Northern Lights

standard towing equipment. You just figured you'd haul this heap twenty miles with a couple of rusted chains hooked onto your truck with, what is this, baling wire?"
    "It was working." Bill furrowed his brow. "Till we hit that rut and she rolled over like a dog playing dead, it was working fine."
    "We were working out how to get her up again. No cause for everybody to go crazy about it."
    He heard the howl of what had to be a wolf, eerie and primal in the ghostly gloom. It served to remind him he was standing on a snowy, rural road on the edge of the Alaskan Interior with a couple of lamebrains.
    "You're blocking traffic and obstructing the town plow from clearing the road for people who have enough sense to drive responsibly. If this had happened five miles the other way, you'd have hampered the fire department on a call. Bing's going to get this thing upright and tow it to your place. You're going to pay his standard fee—"
    "Son of a bitch!"
    "And the fine for towing a vehicle without proper equipment or signage."
    Bill looked so pained that Nate wouldn't have been surprised to see tears run from his eyes. "How the hell are we supposed to make a profit on this if you go around fining us and making us pay that penny-pinching Bing's towing fee?"
    "That's a puzzle, all right."
    "Hell." Jim kicked the bald rear tire of the Jeep. "Seemed like a good idea at the time." Then he grinned. "We'll fix her up good. Maybe you'll want to buy her for the police department. Hook a plow to her cheap enough. Be useful."
    "Take it up with the mayor. Let's get this off the road."
    It took Bing, his helper Pargo, both Mackies and Nate to get the job done. When it was over, and Bing was towing the Jeep away, Nate tried to roll the kinks out of his back.
    "How much you pay for it?"
    "Two thousand." Bill got a gleam in his eye. "Cash."
    He calculated, loosely, what it would cost to make it roadworthy, how much Bing would skin them for over the towing. "I'm going to let this go with a warning. Next time you boys decide to be enterprising, get a tow bar."
    "You're all right, chief." Both Mackies slapped him on the back and nearly sent him pitching face-first in the snow. "Pain having cops around, but you're all right."
    "Appreciate that."
    He drove the short distance back to town and swung to the curb when he saw David helping Rose out of their truck in front of the clinic.
    "Everything okay?" he called out.
    "Baby's coming," David yelled back.
    Nate jumped out and took Rose's other arm. She continued to take slow, steady breaths, but she smiled at him with those melted chocolate eyes.
    "It's okay. Everything's fine." She leaned against her husband as Nate opened the door. "I didn't want to go to the hospital in Anchorage. I wanted Doc Ken to deliver. Everything's fine."
    "My mother has Jesse," David told him. He was looking a little pale, Nate thought. And he felt considerably pale himself.
    "Do you want me to stay, do anything?" Please say no. "Call anyone?"
    "My mother's coming." Rose let David help her out of her coat. "Doc said I could go anytime when I saw him last checkup. Looks like he was right. Four minutes apart," she told Joanna, who hurried over. "Steady and strong now. My water broke about twenty minutes ago."
    And that, Nate decided, was about all a man, even one with a badge, needed to hear.
    "I'll let you get to it." He took Rose's coat from David, hung it up. "Call if . . . whatever. Peter's out doing something for me, but I'll call him in if you want."
    "Thank you."
    They disappeared into the back, to do things he didn't care to think about. But he dug out his phone. It rang in his hand.
    "Burke."
    "Chief ? It's Peter. We didn't find any traps, any sign of them either. If you want, we can extend the search, um, widen the parameters."
    "No, that'll do. Head on back. Your sister's in the process of making you an uncle again."
    "Rose? Now? Is she okay? Is she—"
    "She looked fine to me. She's here at the clinic now. David's with her. His mom has Jesse, and your mom's on her way."
    "So am I."
    Nate stuffed the phone back in his pocket. He should probably stand by, at least until more of the family arrived. The waiting room of the clinic was as good a place as any to sit and think about tracks in the snow.
    And what he would tell Meg when she returned to Lunacy.

 
     
     
     
    SEVENTEEN
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    IT WAS A GIRL, eight full pounds of one, with the requisite complement of digits and a thatch of black hair.