She smiled briefly. "Do you still have a taste for beef jerky? I remember as a kid you'd grab a piece of beef jerky and head up the ridge. You weren't even eight years old. I don't know how you lived."

"I don't know, either but I've got MREs these days. Good stuff."

"Purloined 'meals ready to eat.' Well, I understand they're better than they used to be. The prepackaged camping foods certainly are." She looked out her window, the road twisting again now, evergreens hanging over rock outcroppings. "Once I pass the PJ Physical Abilities and Stamina Test, I'm going to take one of the Appalachian Mountain Club winter camping courses. I think that'd be a challenge."

"Once you pass the what?"

She glanced over at him, a welcome spark in her blue eyes. "The test aspiring PJs take to be accepted into the program."

"Ah. I forgot that's what it's called. Ominous. I just remember running my ass off, nearly drowning a few times, and sweating a lot. Indoc was more of the same, just worse. This explains all the running, swimming and flutter kicks?"

"I'm having fun. I've read up on what you do. All these years with you in and out of my life, and I never really knew much about what a PJ does. Is it true that instructors strap you into a helicopter, blindfold you and throw you in the water to see if you can get out?"

"It's a simulated helicopter."

"Real water."

"I remember," he said.

"You got out?"

He smiled. "I'm a PJ, right? I got out."

She sighed, staring back out her window, the distraction of PJ talk not lasting. "I shouldn't have gotten mad at Gus. He's just trying to help. He doesn't want to see me making the same mistakes all over again with you."

"Maybe, but he was also trying to make you mad. Get your blood up. Put some color in your cheeks."

"Well, it worked."

"You're lucky Gus hasn't locked you in your room by now."

Her vivid eyes stood out against her pale skin. "You taught me how to go out a window on a bedsheet."

"As if you needed teaching."

"It's the age difference. It was more telling when we were six and ten. Now-" She turned back to her window as they passed a steep, eroded embankment. "Never mind."

Ty could see she was preoccupied, dreading her visit with the Rancourts. "I can turn back."

She shook her head. "I need to do this."

He downshifted, taking the last section of hill before the road dead-ended at the Rancourt driveway and the start of the trail that merged with the main Cold Ridge trail. A wild turkey wandered into the road in front of them, and he stopped while it stood sentry for a dozen other turkeys that meandered out from the woods. Carine sat forward with a gasp of excitement, as if she'd never seen a wild turkey before. "Look at them! I wish I had my camera." She bit down on her lower lip, then added, reality intruding, "My Nikon."

Ty couldn't stand another second of seeing her so shattered by her experience in Boston, finding Louis Sanborn dead, running into Manny and now finding the four pictures that had appeared on her camera disk. "Ah, hell." He gripped the wheel, damn near stalling out. "Carine, I'm sorry. I don't know what else to say. If I'd just married you-"

"Don't, Ty." Her voice was surprisingly gentle, more so than he deserved. "It doesn't help. Something worse might have happened if we'd gone through with the wedding. We don't know. We could have been robbed and killed on our honeymoon."

"We postponed a honeymoon. I only had a few days. I had to get back to Hurlburt-"

"You know what I mean."

Actually, he did. It was a rationalization, a way to make herself feel better about what he'd put her through. But he said nothing.

"Anyway, you didn't marry me," she went on. "And I didn't accept Louis's offer of a ride, and I didn't call the police from inside the Rancourt house and not run into Manny."

"That's not the same."

"You're not responsible for what's happened to me this week. Or last week. Or ever. I'm responsible for my own actions. Don't you think I understood the risks when I let myself fall for you? Ty-I've known you all my life."

He let the truck idle a moment. "When did you first want to sleep with me?"

She groaned. "You can be such a jackass, you know."

"Your sister says the jackass fairy must have visited me every night when I was a kid. You two work that one out together?"

"No, but I like it." This time her smile reached her eyes. "I wonder what a jackass fairy looks like."

"I'm really a nice guy. Everyone says so."

She went very still, her hands on her thighs. "You're the best, Ty. I've known that for a long, long time. But you're not-" She sighed, grinning suddenly, unexpectedly. "You're not normal."

"Normal?"

She nodded.

"Right. Like you are, she who can outstare an owl."

"Did you see my barred owl in the woods last fall? I think he knew I was going to be shot at. He flew away. I sometimes think if he hadn't, I might have been killed."

Ty shook his head. "Not to burst your bubble, babe, but it wasn't the owl that saved you. Those guys were using a scoped rifle. They missed you on purpose."

"You're probably right."

Carine settled back in her seat, and he continued up the road and turned onto the Rancourt driveway. Its blacktop was in better shape than the road, the sprawling house visible farther up on the hill.

"I think my digital camera's cursed," she said quietly. "When the police return it, I'm getting rid of it."

Ty stopped the truck at the bottom of the driveway and pulled on the emergency brake. When he reached over and touched her cheek, she didn't tell him to go to hell. "Your camera's not cursed. You're not cursed. And I loved you last winter. I loved you as much as I've ever loved anyone."

"I know."

He kissed her cheek, then her mouth, her lips parting. He threaded his fingers into her hair as their kiss deepened, memories flooding over him, regrets, longings-for her, for himself-but nothing that he could put to words.

She was the one who pulled away, brushing her fingertips across his jaw before she sat back in her seat. "You're a complicated man, Sergeant North."

"Not that damn complicated. I could pull over somewhere more private-"

"I think you've made your point."

Not very well, he thought. He knew Carine, and she'd be thinking he was just interested in sex and that was why he'd kissed her. And he was-he was very interested in sex. Hell, so was she. But his feelings toward her were more involved than that, only he didn't know how to get at them, crystallize them in a few words that made any sense. That was how he'd ended up waiting until the last minute to pull out of their wedding, just trying to think of how to say what he had to say, so that she'd understand and not blame herself. He got the blaming part right-she blamed him instead. But he'd mucked up getting her to understand.

He continued up the Rancourt driveway, which swept them into a parking area in front of an attached three-car garage. They were at a fairly high elevation, the expansive views of the surrounding mountains impressive, majestic more than intimate. The landscaping was natural and minimalist, designed to blend in with the environment, with a sloping lawn, stone walls and plantings limited to those that occurred in the area-flowers only in pots, no ornamental trees and shrubs. The glass-and-wood house was built into the hillside, two levels in front, one in back, with a screened porch and several decks. A separate dirt track curved up from the parking area to a rustic-looking outbuilding that Ty remembered served as a garden shed in summer and a kind of a warming hut in winter. It had its own potbellied wood-stove and a ground-level porch where the Rancourts and their guests could leave their skates and skis.