Northern Lights

but I tell Jack I'm okay. I'm calling for
    backup on my cell. And I'm pulling myself up, and he shoots Jack. Chest, gut. Jesus. I can't get to him. Can't, and the shooter's coming back. Crazy, hyped up. Fucking crazy to come back instead of run. He hits me again, not much more than a graze really. Just this hot arrow under the ribs. And I emptied my clip in him. I don't remember, but that's what they told me. I remember crawling to Jack, watching him die. I remember the way he looked at me, how he gripped my hand and said my name—like what the hell? And how he said his wife's name, when he knew. I remember that, every night."
    "And blame yourself."
    "He wouldn't have been there."
    "I don't see things that way." She wanted to gather him up, rock him like a child. A mistake for him, she knew, an indulgence for her. So she sat beside him, only laid her hand on his thigh. "Every choice a person makes takes them somewhere. You wouldn't have been there either if your wife had been waiting at home for you. So you could just as easily blame her and the guy she'd been seeing. Or you could just blame the man who shot him, because you know, somewhere you know, he's the one to blame."
    "I know all that. Heard it all before. It doesn't change how I feel at three in the morning or three in the afternoon. Or whenever it wants to slap me down."
    Might as well say it all, tell her all, whatever it cost.
    "I went into a hole, Meg, a big, black, nasty hole. I've been trying to climb out, and sometimes I'm almost there, right at the edge. Then something from below reaches up and drags me back down again."
    "You have therapy?"
    "The department arranged it."
    "Meds?"
    He shifted again. "I don't like them."
    "Better living through chemistry," she said, but he didn't smile.
    "They make me edgy or jumpy or out of myself. I can't do the job on meds, and if I couldn't do the job, the whole thing was pointless. But I couldn't stay in Baltimore either. Couldn't face it every day. Another body, another case—trying to close the ones Jack and I caught together before. Seeing somebody else at his desk. Knowing he left a wife and kids who loved him, and there was nobody who'd have been left if it'd been me instead."
    "So you came here."
    "To bury myself. But things happened. I saw the mountains. I saw the lights. Northern lights."
    He looked at her and realized by the faint smile on her face she understood. He didn't have to say more. So he could say more.
    "And I saw you. Similar reaction to all. Something inside me wanted to come back to life. I don't know how it'll be or if I'm any good for you. I'm not a sure bet."
    "I like long odds. Let's just see how it plays."
    "I should go."
    "Didn't I say I wasn't done with you? I'll tell you what we should do. We should go out and jump in the hot tub for a while, then we should come back up here and roll around naked again."
    "Go out? As in outside? Get in a tub of water outside where it's about ten degrees?"
    "Not in the tub, it isn't. Come on, Burke, get hardy. Get stimulated." And soak away some of those blues, she thought.
    "We could stay right here in bed and get stimulated."
    But she rolled away. "You'll like it," she promised, and yanked him out of bed.
    She was right: He did like it. The insanity of the rushing cold, the painful plunge into hot water, the absurdly sexy sensation of being naked with her under a sky now mad with stars and those magical, shifting lights.
    Steam pumped and plumed off the surface, and the dogs once again raced like maniacs. The only downside he could see was having to heave himself out again, race through the bitter air to the house—and the possibility of a heart attack.
    "Do you do this a lot?"
    "A couple times a week. Gets the blood moving."
    "I'll say."
    Sinking a little lower, he tipped back his head. And the northern lights filled his vision. "Oh, man. Do you ever get tired of it? Even used to it?"
    She mirrored his pose, enjoying the way the cold streamed into her face while the heat saturated her body. "Used to it in a way that makes you proprietary. Like they belong to me, and I just share them with a few lucky others.
    "I go out most nights, just to look. There's nobody out, and everything's quiet. And yeah, then they belong to me."
    There were shimmers of lavender tonight, swirls of deep blue, hints of red. The music she'd chosen this time had Michelle Branch singing passionately about the light shining in the dark.
    Stirred, he found her hand in the