“I didn’t get a chance, and flying, where else?”

“Flying where, and with whom?”

He sneered at thewhom and made sure she saw it. “To Nenevok Creek, with Liam,” he said, and was irritated when Jo snapped to attention.

“That the guy they found shot on his gold claim?”

“Jesus,” Jim muttered, “don’t you ever stop being a reporter?”

“No,” she shot back, “don’t you ever stop being an asshole?”

A murmur of voices was heard from the kitchen, a low laugh from Bridget. Jim looked over his shoulder, and Jo turned to see that Luke was helping Bridget make sandwiches. “They’re getting along,” Jim said.

“Aren’t they, though,” Jo said, staring at him.

“What?” he said.

“I didn’t break that story, Jim,” she said in a level voice.

“Yeah, right,” he said.

“I didn’t break that story, Jim.”

“Save it, Jo. You’ve made a career out of breaking stories, the nastier the better. I understand; this was a particularly juicy one, young trooper on the fast track up, loses both wife and son in one tragic accident, goes off the deep end, falls asleep on the job and five people wind up dead in Denali. How could you resist?”

The louder his voice got, the softer she spoke. “I didn’t break that story, Jim.”

“Bullshit. It came out under your byline.”

She put the beer down. “You know the three rules Edna Buchanan gives a cub reporter? One, never trust an editor. Two, never trust an editor. Three, never trust an editor.”

He wanted to say, Who the hell is Edna Buchanan? but he couldn’t bring himself to be that petty. “So you’re saying it’s all your editor’s fault.”

“No. I’m saying, Never trust an editor. I did, so, in fact, it was my fault.”

He was acutely aware that she had not apologized, and understood that she had no intention of doing so. “So, what’re you looking for, peace?”

“That’s pushing it, given our history. How about a truce, for the duration of our visit? Wy’s my best friend, Liam’s yours, we’re sharing their hospitality. They probably won’t invite us back if we leave blood on the floor.”

“Probably not.”

Something in the tone of his voice alerted her. “What?”

He met her eyes, his stern expression sitting oddly on his usually happy-go-lucky face. “Is she going to tell him?”

Her face went very still. “Tell him what?”

He snorted. “Yeah, right.” He went to the door, and said curtly over his shoulder, “If she doesn’t, I will.”

“Jim.”

His name cracked like a whip, and he turned around, ready to do battle, all thoughts of truce gone.

“You don’t know everything there is to tell. Sometimes it’s better just to keep your mouth shut. It isn’t our business, after all.”

“The hell it isn’t.”

“The hell it is,” she fired back. “You’re not in love with Wy.”

“Liam is, and anything to do with Liam is my business.”

“His love life isn’t,” she said. “And he would be the first to tell you so.”

He really hated it when she was right. He really hated it when he was wrong about anything, but he really, really hated it when he was wrong and Jo Dunaway was right.

She interpreted his expression correctly, and very carefully refrained from any retaliatory expression of triumph. “So, you’ll sit on it.”

“I’ll sit on it,” he said grudgingly, and added with a glare, “Not forever. But for now.”

It was the best she could do. The rest was up to Wy. “All right.”

“Hey,” Luke said from the doorway. “Luncheon is served. Anybody hungry?”

Sunshine Valley, September 3

Home, he was home again, and Elaine had come home with him, was with him, again. That first night was like heaven on earth, renewing her acquaintance with the snug little cabin tucked away at the head of the creek. Hand-hewn logs, sanded to a smooth finish inside and gleaming warmly from years of lovingly applied polish. A high-peaked roof with a loft beneath twin skylights, a large, square bed piled high with soft sheets and a down comforter. A stove with a stained glass door, behind which a banked fire glowed. Two chairs drawn up at either side, hand-hewn like the rest of the furniture from the same logs that built the house, sanded smooth and piled high with cushions in nubby fabrics and muted colors. The simple dining table, a slab of wood lathed and sanded to show the grain of the wood swooping and swirling across the perfectly flat surface, so level a marble dropped upon it would roll to a stop before it fell off the edge.

Outside, a thick stand of spruce and cottonwood crowded the eaves, so that fifty, even twenty feet away the logs, unfinished, unoiled and allowed to fade to a silvery gray, shimmered and shifted between the restless boughs like an illusion, an oasis trembling at the edge of a subarctic dream. From the air, the cabin, nestled between two overlapping ridges in the eastern foothills of the Wood River Mountains, was virtually invisible.

It was a beautiful home, in a beautiful place. How could she not love it? How could she not wish to stay here forever, with him? She’d run away, but he had brought her back, and she had fallen in love with the place again, with him again. He’d had to be firm, of course. She was only a woman after all, gentler, weaker, in need of protection and guidance, but that was what he was for, what men were for, and the strength of a man was measured by his ability to forgive, by his tolerance, his patience.

He smiled at her. “We will live here together, forever.”

She looked at him with wide eyes and was silent, as he had taught her. The silence of the wilderness was a sacred thing, and not to be violated with impunity. The silence called to him in ways no one could comprehend, not even Elaine the fair.

Newenham, September 4

Trooper Diana Prince walked into the post at precisely 8:00A.M. The phone rang at precisely 8:01. “Hey, Princess Di.”

She leaned back in her chair and smiled. “Hey, Nick.”

“Have I told you lately I love you?”

“Let me check my watch.”

He laughed, a low, rich, husky sound, and as sensibly and methodically as Prince had chosen her duty assignment, she did find occasion to regret it now and then, just the tiniest bit. Usually whenever she was on the phone with Nick Schatz, the head ballistics man at the Crime Lab. He’d lectured her class on the fine art of telling which bullet came from which rifle. It remained her favorite week out of the sixteen, although she’d come perilously close to losing her head-of-class standing due to lack of sleep.

“So when you coming to visit me in Anchorage?” he said.

“You still married?”

“Yep.”

“Then I’d better keep my distance.”

“Come on, Diana. You know you want to.”

“I don’t always give myself everything I want.”

“How about what you need?”

The purr of that deep, sexy voice was almost irresistible. Almost. “Sitka was one thing, Nick. Your wife was a thousand miles away. In Anchorage, she might as well be in the next room.”

A brief silence. “What if I came to Newenham?”

She sat up. What was this? “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“Maybe the best idea I’ve had all day.”

“And it’s only five after eight,” she said dryly. He laughed again, and she said, “Why did you call? Other than to whip me into a frenzy of sexual frustration.”

“Well, that was my first priority, but as it happens I also have news of an interesting professional nature to relate.”

“Relate away.”

“Those two shotguns you sent me yesterday?”

“Yeah?”

There was a smile in his voice that told her he heard the excitement in her tone. “The Winchester produced a splatter pattern pretty near identical to the pattern on the body you sent Brillo Pad the day before.”