Iditarod Nights (17 page)

"But you've served."

Sworn to protect. Dedicated to serve.

Vic nodded. "I see I touched a nerve. What
was your war zone?"

Playing dumb with the man would only piss him
off. Dillon had seen Vic pissed off. Damn dangerous. "I was a
Portland Police officer." Saying it raked his throat.

"Explains why you let that pretty gal go back
to Portland alone."

"She had a – "

"Who'd you kill?"

The man may as well have reached across the
desk and backhanded him. "None of your God damn business."

Vic shrugged. "You can talk to me or you can
find yourself another cook. I ain't sticking around to watch you
self-destruct."

"Go to hell."

"Already been there, man."

Chapter 30

You'll never be the same when it's over.

A small tremor of panic snaked through Claire
as the truth of Dillon's words taunted her yet again. She looked
around her office at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the dark
leather armchairs and matching couch on a sage-colored carpet, the
rain-spattered window overlooking downtown Portland and the
Willamette River, unable to shake the restlessness beating inside
her as persistent as the weather. It had been an
uncharacteristically wet June. She and Alice replanted the lemon
cucumbers a week ago because the first seeds drowned.

A headache drilled into her temple. She
glanced at the Madison file on her desk, a clear case of
self-defense. But something was missing, a detail lurking at the
edge of her awareness.

Three months and she still struggled to
concentrate, still couldn't sleep longer than four hours at a time,
still woke listening for the dogs. The fussy clothes, the shoes
that hurt her feet, business lunches, courtroom appearances, prison
consults, city noise, too many people pressed together. She felt
suffocated. As hard as she tried, she couldn't force things to be
the same anymore. The pieces of her life crumbled from under her a
little more every day, like an eroding embankment.

She'd packed and unpacked half a dozen times,
with no destination in mind. Janey told her their door was always
open, but Claire had no desire to encroach on her friend's
hospitality again.

Pushing away from the desk, she smoothed the
front of her gray pinstriped skirt and paced. Window. Desk.
Bookshelves. Window. She rubbed at the throb in her temple.
What
am I missing?

And where the hell was Dillon? Three months
and not a word. Three months of empty arms and an empty bed. Her
dad and Helen had been in constant communication – letters, phone
calls, emails. If Helen mentioned Dillon at all, Dad remained
annoyingly tight-lipped about it. Kept saying a gentleman doesn't
kiss and tell until she felt like kicking him. There was no denying
the light in his eyes. Helen's wasn't so unlike Mama in that
regard. Dad looked happy. Claire was happy for him.

Everybody was happy but her. She felt a
full-blown pity party inviting her to open its doors and stay until
dawn. Tempting.

She dragged her thoughts back to the Madison
case.
I've been away too long. Things have changed. I've
–

"Claire?"

She stopped. Glanced toward the door.
Great. Now I'm hallucinating.

***

She looked fragile in her silk-white blouse,
her slim skirt showing enough leg to make Dillon's chest tighten.
Her dark whisky eyes fixed on him like a deer in headlamps and the
air in the room stilled, making it hard to breathe.

He should say something. Explain himself.
What if she didn't want to see him? A boulder lodged in his
stomach. "Am I interrupting?"

"It's really you."

"Guilty."

She took a halting step toward him, stopped.
"What are you doing here?"

Looking for you. That was the easy answer.
But his reasons for coming to Portland were a hell of a lot more
complicated than his need to see her. "I'm through hiding."

"Good." She tucked at her hair, a gesture he
found achingly endearing. "That's good."

He accepted her hesitation, knew he deserved
it. Pulling in an uncertain breath, he asked, "Is there a boyfriend
or husband I should know about?"

She gave a weak laugh. "God no."

"Then would it be alright if I kissed
you?"

The small cry she made was the answer he
needed. The heaviness in his stomach lifted and he met her in two
strides. He pulled her close, taking her lips with his as a hint of
lavender seduced him. A new fragrance. It suited her. The girl
clothes suited her. His callused hands snagged at the back of her
blouse, her slim curves achingly familiar beneath the whisper of
fabric.

"I've missed you," he said and kissed her
again, tasted the coffee on her mouth.

He felt her breath hitch. Her fingers fisted
the front of his shirt. "I've missed you too, damn it. Three months
without a word."

"I'm sorry I shut you out."

"I don't need you to protect me."

"I know." He brushed her hair back from her
face. "It's one of the things I love about you."

A shine of tears came into her eyes. "You
said yourself, love was never the problem."

"I've been working on that."

***

She wanted to believe him. Wanted it
desperately. Still handsome in the rawboned way she remembered, he
looked rough around the edges, as though he'd had his share of
sleepless nights. His physical presence pulled at her. His smell.
His heat.

But she wasn't ready to bare her heart to him
again. Not until she had some answers. She forced herself to move
out of his arms, went to her desk and called Maggie in the front
office. "I'm going to be unavailable for the rest of the
afternoon."

"Shall I cancel your dinner appointment?"
Maggie asked.

"No. Dinner's still on."

Maggie exhaled an audible whoosh of relief.
"Excellent."

Claire hung up and gestured Dillon to the
couch. "Have a seat."

"You've got a dinner date?"

"No. That's a code Maggie came up with. If
I'd told her to cancel dinner, she'd have security in here so fast
you wouldn't know what hit you."

He arrowed a sharp look at her. "Has that
happened?"

"Once." Claire resisted the impulse to smile
at his chivalrous stance. It felt nice, his wanting to defend her.
Maybe some day she'd tell him about the client who scared the crap
out of her and Maggie, but now wasn't the time. She joined him on
the couch, sat on the edge so she could face him, close but not
quite touching. She didn't need to touch him to feel the tension in
his body. "Tell me what's going on."

He hesitated, as though uncertain where to
begin, his gaze focused on the space of cushion between them.
"Things fell apart. I fell apart. Nightmares. Insomnia."

She didn't know how to ask if he'd started
drinking again without sounding accusatory, so she held her tongue,
took shallow breaths and waited.

The look in his eyes when they lifted sliced
her heart. "I wanted a drink so damn bad it scared me."

"What stopped you?" Because it was clear now
he hadn't given in to the craving.

"Vic. He knew something was wrong. Hell,
everybody did. He dragged me to a place in Nome that helps people
with PTSD."

"Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."

"You're familiar with it."

"It's been offered as a basis for defense. I
haven't handled a case personally, but I did a little reading when
I got home." She followed a hunch, spent late hours online
researching websites that dealt with the disorder. Poured over
books from the library. She discovered PTSD was far more prevalent
in law enforcement that she realized. Police officers are expected
to be compassionate yet invincible, never make a mistake, suck it
up and keep going. She watched videos that made her cry. But she
understood Dillon needed a patient listener more than he needed
tears and condolences. "How did Vic know?"

"He's a Vietnam veteran, been through it
himself."

"I would never have guessed. He's such a big
softy."

Dillon grunted. "Vic a softy? Are we talking
about the same guy?"

"Anybody who tattoos the name of a beloved
dog on his bicep is a softy in my book."

The look of surprise on Dillon's face made
her laugh. "Reta is a
dog
?"

"Ausie/husky mix, his constant companion for
fifteen years." When Vic spotted Claire, lost and weepy-eyed after
saying goodbye to her dad and the Sommers, he sat her down, lifted
her spirits with the story of Dillon's grill fire, then had her
near tears again as he talked about his Reta girl. "He never told
you?"

"I never asked."

Claire shook her head, scooted back onto the
couch, shoulder to shoulder with him, and took his hand. "He cares
about you, Dillon. A lot of us do."

"Yeah, I'm finally figuring that out." He
lifted her hand and brushed his lips across her fingers. "I've been
an idiot."

"Welcome to the club." She kissed the edge of
the slanted smile he gave her. "Where do we go from here?"

Chapter 31

He asked her to drive his rental. He'd been
away from Portland too long; downtown traffic made him jittery and
screwed with his concentration. Sitting in the passenger seat gave
him a chance to see how the city had changed in his absence. A few
new shops and eateries shared Broadway with the Arlene Schnitzer
Concert Hall – the "Schnitz" – and Nordstrom. Rain filled gutters
and pooled in potholes, dripped from awnings, streaked the sides of
bus shelters. People hunched under battle-weary umbrellas or
ignored the weather altogether, going about their business with a
posture of indifference. The homeless and indigent continued to
gravitate to Burnside. The grim edges of a city that always seemed
to come up short for those most in need.

All in all, not much had changed. Except
him.

The car's wipers cleared the windshield every
three seconds. Dual metronomes. Flashes of moments surfaced then
disappeared, as the city's images blurred and cleared and blurred
again. His therapist talked about cognitive processing, visiting
reminders of his trauma, putting his feelings in context through
exposure, but the reminders came at him too fast, were too fleeting
to compartmentalize
.

Claire stopped for a traffic light. "How are
you doing?"

He met her gaze. He'd missed those eyes. The
look in them now calmed him. "I'm good."

But his calm didn't last. As they crossed the
river and neared the address Dillon gave her, images slowed,
sharpened. Details his memory had dulled came into clarity. The
crumbling mini-mall with its Laundromat, all-night convenience
store and take-out pizza. The chain link fence along an embankment
to the Banfield freeway. The low brick wall in front, separating
the parking area from the residential street. Claire pulled into a
slot reserved for guests and shut off the engine. The drum of rain
on the car roof rivaled the heightened pound of his pulse.

"Is this where it happened?"

"Yes." He drew in a long breath and blew it
out. "No."

The building didn't look right. They say when
you go back to a place after being away for years, things seem
smaller. Maybe that was the case. Or maybe it was the groomed
landscaping, new windows and cream-yellow paint with white trim.
The dingy, rundown building of his nightmares no longer
existed.

He opened the car door to the rush of traffic
noise from the freeway and waited for a brief flare of anxiety to
subside before getting out. Claire followed, pulling the hood of
her rain jacket over her hair. She hooked her arm in his and walked
the length of the building with him, to the last apartment on the
end. Number six.

Details sped up again, bombarded him in quick
flashes: a woman's scream, her torn blouse. Two men struggling.
Lewis firing. Intense ringing in his ears. A third man reaching
into his pocket.

Naked fear.

The force of the realization hit him like a
stomach punch. He fought to keep from vomiting, locked his knees to
remain upright.

Claire's hold on his arm tightened. "Talk to
me, Dillon."

Remember all the pieces to process the
trauma and heal
.

Warm rain soaked his cotton shirt, plastered
his hair and ran into his eyes, a baptismal rite, as the
marrow-deep terror he'd blocked condemned him. "I thought I was
going to die," he said, his voice raw.

He regretted taking the life of a
nineteen-year-old, would carry the burden of it to his last breath.
But it was the instant before he pulled the trigger, when he came
face-to-face with his own mortality, that tortured him more.

He'd masked his fear behind a lie so he could
live with himself. The support of his coworkers turned the lie into
an insatiable animal eating at his conscience. He drank to kill the
beast. But the beast hadn't died; it stowed away and followed him
to Alaska, lay in hibernation, waiting for the delusion to be
exposed.

"I panicked and was treated like a hero."
Saying it aloud made it something concrete he could face instead of
cower from.

Claire didn't offer empty platitudes or
attempt to console him. He appreciated her silent witness.

"I had no right to drag you into this," he
said. "But I'm glad you're here."

"Me too." She looked up at him, rain flipping
from her lashes. "Did it help, coming here?"

"Yes." It surprised him how easy the
admission slid from his mouth.

A baby cried and a woman shouted, "Are you
people lost or something?"

Dillon's attention swung to the source.
Apartment six's door stood open and his knees jerked.

But the woman watching them with a baby on
her hip, her stance defensive, wore a baggy Oregon Ducks t-shirt,
not a torn blouse. She was younger. Cleaner. The room behind her
looked lived-in and comfortable. Carpeting where there had been
stained linoleum. Toys where there'd been trash. Framed photos hung
on the wall where a small man with a gun in his waistband had once
been pinned and choked.