In Harm's Way Part 2

"I don't want dead pig," Emily said, her arms crossed, her eleven-year-old's face locked in determination.

"Don't do this," Walt said, collecting his wares onto the cutting board. "This is your dinner. You like bacon, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"Bacon is pork, same as this."

"Then why can't I have bacon?"

"It's the same thing same thing," sister Nikki said.

"Because this is what I cooked for dinner," Walt answered. "I thought you'd like it. It's your favorite."

"Is not."

"I like it," Nikki said.

"You don't have to eat it, Em. But no ice cream with Lisa if you don't eat your dinner."

"That's not fair."

Nikki rolled her eyes. She didn't understand her sister any more than Walt did.

"It is what it is: no dinner, no ice cream. I had planned for the three of you to bike over to Fifteen Flavors. If you'd rather not . . . ?"

He managed to kick open the door while carrying the board. Beatrice, Emily, and Nikki followed, in that order.

Lisa charged through the front door, apologizing for being late. Walt conferred with her about the evening's rules, including bedtime and the ice cream trip, all unnecessary since Lisa knew more about the girls' routine than he did.

"You look fancy," she said, as he got the ap.r.o.n off and the jacket on.

"My one and only suit."

"It suits you."

"Ha, ha. It's the Advocates dinner. Very swishy."

He hugged his daughters good night, getting barely anything out of Emily, and heaved a sigh as he closed the front door behind him. An early summer evening was a piece of heaven in Hailey, and this one was no exception. The sun tracked surprisingly high in the sky for seven p.m., skirting the tops of the valley's western mountains, its golden light taking on a magical, ethereal quality. Neighborhood lawn mowers ticked, the smell of burning charcoal hung in the air. Some kids rode by in a pack of speeding bicycles.

As he drove north, Walt composed something to say to Fiona, something to try to break the ice. She'd sent him an e-mail with photographs of the bear damage-no message. He'd called twice on the pretense of a follow-up, but she'd failed to call back. It wasn't the first time Fiona had gone off-grid-she occasionally disappeared for days at a time, unreachable, unpredictable-but this time it felt personal.

Sun Valley's Limelight Room, located in the Sun Valley Inn, was a four-star convention hall that had recently undergone a multimilliondollar renovation. It was filled with lavishly appointed tables for three hundred dinner guests, a low stage, and a lectern. Two projection screens displayed PowerPoint slide shows of women at work, mixed with bullet lists of the accomplishments of the nonprofit established to support the battered and abused. Each table of ten had a sponsor. Walt was the guest of a retired general who, thankfully, had picked up the tab for the entire table. Fiona sat to Walt's left, with Kira Tulivich next to Fiona. Twenty-one-year-old Kira, adorable and gorgeous in a summer dress, had been the victim of a savage a.s.sault two years earlier, and an important witness for Walt. Scheduled to give one of the evening's two keynote addresses, Kira looked both nervous and out of sorts as she studied the cutlery and tried to decide which fork to use.

Walt elbowed Fiona in the ribs and gestured for her to rescue her charge. Fiona directed Kira to the outside fork and relief washed over the young woman's face.

"Thank you," Fiona whispered.

"Nice to hear your voice," Walt said, between bites.

"We can discuss this later," she said.

"But we won't, will we? Because you won't return my calls."

"Later."

"I fought hard for you. Not hard enough, I know-you told me that-but as hard as I dared. As sheriff . . . I explained my delicate relationship with the paper." He ate some more salad and watched her move hers around the plate. "You never did tell me why it mattered so much. The way you've treated me, I a.s.sume it was more than just modesty or vanity. But for the life of me, I can't figure it out."

"For the life of you, no," she said.

"But if it was so important-"

"What's done is done," she said, cutting him off.

"Doesn't feel that way."

"No, it doesn't, does it?"

"Why so angry?"

"Am I? I don't mean to be. Seriously. It's not with you."

"Of course it is."

"Not meant to be."

"I don't believe that," he said.

He looked up. Every face at the table was looking at them, listening to them. The others immediately returned to their food and they faked conversation, but Walt realized they'd all heard every word. Given the other guests at the table, it meant that most of the valley would know, word for word, everything said. It was the blessing and the curse of the Wood River Valley, and something that all residents willingly suffered as a trade-off to the lifestyle.

During the entree, Fiona coached Kira on her talk, and finally the moment arrived when Kira was introduced.

"We are so grateful to have with us tonight," the evening's host began, "a young woman of extraordinary courage, poise, and intelligence. Kira Tulivich turned to Advocates following an ordeal that not only tested her own will to live, but resulted in the apprehension of domestic terrorists by our own Sheriff Walt Fleming, and put an end to a terrorist cell operating within our state. Hers is a story of strength, determination, and recovery, and we are honored to hear from her tonight. Won't you please join me in welcoming . . ."

Her formal introduction was overpowered by the thunderous applause as the guests spontaneously rose to their feet. Kira's story was already well known. This was her first public appearance since the incident, and the applause carried her from the table to the lectern, some of the women openly weeping. It took her three tries to quiet the crowd. Finally people sat. Kira cleared her throat with a sip of water and began her short and emotional speech.

Halfway through the speech, Walt felt fingernails scratching at his fist beneath the skirt of the tablecloth as Fiona's hand found its way into his. He looked over at her, but she never took her watery eyes off the stage. He missed the rest of the talk, his mind racing and unable to light on any single thought except that life brought unexpected pleasures and made it worth getting up in the morning. For the first time at such an event, he hoped the keynote speech would go on for hours.

Fiona withdrew her hand from his and grabbed her mobile phone, vibrating from within her purse. As she went to stop it, he saw her eyes light upon the screen and consternation grip her face. She slipped the phone back into her purse but their connection was gone. She didn't even seem to be hearing Kira's speech.

"You okay?" he whispered.

She looked at him, attempting, but failing, to wipe the crease from her brow. She nodded.

Kira said from the lectern, "I think the main thing I want to say is thanks to the Advocates. The physical healing was the easy part, as it turned out, but the-"

She stopped abruptly, locked in a stare.

Walt turned back, following her line of sight to one of the hall's two center doors, just closing. His sheriff's instinct was to jump up and hurry into the hallway to see who was out there. But he kept to his seat.

Kira then searched and her eyes found Fiona, who nodded back at her rea.s.suringly. Some heads turned in the direction of their table. Kira's eyes finally fell back to her notes and she continued speaking.

"But the emotional healing, the real real healing," she continued, "well . . . it really does take a village." healing," she continued, "well . . . it really does take a village."

Walt turned and reached out to both rea.s.sure and congratulate Fiona for her mentoring of the girl, but the chair stood empty, Fiona gone.

Eyes darting around the room, a.s.suming Fiona had gone up to greet Kira as she left the stage, he found his vision blocked as an appreciative audience rose to its feet. Walt stood, tempted to climb up onto his chair, cursing his five-foot-seven frame.

Instead, he seized the moment, ducking out into the hallway, moving toward the restrooms-thinking Fiona might have gone there-but then, upon seeing a pair of bellmen outside, approached them.

"A woman?" Walt inquired. "Cream-colored top. Black purse. Maybe left just now."

"Didn't see her."

"Don't I know you?" the other bellman asked.

Walt ignored it, wondering if the kid had been in trouble or just knew his picture from the local paper. "How about a guy?" Walt said.

"Big guy? Yeah," said the first bellman.

A couple came out-the exodus was under way-and the guest handed the second boy his valet claim stub. The kid took off at a run.

"Yes, the big guy," Walt said, trying to hold the other boy's attention. The rush of people wanting their cars was suffocating. Walt presented his sheriff's shield, held down low. The boy caught sight of it. "The big guy," he repeated.

"Came and went. Wasn't inside more than, like, two minutes."

"How big?"

"Solid Snake," said the kid. "You know, Metal Gear, Sons of Liberty?" Reading Walt's bewilderment, he added, "PSP? Gaming?"

"Uhh."

"Huge, stupid huge. Ridiculous." A valet stub stabbed at the kid and he accepted it. "Sorry," he said to Walt. He took off.

Walt fought up-current against the departing guests and reentered the half-empty conference hall. He located his host and thanked him. He made his way toward the stage and awaited his turn with Kira.

"You seen Fiona?" Kira asked him immediately. Guests broke in, congratulating her. She shook hands with several of them. Walt wanted a private moment with her but wasn't going to get it.

"Restroom," he said. It was the only explanation that made any sense; Fiona wasn't leaving Kira in the lurch. "You paused," he said. "You were looking toward the doors."

She shook her head as if by doing so she might convince him it hadn't happened.

"Please," he said.

"Roy Coats," she said, lowering her voice and naming the man who had raped her, a man Walt had watched die. "Just a flashback. They still happen. Why it had to be right then . . . but I suppose it was because I was talking about it. I don't talk about it much."

"Did he look like Coats?" Walt asked.

"No," Kira answered. "It was was him." him."

"Ms. Tulivich . . . Kira?" A woman wearing too much perfume pushed in front of Walt and he lost his moment.

He turned and looked back toward the center doors, imagining how it must have felt for her to see an image of Roy Coats listening in on her recovery speech. He lived with his own demons: memories of b.l.o.o.d.y murder scenes he couldn't shake, traffic accidents, his killing a man in the backcountry, an incident with his father when he'd been nine years old. Things he didn't talk about. He envied her ability to talk to counselors, to free the demons, to break the silence of those terrors.

People milled around him and for a moment it was almost as if he wasn't there. He might have been a table or chair they were dodging. He'd internalized, he'd sunk beneath the surface and was kicking like mad to reach the air above.

Fiona wasn't returning; he knew it without checking for her. He couldn't imagine what would have taken her out of the room at that, of all moments. She had practically adopted Kira, had installed her into the Engletons' main house as her a.s.sociate caretaker. Abandoning her in the last few lines of her talk seemed impossible. Unthinkable.

Or, he wondered, had Fiona also seen whoever had been at the back of the room?

He reached for his phone and called her. It jumped straight to voice mail-the phone was turned off.

He had a vision of her reacting to whatever message she'd read on her phone. Had the message-some kind of personal emergency-caused her to leave? Should he stop by her place on his way home? Or was that overstepping his bounds, given that she'd shut off her phone?

He slowed the Jeep at the highway entrance to the private road leading to the Engleton and Berkholder properties. He didn't need an excuse to check up on her, but she was also a woman who appreciated her s.p.a.ce, and in the end he gave it to her, reluctantly.

Tie loosened, his suit coat slung over the back of a dining-room chair, Walt enabled the Skype software as he had for each of the past eight evenings and then checked on the girls.

He found Lisa asleep atop Nikki's bed covers, a book in her lap. In her late thirties, Lisa still had the look of a woman much younger, and the energy to go with it. Catching her in a catnap was a rarity. He gently shook her awake, the intimacy of the moment not escaping him. He hadn't felt the warmth of a sleeping woman in a very long time.

Walt nearly gave Nikki a goodnight kiss, but decided against it as she was such a light sleeper. He turned around and instead planted a kiss onto Emily's cheek. She could sleep through an earthquake. Lisa hopped up and adjusted the blinds and shut the door as they left together.

"Any problems?" Walt asked.

"Smooth as silk."

"Did Nikki say anything about Gail?"

"Didn't mention her. Not to me."

That was a first. Nikki was obsessed with using their marriage separation as an excuse. "Then you should be around more often," he said, realizing too late a man didn't say that to a happily married woman.

"It takes time."

"They'll never get over it. Nikki, she may not even get past past it." it."

"Sure she will."

"Maybe Em's hiding it all, but she doesn't seem affected. She's moved on, I think."

"Nikki's the one to watch, for sure. What's the schedule this week?"

"There's a city council thing on Wednesday," he said, "and a Search and Rescue exercise on Thursday. A Chamber event on Friday night that I'm hoping to duck."

"Wednesday and Thursday are no problem and I'll keep Friday open just in case." She paused. "Listen, Walt, I have a favor to ask."

"Name it," he said.

"It's a big favor," she cautioned.