Mace
The emergency radio has been recalibrated. I am recalibrating it again.
The frequency alignment is correct. It was correct the first time. It was correct the second time and the third time and it is correct now, and I am still turning the dial because if I stop I'm going to do something stupid.
Callum is at his desk. He has been watching me in silence for twenty minutes. This is normal.
At nine-thirty exactly, he says, "What did you say to her."
Not a question.
"What makes you think I said something."
He gives me the look. The one that ends arguments. "You've recalibrated that radio four times."
I put the radio down.
"She drove away this morning," he says. "You've been in here since she walked out."
"She lives six hours south."
"Nell lived further."
I look at the whiteboard. Thane's handwriting in the top corner: N: arrives today. Below that, in Callum's block caps:
C: road clear. ETA: gone.
I stare at that.
ETA: gone. Written like a callout that missed its window. Callum put it up this morning. He put it up while I was next door saying the wrong thing to the wrong woman, and I walked back in at nine-ten and went straight to the radio without looking.
"I told her this wasn't her kind of place," I say.
"Was that true?"
It was not true. I knew it wasn't true when I said it.
She stayed when I told her to leave. She asked questions nobody asks.
She wore Dottie's terrible boots without complaint and walked up a mountain trail and kissed me at the falls like she meant it and wrote something about this town that I wanted to read, and I don't read.
I said it because watching her pack felt like watching the road close — except this time I was the storm. So I made it easy for her. Pushed her out before she could choose to go.
I pick up my keys.
Callum says, "She's been gone thirty minutes."
"I know how far south she drives in thirty minutes."
I know Ridge Road. I know every switchback, every mile marker, every place the plows miss and the black ice builds. I know the distance between Harrow Peak and the 24-hour fuel stop at the interstate junction — one hour in good conditions.
She left the bar at nine. Cold engine — she wouldn't have been moving until nine-oh-five at the earliest. It's nine thirty-five. She has a thirty-minute head start on a sixty-minute road.
I run the SAR lights the whole way. They are not strictly legal on the highway. I don't care.
I pull into the forecourt at ten past ten and her rental is there. She's already in the driver's seat. Key in the ignition.
I block her exit with the truck.
She sees me through the windshield. Her expression is not warm.
She gets out. Because she's Cleo.
We stand in the winter morning light. The mountain behind me. The highway in front of her. Her car still running. My truck still running.
"I was a coward," I say.
She doesn't move. Arms crossed. Waiting.
"You were right. I looked at you and decided what you were before you had a chance to show me otherwise.
Same thing everyone else in your career did to you.
" My chest is tight. My hands are fists at my sides.
"I knew better and I did it anyway because —" I stop.
Breathe. "Because you were packing your bags and I couldn't think of a single good reason to ask you not to that didn't terrify me. "
She watches me. Her face gives nothing away.
"And now?" she says.
"Now I can think of several."
"List them."
I look at her. Steady. All the way in.
"You asked questions nobody asks. You went toe-to-toe with me for three days and didn't back down once." My voice is rough. I let it be rough. "You're writing something about this place that makes me want to read it, and I don't read."
She doesn't move. But something shifts behind her eyes.
I take a step closer. My hands open at my sides. No wall.
"I haven't wanted someone to stay since I came to this mountain. That's not nothing." I breathe. This is the part I swore I wouldn't say. "I was a Ranger. 75th Regiment. I spent my entire adult life moving fast enough that nothing could catch up to me."
My jaw works. The words are harder now. Closer to the bone.
"You are the first person who has ever made me want to stop."
The highway hums behind her. A truck passes on the interstate and the sound fades and the quiet comes back and she is still looking at me.
"Next time you're scared," she says, "say that first."
"Next time."
"Yes." The corner of her mouth moves. Not a smile yet. Close. "You're going to have to buy me coffee. I've been driving for an hour on an empty stomach."
"You were just inside a 24-hour gas station."
"I know." She wraps both hands around the empty space where a coffee should be. "I was so angry I forgot to buy anything."
"There's a diner two miles back."
"I know. I just drove past it."
I almost smile. The muscles remember how this time. "Follow me."
She looks at me for one more second, and I can see the exact moment she makes the decision. A choice.
She gets back in the car. She doesn't turn toward the highway. She turns left out of the lot, back the way she came, and my shoulders drop six inches and every muscle I've been holding since nine o'clock this morning lets go at once.
The city is five hours south. The diner is two miles back. She chose the diner.
I keep checking my mirror the whole way. She's right there. She stays right there.
The diner is called Millie's. It has red vinyl booths, a counter with stools that spin, and coffee that tastes like it was brewed during the previous administration. I don't care. I am sitting across from her in a sticky booth with winter light coming through the window and she is here.
She orders pancakes and coffee and a side of bacon and eats all of it like a woman who has been running on fury and an empty stomach for an hour.
I order coffee. I don't drink it. I just sit there watching her eat and trying to figure out what my face is doing, because it keeps doing things I haven't authorized.
She catches me looking. "Stop that."
"Stop what."
"Looking at me like you just got away with something."
"I did just get away with something."
She points her fork at me. "You got away with nothing. You are on extremely thin ice. You are buying me breakfast for the foreseeable future."
"Fine."
"And lunch."
"Fine."
"And you're going to tell me about the 75th Regiment. All of it. Not today — I can see you're at capacity — but eventually."
I look at her across the table. Pancake crumbs on her chin. Coffee in both hands. Dark hair still messy from the drive. She is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life and she is not letting me off the hook and I would not want her to.
"Yeah," I say. "Eventually."
She nods once. Takes another bite. Reaches across the table with her free hand and puts it on top of mine, easy, like it's already a habit.
Outside, the mountain is there. The road is there. The city is five hours south and she is eating pancakes two miles north and her hand is warm on mine and I am not moving.