Dana Stabenow - So Sure Of Death

Not that that had stopped him when he met Wy.

“Stop it,” he said out loud.

“Stop what?” said a voice from the doorway.

He looked up and saw Wy.

She let the door swing closed behind her and said again, “Stop what?”

“Nothing,” he said automatically, and then thought, the hell with it. “Stop feeling guilty about sleeping with you when I was married to Jenny.”

“Oh.” She pushed her hair behind her ears and then shook it forward again, a habit she had when she was nervous. “Do you think about it a lot?”

“Every day.”

She bit her lip. “Me, too.”

He turned off the computer and sat back. “What are you doing here, Wy?”

She took a deep breath. “I didn't-I… hell.” She squared her shoulders and looked him right in the eye. “Jo said something to me last night.”

“Oh great,” he said, remembering the last time he'd seen Jo, or rather she'd seen him, dancing around with his pants half off, in company with Diana Prince. “My new best friend, I'll bet.”

“She called me a martyr.”

“A what?” he said, startled. It wasn't what he'd been expecting.

“She said that three years ago I sacrificed my happiness for yours. She says it's become a habit, and that I'm afraid that a relationship with you wouldn't measure up to our affair, and that's why I won't… why I won't…” She made a vague gesture and lapsed into silence.

Liam digested this for a moment. “Is it true?” he said finally.

She blew out a breath. “I've been asking myself that over and over again. I don't know.”

He got up and came around the desk. “I can only speak for myself, Wy, but it's there, everything I ever felt for you. It's still there.”

She regarded the buttons of his shirt. “There's a lot you don't know about me, Liam. A lot I never told you. Some of it…” She hesitated. “Some of it could be hard for you to take.”

“I can hear it all. I want to hear it all.”

“You say that now. No, wait. Liam, I learned about catastrophe at an early age, and I've lived my life preparing for it to happen again.” She looked up at him. “I looked at you and I saw another catastrophe coming at me like a freight train. Maybe that's why I couldn't say the words you needed to hear. And maybe that's why you couldn't make the commitment I needed you to make.” She took a deep breath, met his gaze, held it. “Do you know what I wish?”

“What?”

“I wish that just one time I could kiss you on purpose. No, Liam, you know what I mean.”

Liam, in the act of reaching out, halted. “No. I don't.”

She made a frustrated sound. “Every time, it's like we jump on each other, a surprise attack, quick and dirty and then we're gone. Just once I'd like to kiss you and have started out meaning to kiss you.” She took a step forward. “Bend down a little. Put your hands on my waist.”

He obeyed. She was trembling, visibly, but she stood on tiptoe and brushed her cheek against his. He quivered at the feel of skin on skin but didn't make any moves. Her nose nuzzled his, she ran her chin along his jaw, her brow against his neck. Her lips came to rest against the pulse in his throat, which instantly accelerated. She raised her head and slid a hand behind his to urge it down. Her lips were full and soft, her breath light and warm. Her lips parted, her tongue flirted with his, her teeth nipped at his lower lip.

She pulled back and stood in the circle of his arms, staring up at him. It was late, and dim in the little office, but he could see her features clearly, her enlarged irises, the lovely flush of color in her cheeks, the quick rise and fall of her breast. “Like that,” she whispered.

He understood. They'd gone at each other like they were starving, like they could never eat enough to fill themselves up. He sat down on the small couch behind the door and pulled her into his lap. “We never had time to play,” he whispered back.

She put her head on his shoulder. “No.” His heart beat steadily, reassuringly beneath her cheek. He ran his hand slowly, lazily up and down her spine, such a fine, firm arc of flesh and bone, supple, strong, sexy. He was convinced he could recognize it out of a thousand different spines by touch alone.

She raised her head and smiled at him. “I'd better get home.”

“Me, too, damn it. I've got to get some sleep. Tomorrow's going to be a long day.”

“I know.” She lifted her face and kissed him again and he lost himself in it and in her.

He cupped her cheek in his hand. “Is it okay that I want more?”

She smiled, the smile of every temptress since Eve. “It's more than okay.”

They stood up and paused, both of them reluctant to say goodnight. “What next?” he said.

She looked thoughtful. “I could say, we start dating.”

“In principle,” Liam said, “I like the idea. In practice, though…”

She smiled. “I know. There really isn't anyplace to go on a date in Newenham.”

“We could drive out to the dump and watch the bears,” he offered.

She pretended to consider, and shook her head. “Too early in the season. There's still salmon in the streams.”

“Well, then, I could take you to dinner at Bill's.”

“We just did that.”

“Right, right.”

“I could take you on a flightseeing trip to Round Island,” she said.

“Round Island? Where's that?”

“It's a state game sanctuary fifty-plus miles south of Kulukak Bay. Walrus haul out there in big herds. It's quite a sight.” Her nose wrinkled. “And smell.”

Liam remembered the walrus head on Walter Larsgaard's kitchen wall. “Walrus, huh? And since it's a sanctuary, I suppose you can't hunt them there.”

Since he seemed interested, she obliged. “Not until recently. Around 1960 the state government declared the area off limits to everyone, Native or non. Pissed off a lot of people, because it was sort of a ukase from the czar, they did it without any hearings held in the area. It was pretty drastic, but there was some justification.”

“Why? The walrus go the way of the otter?”

“Pretty much. It had been hunted nearly to extinction, not by Natives but by Yankee whalers in the 1800s, and not for their meat or hides but for their ivory.”

Liam thought again of the walrus head, the long, curving tusks of smooth, glowing ivory. A tempting target, all right.

“The population has come back since then; you can see thousands of walrus hauled out on this one particular beach alone.”

Liam thought of what Ekwok had told him about Larsgaard Senior. “So the state was forced to reopen the area to hunting.”

“Depends on how you define hunting.” Wy's voice was very dry. “Native hunters only, of course, and no hunting at all until a ten-page agreement had been drawn up and signed between state and villagers, detailing where the boats could go ashore, how the animals could be shot and allowing for tissue samples to be collected from each kill. Observers from both federal and state governments were on hand to witness the event, hand out permits and videotape the results.”

With a smile, Liam said, “You flew some of them in.”

She nodded. “A whole plane full of observers and equipment. So. You want to go?”

“No first dates that involve flying,” Liam said firmly. “I'm better at making my moves when I'm not airsick. How about you cook me dinner tomorrow night? I'll bring a movie to watch after.”

“Tim will be there.”

“I know.”

She smiled, this time a sweet smile full of promise. “It's a date.”

Liam rose early, stood post and practiced all sixty-four movements of the form with what he was sure was exquisite grace and superb style, showered briskly and was at his desk, whistling while he worked, by seven-fifty-nine. He called the medical examiner's office in Anchorage and left a message on the machine for Brillo Pad to call him. He went through the evidence he'd collected from the archaeological dig at Tulukaruk. Don Nelson's journal made very interesting reading, but there was nothing in it that Liam identified as pertinent to his murder. He reviewed his notes on the interview with Alta. Molly and Larsgaard's last meeting had been the previous Monday. One week alive and loving, the next dead and buried. Sounded like a line from a country-and-western song.