Fire And Ice

NINE

The Blazer was the property of the state and as such should only have been driven on official business, but since Liam didn't have a car yet, along with an apartment or an iron, he decided to risk the wrath of observant citizens and drive it anyway.

Like DeCreft's, Wy's house was on the river bluff. The road in was, again, almost but not quite lost in a tangle of brush and trees. When he had bumped his way to the end of it, he found a surprisingly neat clapboard cottage painted white, with a detached garage and shop, also painted white. Both buildings were old but well kept.

Wy's truck was in the garage. Good. There was a battered white Isuzu pickup parked behind it. Wy had visitors. Not so good. He climbed the steps to the door and raised his hand to knock. The door opened before he could.

"Liam!" Wy said brightly.

There were two people standing behind her in the act of shrugging into their jackets. A tall man with white hair, and a stocky woman with intent green eyes. He recognized them at once from the plane: the other Alaskan Old Fart, with Daughter.

"I don't think you've met Dan and Jo, have you?" Wy said, still in the bright, artificial voice. "Daniel Dunaway, Joan Dunaway, this is Liam Campbell. Liam, this is Daniel and his daughter, Jo. Dan is a friend of my parents. Jo and I went to high school and college together."

"How do you do?" Liam said, holding out his hand.

After a moment of hesitation, Daniel Dunaway took it. His grip was dry, callused, and hard. When Liam turned to Jo, she had her arms folded across her chest and was staring at him out of narrowed eyes. Liam thought better of holding out his hand to her.

Daniel settled one big hand on Wy's shoulder. "It was great seeing you, girl. I'll call your folks when we get back, let them know you're all right."

"Thanks, Dan."

Jo broke off staring at Liam long enough to give Wy a fierce hug. "Anything you need, you call, you hear? And I'm coming out over Labor Day for a week or ten days, okay?"

"Okay."

Daniel Dunaway put one large hand on Wy's shoulder and bent a forbidding stare on Liam. "Wy's one of the family."

"Yes, sir," Liam said.

"She's like blood to us. To me."

"Yes, sir."

The older man gave a curt nod. "So long as you know."

His daughter was a hair less subtle. As she brushed by him on her way out, she said in a low voice, "You hurt her again and you're toast, asshole."

"Yes, ma'am," Liam said. It seemed the most politic response.

The Dunaways climbed into the rental, waved good-bye, and were off.

"Friends of yours?" Liam said neutrally.

"The best," Wy agreed. "Come on in."

"What do they do?" Liam said, following her inside.

"Daniel's retired, sort of. Used to be a heavy-duty mechanic; he's got an IBEW pension. Nowadays he amuses himself with hunting, fishing, and some wheeling and dealing around the Bay. He's got a piece of property out at the airport-he's trying to sell it to one of the local fishermen."

"And his daughter?"

"Jo's a reporter for the Daily News. She just came along for the ride, and for the chance to visit with me."

Liam got his first good look at her, and blinked. Wy was wearing an apron. At least he thought that was what it was-he'd never seen her wearing one before. If he wasn't mistaken, there was lace around the hem.

"I'm just cooking dinner. Would you like some? I tried to get Dan and Jo to stay but they had to catch a plane."

He opened his mouth and his stomach growled, loud enough to be heard over the strains of Constance Demby floating in from elsewhere in the house. Constance Demby was one of his favorite composers, and he had given a CD of hers to Wy. If he wasn't mistaken, the particular cut playing just now was "Oceans Without Shores."

"Well," Wy said, bright and chipper, "I guess you're hungry." She gave a hostessy little laugh that sounded so unlike her he almost asked what was wrong.

Instead, he followed her through to the kitchen. It was a large room that took up the whole south side of the house. The south-facing wall was almost all window. A door opened out onto a large deck that faced the mouth of the Nushagak River where it flowed into Bristol Bay.

The broad expanse of grayish brown water, more than a mile across, moved steadily, powerfully, inexorably south between low bluffs thickly encrusted with trees and brush. Here, the current had swept a stand of spruce trees growing too close to the edge for comfort out to sea. There, it had carved out a backwater and lined a sand beach in a perfect crescent shape with a tidy row of driftwood bleached white by water and time. Farther down, where freshwater met salt, a dozen little estuaries nourished tall stands of marsh grass and dozens of species of wildfowl, from the elegant Canada geese to widgeons with calls like rubber duck squeeze toys to the long-legged, long-billed lesser yellowlegs. An immature eagle, as yet uncertain of the newfound power of his great wings, landed for a breather in a nesting area and was instantly dive-bombed by a flock of furious seagulls. A male merganser, red of neck and of temper, chased off a rival for the affections of the female merganser at his side. A large salmon jumped free of the current and smacked back into the water again with a large, loud splash that echoed clearly up to the top of the bluff and through the open windows of the house perched there.

The sun was still well up above the southwestern horizon, pouring an unceasing flow of golden light over them all. That same sunlight gilded the interior of Wy's house, and Liam tore his eyes away from the incredible view and took stock of his more immediate surroundings. There was a dining room table big enough to seat eight on the left and the kitchen on the right, the two separated by a counter and passthrough. Wy pulled out a stool and he sat down and accepted the glass she handed to him. One sip, and he knew the buttery-smooth slide of twentyyear-old Glenmorangie, which retailed for something like eighty bucks a bottle in Anchorage. God knew how much the stuff cost in the Bush, and Wy didn't drink hard liquor. He picked up the bottle and looked at the label. It was about two-thirds full, the same as the bottle at Bill's. Had she bought it from Bill to serve especially to him? That was how Moses had known what he drank, he realized with a rush of something like relief. There. He always appreciated a nice, rational explanation for the oddities of life.

A little voice whispered that the explanation might not be quite that easy in the long run, but he banished it at once and took another sip. "Nice," he said, putting down the glass. He didn't want anything about this night to be clouded in his memory. "How did you know I was coming?"

She was stirring something in a boiling pot. "What? Oh. Bill called. Said you were on your way."

"Where's Tim?"

Her face darkened. "In his room." She managed a smile. "He'd better be studying for his civics exam, or I won't just ground him until the next century, I'll ground him for life."

Liam studied the golden brown liquid in his glass. "We've got some catching up to do."

He felt rather than saw her pause. "Yes," she said, her voice a little breathless but determined enough for all that. "Yes, we do."

"You first," they said together. Their eyes met and they both broke into laughter. It was nervous laughter, but nevertheless it sounded good to Liam. It must have to Wy, too, because when the phone rang she said, "Shoot!"

"Let the machine pick up," Liam suggested. Phone and machine were sitting on the kitchen counter.

She hesitated, hand hovering. "No," she said, and gave him a rueful smile. "Might be work." She picked up the receiver. "Hello? Oh." Her face changed. "Just a minute." She held the receiver to her chest. "Liam, I'm sorry. This is kind of personal. Would you mind?"

He did, big time, but it wouldn't do to say so, or at least not yet.

He wandered into the living room, listening to the sound of her voice as he inspected the furnishings.

"Harry, I sent you a copy of the police report, and a copy of the statement made by the doctor who examined him when I brought him home with me. Plus Mrs. Kapotak's statement. You know what he's been through. He can't go back there. He won't go back there, and even if he would I wouldn't let him."

The living room was smaller than the kitchen and dining room. One small window looked out on a stand of birch and alder. There was a blue denim couch and two armchairs, shabby but comfortable. The beige carpet was worn but scrupulously clean. A do-it-yourself bookshelf stood against one wall, filled to overflowing with paperbacks, some history, some mystery, some both, and an eclectic mixture of nonfiction: The Home Book of Taxidermy. The 1998 Federal Aviation Regulations and Aeronautical Information Manual. The Gun Digest and The Shooter's Bible, The Handbook of Knots and Splices, The Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants, Bears of the World, a Yupik-English dictionary.

Liam pulled this last out and thumbed through it. "Ik'ikika" was defined as an exclamation meaning "so much" or "so many" or "so big." So much or so many or so big what? Liam wondered. Probably salmon, he decided, and replaced the dictionary on the shelf. Every other word of Native Alaskan he'd ever run across-Athabascan, Eyak, or Yupik-seemed to relate to salmon in some way. If it was Inupiaq now, he'd figure maybe it would modify snow. He'd heard the Inupiaq had fifty different words for snow.

An entertainment center held a small television and a component stereo system. The videotape collection was not genre-specific, either, including as it did The Little Mermaid, How to Steal a Million, Casablanca, Ruthless People, The Hospital, Little Shop of Horrors, and Aliens. The CD'S ranged from the Beach Boys to the Indigo Girls. He felt a pang at the knowledge that Jenny and Wy had had something in common.

There were four CD'S by the Neville Brothers and a dozen by Jimmy Buffett. Wy must have been hanging out at Bill's and been converted. There was the CD by Constance Demby, another by Louis Gottschalk, other albums he recognized as gifts from him. He was surprised she hadn't tossed them, and glad.

He himself hadn't been able to throw away anything she had given him, not the copies of her favorite books, not the picture of the moose triplets she'd taken during a charter into Denali, not even the Don Henley tape she'd made for him, which like to melt his eardrums the first and only time he'd played it.

Wy's voice sharpened. "Harry, what judge in his right mind is going to send a twelve-yearold boy back to his mother after what she did to him?"

There was a neat stack of magazines on the coffee table. Liam riffled through them and found a catalogue for Sparky's Pilot Shop. He thumbed through it. Everything you ever needed if you drove a plane. Sparky's F7C, a flight computer that would plot your course, file your flight plan, chart your location, predict your destination, divine your arrival time, and sugar your coffee, all for $69.95. There were videotapes: The Wonderful World of Floats, The Art of Formation Flying, Taming the Taildragger. There were SicSacs for sale, just what they sounded like, and Little Johns, also just what they sounded like. There was a Mile High Pin (specify gold or silver) that Liam couldn't figure out. What was so special about getting to 5,280 feet in an airplane? Ten thousand jets did it every day.

Wy said, "What the hell am I paying you for? You're supposed to be Tim's advocate, Harry." A pause. "Then.be his advocate!"

Liam wandered not so casually down the hall, walking softly. The boy's door was open a crack, and the boy himself was lying on his bed, Walkman earphones clamped to his head, textbook open in front of him. Even from the hallway Liam could hear the faint staticky sound of rap music coming from the headset. The boy didn't look up.

A whole generation of Americans was going to grow up deaf, Liam thought. Sony had a lot to answer for.

He padded on to the next room, Wy's. It was small and neat-a single bed with a down comforter, a closet, a chest of drawers. Unlike Laura Nanalook's, the top of Wy's dresser was neatly arranged. She had a small embroidered box she had brought back from Greece the summer her parents took her there, which held all of her jewelry-a dozen pairs of earrings, the strand of pearls her mother had given her when she graduated from high school, the gold nugget watch her father had given her on the same day.

He opened a few drawers. The second held a purse, a couple of scarves, gloves, and three nightshirts. He found what he was looking for buried beneath the nightshirts.

But it wasn't the discovery he made, or even the unconscious fears it confirmed that gave him pause; it was what it came wrapped in that held him rooted in place, immobile, speechless with shock. One trembling hand smoothed the vibrant blue spill of silk, the rich fabric catching on the roughness of his skin, and he had a sudden and unbearably clear recollection of the time and place when he had seen it last. He forgot who he was and the shame that had become invested in that man, he forgot the disgrace that had caused his reduction in rank and his posting to Newenham, he forgot even the bloody, lifeless sprawl that had been Bob DeCreft. He looked at the length of blue silk and was instantly transported back in time to those few halcyon days in Anchorage, so long ago and so far away.

It was the first week of September again, two, going on three years before, an Indian summer of warm, golden days and crisp, clear nights. Liam had driven to Tok, where Wy had picked him up in a plane she'd borrowed from another pilot (they had always been discreet to the point of paranoia), and they had flown into Anchorage, landing at the Lake Hood strip. The alder and birch and cottonwood were a continuous, rippling golden mass, the sky a bright, deep blue, and the peaks of the Chugach Mountains wore only the faintest layer of termination dust, winter as promise instead of threat.

They had four days. They biked the Coastal Trail, shopped along Merrill Field for parts for Wy's Cub (including a set of tundra tires whose possibilities Liam found perfectly appalling), bought Liam a new pistol (a Smith and Wesson 457 that kicked like a horse and cost more), stocked up for the winter at all the used bookstores, held hands through a movie, had gyoza at Yamato Ya and four-cheese pizza at L'Aroma and pasta alla arrabiata and too much red wine at Villa Nova.

They had four nights. They came home every evening to the Copper Whale Inn on the corner of Fifth and L to spend long hours in the enameled brass bed, loving and sleeping and waking to love again. Their host, a friendly, chatty young man, thought they were newlyweds and left them to themselves. They would have been grateful, if they'd noticed.

There were discoveries. They both loved raspberries, playground swings, the American Southwest, the sound track from the movie The Last of the Mohicans. Flying terrified him; it was her profession. He'd quit smoking, but walked slowly through the smoking section of a restaurant inhaling deeply for his nicotine fix. "In lieu of a bowling alley," he told her, grinning. She wore contact lenses she had to remove for twelve continuous hours once a week, and after he got over the mild shock he decided he kind of liked her in glasses. He listened to classical music, she sang backup for the Ronettes, and they wrangled over the radio settings in their rented Ford. She wanted the tipsy clams at Simon and Seafort's, and when there were no reservations available he asked the hostess, "Well, then, do you maybe have something left over from lunch?"

They read to each other from Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday, and they talked, nonstop, an unceasing flow of communication on every level that amazed them with its ease and empathy. "I didn't know," she said one night. "I didn't know I could talk to a man about everything, about work and poetry, about music and the movies, about society and sex."

Oh yes, the sex. They came together the first time like thunder, ardent, urgent, demanding, and it was so easy and so effortless and so incredibly satisfying that they both lay stunned in the aftermath.

Later, when there was time for play, she bound his wrists with a long blue silk scarf and he, the man always and forever in control, astounded himself by lying back and loving it. He made her come and come again, with his hands, his cock, his tongue, and she was amazed at her response and, she confessed, her head hidden in his shoulder, a little alarmed at her loss of control. He rolled to his back and said, "Feel free," and she startled them both by slithering down his torso and taking him in her mouth, until he was as mindless as she had been. "Jesus, woman," he said the fourth night, "is this the way it is with everyone? Have we been missing out?"

"No, Liam," she said, a little sadly. "It's the trusting."

He craned his head to look down at her. "What? What do you mean?"

She looked up to meet his eyes, and repeated, "It's the trusting." She blushed slightly. "Like the other night with the scarf. You trusted me not to hurt you. I trusted you not to be shocked, or offended."

After she was asleep he lay wakeful, turning her words over in his mind. He had put their attraction down to chemistry, plain and simple. He'd felt it before-not this strongly, true, but there had been times in his life when he had come together with a woman with whom he had absolutely nothing in common but sexual attraction. Why should this be any different?

But it was, and he knew it.

Later, he roused to find himself alone in the bed, and sat up to see Wy in one of the chairs in the bay window that overlooked Knik Arm. Moonglow silvered her hair, cupped her breast, gilded a smooth hip. He heard a soft, muffled sound and realized she was crying. "Wy?" he said, getting out of bed and dropping to his knees next to her. "What's wrong, sweetheart?"

She wouldn't look at him. "I'm going home tomorrow."

"What? But-Wy, we've got a week. Is something wrong, did somebody call?"

She shook her head.

"Then why? We planned this for three months. I want my week."

She looked up. "Liam, I have to go. And you have to let me."

He made as if to touch her, stopped himself when she warded him off, one hand upraised. "I always knew we had to go back. I always knew I had to let you go. But we agreed on a week." He was beginning to be angry. "I want my seven days."

She swiped at her tears with the back of a hand. "I can't do this. I don't do this," she said, angry in her turn. "I don't know how I got here. You are married," she said, and repeated it a second time as if to remind them both, as if both of them needed reminding. "You are married. You're a father."

What could he say? It was true. "Don't leave. Please don't leave. You promised me seven days. I want those seven days. Then we know if it's real. Then I can make some decisions."

"No you can't," she whispered.

"Wy-"

She shook her head fiercely, and he stopped. When she spoke again, her voice was so low and so filled with pain that he could barely hear it. "I can't do this. I can't live like this, live with it. I can't live with what we're doing, what we might do. And I hate all this sneaking around. It makes me feel cheap." After a moment, she added, "It makes us cheap."

"But-"

"No! Liam, don't." She held out her hands, and he put his own into them, the despair welling up like a black tide. "You have responsibilities. You can't turn your back on them. You shouldn't try."

"But-"

"No, Liam. You know I'm right." She paused, and he was silent. Her attempt at a smile was shaky. "You see? You know I'm right. I'm flying home tomorrow. Alone. You can take an air taxi."

He traced the back of her hand with his thumb. "All right," he said at last. "Call me in a couple of days. Or I'll call you."

She shook her head. "You know you can't." She took a deep breath, let it out, and continued in a steady voice, "And I won't be there long. I've found another job."

"What?" The panic was sharp and immediate. "Where?"

She shook her head. "I'm leaving on Wednesday."

"Wy," he said, drawing her name out. "No. Don't do this."

She put gentle fingers over his mouth. "We'll both be better off if we don't see each other after tomorrow." Again, she tried to smile. "It's not our time, Liam. Maybe in the next life."

She took him back to bed then, and they made love in a fury of pain and loss and despair, and when he woke the next morning she was curled in a ball against his chest, her shoulders shaking, her face wet against his skin.

She refused to let him drive her to Lake Hood, saying her good-byes at the car. She looked down at their clasped hands. "I've gotten used to this hand," she whispered. "This hand in mine. Your skin against mine. Warm. Strong. Holding me."

He couldn't speak. It took him three tries to get in the car, until finally she gave him a gentle push. "Go on. Go on, now. Your son is waiting."

Chin up, shoulders back, eyes blinded by tears, she walked steadily down to the intersection of Fifth and L. She did not look back. He knew, because he watched her in the rearview mirror, her hair a dark blond tumble against the blue silk scarf wrapped round her neck, until the light turned green and the car behind him gave an impatient honk. He stepped on the gas and started through the intersection.

When he looked up again, she was gone.

"Harry, dammit, I know it's not in the job description but try for a little friggin' compassion, would you!"

Wy's voice, angry, impatient, and just a little frightened, brought him back into the present with a jerk. He looked down to discover that he'd wound the scarf around his wrists, straining the delicate fabric between them. With an effort, he freed himself and replaced everything as it had been. He closed the drawer again and, still moving softly, went back out into the living room.

There was a framed poster on one wall with the title INTERNATIONAL SPACE YEAR 1992 running across the bottom. It had a couple of galleons sailing rough seas out of the bottomleft-hand corner of the frame and into space in the upper-right-hand corner of the frame, with ringed planets and gas giants and moons and comets interspersed with blueprint drawings of spacecraft.

Wy was a big follower of the space program. She wanted someday to go to Florida to watch the shuttle take off, and stay to watch it land, and in between to live at Spaceport. "Did you ever think of becoming an astronaut?" he'd asked her, and she had replied, with a twisted smile, "My parents wanted me to become a teacher. So I became a teacher."

He'd wanted to ask her how she had made the jump from teacher to pilot, but the memory was so obviously painful that he left it for another time.

In those days they were easily distracted. That other time never came, and soon afterward she left.

This time, he thought, staring at the poster, this time he would know it all.

Wy's voice became edgy and defensive. "I said you'll get it, and you will. I keep my word, Harry. And I pay my debts."

Footsteps came down the hall. Liam looked around to see Tim Gosuk standing in the doorway.

"Hey," Liam said.

Tim's expression was aloof, giving nothing away. "Hey."

They regarded each other in silence for a moment. Everything Liam knew about kids could have been written on the head of a pin. On the other hand, he'd been a trooper for over ten years and knew more about human nature than most shrinks. He was also older and tougher and probably smarter than the boy, which would help. "Finish studying for your civics exam?"

Tim looked toward the kitchen and back at Liam. He was still dressed in urban punk: bagged-out jeans, oversized plaid shirt, and backward baseball cap. At least he didn't have a do rag. "Yeah," Tim said finally. "What's it to you?"

His voice was curt but not necessarily challenging. Liam shrugged. "Just making conversation." He wasn't going to force himself on the boy, but he was equally determined not to be shut out. "What other subjects you studying this year? What grade are you in, anyway?"

"Eighth."

"Really?" Liam said, adding mendaciously, "I thought you were older. So?"

"So what?"

"So what else are you studying? English, history, what else?"

It was the boy's turn to shrug. "English, history, what else."

"Math?"

Tim made a face, the first natural expression Liam had seen there. Aha, a breakthrough. "Algebra."

"Yuck."

The boy made a noise somewhere between a snort and a grunt. "It's not so bad. Mrs. Davenport is a good teacher. It's hard, but she makes it fun."

"I was lousy at math," Liam observed. "Never got all that business about x's and y's straight in my head. Geometry was better; I liked fooling with the volume of all the figures." He grinned. "And I liked Mary Kallenberg, who sat next to me in geometry class and helped me find the area of the three different kinds of triangles. Can't for the life of me remember what they're called now."

"There aren't three, there are six," Tim said promptly. "Right, isosceles, equilateral, obtuse, acute, and scalene," and he actually smiled.

"Yikes. You're scaring me." Liam smiled back. "Not much call in the trooper business to figure out the area of a right triangle."

"You don't use it, you lose it," Tim said, his words an uncanny echo of Moses'. "Mrs. Davenport says that a lot. She loads us up on the homework like you wouldn't believe."

Inwardly Liam marveled at the way the boy's face had metamorphosed from sullen, wary, potential juvenile delinquent to animated, intelligent teenager. In this persona, it was easy to see why Wy had taken him on.

The smell of something wonderful wafted in from the kitchen, and their stomachs growled in unison. Both males were surprised into laughter. Mutual laughter, once enjoyed, is a hard thing to step back from. "Maybe if we go into the kitchen and squawk like seagulls she'll feed us," Liam said.

"Works for me."

They walked into the kitchen in time to hear Wy say into the phone, "Oh, like this phone call didn't cost me a hundred and fifty bucks! Look, Harry, I'll get you the goddamn money just as soon as I get paid myself! Okay?"

She slammed down the receiver and turned to see Liam and Tim standing in the doorway watching her. "Oh hello," she said, bright smile newly polished and back in place. "Ready for some dinner?"

When Liam looked at Tim, he saw the sullen look had descended again like a cloud.

The Constance Demby CD ended. Bon Jovi's Keeping the Faith blared out in its place. In spite of himself Liam winced, and they both saw it. Even Tim laughed, and it eased the tension.

"Feed me," Liam said, and they both recognized the line from Little Shop of Horrors and laughed some more. It got them to the table in something approaching amity, and Wy served up a kind of pork sparerib stew with pea pods in a delicious sauce. When Liam asked what went into the sauce, all Wy would say is, "Secret Filipino ingredient," and it wasn't till he helped clear the table and saw the empty can of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup in the garbage that he realized what it was.

"When did you learn to cook?" he asked her as she ran the sink full of hot water and soap.

"My college roommate's dad was Filipino, and a chef. I went home with her a couple of times, and Freddy would cook for us." She closed her eyes in remembered ecstasy. "Adobo, sweet and sour spareribs, long rice, bagoong. Anybody who likes to eat should have a Freddy Quijance in their life, just once."

Tim had vanished back into his room, and the sound of a thumping bass could be heard in the distance. It made Liam cringe, but it wasn't as bad as some of the car stereos he had heard driving by his house in Glenallen, so he held his peace. Wasn't his house, anyway.

Yet.

Which reminded him. "That couch of yours fold out, Wy?" he said, stirring half-and-half into his coffee. She'd even remembered that, he thought with a secret smile.

She looked up. "Why?"

"I haven't had time to look for a place."

"Where did you sleep last night?"

"In the desk chair in the troopers' office."

"Oh. Ugh." She hesitated. He waited, enjoying the play of emotion across her face. "No," she said finally.

"No, it doesn't fold out, or no, I can't sleep on it?"

"Both."

"Why not?"

"Tim," she said.

"I'm not asking to share your bed," he pointed out.

Yet.

She shook her head. "No, Liam," she said firmly. "I'm sorry, but you'll have to find another place to sleep. There's a hotel across from city hall. I know the night clerk; I could give her a call."

He wasn't going to push it, not until he was more sure of his ground. "That's okay, I'll figure something out." But that didn't mean he wasn't going to do his level best to change the situation. He reached for her hand. Her fingers curled naturally around his. Encouraged, he raised them to his lips. Her skin was warm, and he felt her pulse skip a beat. He looked up and smiled at her as he turned his mouth into her palm and nuzzled it.

"Liam." Her voice was unsteady.

He touched his tongue to the center of her palm, tracing the lines he found there. The mound at the base of her thumb was plump and tantalizing. He bit it, gently, and heard her breath catch.

"Liam!" Her free hand flashed up around his neck and pulled his face to hers. She nipped at his lower lip, ran her tongue over his teeth. He found himself on his feet, reaching out to drag her across the counter.

"Don't mind me," a voice said, and they looked up to find Tim standing in the doorway, the line of his mouth set and vulnerable.

"Tim!" Wy said, and then didn't seem to be able to think of anything else to say. She pulled free of Liam and slid to her feet. There was nothing she could do to hide the brightness of her eyes or the flush in her cheeks.

Liam didn't say anything, meeting the challenge in Tim's eyes with calm recognition and, he hoped, no answering challenge. He needed badly to rearrange the fit of his jeans, but considered it diplomatic to refrain for the moment.

"I just wanted a Coke," Tim said, and walked around Wy to the refrigerator.

By the time he was back in his room, Liam's heartbeat had slowed down to something approaching normality. Wy smoothed back her hair with a trembling hand. Liam's was a little steadier when he reached for his mug, but not much. "This is a nice house. I looked in the paper; I didn't see much for sale or for rent. How did you luck into here?"

Watching him warily, as if she was determined to thwart any effort he made to pick up where they had left off, she said, "It came with the business."

"The air taxi?"

She nodded. "The owner wanted to retire, and he put the business up for sale. One plane, a Cessna 180, the two tie-downs, a lease on a hangar, this house, and the goodwill. That, plus the Cub, is what there is of the Nushagak Air Taxi Service."

"How did you hear that it was up for sale?"

"Bob DeCreft told me."

"You knew him before?"

She nodded again. "You know how it is with Bush pilots. If you don't know them, you've heard of them."

"Which was it with the two of you?" He saw her look and sighed. "Come on, Wy. You've been close enough to the business to know how it works. I have to ask."

She held his gaze for a moment, and then looked away. "Yeah, I know how it works." She sipped at her coffee, put down the mug, and looked at him squarely. "I've known Bob DeCreft since I was a kid."

Liam did not greet this news with overt joy. He didn't want her to be so well acquainted with the victim of what might have been murder.

"You know I come from Newenham originally, more or less," she said, raising her eyebrows. He nodded. "Well, Bob was a Bush pilot, and he flew in and out of Bristol Bay on a lot of different charters, some government-related, some ANCSA'-RELATED, some both. He knew my parents, and he'd spend the night." She paused. "One day he was supposed to fly the local Native association board into Togiak or somewhere, only the weather was socked in there. So he took me up instead." She smiled, her eyes looking over his shoulder at a fond memory. "He had a Skywagon in those days, with dual controls. He let me fly her. I was hooked. From that day on, I didn't want to do anything but fly."

"How old were you?"

"Sixteen."

"But you went to college."

She shrugged, the glow fading. "It was what my parents wanted. I figured I'd do what they wanted, and then I'd do what I wanted."

"How did they take it?"

Her smile was wry. "They didn't like it much, but they got over it. They helped me buy the air taxi."

"Must have cost a bundle."

She nodded. "Pretty much. I'm in hock up to my eyebrows. It was worth it, though."

To get away from me? The question hung between them, unsaid, but she flushed a rich red in spite of it. "I didn't mean that."

He didn't say anything, and in an obvious attempt to shift the focus, she said, "And you? What have you been up to?"

Her interest was as false as her question. "Come on, Wy, you knew I was coming. Didn't you? That's why you weren't surprised when I got off the plane."

Her eyes slid away. She didn't reply. He sighed. "Yeah, well, after the mess up at Denali, Barton transferred me here."

"I didn't hear much about that, I…" "I on purpose didn't listen," he thought she was going to say. Instead she said, "I would have thought you would want to stay in Glenallen, no matter what, and then…" Her voice trailed off.

"And then I could see Jenny every weekend," he agreed evenly. "It wasn't up to me. John transferred me after my demotion came through, and that was that." He could have added that Barton had transferred him to Newenham because Wy was there, because their relationship had not been the secret romance they had always been confident of, but he didn't.

Her voice was low, and she wasn't looking at him. "How is she?"

"The same."

"How often are you going to get back to see her?"

"At least once a month." He studied the coffee in his mug. "We took her off the respirator."

He heard the sharp intake of her breath. "I didn't know that."

"She's fed through a tube, Wy," he said. He stated it as a fact, not a horror or a tragedy. He'd had too much time to become accustomed to his wife's physical and mental state; it no longer held any terror or disgust for him. "She wears diapers. She's home with her parents, and they've got money, so she's got twenty-four-hour care." He closed his eyes. "Do you know how long Karen Ann Quinlan lasted after they disconnected her life support?"

Her voice was infinitely gentle, infinitely sorrowful. "No."

"Nine years." He opened his eyes and tried for a smile. From her wince, he knew that he hadn't quite made it. "Nine years and change."

"Liam, I am so sorry. So very sorry."

"Yeah. Me too." He rose to his feet and took his mug over to stand in front of the window, staring unseeingly out at the vast expanse of river, roiling and tumbling and gray with glacial silt, driving forcefully for the Bay and points south. Soon it would be filled with salmon, king and silver and sockeye and humpy and dog, all driving just as purposefully upstream, fighting the current to return home to the stream in which they were spawned, there to spawn in their turn and die.

"It's different here," he said. "Hard to get used to not having mountains to bang your nose against."

"I know. The Wood Mountains start at Icky, though. It's only forty miles up the road. The blink of an eye if you fly."

"The blink of an eye," he echoed. "You know something, Wy? It constantly amazes me just how fast a life can turn to shit. I was the golden boy: straight A's straight through school, graduated college magna cum laude, I was first in my class at the Academy, I made sergeant before any of my classmates and before a lot of prior graduates, John Barton handpicked me to lead the Petersham task force, which got me headlines all the way Outside, I was headed straight up the ladder and I knew it and so did everyone else. To top everything off, just the icing on the cake, I married me a rich, beautiful, loving wife. Nothing could stop me, nothing could touch me, I had the world by the tail."

He turned to look at Wy. "And then, in the blink of an eye, I didn't."

She stared at him, stricken.

"They busted me down to trooper," he said. "Just before they transferred me here."

She said slowly, "That's what you meant yesterday, when Corcoran called you sergeant and you said no, just trooper."

"Yes."

"What happened, Liam?"

He shook his head. "Doesn't matter. Buck stopped on my desk. Barton was right to do it." He gave her a twisted grin. "So here I am, in Newenham, a trooper again, starting all over at the bottom of the ladder. My wife is in a coma four hundred miles away, and the woman I love-"

"Don't, Liam."

"The woman I love," he repeated firmly, "is up to her eyebrows in a murder." He laughed, because there wasn't anything else to do, except maybe get drunk. "Just when you thought it was safe to come back to life."

He walked back to the counter and sat across from her. "How did you come by the boy?"

She thought about that for a minute, as if she were deciding how much it was safe to tell him. He held on to his temper, and waited. "It was my first week here," she said finally, looking toward the back of the house and dropping her voice instinctively. "I flew into Ualik with the mail that morning. Jeff-Jeff Webster, he's the guy who sold the business to me-Jeff rode shotgun with me for a month before he'd let me loose in his plane on his routes. Anyway, Jeff walked me through the procedure, getting all the right signatures from the postmaster, that kind of thing, and then he went off to say good-bye to a friend of his. I went back to the airstrip to repack the plane."

She looked at him. "Have you ever been to Ualik?" Liam shook his head. "Ever been to any of the western Bush villages?"

Liam shook his head again. "I've been pretty much an urban cowboy all my professional life." He paused, and added, "Or as urban as it gets in Alaska."

She nodded. "I didn't think so. It's different out here, Liam. It's different in Ualik."

"Different how?"

"Well, for starters it's a Yupik village, about six hundred people, and for the most part good people. But, like most Bush villages, the worm in its apple is booze."

"They're not dry, then?"

"They've been dry," Wy said grimly, "and they've been damp, and they've been wet, sometimes all three at once. Right now they're wet again."

"Let me guess," Liam said. "The local liquor store owner petitioned for a vote when all the families were at fish camp last August."

"The August before."

"Figures." He shook his head. "God, you'd think every village in this state would look at Barrow and see what happened there when they went dry. The first month-the first month, Wy-there was something like an eighty percent drop in alcoholrelated instances of child abuse, wife beating, and assault."

"Booze is the worm in the Bush apple," she repeated.

"Including Ualik," he said, nudging her back to the subject.

"Including Ualik," she agreed. "So I went back to the plane to repack it and wait for Jeff. You know how airstrips are practically the main streets of a lot of the older villages?" He nodded. "It's like that in Ualik, a lot of houses lined up along one side of the strip, and the town kind of meanders down to the Ualik River from there. I was walking down the strip past one of the houses. I heard this kind of whimper. I thought it was an animal. It wasn't. It was Tim."

Her face flushed with remembered fury. "He was curled up in a ball underneath the porch of his mother's house. Both of his forearms were fractured, both eyes were swollen shut, one of his front teeth was dangling by a piece of flesh, his nose had been broken, there were patches of hair missing from his scalp." She closed her eyes and shook her head. "I got him out from under the porch and strapped him into the plane, and I went looking for Jeff. Jeff told me not to get involved, that it was a village matter, and took me to find the vipso."

A VPSO was a village police and safety officer, a local citizen trained by the state troopers to deal with minor infractions and call in the troopers when necessary. It was a great idea, especially given the fierce independence of most village councils, but often did not work out so well in practice. "You find him?" Liam said.

"Oh yeah, we found him," Wy said wearily. "He was home, mending nets. Give him credit -he came and looked at the boy and agreed we should fly him into the hospital here. Then we all trooped over to the house where I found the boy. He lived with his mother, and a guy she called his uncle, although later the vipso said he was no such thing." She shuddered. "The place was a pigsty, Liam. I mean it even smelled bad-kind of sour, like someone had barfed in every room and no one had ever bothered to clean it up. They were both drunk. The "uncle" still had blood on his knuckles. The vipso wouldn't arrest him."

"Probably his brother, or his brother-inlaw."

"Probably. All I knew at the time was that the mom came roaring out of the house and down to the plane and tried to jerk the boy out of it. He was all but unconscious by then, but he woke up all right when she started yanking on one of his broken arms. He started screaming, and then his grandmother showed up."

"His mom's mom?"

She nodded. "She's great; her name is Sarah. She's this little old lady who weighs in at about eighty pounds, all of it tiger. She grabbed Tim's mom by the hair and hauled her down the strip while we loaded him back into the plane and took off."

"I'm guessing that'd be Mrs. Kapotak," Liam said.

Surprised, she said, "Why, yes, how did you-oh."

"I was listening from the living room," he admitted without shame. She might as well know from the get-go that he refused to be kept out of anything.

"I see." She was silent for a moment. "Well, we brought him back here. He was in the hospital for three weeks. Turned out he had a lot of old scars, and DFYS got involved, and when it came time for him to come out of the hospital they looked around for somewhere for him to stay." She shrugged. "I'd flown him out, I'd been visiting him. I felt, I don't know, responsible for him in a way. And Sarah, she visited when she could coerce Bob into flying her over. We got to know each other, and she suggested I keep him. She said she would have taken him, but she'd already tried that once. Lasted a week before her daughter missed her punching bag and came looking for him."

"I would have thought she'd want him in a Native home."

She looked at him. "I'm a quarter Yupik, Liam."

He looked at her, noticing again the high, flat cheekbones, the slight golden cast to her skin, the almost imperceptible tilt to her eyes. As with Moses, if you didn't look for it you'd never see it. He shook his head. "I keep forgetting. Of course you are."

"Tim's half," she said. "His father was some pilot that blew through Ualik twelve years ago." She looked at him squarely. "It can be tough, very tough to be a mixed-blood in the villages. The elders, a lot of them are okay with it, but the next generation is all for tribal rights and sovereignty and purity of the species, or whatever they call it. They can make it very, very hard on someone who's part white."

There was a ring of certainty in her voice that Liam hadn't heard before. "I know you were adopted from one of the villages, Wy," he said. "Where were you adopted from?"

She smiled. "Not from Ualik, Liam. But close enough in spirit as to make no never mind." She sighed. "Well, anyway, the long and short of it is, I brought Tim home with me." She waved a hand at the house. "I have the room-it came with the business. I have the stability DFYS wants in foster parents." She smiled. "And I like him, and for some mysterious reason, when he's not playing the role of Teenagerus horribilus he will admit I'm fairly tolerable my own self." She met Liam's eyes. "And after you, after us, I was lonely, and I was drifting, and I needed a reason to get up in the morning."

"And Tim was it," Liam said.

"And Tim is it," she said firmly. "Understand one thing, Liam. Tim is with me for good. He is my son now. I've started adoption proceedings."

If she'd expected him to run screaming into the night, Liam thought, she'd picked the wrong guy. "Okay," he said equably. "If he's yours, he's mine, too."

"Liam," she said warningly.

"What?"

She took a deep breath. "Look, I admit, the attraction is still there. But you are still married to Jenny. I'm sorry, God I'm sorry, for her, and for you, but you can't divorce her, you simply can't." She straightened in her chair. "I'm actually glad that you've raised this-this situation, so we can talk it through. I'm adopting a child, Liam. The authorities are going to look very carefully at my private life. So far in Newenham, and for all they know for my whole life, I am squeaky clean."

So long as they didn't talk to John Barton. Liam smiled at her. "There hasn't been anyone since me, has there?"

"Liam!" she said, exasperated. "That's not the point, and you know it."

Their conversation was interrupted by the phone. "Don't answer it," Liam said, but Wy fairly snatched up the receiver. "What? No lie? Great! Okay, will do."

She hung up the phone and stepped around the counter to where a marine radio sat. She switched it on and turned to Channel 15. A voice came on, a male voice, dry, academic, reading from something. "I repeat, this is the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announcing a possible herring opener in the Newenham district for both seine and drift net at noon tomorrow, May fifth. Tune in to this channel tomorrow at ten a.m. for confirmation. Over and out."

Wy looked up, eyes bright. "Yes!"

"I thought you just had a herring opener," Liam said.

"We didn't make the quota," she said, grinning. "Fish and Game's giving us another shot at it." And then her smile faded. "Oh. That's right. I don't know if I'm fired or not. I haven't talked to Cecil yet."

As if on cue, the phone rang. Wy lifted the receiver. "Yes? Oh, hello, Cecil. Yes, I heard it. Yes, of course. Well, there is the 180-no, sure, I can get hold of another Cub, not a problem."

Oh really, Liam thought.

"Yes, of course I can find another spotter." She climbed up on a stool and swung one leg over the other, wiggling her foot. "I am still waiting on last period's check, Cecil. Yeah, I know it's only been a couple of days, and I know it won't be much, but I flew for you, I earned it, and I want it now. Um-hmmm. Sure. Fine. Okay, I'll be in the air at six. Right after I pick up the check at the cannery office. You can leave it there in an envelope for me, okay?" Wolfe's growl was audible even to Liam, and a satisfied smile spread across Wy's face. "You going out tonight? Okay, drop the gas at the usual spot on the beach, one up, two down, gas pump on the upright barrel. Okay? Okay." She hung up, jumped down from her stool, and pumped her hand once. Her face was exultant. "Yes!"

"What other Cub?" Liam said.

"What? Oh. There's an Anchorage dentist who parks his Cub next to mine. I keep an eye on it for him, service it when he calls to let me know he's coming down to hunt caribou or whatever."

"Does he know you're taking it up to spot herring?"

"Shit!" she said, elation fading from her face. "Where the hell am I going to find me a spotter between now and tomorrow morning?"

"Wy," Liam said carefully, "you once told me that herring spotting was the surest way to get yourself killed short of jumping off a cliff."

She shrugged this off, tapping one fingernail against the counter, eyes narrowed on some distant object.

"Wy, they had a herring opener in Prince William Sound two weeks ago," Liam said, voice rising. "One plane ran into another's float. He crashed, and it totaled the plane and killed him and his spotter."

"Uh-huh," Wy said.

"Wy," Liam said, rising to his feet and giving her the benefit of full volume, "last summer a couple of spotters had a midair in Kachemak Bay! What makes you think it won't happen to you?"

She blinked at him, drawn out of her absorption by his vehemence. When she spoke, her voice was low, reasonable, and utterly infuriating. "Liam, I own a flying business. People pay me to fly. I fly passengers, I fly freight, I fly supplies into hunting and fishing lodges and mining camps. I fly archaeologists out to old burial grounds and villagers out to fish camps and federal marine biologists out to count walrus. I even fly state troopers out to crime scenes," she added pointedly. "And when somebody like Cecil Wolfe, who has been high boat on the Bay for the last four years, when Cecil Wolfe calls and offers me a fifteen percent share-fifteen percent of three boats, Liam-then I fly for him." She stared at him challengingly, hands on her hips.

"Jesus, Wy, I'll loan you the money. I've got over a year's worth of back pay in the bank; you can have it, every dime."

"Who said I needed money?" she demanded hotly, and flung up a hand before he could answer. "Oh that's right, I forgot you eavesdropped your way into that little tidbit of information. Look, Liam, I'm spotting herring for Cecil Wolfe because he needs a spotter and that is part of what I do for a living. Is that clear?"

"Very clear," Liam said.

"Fine," she said. "Now where the hell am I going to find me a spotter?"

"Beats the hell out of me," Liam said, hoping she wouldn't find one in time.

"I'll go up with you, Wy."

Both adults turned to see Tim standing in the doorway. An empty Coke can dangled from one hand.

"Like hell you will," Liam said before he thought.

Wy glared at Liam. "Back off, this is my business." She turned to Tim. "Like hell you will."

"Why not?" Tim said. "I've been herring fishing before, on one of my uncle's boats. I haven't seen herring from the air, but I've spotted them balling up from the crow's nest. I know what to look for."

"Wy," Liam said. "You can't."

"Why can't she?" Tim said. "She needs a spotter. I've spotted before. What, you gonna spot for her instead?"

Liam stared into the boy's defiant, challenging eyes. "Yes," he heard himself say. "Yes, I am."