Northern Lights

live with that."
    "I can." Meg stepped up beside Nate, aimed her gun between Ed's eyes. "You know me, you bastard. I'll down you like I would a sick horse, and I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over it."
    "Meg," Nate warned. "Ease back."
    "I can kill her and one of you first. If that's what it takes."
    "Her probably," Meg agreed. "But she doesn't mean anything to me. Go ahead, shoot her. You'll be dead before she hits the ground."
    "Ease back, Meg." Nate lifted his voice now, and his eyes never left Ed's. "Do what I tell you, and do it now." Then he heard a chaos of voices, stumbling feet. The crowd was surging forward, Nate knew, with curiosity, fascination and horror outweighing simple fear.
    "Drop the weapon and let her go," Nate ordered. "Do it now, and you've got a chance." Nate saw Coben come around the back and knew someone was going to die.
    Hell broke loose.
    Ed whirled, fired. In a flash, Nate saw Coben roll for cover and the splatter of blood from the bullet that caught him high on the shoulder. Coben's service revolver lay on the sidewalk where it had flown out of his hand.
    Nate heard a second bullet thud into the building beside him and the sound of a thousand people screaming.
    They barely penetrated. His blood was ice.
    He shoved Meg back, sent her sprawling to the ground. She cursed him as he stepped forward, his gun steady. "Anyone dies today," he said coolly, "it'll be you, Ed."
    "What are you doing?" Ed shouted as Nate continued to walk toward him. "What the hell are you doing?"
    "My job. My town. Put down the gun, or I'll take you out like that sick horse."
    "Go to hell!" With one violent move, he shoved the weeping woman at Nate and dived behind a car.
    Nate let the woman slide bonelessly to the sidewalk. Then he rolled under another car, came up street-side.
    Crouched, he glanced over to check on Meg and saw her soothing the woman whose life she'd claimed didn't mean anything to her. "Go," she snapped out. "Get the bastard."
    Then she began to belly forward toward the injured Coben.
    Ed fired, the bullet exploding a windshield.
    "This ends here. It ends now!" Nate shouted. "Throw out your gun, or I'll come and take it from you."
    "You're nothing!" There was more than panic, more than rage in Ed's voice. "You don't even belong here." There were tears. He broke cover, firing wildly. Glass shattered and flew like lethal stars; metal pinged and rang.
    Nate stood, stepped into the street with his weapon lifted. He felt something sting his arm, like a fat, angry bee. "Drop it, you stupid son of a bitch."
    On a scream, Ed swung around, aimed.
    And Nate fired.
    He saw Ed clutch his hip, saw him go down. And continued forward at the same steady pace until he'd reached the gun Ed had dropped as he'd fallen.
    "You're under arrest, you asshole. You coward." His voice was calm as June as he shoved Ed onto his belly, yanked his arms behind him and cuffed his wrists. Then he crouched, spoke softly while Ed's pain-glazed eyes flickered. "You shot a police officer." He glanced without much interest at the thin line of blood just above his own elbow. "Two. You're done."
    "We need to get Ken up here?" Hopp's query was conversational, but when Nate looked up to see her coming toward him, crunching broken glass under her dressy shoes, he saw the tremor in her hands, her shoulders.
    "Couldn't hurt." He jerked a chin toward the people who'd jumped over, crawled under or simply shoved barricades aside. "You're going to need to keep those people back."
    "That's your job, chief." She managed a smile, then it frosted as she stared down at Ed. "You know, that TV crew got damn near all of this on camera. Cameraman must be certifiable. One thing we're going to make clear in the upcoming interviews on this unholy mess. This one's the Outsider now. He's not one of us."
    She shifted deliberately away from Ed, held out a hand to Nate as if to help him to his feet. "But you are. You sure as hell are, Ignatious, and thank God for it."
    He took her hand and felt that light tremor in hers as she squeezed his hard. "Anybody back there hurt?"
    "Bumps and bruises." Tears trembled in her eyes, were willed away. "You took care of us."
    "Good." He nodded when he saw Otto and Peter working to move the crowd back.
    Then he looked over, found Meg crouched in a doorway. She met his eyes. There was blood on her hands, but it appeared she'd fashioned an expert field dressing on Coben's wounded shoulder.
    She brushed a hand absently over her