't care if you're chief of the known universe, you don't get off snapping at me, ordering me, threatening me."

  "I did get off. But I wouldn't have had to do any of those things if you'd just done what I told you."

  "What you told me?" She shoved into the room behind him. "You don't tell me. You're not my boss or my father. Just because I've slept with you doesn't give you the right to tell me what to do."

  He yanked off his soaked jacket, then tapped the badge on his shirt. "No, but this does." He peeled off the shirt on the way to the bathroom.

  He was still someone else, she thought. The someone else who'd lived behind those sad eyes, just waiting to muscle his way out. That someone was hard and cold. Dangerous.

  She heard the shower start up. Both dogs continued to stand, their heads cocked at they looked up at her.

  "Lie down," she murmured.

  She marched into the bathroom. Nate was sitting on the toilet lid, fighting off wet boots.

  "You sic Otto on me like some sort of guard dog and leave me waiting damn near three hours. Three hours where I don't know what's going on."

  He looked at her, dead in the face, with eyes like flint. "I had work and more important things to do than keep you updated. You want the news?" He set the boots aside, rose to strip off his pants.

  "Turn on the radio."

  "Don't you talk to me like I'm some sort of whiny, irritating female."

  He stepped into the shower, ripped the curtain shut after him. "Then stop acting like one."

  God, he needed the heat. Nate pressed his hands to the tile, dipped his head and let the hot water pour over him. An hour or two of it, he estimated, it might just reach his tired, frozen bones. A bottle or two of aspirin, parts of him might stop aching. Three or four days of sleep might just counteract the fatigue that trudging through icy flood water, hauling barricades, watching a grown man and woman weep over their murdered dog had drenched him with.

  Part of him wanted the quiet, the quiet dark that he could sink into where none of it really mattered.

  And part of him was afraid he'd find his way back there, all too easily.

  When he heard the curtain draw back again, he stayed as he was, arms braced, head down, eyes shut. "You don't want to fight with me now, Meg. You'll lose."

  "I'll tell you something, Burke, I don't like being shuffled off like a petty annoyance. I don't like being ignored. Ordered around. I'm not sure I like the way you looked outside Town Hall tonight. So I couldn't see anything I recognized on your face, in your eyes. It pisses me off. And . . . "

  She slid her arms around him, pressed her naked body to his so that he jerked straight. "It stirs me up."

  "Don't." He clasped his hands over hers, prying hers apart before he turned to hold her at arm's length. "Just don't."

  Deliberately she looked down. Deliberately she smiled as she looked up again. "Seems to be a contradiction here."

  "I don't want to hurt you, and I would, the way I'm feeling right now."

  "You don't scare me. You got me all churned up, spoiling for a fight. All of a sudden, I'm spoiling for something else. Give me something else." She reached up, ran her hand down his chest. "We'll finish fighting after."

  "I'm not feeling friendly."

  "Me, either. Nate, sometimes you just need something else. Just need to go somewhere else and forget for a little while. Burn up some of the mad or the hurt or the scared. Burn me up," she murmured. She gripped his hips now, squeezed.

  She'd have been better off if he'd pushed her away. He was sure of it. But he yanked her toward him, so that warm, wet body collided with his, so he could find her mouth, ravage it.

  She clamped around him, hooking her arms up his back so her fingers could dig into his shoulders. Nails biting flesh. The heat pumped out of her, and it reached his bones, seared through them, scoring away the tired and the cold line of anger.

  Her hands streaked down him again, wet against wet, and her head dropped back to invite him to feast on her throat, her shoulders, anywhere he could find that soft, warm flesh.

  The sound she made, the sound that simmered against his lips was one of erotic triumph.

  "Here." She slid the soap out of the slot. "Let's clean you up. I like the feel of a man's back under my hands. Especially when it's all wet and slippery."

  She had a voice like a siren. He let her use it on him, use her hands on him, let her think she was guiding him. When he pushed her back to the shower wall, the sleepy look in her eyes sharpened with surprise.

  When she started to smile, he crushed his mouth to hers.

  She'd been right, she thought dimly. He was someone else, someone who took control, ruthlessly.

  Who took away choice, who could make her surrender it.

  Even as his mouth took possession of hers, he twisted the soap from her hand. He ran it over her breasts, long, teasing strokes that had her nipples aching. Her breath trembled out in a sigh.

  The tickle low in her belly told her she was ready. That she wanted. She needed. Rubbing her lips down the side of his neck, she murmured to him. "It's good with you. It's good. Be inside me now.

  Come inside me."

  "You'll scream first."