this must be the place

Fraser meets me at the airstrip. He's got the jeep and I can see Dief has taken over the front passenger seat since the last time I was here.

Used to be, Dief'd be all over me when I showed up. He'd come racing over and try to knock me on my ass so he could lick my ears and just generally give me the wolf equivalent of a big, tight hug.

Dief's getting on, though—ain't we all—and his joints are stiff. I noticed the last time I got some time off and made a flying (literally) trip to Canada. The wolf don't get around like he used to, but that doesn't mean he's lost his smarts. He knows I'm going to get in the jeep in a minute and then he's going to give me a good ear washing.

Fraser has got his civvies on. Those jeans and the flannel always look good on him, but that isn't why I grin. Dief may not be up to a big PDA, but I'm figuring I got a good hug coming from the Mountie, since he isn't in uniform.

I'm right, too.

Fraser is squeezing me tight enough to make my ribs ache just as soon as I hop down out of the little two-prop bush plane I rode in on.

I manage to make some squeaky sound and Frase lets go enough I can get my breath. He's still got his arms around me, though, and mine are locked around him too. We just sort of lean our foreheads together and bask in being together again.

Denny Tenia, the guy that flew me in, drops my dufflebag out of the door and neither one of us moves. He laughs.

"Can the sap, guys."

"Yer just jealous, flyboy," I say.

Denny's been flying me into the airstrip at Three Forks Lake for years, flying me out again, and chauffeuring Frase around for the RCMP for almost ten years. Sometimes it don't seem real, but then I notice the kid's got crows' feet round his eyes, the way Fraser's got silver getting thicker and paler at his temples and Dief's gait's real stiff in the morning until he warms up. Hell, there's the way my own bones ache when I lever myself out of bed to head into the station for my shift everyday, too, to remind me time's passing.

"Yeah, my girlfriend moved in with me last month," Denny jokes. "Long distance relationships are starting to look real good."

I give him the finger behind my back where Fraser can't see. 'Course, he knows what I did, because I had to let go of him and Denny's snickering.

"Ray!"

I grin at him. God, I love the man.

"C'mon, Frase," I say, scooping up my duffle, "pitter patter, let's get at 'er."

Frase shakes his head and smiles.

"Thanks for delivering him, Denny," he calls. "I know you must have been tempted to shove him out without a parachute."

I snort with laughter. "Been there, done that, remember?"

Denny's cackling like a fiend too, because I told him the story one time we got stuck in Yellowknife and had to wait out a storm in the airport there. "I kept telling him, Turtles, Sergeant," Denny yells, "but he didn't believe me! Can you imagine that?"

Fraser dissolves into laughter too.

Shit, there's a lot of things I hate about Fraser being so far away from me most of the time, and the biggest one isn't sleeping alone, but being alone, not having him beside me as my partner anymore. But one thing I don't regret is the way Fraser's relaxed since he came back north after the Muldoon case. He's home. I know he misses me too, when I'm gone, but he fits in here. He's got friends, people to look out after him and keep him from getting too lonely.

Chicago was killing him inside. Killing the parts of him that believed in people and none us could even see it, because you can't even recognize what you haven't got. I didn't really understand, even after I saw him on the ice field. I mean, I understood he was home and happy in a way I'd never seen him before, but I didn't understand the other . . . the believing in the good in people thing.

'Cause I didn't.

Except for Fraser. I couldn't help believing in him from the first day I met him. You'd have to be blinder than me to miss that Fraser is genuinely good and decent. But down in Chicago, I think that made a lot of people want to tear him down, break him. Even I had that impulse sometimes, like with Warfield, but it didn't last after I saw him all bloody and bruised.

I don't say beaten, because he wasn't. Not in anyway that mattered to him.

But like I said, I didn't understand it like that then.

Fraser's got himself under control now. He says to Denny, "You'll be back in a week?"

"Yeah, I'll be back."

Sometimes I wish Denny wouldn't show up to fly me back. If I'm being honest, it's every time, but it isn't going to be much longer. Next time Denny flies me in, I'll have more than a dufflebag with me. Next time, when Fraser says what he always says, I'll have a different answer.

I drop the duffle in the jeep and Dief obligingly hops into the back seat so I can ride alongside Fraser. I give myself a good stretch, trying to shake out the kinks I got scrunched up in Denny's plane, before getting in the jeep. Hell, it feels good to just lift my face to the sun for a minute, close my eyes, and soak in the sweet summer heat. I'd feel like a moron if I did that in the city, but here, I know Fraser understands.

When I open my eyes, he's just standing next to the jeep, watching me. He's got the goofiest smile on his face and his eyes are warmer than the sun ever dreamed of being. I can feel a smile stretching across my face too.

"Ready, Ray?"

I duck my head and get in. Sure enough, Dief sets to filling my ears with slobber. He's even trying to swab down my face, despite the couple of days stubble I couldn't be bothered shaving before taking off. I protest and bat him away and tell him that's disgusting, just like always, but truthfully I'd be disappointed if Dief ignored me.

Fraser always said he ground the gears on my GTO because he'd learned to drive on his Dad's old Jeep, but guess what? He's driving the jeep (which I rebuilt about five years ago now) and he still grinds the gears.

Kind of comforting to know there's something Mr. Perfect can't get right. So I grit my teeth and keep my lips zipped as we head for the cabin.

I'd lean my head back and catch a few winks, because I'm wiped after trying to close every damn case I could and cleaning up all my paperwork so I could take this week, but the road's more like a rut. If I don't pay attention, I'm liable to get bounced right out of my seat. Fraser's dad's fossil of a jeep is so old there aren't any seatbelts for him to nag me about, so, instead, it's hang onto your hats and anything else you can latch onto when the road gets rough.

Even so, I can feel the tension just sort of sieving out of me with every mile we get closer to the cabin. That cabin's home, the way my apartment in Anchorage and Fraser's allotted housing wherever he's posted never will be. It's the place where we're together; the place we're going to spend the rest of our lives.

When I first got that wild hair to go on an 'adventure' with Fraser, I never dreamed we'd end up the way we have. I just couldn't figure any way I could go back to Chicago without him. Couldn't figure out any way I could ask him to go back there and live with myself either, because once I saw him on that ice field, I understood north was where he belonged. Looking for Franklin's hand was just an excuse to stick with him as long as I could; I never cared if we found Franklin's fingers or Trudeau's toes.

Turned out Fraser felt the same way.

It just took a while for both of us to get it.


"Don't go back, Ray."

I just froze. Yeah, standing there above the Arctic Circle, where we were camped along the MacKenzie Bay, it's fucking cold, but I don't mean that kind of froze. I mean the can't move, can't breathe, can't think, froze. Fraser wasn't even looking at me. He was looking out over the ice, with a slightly panicked expression on his face, like he'd just spotted a herd of rampaging walrus heading for us or a MacDonald's franchise.

"Uuuh, Fraser—"

Yeah, that's me, Mr. Articulate.

"Uhm, I've got, like, the job. I mean I hope I do. 'Cause Welsh was supposed to fix things, time off, coming out of undercover, de—depressurizing or something, you know," I blurted out.

"Yes, Ray," Fraser said. He nodded to himself. "I'm sorry."

"Look, Frase, it isn't that I don't want to stick around, okay," I said fast. He was turning away from me and I felt like a selfish jerk.

"No, Ray, I understand, you have your responsibility as an officer of the law," Fraser said quietly. His shoulders were a little hunched. Fraser of the perfect posture looked tired and weighed down. It was so wrong and I had done it. It just about killed me.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

"I'm being selfish, I suppose," Fraser added.

Of course, I blew up.

"Selfish! Fraser, you ain't got a selfish bone in your body! You're nuts. Crazy. Loony. God damn unhinged!" I yelled, waving my arms around and almost hopping, I was suddenly so mad. For the last three days since we headed back to Tuktoyaktuk, I'd been desperately trying to not think about what came next, namely going from there to Inuvik and then me heading back to Chicago and Fraser staying behind, but he'd had to bring it up. Stupid, stubborn, bull-headed . . . and he asks me to do the one thing I want to do and can't.

I'm practically vibrating now and I've got to move, I've got to move when I feel like this; Fraser can act like a damn wooden Indian, but not me. "You think I been wandering around the fucking Northwest Territories the last three months because you made me, buddy!?" I stamp around the fire and shove my face as close to Fraser's as I can.

I've got so many layers on, I look like the Michelin man, but my face is bare. So's Fraser's. Neither one of us has shaved in weeks. He's wind burned and red and still too damn good-looking to believe. Me, I look like someone you'd spot on an FBI flyer in the post office. Feel like it too, because I can see the loneliness in Fraser's eyes. I could see it if he was so covered up only his eyes showed. Why the hell do things have to start hurting even before they happen?

"Because no one, no one, makes me do anything, Fraser," I snarl. "Get that?” And then I deflate, because it isn't true. I want to stay in Canada with him and that just isn't going to happen, is it? And that's why I'm mad, because he knows it too and he still asked, made me be the one to say no.

Damn him.

Fraser's a manipulative bastard sometimes, don't let the innocent Mountie face fool you.

Fraser's face is all set and blank as he answers me.

"Yes, Ray, I am selfish. I know you can't stay, but I can't go back to Chicago. Even were the RCMP inclined to continue my posting there, I don't think I could go back—"

I know, Frase. I know.

I wave my hand at him to go on.

His voice drops. "The last months, here, with you beside me, Ray, have shown me just how much I do want."

My head jerks up and I look at him wide eyed. Oh, no. No, no, no, do not go there, Fraser. Do not say it. Just let me go back to Chicago with one secret still, one thing I don't have to face up to, damn it.

I start semaphoring my hands. Stop. Stop. Stop talking, Fraser.

Thank God, he does.

"Frase, I get it, okay? I know you can't come back to Chicago with me." I look at him as serious and honest as I can, willing him to understand, because words have never been my buddies. They get tangled up between my brain and my mouth. "You—this—" I make a gesture to encompasses the snow and the adventure and the whole freaking Northwest Territories, "—this has been the best, uh, the best thing that ever happened to me." I draw in a deep breath. "But I can't stay here and play Tonto to your Lone Ranger, okay? You're going to go back to being a Mountie here and, and, what the hell would I do?"

Because, damn it, I'm a cop. It's not what I do, it's what I am. You think my folks not speaking to me all those years was easy? But I didn't quit to please them. I didn't quit to please Stella either, and there wasn't much else I didn't do, including crawling, to try to keep her. It's the only thing I've never caved on. Never been dirty and believe me, in Chicago, that's something to say. Pulled myself together—with a hand from Fraser—after the Beth Botrelle case and went on being a cop—a good cop—and I don't know how to be anything else.

Anyone else.

Even without Fraser there, that's who I gotta be.

Fuck, that hurts.

The other stuff, the stuff I've finally been letting myself know I feel, it just isn't going to work. Even if Fraser wants it too, and I still got no idea if he's on the same page when it comes to skinny Polacks who'll try anything.

"I—I just gotta go back, Frase," I finish.

"I know, Ray."

I look into his eyes and see he does know. It's the same thing that kept him with the Mounties after they screwed him over for busting Gerard.

Well. That just sucks. 'Cause I think I see something else there in those big blue eyes, something that says figuring out that, hey, evidently you're fucking bi, Ray, wasn't quite pointless. Or wouldn't have been, if I'd got my head out of my ass a little quicker. Even if it was too damn cold to do anything about it.

"Yeah, yeah," I sort of whisper. Then I half turn away, because looking at Fraser right now is opening this big hollow thing inside my chest. "Uhm, yeah, I'm gonna go check on the dogs . . .”

"That would be kind of you, Ray. I shall start our dinner." Fraser's doing his practical thing, all polite and like we didn't just say or not say whatever it is we just said. Tucking it all back in place, pretending he don't feel it, hell if that ain't cop behavior to a tee.

"Hash again?" I ask, trying to act normal too.

"Ah, yes, I'm afraid so, Ray. Our supplies are rather depleted."

"'S okay," I tell him and go check the dogs are all comfy for the night.

That night, after we've put out the lamp and crawled into our sleeping bags, Frase says, "I shall never regret going to Chicago, Ray. The opportunity to work with Ray Vecchio, the things I learned there, all of it, was worth it."

I stare at the dark ceiling of the tent.

"But if none of that had been good, I still would have been deeply grateful to have met and been your friend, Ray."

Now I squeeze my eyes shut. My friend. Yeah. Best friend. Best partner too. Best everything.

"As you so eloquently put it earlier, Ray, you are the best thing that ever happened to me," Fraser says in the darkness.

Ah, shit.

I love you, Fraser.

Instead of saying it, I squirm out of my bag and fumble my way over to him. Somehow, in that Fraser way of his, he's ready and his sleeping bag is unzipped so I can slip right in with him. I wrap my arms around him as tight as I can and hold on.

There's nothing sexual about it, just the two of us being as together as we can for the last time. Fraser's warm and solid and there. I've got my scraggly face shoved against his neck and his arms are locked so tight around my ribs it almost hurts. Almost. Or maybe it's the honking big empty thing in my chest that hurts.


Inuvik's airport terminal looks a lot more like an airport than I expected it to. It's got the molded plastic seats (not as uncomfortable as you think), art on the walls and windows and telephones and desks for a couple of different air outfits. It's even warm, at least it seems that way. Every building I've been in since we got back to civilization has seemed too damn warm, even after I got rid of a few layers.

The plane would probably be the same. And cramped. But hell, my own Lear Jet wouldn't be any better, since it would be taking me away from Fraser.

Fraser had called the airport around noon from the hotel we'd checked into. The regular plane from Norman Wells was scheduled to get in by four. I'd be on it when it headed back to Norman Wells and then south at five.

Whoop-di-freaking-do.

We took a taxi out to the airport. Nothing else to do, once I had my duffle bag packed. Most of the arctic gear I was leaving with Fraser. Wasn't going to need it in Chicago, that's for sure.

Just like every other place up in the north, everyone left their trucks and snowmobiles running. You don't leave it running, it ain't gonna start once the cold gets to it. You shut it down, you better hook it up to a heater. They got the same thing in Minnesota and North Dakota and East Bumfuck, hell anywhere it gets cold enough to freeze the oil in the pan, I guess. That, at least, was something Fraser didn't have to explain to me.

So you see all these empty vehicles sitting in a line, clouds of exhaust pumping out of the tailpipes. It stains the snow. Drowns out the silence. Fraser sort of scrunched up his nose, looking at them. I had to grin and kid him, "Ah, the sweet smell of exhaust."

Fraser earnestly told me, "It's terribly destructive of the environment, Ray.”

"Uhhuh, yeah," I said with a nod. Used to think Fraser was weird because he was Canadian, but aside from being maybe a little more polite than folks in Chicago, the people I'd met (aside from Frobisher) had been straight forward and practical types. Eccentric sometimes, but tough and sensible. I'd come to the conclusion Fraser was a one-off. No one like him and it might have been because of being born and raised in the north, but it had nothing to do with him being Canadian.

Inside, it was just damn normal, just another small airport, could have been just about anywhere in the world, if you stripped off the parkas. There was a cafe, so we sort of drifted over there and ordered coffee and tea. Neither of us felt like talking much.

And then the plane was there and everyone began boarding and I still hadn't said anything to Fraser that I needed to say.

We just stood there, looking at each other, already feeling lonely.

"Ray."

"Yeah?"

Those blue eyes were gonna kill me.

"Don't go back."

Like I had some kind of choice. My eyes were stinging. Must have been all the damn exhaust in the air. No way was Ray Kowalski going to start crying in the middle of Inuvik Airport. I had to blink hard, to make it stop.

"Damn it, Frase," I said finally.

Being Fraser, and understanding Ray-speak, he nodded because he got it. Then he just stepped up and hugged me tight, holding on while a long shudder ran through me, before letting go and stepping back.

"You'd better hurry, Ray. Everyone else is already on board."

So I picked up my duffle and went while I could still make myself go. Back to Chicago. Back to the job. Back to my life, such as it was.

I looked back when I reached the door into the plane. I couldn't see him. I said the words anyway.

"Good-bye, Fraser."


The bullpen's the same. Same puke green filing cabinets about to explode with files, same tack board with so much crap on it you can't find anything, same twenty year old chairs and desks, each one piled higher and deeper. Same racket of noise, same crowd of perps and cops and vics, all jabbering at each other. It never felt this damn hot before, though, even in summer with the a/c shot.

This is your life, Stanley Ray Kowalski. Right.

There's no air. There's air, I guess, but it's inside air, stuffy, stinky, stale air. My lungs don't like it.

It's nasty.

My nose got a tune up while I was up north and when I walk in it's like getting hit upside the head with the smell: sweat, fear, perfumes, chemicals, puke, soap, cologne, unwashed bodies, burnt coffee, piss, grease, garlic, stale doughnuts. I want to slap my hand over my nose and hold my breath.

It's a hell of long way from snow, fish, musk, salt, leather and dog, which is what I'm used to after three months up north.

Makes me want to turn around and run for home. I would if I could figure out where the hell it was.

I don't even recognize any faces except Frannie's, which has gotten considerably rounder.

Whoa, Frannie. I have a feeling I better toss the diet jokes. And the pregnant ones. Definitely the elephant ones. Unless she had a head start before Fraser and I took off, the kid she's carrying is going to be big enough to be the whole Bears' defense by himself.

I just stand there for a while until she looks up from her computer, spots me, and shrieks my name, hitting a note high enough I'm pretty sure even Dief would've heard it. "Ray!"

Shit. I have got to get over thinking about Dief, same way I've got to stop thinking about Fraser all the time. That's over. He's back up there, not here. I'm here.

"Hey, Frannie," I greet her, giving her a kind of careful hug. That football player she's got inside is in the way, you know? She feels good, warm, soft, sweet, a nice shampoo smell from her hair. She's a ditz, but she's got a good heart. I wonder why I couldn't have fallen for her—I mean, other than the pretending to be her brother the whole time thing. "Good to see you."

"KOWALSKI!"

Welsh is standing in the doorway of his office, glowering at me. It takes a second before I remember I can answer to my own name now. I let go of Frannie and amble over to the lieutenant, donning a shit-eating grin.

"Yeah, Lieu?'

"Get in here."

I park myself on the couch, going for the relaxed and casual look. Hey, I do undercover, I still got my chops, no use letting anyone see I'm almost sick to my stomach I'm so nervous at being back. Welsh has always had my number though. He gives me a sharp look and then just grunts.

Welsh is the same, at least. Looks like someone used the blunt end of a hammer on a piece of granite to model his face. The day Welsh isn't the same is the day the world ends. Even if everyone else is different.

"About time you got back, Kowalski," he says.

"Miss me?"

"I'm down three detectives, Kowalski," Welsh gripes. He gives me another sharp look. "Four if I count the Mountie. So where is he?"

I shrug uncomfortably.

"Back home. Last I heard, the bigwigs were gonna offer him a choice between Old Crow and someplace out east of Great Bear Lake that I can't pronounce."

Welsh nods to himself.

"So he isn't coming back."

I drop my eyes.

"No."

"You'll need a new partner."

Shit. Just what I don't want. I open my mouth and Welsh holds up his hand. "Shut up, Kowalski. You work here, you work with a partner. This one will even have a badge and a gun. No arguments."

I'm not going to win, so I shrug.

"Okay."

Welsh gives me the hairy eyeball, probably because I'm not putting up a fuss. I'm telling myself it will be good to work with another cop; you know, one that isn't a wacko do-gooder wearing a shoot-me uniform. I don't believe it, but I haven't got the heart to fight over it.

"Right. You've got your old desk. The files on it are Black and White's overflow. You can start with those, I'm going to partner you with Brown since he has half a brain, and he can catch you up."

I shake my head like Dief with a fly buzzing at his ear. "Uh, Lieu, did you say Black and White and Brown?"

I think that's a look of pain and exasperation on his face. It's hard to tell. Could just be constipation.

"Yeah, Kowalski. That's what I said."

Ooookay. First the Duck Boys. Now the Color Guard. I'm back at the 27th, wackiest division in Chicago, even without Fraser around. Some time when I wasn't paying attention my life turned into an outtake from the Twilight Zone. But, hey, at least I got my name back.

"Now, get outta here," Welsh growls at me, daring me to make another comment. I got some sense left though. I stay quiet. "You're back on the job tomorrow. I want to see you in here on time, Kowalski, and with that thing on your face shaved off."

Right, the beard. Sort of beard. I got out of the habit of shaving up there in the north. Never thought of it since I got back. I don't need it to keep my face warm anymore, so I guess it's got to go.

"Yes, sir." I give him a cocky salute and head out, checking out my desk. My desk, not Vecchio's. Huh. Cool.

Geezus on a wedding cake, it's covered with files. Piles of files. Paperwork to last until the end of the world. No way I'm going through all those without coffee. I head for the break room and come back with a cup of sludge, cursing because someone cleaned out my stash of M&Ms, and I've got to drink it straight.

Headache city, here I come. I fumble out my glasses and stick them on. Hey-ho, back to normal. Case files. Bad coffee. Too much noise, too many people, too little room, too little time and money to get the job done and doing it anyway.

Yeah, back to normal.

This is where I belong.

Sucks.

Maggie's got a phone. Hey, lots of people up in Canada have telephones. More do than don't, I found out. Fraser always made out it was like the Land of the Lost or something up there, but it turned out he was just yanking our chains.

Anyway, Maggie's got a phone and I have the number.

Fraser's staying with her until they decide on his posting.

And I'm sitting in my apartment, by my phone, wondering if I should call him. Just to be polite, to let him know I made it back just fine.

Tell him him I'm just fine.

Of course, I'm fine. I've got a half a pizza, with ham and pineapple, in front of me. Six-pack of beer, Molsons, to drink with it. I've got a Blackhawks game on the TV. I can walk around my apartment in nothing but my shorts if I want to without important bits of my anatomy turning blue and shriveling away. I missed all this.

The damn apartment filled up with quiet while I was gone. I've got the CD player playing even though the TV's on. I need the noise. I need something to fill up the emptiness.

It's freaky to hear the refrigerator running, the water in the pipes, the furnace kicking on and off and really notice it. I used to just tune it out.

I feel not quite there. Disjointed, dislocated, dis-something. Dissociated. Some Fraser word for just plain weird and lonely. I'm like a key that still fits in the lock but doesn't work. It looks right but it isn't.

But I'm fine. I am absolutely just fine and I should let Fraser know that.

I pick up the phone and dial. The truth is I just want to hear his voice, like that will connect me to myself again. And if that doesn't prove I've still got it bad, what would? I was hoping that being away from Fraser, I'd stop wanting him so much, that it was like a kid's crush and would fade. No such luck.

Maggie picks up on the second ring.

"MacKenzie."

"Hey, Maggie, it's Ray."

Her voice goes from cool professional to warm and friendly just like that. "Hello, Ray. How is Chicago?"

"Maggie, you remember Chicago," I laugh. "Do you think it's changed? It's still dirty, stinky, crowded and loud. Home sweet home." I just didn't notice it before, like the sound of the refrigerator. "I already got a stack of cases taller than I am."

"You must be happy to be home."

"Sure," I say quick. "So, is Fraser around or did he take off chasing a litterbug or something?"

"I'm sorry, Ray. He left earlier today to take the dogs back to Sgt. Frobisher."

"Oh."

Stupid to feel so disappointed, but I am.

"So, the consulate down here's down by a couple of Mounties," I say. "How about getting a transfer and coming to work with me? You're smart, you're gorgeous, you're a good cop, you're even Canadian; it'd work for me." I'm only half kidding. Once Fraser and I got over acting like a couple bull moose around her, I realized I really liked Maggie as a person. She's saner than Fraser, but she's got some of the same oddball vibe going. She's someone I could partner no problem.

I got no idea what Brown's going be like. It doesn't matter. He isn't going to be Fraser. No one could ever take Fraser's place. Brown's just someone I'll have to drag around to keep Welsh and the brass happy.

Maggie laughs.

"Sorry, Ray."

"How'm I going to get my regular dose of weirdness without a Fraser around?" I whine.

"I'm sure you'll do fine," Maggie tells me.

"Yeah, well, send me some pemmican—-no, God, what am I saying? I'd rather eat blubber. Feed Fraser the pemmican and I'll send Dief some donuts."

Maggie's giggling and that's good, it means I at least sound normal on the telephone. Tomorrow I'll go into the 27th, shake hands with Brown, and get to work. Everything will go back to normal and I'll get over wishing for the sound of Fraser repeating my name over and over and over again.

"So, Maggie, tell your brother I'm back on the job. He's got my number if he wants to call or anything. I just wanted to check in."

"I'll tell him, Ray."

"Thanks." My voice is a little choked, but she probably can't tell. "Good-night, Maggie."

"Good-night, Ray. Be well."

"You too. Bye."

I set the receiver down and cut the connection, then drop my face into my hands.

I've got to get over this.

Frannie fills me in on the whos and whats of life back at the 27th. Without Fraser around for her to go stupid over, I don't get half as irritated, and we get along. Plus, no more midi-tops and mini-skirts now that she's getting big as a house. We're both alone now, so it's misery loves company time.

Coming back to the 27th is like walking into the house you grew up in and finding that your parents have completely remodeled it. It's a place that should be familiar as the back of your hand and suddenly it isn't.

A week after me and Fraser took off for points north, the Duck Boys put in their papers. They're still partners, running a comedy club. The place serves lunch too, so Frannie takes me by. One look around and I start to relax; the jokes probably aren't any funnier than Dewey's were before, but it doesn't matter. It's dark as sin, kitschy in a bad sort of way that will keep the 'with it' types away, and smells like spilled beer and peanuts. (Stale beer's okay, I figure, compared to fish and bacon.) The place is well on its way to becoming a cop bar. There's guys from the local precinct and faces I still know from the 27th and the precinct I worked before the Vecchio gig, all holed up inside, slugging back coffee and sandwiches. A few of them, guys going off shift, are tipping back beers.

Jack Huey wanders by, spots me, and parks himself at the table with us.

"Freeze off anything important, Kowalski?"

"See me laughing," I say flatly.

Frannie puts her hand on my forearm and I realize my hand is already curled into a fist.

"Ray."

I relax my hand and sit back. "Nah, just got tired of making like Nanook of the North."

"So, is Red back too?" Jack asks.

"The RCMP're gonna post him somewhere in the Yukon or the Territories," I tell him.

Huey raises an eyebrow. "You mean the Northwest Areas, Kowalski?"

I grin tiredly. "Northwest Territories, Huey, Territories." I always knew that, but acted ignorant just to ruffle Fraser's feathers. I dropped the joke once I got up there. I dropped a lot of the attitude too, the belligerent tough guy shit, I've used to protect myself since I was a kid. It's all coming back though. Pretty soon I'll be in the zone.

I already threatened to kick Brown in the head.

Huey wants to jabber about the old days. I let him talk and watch him and wonder. He's got a nice suit, like always, looks good, satisfied, and even though he's reminiscing about being on the job, I'd bet he doesn't want to come back. He quit and he's happy.

Why couldn't I do that? Why'd it seem so important to come back to Chicago and go on being a cop? I don't get it. I miss Fraser like crazy. He even asked me to stay. Twice. I'm messed up, there's no other explanation.

"Hey, Kowalski," Huey's saying and I know I spaced out.

Frannie waves her hand in front of my face. "Dirt to Ray? Come out."

I run that through the Frannie translator, because no way did she mean come out. Did she? I bat at her hand. Whatever she meant, I am not going there sitting at a dingy table with Jack Huey listening in. That's not a story I want buzzing around if I'm going to stay in this town.

Which I am. I already made that decision. Right?

"Cut it out."

"Well, get with the pogrom, Ray," Frannie said.

My mouth drops open. "Frannie?"

"Yeah?"

"Tell me you meant program. I am so not partipat—-particiat—ah, doing any pogroms. That's like, a, you know, massacre or prejudiced shit."

I look at Huey for some help. Why, I don't know, no one's ever helped setting Frannie's skewed phrasing straight before. Fraser would say man lives in hope. Me, I'm a pessimist most days, and I don't like the neighborhood.

"Give up, Kowalski," Huey advises. I take a deep breath and then keep my mouth shut as Frannie launches into one of her rants. I tune it out after a minute.

This is my life now. Lunch with Frannie at a cop bar, working cases until I drop, yacking it up with guys like Huey, playing the game, making sure everyone thinks I'm okay. Don't want anyone to guess about the big hollow void inside or the way it feels like it’s getting bigger and bigger every night. But suddenly, I want out of this place so bad I'm about to jump out of my skin.

"Welsh is going chew us both new ones if we don't get back quick," I tell Frannie. I toss Huey some money for the lunch, get up, and help Frannie to her feet.

Huey waves the green at me and says, "Come back any time, Kowalski."

I give him a nod and a wave. I probably will be back. There are worse places to get a drink in Chicago, after all. Though if I really want to get shit-faced, I'll buy a bottle and take it back to the apartment. A miserable hangover is a pretty good distraction, when you're missing what feels like a part of yourself.

See, I have plans for tonight.


My answering machine blinks at me accusingly. The tape's full. I know that somewhere on it is a message from Fraser. I turned it off as soon as I heard his voice. I haven't listened to anything on the machine since then.

I curl up on the couch with an Afghan pulled over me and the TV tuned in to a curling match. I despise curling, it's like frozen bowling with brooms. Bowling. There's something else I hate, ever since I heard Vecchio had split for Florida with Stella wearing his ring, to open a freaking bowling alley.

Frannie ever so kindly told me all about it.

I think it would have bothered me more if I hadn't already been maxxed out on misery. So Stella's defection from sanity just sort of rolled off. I didn't really care. Though I did decide I was never going bowling again.

My new partner is a giant pain in the ass. Elvis Brown. Detective Elvis Brown. I'm sure he must be related to the mayor and the police commissioner. No way he earned that gold badge without some serious nippet—nepo—nepotism (hah, got it!) going on.

Today I thought the incompetent twerp was going to get me killed. I also found out that I still got a strong, healthy desire to go on breathing. Good thing I've taken to wearing a vest again. Funny, except that first day, I never wore one working with Fraser, and as crazy as the stuff we got up to was, I should have.

Damn it! I can't go five minutes without thinking about him, and it hurts so much. I replay every time he touched me, from his hand on the back of my neck outside Beth Botrelle's house, heavy and warm, to that first day while he tried to find a bomb in Vecchio's Riv and I told him not to touch my calf or inner thigh. I even go over when I got him to hit me back, just before the whole Henry Allen thing. Every touch. Every smile, every damn time I got him to laugh and look alive, instead of like a mannequin. The crinkle at the corners of his eyes . . .

He's better off up there where he belongs. I know that. I know that after a while, he'll stop calling and writing. Fraser's smart. He'll get the message when there is no message from me, no answers. He'll get over missing me.

It's not like he hasn't got experience, is it? Everyone leaves him. I'm just one more person in a long, long line of folks who have walked away from Fraser.

Another tea kettle goes sliding along doing something incomprehensible. Everything's so blurry I couldn't tell what was going on if I did understand it.

I hate myself.

I really do.


Carter's Crab and Steakhouse belongs to Murray Carter, a pretty nice guy Fraser and I had run into on one of our earlier cases. The one where I got tied up and rolled inside a Turkish carpet and then got to listen to Fraser tell me about Cleopatra getting smuggled in to see Caesar inside a rug. I can't remember if he told me if it was true or just a story. What I can tell you is that getting carried around in a big roll of woven wool itches like crazy.

I hadn't been back to the place since before the Muldoon case. Usually I want Chinese take-out or a pizza, something I can eat at home with my shoes off and the TV on.

I let Frannie fix me up with Marcy Owen, a friend of hers, though, and decided Carter's would be a decent place to take her. Nice, you know?

The date was a fizzle, of course, between Marcy venting about her ex-husband, and me mooning over the last time I'd been there with Fraser. Halfway through dessert, Murray comes over, having spotted me, and asks if I could come by for lunch the next day, give him some advice.

I keep wanting to look behind me, see if Fraser's there, though I know he's not. Ever since I got back, I've been fielding all the people that used to come to him for help. Every time I start to blow some loser off, I think of how disappointed Fraser would look if he knew and the next thing I know, I'm neck deep in weirdness again. Whatever Murray wants to talk about is probably going to be strange too, but I'm beyond caring. I tell him sure, figuring anything is better than stopping long enough to think about how I'm just going through the motions of living any more.

I drop Marcy off at her apartment and both of us let out a sigh of relief, I'm guessing. Nothing wrong with Marcy, but sparks, there are nada.

Which pretty much describes my life recently.

Ten minutes later, I'm on my way to a homicide scene, after getting a call from Welsh. It's bad, bad enough I don't have any time or energy to feel sorry for myself. Not when Aldo Bernini, his wife, two kids, and Great Aunt Matilda are all dead. Somebody walked into their house and shot them, sleeping in their beds, starting with Aldo. Then the bastard did Mrs. Bernini, walked down the hall and offed a harmless old lady with her blue rinsed hair done up in curlers for the night, and finished the massacre by murdering a six year old and a eight year old. He used a shotgun. Neighbors across the street heard it and called it in.

I've got to interview them next.

It's going to be a long night.

Brown takes one look at the bloody mess in the kids' room and bolts outside. He's tossing his cookies while I talk to the forensic guys. I'd be out there with him, decorating the shrubs with my dinner, except I've got no time for it.

I want the bastard who did this.

He's not getting away with it, I swear. This is why I came back to Chicago. Stopping shit like this, or at least stopping the creeps that do it from doing it again. 'For the pride and honor of knowing that we make it possible for good people to tuck their kids in at night, turn out the lights and know they'll be safe.' The Chicago PD has nothing to feel proud of when it comes to the Berninis. Their family wasn't safe. But on my honor they won't go unanswered for.

Like I told Fraser a few days after we met, I've humped the job for a long time. 'Bad hours, bad pay and bad guys.' Someone had to do it, though, and I'd do it right. That's what Fraser taught me.

Thinking about those two little kids and the blood puddled all over the sheets with the patterns of toy trains and teddy bears, I was glad Fraser hadn't come back with me. He didn't need to see that.

Hell, neither did I. I had to wonder, how many more times could I?


I make myself call Fraser with the news when Frannie has her baby.

He answers the way he always does these days, smooth and controlled and detached, "Corporal Fraser here."

"Hey, Frase," I say. I'm leaning against the sick green wall next to the pay phone in the hospital lobby. The nurses are real fussy about people using cell phones in the hospital and I'm too wiped to head outside to make this call.

"Ray." I imagine his mouth tipping up just a little, the way his blue eyes have just got a little sharper because he's wondering why I'm calling. I don't call much anymore. I don't know if it rips open all of Fraser's hurts, but it sure does mine. It feels so good to just talk to him, and then when I hang up the phone I feel like I'm bleeding out.

"Got some news."

"What is it, Ray?"

"You're an uncle. Unofficial uncle. Frannie finally popped."

I hear him take in a quick breath. "That is wonderful news, Ray. May I assume Francesca is well and there were no complications?"

"Yeah, you 'may assume'. Frannie's fine, I drove her to the hospital myself."

I'd been staying over with her most nights, just in case, because the rest of the Vecchios, even Ma Vecchio, had moved down to Florida a few months back. Frannie told me Tony was co-managing the bowling alley, because the Style Pig had opened up a private detective agency. They all wanted Frannie to move too, but she dug her feet in and stayed in Chicago.

"Girl or boy, Ray?" Fraser asks.

"Girl."

Let me tell you, there were more than a few rumors floating around the 27th about me and Frannie. Me just about moving in with her hadn't helped either. Cops live off of coffee and gossip. It didn't bother me, other than that the idiots thought I would have endangered my cover and Vecchio's life fooling around with someone who was supposed to be my sister at the time. Count the months back and Frannie and me were still supposed to be related back when she got knocked up. To hell with them all, anyway. It's better than the other rumors, the ones about me and Fraser, which weren't true either. I'd shrugged all that off too.

"Gabriella."

Fraser lets out with a big, gusty sigh of relief and I have got to laugh. He was probably afraid Frannie was going to name the kid Bentonia or something equally abusive. So I give him the second half. "Gabriella Benita Annunciata, Fraser."

"Good lord."

"Yeah, I think I said something like that." I tell him what hospital we're at, along with Frannie's room number, because he wants to wire her some flowers. Then I tell him about the Bernini homicide, because it's the most natural thing in the world to talk to him about a case. I'm so tired the only thing holding me up is that wall, but I desperately don't want to hang up. I miss him so much, miss someone who listened.

Finally, I realize I have to give up. It isn't any earlier where Fraser is than in Chicago. I don't want him out in the cold trying to do his job on no sleep.

"It sounds like you're very busy, Ray."

"Yeah, yeah, guess that's why I haven't kept in touch, you know." I know he can hear the lie in the way my voice hitches.

"I understand, Ray."

Maybe he does. Maybe that's what makes me feel even worse.

"I gotta—I gotta go, Frase. Just wanted to let you know. About Frannie and the kid. And stuff. You're taking care of yourself, right? Not making Dief live off of mice or anything?"

"Mice, Ray?"

"Yeah, uh, I watched this movie . . . this guy was studying wolves and found out they were living off of mice or something," I babble. I watched the damn thing because it was set up north and had wolves. Because it was something I thought Fraser would have wanted to watch.

"Ah, I believe that must have been Never Cry Wolf, Ray. I read the book by Farley Mowat, though I haven't seen the film. The book was quite a revelation at the time of publication."

"Yeah, that was it."

We're both quiet then.

"Dief misses you, Ray."

I scrub at my face and mutter, "Well, I kind of miss the furface too."

"I will be sure to tell him."

More silence.

"I miss you as well, Ray."

Close my eyes and tell myself it isn't a good idea to start banging your head against the wall in a hospital.

"Yeah, uhm, me too, Frase. —I really need to get home now, though. Welsh is breathing fire over this Bernini case; I need to get to work on it in the morning."

"Of course, Ray. You should rest. Do be careful driving home."

"No worries, you know I can drive in my sleep."

"But other drivers can't," Fraser reminds me gently.

"Okay, I'll watch out."

"And remember to wear your vest."

"Yes, mother."

"Good night, Ray."

"'Night, Fraser." I hang up the receiver before I can hear the connection click off. Then I just slide down the wall and sit on the floor, staring at picture of a wood duck on the opposite wall. I didn't say it. I should have said it. Except saying it would only make me and him feel worse, I think.

Love you, Fraser.

I sit there until a nurse walks by and asks me if I'm all right.


I dream of drifting curtains of colored lights, sheets of fire across a night sky so velvet dark, yet bright with stars, it leaves me stunned. I never saw a sky like that before.

The air wants to freeze in my lungs, cuts at me, but I don't care. I want to watch this all night, watch all the colors twist and bleed into each other, reflecting off of the snow and ice, so eerie and beautiful it steals away my words.

I dream of Fraser wrapping my hands around a hot cup of tea, then throwing a blanket over both our shoulders, so that we just leaned together, staring up at the aurora borealis dancing for what felt like forever.

I wake aching, cold and alone, in my apartment. The only snow is the hissing static on the TV.

I clamp the cuff's around Leon Bernini's wrists with an extra twist, making them cut into the flesh. Petty revenge. I want to pistol whip him, kick him until he bleeds, shout at him that he's scum and there aren't enough years for him to serve in prison to pay for what he did.

I don't.

I already recited the Miranda warning to him once, but when he starts whimpering that he needed the money, I recite it again in the car. Lalalala—I can't hear you. The uniform cop in the driver's seat next to me thinks I'm nuts, telling Leon to shut up and wait for his lawyer. I don't want his damn confession yet. I want it at the station, with a tape recorder going and witnesses on the other side of the observation window. This case is going to be as airtight and nailed down as I can make it.

As soon as I got a line on Leon, Aldo Bernini's brother, I knew in my gut he was my guy. I double checked everything Brown did on the case, to make sure there were no slip ups, and we made the case in three days.

See, Leon Bernini worked at his brother's car salesroom as a mechanic. He had a little nose candy problem, though, and decided to pay it off by ripping off his brother. Aldo found out and fired him. That night Leon let himself into Aldo's house using Aldo's own spare keys, and used the shotgun their Sicilian grandfather had left them to kill Aldo and his family. Motive was as simple as who inherited Aldo's business once everyone else was dead.

He made me sick.

Once the District Attorney has him in front of a jury, I figure the little greaseball will make them sick, too. With the case I'd made, the evidence, I didn't even need to get a confession out of him. That would just be frosting.

It felt good, bringing Leon in, but it felt lousy at the same time. My gut burned when I thought of those two kids dying because Leon wanted them out of the way. Dying for money. Hope to God they didn't wake up and see their uncle standing over them with that shotgun, a boogey monster that hid inside their family instead of the closet. Knowing this piece of crap had taken them out for hotdogs at baseball games, babysat on nights Aldo and the wife wanted to get out for some dinner and dancing, knew them since they were in diapers . . . and still did that, made it so much fucking worse.

I had to leave a uniform guarding the door of the room I plunked Leon down in until his lawyer showed, while I made it to the john just in time to puke up everything I'd managed to eat in days. Mostly coffee and stale donuts. It felt like I ought to be checking to make sure I hadn't ejected my stomach along with its contents by the time the heaves quit.

It was all so damn pathetic.

I cleaned up afterward, went into the interrogation room right along with Krenitz, the lawyer. Gave him a nasty grin when he started going on about us interrogating his client without his presence.

"I been in the Men's, Krenitz," I told him. "Your poor buddy's been all by his lonesome. No one's asked him zip."

After that, Leon made like a canary, despite his mouthpiece's best efforts, and I formally booked him. I was quiet and calm and professional. I saw Welsh give me a nod as I led the bastard to holding.

I needed something to distract me.

I remembered promising Murray Carter I'd stop by for lunch and talk to him about something days before. When the door of the holding cell clanged shut on Leon, I decided it was time to keep that promise.


Murray tells me what's got him all ticked off over a nice meal, while I listen. He asks if Fraser's around, but then it's business. He's okay with just me checking into things, doesn't want to make any kind of fuss, just find out what's going on so he can fix things.

Seems Murray switched over to a new outfit to provide his fresh seafood. Alaskan King Crab, shipped in live from Alaska. I never thought about where my crab salad came from before. Murray explains the stuff I'm eating got brought in yesterday. The day before that, Mr. Pincers and his hard-shell buddies were still scuttling or swimming or whatever crabs do, up in the cold waters off Alaska.

I think about that for about a half a second, shrug, and go back to eating.

Catch 'em live, tuck 'em in crates that are suspended in tanks of water, and make sure the water's not too hot, not too cold, got enough air in it. My eyes are glazing before Murray finishes explaining. I've got the idea though. Fraser would be happier than a pig in . . . hell, Fraser would probably be lecturing poor Murray and me on the history of fishing if he were here.

How the hell can I miss something that drove me absolutely batshit, anyway?

Thing is, the crabs are sold by weight, right? And the crates they're shipped in are plastic now, instead of wood that soaks up water and swells and gets heavier, so the plastic crates have a set weight. The crates Murray's getting from Fresh Alaskan Marine Exports are getting weighed before they're shipped and that's what Murray's paying to get. But he hasn't been getting quite that much.

Murray's a bit of a pain. He used to be an accountant. I get the feeling most people would just let this, uhm, discrepancy slide, but not Murray. He wants to know if he's getting ripped off somewhere along the line.

I tell him I'll look into it.

I've got nothing better to do.


"Kowalski!"

I flinched. It hadn't taken long to get used to Welsh bellowing my name instead of Vecchio's. The end result seemed to be the same: me in the Lieu's office, getting my ass chewed off for something.

I lift my head and look at him as innocently as I can.

"My office, Kowalski. Now."

Black and White are snickering. Like they don't spend more than their fair share of time listening to Welsh tell them how to act like real cops. Their case closure rate makes even me miss Dewey.

"Better you than me, Ski," Brown mutters as I rise and head for the lieutenant's office.

I roll my eyes.

Brown. In what previous life did I do something so bad I get Brown for a partner? Welsh said he was giving me Brown as a partner because he had half a brain. I didn't realize he meant it literally.

And I've told him I will chop him into itty-bitty pieces with an axe if he doesn't quit calling me Ski and telling Polack jokes.

When I get to Welsh's office, he's at his desk, paging through a file. The Carter's Crab & Steakhouse file, the one I've been surreptitiously working on between other stuff. Crap.

"Look, Lieutenant, I know there's something hinky there, but I've been working on it on my own time," I say immediately.

Welsh just looks at me and points to the couch. I slouch over and collapse onto it, stretching my legs out. I lean my head back and stare at the ceiling, which is just a big, beige blur. If I had my glasses on I could count the holes in the acoustic tiles. It would be the high point of my day.

Welsh closes the file and sets it next to a stack of other files. They look suspiciously familiar and I figure it's because they're all cases I've been working on.

"Kowalski, are you happy here?' Welsh asks me.

I stare at him. "Sir?" What kind of weird question is that? Little gray aliens have beamed down and replaced the real Welsh with a pod person or something. I've been clearing cases. That's all the Lieutenant cares about. What's happy got to do with it?

Welsh taps the stack of case files.

"Are you trying to prove something?"

Now I'm frowning, because I'm totally lost. "Hunh?"

Welsh lifts the first file. "The Bernini homicide."

I lean forward, trying to figure out where this is going. "It's a good bust, sir. We got the evidence, even the shotgun, we got a motive and means and opportunity, and I Miranda-ed Bernini myself—" because Brown always forgets, natch, "—we even got a goddamn confession. "

Welsh nods and sets it down.

"It was good work, Detective. Fast work, too." He picks up the next file. "And two nights ago you ran a stake-out on the Greenery diner and busted four skinheads who turned out to be the same bunch who assaulted three men down in Boys' Town."

Nasty little bastards. It felt good to bust them.

"So?"

Welsh goes on, illustrating with a file each time. "The Nickelson jewelry store heist, the Watson fraud sting, the Taxi-jacker, Tallulah the transvestite, the Midget Mugger, Silenko the Pimp, and three drunk drivers." Welsh sets them all down and taps his finger on the Crab case file I've put together. "All of those in the last three weeks, Detective. Now this."

I shoot to my feet and then try not to pace. "What? What? I'm doing my job. They're all good busts."

"And you're not trying to prove you're just as good without Constable Fraser as you were before?" Welsh asks.

I gape at him. "Hunh?"

Welsh sits back.

"I guess not."

I officially have no idea what the hell Welsh is getting at. I'm a good cop. I was a good cop before I met Fraser. That's why they tapped me for the undercover gig. They knew I wouldn't make Vecchio look bad.

It didn't hurt that after Stella kicked me out I didn't have any reason to stick with my own life. No family, no wife, no kids, no nothing, so I had nothing to lose. Sort of like those Pony Express riders, you know, orphans preferred?

"So what's the problem?" I ask impatiently.

"You're going to burn out," Welsh says quietly.

I give him the Kowalski grin. "Nah, I'm just getting warmed up." I can tell just looking that Welsh isn't buying it. I run my hands through my hair, thinking I need to get it cut again. Unless I just want to go for the flat look. Which makes me look like a geeky kid. —I'm not trying to prove anything. I came back to do my job and doing it, full out and all the time, is all that's keeping me from going nuts.

More nuts. Nuttier. Damn, just get me a top hat and call me the Planter's Peanut Man.

"Kowalski, I'd hoped that with the Constable back in Canada, his magnetic ability to attract the weird and bizarre would also go away," Welsh said.

I snickered. "Yeah, I bet."

"You seem determined to take up the slack, though." He looked at the Crab case file. "Stolen live crabs, Detective?"

"I don't think that's it, Lieutenant," I tell him. I've been checking this out since Murray came to me. He explained that he buys the crabs—live, clickety-clack with the claws—from some outfit called FAME by the pound. But what he's been getting has been just a little bit off. Not gone bad off; off as in not quite as much as he's paying to get. Not enough to make him accuse anyone of shorting him, just off. He wanted me to nose around, see if someone along the way from the airport to the restaurant wasn't relieving the crates of a crustacean here and there and selling them on the side.

"There's something going on there. I got a hunch."

"A hunch, Detective?"

"Yeah, you know, that uh, ah, trained police officer's instinct thing." I can't do the big Mountie eyes thing, but I do intense really well. Welsh shakes his head.

"I can't tell you not to waste your time, Detective, because you've handled stranger cases, not to mention your arrest and conviction record are making the rest of your shift look bad," he tells me in a heavy voice. Then he points at me. "I can tell you to ease back, though, Kowalski. No overtime. No taking off and working by yourself, leaving Brown warming his desk chair anymore. Get it?"

"Got it."

Brown will slow me down, but I can work around him.

"Good. —There's one more thing."

"Yeah?" I'm surprised, because Welsh sounds sort of, I don't know, reluctant? Not irritated and tired.

"Remember the deal with the Feds when you agreed to become Vecchio?"

Huh?

"Yeah, sure."

I remember it all right. Not the details. I didn't care. Go off and be someone else while still being a cop, they said. Sounded like a dream deal to me right then. I snapped it up. There were all kinds of promises from the brass about getting whatever I wanted afterward, but I never figured it would work that way. Honestly, when I took over for Vecchio, part of me didn't figure on even being around that long. Back then I was hanging on by my fingernails when I wasn't pushing my luck so hard it creaked.

Being responsible for Vecchio's life, looking out for his reputation and his family and his partner, that was important, so I stuck around when otherwise . . . hell, I don't know. There's a thing called suicide by perp. I could have gone that way, just not really caring, you know. I don't know. Bad as I miss Fraser since I came back, it's not something I'd do now. I know it would get back to him and the great big freak would find some way to make it his fault.

There's a special place in hell for the people that have knowingly hurt Benton Fraser and I've got no intention of spending eternity locked up with Victoria Metcalfe.

'"That offer's still on the plate, Kowalski. Transfer anywhere you want. Feds'll fix it up. California. New York. Willison." He gives me a tired grin as he says that. "Vice or Narcotics would take you in a minute, if you want to stay in with the CPD. You need to start thinking about it."

Yeah, right. They can't offer me a job working with Fraser again, though, can they? So I might as well stay where I am.

"Forget it, Lieu."

"Just think about it, Kowalski."


I cannot believe this. I thought this kind of thing only happened with Fraser around. I mean, all I did was walk into the unloading dock, ask this guy if he knew anything about some crabs disappearing and the next thing I know, he cold-cocks me, and I wake up breathing water at the bottom of a tank filled with crates of the damn things.

Okay, it only took hitting the water to bring me around, but drowning is so not the way I want to go. This ain't the Arthur Anderson or the Patrick Henry or whatever the hell that ship was named. Fraser is not going to bloom and kick his way over to give me some sweet mouth-to-mouth. Nope, this time I gotta save my own bacon.

Luckily, this time I don't have duct tape over my mouth and Moriarty up there didn't think of using my cuffs to trap me on the bottom. I thrash around in a panic for a minute or two, figure out which way is up, and push myself to the surface. I end up wriggling into an empty spot where someone's lifting another crate out of the tank.

This guy looks at my wet head popping up out of the water, nods to himself, and says, "That's it, Cheryl's right. No more tequila on Wednesdays."

After I snort and gag out some water, I glare at him and say, "Where'd the skinny guy go? The one that just stuck me in here?"

"Joey?"

"Joey, Johnny, Jimmy the goddamn Greek, I don't care what his name is," I snarl, trying to get myself out of the tank. Cold water is running out of my hair and down my face. "Give me a hand here, okay?"

Tequila Guy grabs me by the biceps and lifts me right out. Impressive. I may scale back the bad mouth, since I want to keep my head attached to my shoulders.

"Hey, thanks."

I feel sort of sick and my head's all woozy, so my knees decide I'll be better off on the floor. The side of my head hurts like a hell, and I've got an egg-sized lump coming up there, where Joey slapped a mini-crowbar into it. Ouch, ouch, ouch. Do I have a head injury? Why, yes I do. Geez, now that I'm not so focused on my next breath not being water, I'm noticing the hellish headache and that I'm freezing.

What was I doing, anyway? Oh, yeah, questioning the crab kidnapping creep and then I got walloped. No way am I getting up and going after him right this minute. I'd fall on my face.

"You okay, there?" Tequila Guy asks.

I nod and regret it and decide talking's easier.

"Yeah, yeah, sure, I get hit over the head and thrown in a tank full of crabs all the time. Just give me a second here. "

"How come Joey did that to you?"

I angle a look at him. No, he's not being snarky. He really doesn't know. Good thing too, because if this guy wanted to stick me in the water, he could hold me under with one hand until I stopped bubbling. Since he seems all right, maybe he'll be able to help. 'Cause surer than Carter's got pills, Murray Carter's got something screwy going down here with his fresh crabs. Something stinks and it ain't the state of Denmark.

"Buddy, if I knew that I sure wouldn't have asked him any questions." I fish my wet wallet out of my jeans and flash the badge. I'm going to have to take my gun down the parts, dry it, and oil it tonight. "Ray Kowalski, CPD."

Tequila sticks out a ham-sized hand to shake. "Bobby Deerforth."

I glance around and notice there's a crate of crabs still sitting where Joey the head whacker dropped it. The top's come open and a jailbreak is in progress. "Come on, let's check this out. The guy I talked to acted like I caught him red-handed or something here."

Bobby pulls me to my feet and we sort of hop and skip over to the rapidly emptying crate, avoiding the escapees scuttling everywhere. All those crabs together make me want to shudder. I do not like anything with more than four legs. They don't look natural.

The crate looks like, you know, a crate. Plastic. Sort of a sick, pale green, sides angling up and out from the bottom. The lid's made in two pieces that fold back on hinges, for easy access. The whole thing's perforated, so it can sit in the tank and the water moves through it. The way I understand, they stack the empties inside each other and send them back to Alaska, where they get packed full and used again.

I gingerly open the half-lid that's still down and immediately feel something. I also notice this lid has a funny mark on it. "Hey, Bobby," I say and point at it, "You know what this means?"

"Nope, none of the other crates got it. I never seen it before."

"'Kay."

The lid comes up and there, wired to it, is a brick of something wrapped up in plastic and duct tape. I'd bet anything my friend Joey was about to get it when I showed up and scared him witless.

"So you don't know what this is?" I pull it loose and show it to Bobby.

My new buddy gets a pissed off expression. "That little s.o.b."

I'm opening up the package with my switchblade, nodding even though my head hurts, because the stupid little dickweed left me the goods. That's all I need.

I peel the plastic back and stare at the contents.

Bobby's staring over my shoulder.

"Sheeeit."

Yeah.

"That what I think it is, Detective?"

"If you think it's enough horse to send every junkie in the city on the nod tonight, yeah."


Even though I figure Murray for being clean, since he's the one that came to me, the first thing I do is check him out.

Second thing I do is go after Joey Ellsmore. Bobby Deerforth gets onto his boss and finds out where the little weasel is crashing. Joey hasn't got much of a singing voice, but he makes up for it, because the song's so sweet. He gives up everything, since he's facing possession, conspiracy to traffic, interstate and federal charges, plus the whole assaulting and attempting to kill a police officer thing.

Turns out the difference in the weight Murray's been buying and the crabs he's been getting has been made up of tar heroin, smuggled in under Customs' nose. No one's sticking their drug dog's nose in a case of irritated crustaceans. No one's too eager to stick their own tender fingers in there with the claws, either.

It's a smooth deal.

Thing is, Joey doesn't know where the heroin is coming from before it's delivered aboard the fishing boat up in Alaska. He's just the pick-up and delivery boy, dropping off the bricks of smack to dealers. The dealers are paying someone else.

When I've got everything I'm going to get out of him, I head for Welsh's office and knock.

"Yeah?"

He's hip-deep in paperwork, the curse of being a lieutenant. "You got a second, Lieu?"

"Sure, tell me a story, detective." He sets his pen aside and sits back. "Tell me a story about how you can walk out of this office to get lunch, in dry clothes may I add, and show up four hours later, with a skinny geek, five pounds of heroin, wet clothes and what looks like a concussion? All without benefit of the Mountie." Welsh is shaking his head and smiling as he says it all.

I prop myself against the wall and grin at him. "Just lucky, I guess."

"Sit down before you fall down, Kowalski."

I pluck at my still damp T-shirt and say, "Nah. Figure I'll hit my locker and change as soon as I tell you about this."

"You know Narcotics is going to want to take this over?"

"What?" I come off the wall ready to fight. "No. No way. This is my case!"

"I'll back you, Kowalski, but with what you've got and what it looks like you could get, someone's probably going to have to go in undercover."

He's staring at me steady. Undercover used to be my thing. Was my thing until Vecchio came back, though wearing his name and carrying his badge number was about all I did as him. I was still being a cop. It wasn't like my other undercovers, where I had to turn myself into someone else. It's been a while since I had to make myself over into a sleaze.

"Yeah, well, you know I'm good for that," I mutter at last.

And now that I think about it, maybe I'd like to go be someone else, someone who doesn't miss his partner more than anyone should. Someone who doesn't wake up hard after dreaming about that partner. Maybe it would feel good to be some sleazy jerk that doesn't mind smuggling dope, because the only thing he ever loved was money.

Who am I kidding? I feel sick to my stomach at the thought of taking another undercover gig. I'm scared I could lose myself. But if it's what I've got to do to make my case and shut this drug pipeline down, I'm going to do it.


The DEA shows up about three days later, but by then I've already got an in, using an old established cover that never got blown during my Vice days. Anyone asks where Raphael 'Ray' Daniciecz has been for the last two and half years, I tell them I had to split town for a while. The deal gets struck that I stay under and work the investigation from inside, while the DEA runs the rest of it. I don't like Feds, but the bunch working this job aren't too bad. At least, they admit they never had a clue how the horse was coming into the States.

So as Ray Daniciecz, I get a job on the Crusty Clancy, the crab boat that's delivering the heroin along with the crabs for shipment to Chicago. It's cold, wet, hard work, and I hate it from the first day when I'm set to working on the gear. The next day I hate it more. The third day, I take a chance and write down everything about the case and what I'm doing, plus where I'm going, and send it off to Fraser's latest post. I know Welsh is looking out for me, but I've never trusted the Feds. And I don't want Fraser wondering what happened to me if I don't come back. That's the day I spot Billy Tremont retrieving the dope from the hold. I've got no idea how he got the dope though, so I find myself going out from Dutch Harbor on that damn crab boat at 3 a.m. the next morning.

Two days out the Clancy reaches St. Matthews Island. Standing my turn at watch isn't too bad, no worse than doing a stakeout, I figure. Noon, though, we start fishing and I start wishing I was back on dry land. Chop bait, sort the catch, haul, push, drag, geez, it's hard nasty work, all out on the deck in the wet and the wind. And the boat's gonna stay out until the hold's full, we run out of fuel, or the season closes. Every time we launch a crab pot, one of us has to throw out the lines with it, without getting caught and dragged into the water with it. The Clancy's got 60 crab pots and they weigh in at 750 lbs. with the gear and lines. My whole body hurts at the end of the twenty hour day the crew puts in and I'm colder than I ever was on the ice with Fraser.

A weather update comes through, the Coast Guard warning that the fast moving clouds piling up on the horizon are serious, and the crew scrambles to get everything tied down and under the hatches. In between emptying my stomach into water that's starting heave and rise under the boat, I try to do my part and wonder if I'm gonna end up drowning, just in the Bering Sea instead of a lake. What kind of idiot takes a job on a boat when he can't swim? Not that it would matter, because the water's so damn cold hypothermia would get me even if I could swim. Makes me shake just thinking about it.

I'm jumping every time the Clancy groans and shivers, wondering if the old hulk is going to hold together through the twenty-five foot seas and forty knot winds. I don't even know how fast forty knots is, just that the first mate's yelling something about freaking gale force and I think I'm going end up pushed off the deck. Water sheets over the bow, drenching anything that wasn't wet, freezing onto the deck, and I brace myself and start reciting Hail Marys under my breath. It goes on for hours, so long that I stop being so damn afraid I can't move and end up just exhausted, working on automatic with the rest of the crew to keep the ice from building up until it takes the boat down. There's no way to rest, no escape from the storm until the Clancy rides it out.

Fuck, I'm gonna die without telling Fraser everything. I didn't even have the guts to write it down and send it in that stupid letter. I'd promise God my first born, if I had one, to get me out of this. If I get back to shore alive, I'm gonna find Fraser and tell him how I feel, I swear. All I gotta do is keep from falling overboard first.

It takes days for the crew to finish de-icing the boat afterward. I'm frozen and encrusted with salt before it's done. When the weather clears, it's back to hauling pots, bringing in an average of five keepers each time. Shitty catch, I gather from the other guys. It's a percentage deal, so everyone complains. The take home on this trip is barely going to cover their costs when we get back into Dutch Harbor. The reduced quotas for the season mean deck jobs are nothing but hard labor, I learn, explaining how a greenhorn like me got signed on so easy. Mostly, I keep my yap shut, though, and watch Billy Tremont.

I'm used to the work by closing day, but one thing I know: I hate fishing.

And I'm pretty sure I'm going to hate crabs for the rest of my life, too.

Tremont pulls in a crab buoy put out from another boat with that same mark from the crates in Chicago, shortly before the Clancy heads back for the docks with maybe 18,000-19,000 lbs. of crab in the hold, and retrieves another shipment of dope from it. The buoy has the name of the other boat on it, so I memorize it, then use my cell once we're within range to call the local cops to pick up Billy Tremont and the heroin.

I'm not looking forward to whatever's going to go down once we dock, no matter how much I want off the damn boat, but I could never have imagined what I see waiting. I'm up on the deck, because the smell isn't so bad there, and I spot him.

It's funny. He's not wearing the red serge uniform. It's the brown one. He's holding his Stetson, it isn't on his head, but I recognize him anyway. It's Fraser standing there on the dock, legs planted just far enough apart that nothing can rock him off balance. He's almost at attention. The wind is ruffling his hair in a way that makes my mouth go dry.

He must have got my letter.

He just stands there as the local cops and some Alaska State Troopers come onboard the Clancy and arrest Tremont. He's just there. If I still gave a damn about my cover, I could just pretend to ignore him.

Well, to hell with that. The DEA and the local cops can wrap this baby up, find out who that other boat belonged to and hound dog it back to the big cheese in charge. I'm done.

My heart's beating hard enough to slam through my ribs. All I can think is how much I missed Fraser, how much I want to go over and wrap myself around him and never, ever let go. I thought I was going to die in that storm. Maybe I'm as nuts as Fraser, because I never thought I was going to buy it before, not even on the Henry Allen, because I knew Fraser was with me. Nothing can touch us when we're together. Out there in the storm, even with the rest of the crew around me, I felt completely alone. I thought I would never see Fraser again.

I thought I'd blown my last chance, forever.

I almost sprint over to him once I've get away from the cops and fuss. He's still waiting. He's still there. I skid to a stop in front of him and just stand there, a wild smile on my face, wanting to laugh and cry at the same time.

"Frase. You're here."

"Yes, the letter you wrote me was immeasurably helpful in foiling a drug ring that was operating through Ellsmore Oil and using their company planes to bring in heroin from Mexico, Ray," Frase tells me.

"Oh." I look around for old white and furry. Fraser always had Diefenbaker with him back in Chicago. His living teddy bear and alter ego. I'd listen to what he was saying to Dief and figure out everything Fraser couldn't make himself say for himself. "Where's Dief?" Geez, I hope the furface is all right.

"With Maggie," Fraser tells me. "I feared he might inadvertantly betray your cover were I to bring him. He's missed you quite intensely. I did not believe he would adhere to any instruction to ignore you should it be necessary."

Translation, Dief would have knocked me on my kiester, licked my face, and acted embarrassingly happy to see me; all the things Fraser can never bring himself to do. Except the licking.

"The RCMP were quite pleased and agreed to give me leave to help close the American end of the case. I asked to come because I knew you would be here, Ray."

He looks uncomfortable and serious now.

"No, that isn't really true, Ray. The case is just an excuse. I had to see you."

"I needed to see you, too, Frase." I take a deep breath and then take the plunge. If I'm wrong, I'll just go throw myself in the cold water and drown. "I missed you, you know. I—I love you, Frase. " I can't look in his eyes. I think he feels the same, but I can't stand to see it in his eyes if he doesn't. My voice is so low I can barely hear it. "Not symbolically, you know. I love you."

My head's still down as he grabs me and hugs me tight, saying something I can barely hear into the side of my head. Then I hear it real clear.

"Don't leave me again, Ray. I love you too. Stay. Stay. I need you."

"Ya got me, Frase. Ya got me, okay," I whisper back, holding on just as tight as he is.

God, it feels good.

"Come back to the hotel with me?" he asks.

"And . . . ?'

"Sleep with me."

Wow. Okay, I'm down with that. This is Fraser. I love him. I want him. Through all the layers of clothes between us, I can definitely feel that he wants me. So going to bed together is the natural next step.

I ought to be freaking right about now, but no, I'm just happy and calm.

"You got a deal, Frase."

I stop outside the door to my hotel room. Was this real? Was this me, about to go to bed with a guy?

Yeah, pretty sure it was.

It wasn't just any guy, after all. It was Fraser.

He was standing right beside me. I slanted him a glance, weighing the key in my hand. If I changed my mind right now, he'd never say another word about it. He'd go on being my friend, while I went on being a coward.

Because that's what I'd been. A full on, no other word for it, yellow-bellied chickenshit.

I'd been afraid.

Not of the sex. Being with a guy wouldn't be that big a deal in my book. Nope, it was the other thing. The love thing.

That scared me.

Because I had to wonder, if I went for it, if I let Fraser love me the way he was offering, how much it would hurt when things inevitably got too hard.

As far as I could tell, based on experience with my folks and the Stella, love came with strings. My father washed his hands of me when I refused to change my mind about being a cop. You can't wash that stink off. Mum went with him without a backward glance and I didn't see or hear from them for years. Not until they showed up in Chicago, and maybe it's cynical, but I know they didn't come back there because I needed them. I'd needed them plenty of times . . . and they hadn't been around then. Stella had an image of me as the kid from the wrong side of the tracks, that James Dean/Steve McQueen wannabe rebel, that turned her Golden good-girl crank. Once she had her career, though, once the glow of her rebellion wore off, she got tired of me. I didn't change to go with her new idea of her life, so the love faded away.

Strings.

So I figured, yeah, Fraser probably loved me, but . . . how long would that last? Until being with me messed up his career? Until he met someone that fit his life better? My thinking was screwed up, because Fraser isn't like that, he doesn't use people, but on the other hand sometimes it isn't about what you mean to do, it's just what happens.

I sure as hell hadn't wanted to hurt him and I knew I had, when I said no and left.

Seeing him there on the pier when the Crusty Clancy docked woke me up, though. I didn't really think Fraser would let things get as bad as I'd imagined. And if it did, well it would be worth it, to have him love me, even if it wasn't forever.

All that time on that crab boat, alternately praying I wouldn't get swept overboard and feeling so sick I half wished I would, had taught me something. I didn't want to give up being a cop, I still got a thrill out of outsmarting the bad guys, maybe that same do-gooder thrill that Fraser gets. I didn't want to quit, but I could. I could, if it was Fraser in the balance. I'd still be me.

I loved Fraser without strings and if I could do it, I knew damn well he could. Did. Just looking into his eyes, listening to him repeat my name, "Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray," told me that. He loved me. No strings, no small print, and he'd go on feeling that way no matter if I felt the same or not.

Something else I saw in his eyes.

Fraser wanted me.

Really wanted me. Hot, hungry for the body, let's hit the sheets, wanted me.

Talk about a turn on.

I smelled like smelt. My beard itched. I had to be one of the most unattractive prospects to ever present itself for inspection, but Fraser hadn't seemed bothered. I could feel him taking in every little detail of how I looked, from the rubber boots on my feet to the yellow oilskin slicker and the heavy coveralls and sweaters. I could see his relief and approval and that surprising glint of desire, and I had to believe in him then. Anyone who wanted to go to bed with me right off the boat had to be in love.

Love's the scariest thing there is. Standing up unarmed against some creep with a gun doesn't even compare. That's why I hadn't been willing to take the chance.

Suddenly it didn't matter. I'd scrambled off that boat and headed straight for Fraser.

We'd tried it apart and it didn't work.

I almost fell apart in front of six Alaska State Troopers, half the fishing fleet, a couple of tourists, and a seal.

"Frase—"

He'd hugged me right there on the pier. I didn't care who was watching then. I'd hugged him back. It felt like coming home. It felt like everything I'd needed and lost when I went back to Chicago. It felt like being alive again.

It felt like love.

That was a couple of hours ago, because it took that long to straighten out why a Chicago detective was arresting a Canadian smuggler in Alaska. I had to explain about being undercover and how this guy that worked for one of the big oil companies was bringing Mexican heroin into Canada, then transferring it from crabbers to an outfit that shipped the catch south into the States. Just explaining it all made my head ache. The cop in charge seemed pretty impressed though, especially when I showed him where there was 5 kilos of brown tar heroin in the boat's hold. My suspect was now locked up and lawyered up in the local jail and all I had to do until tomorrow was get a shower, some sleep, and something to eat.

And talk to Fraser.

Except neither of us were really thinking about talking once we went through this door.

"Ray, are we going to go in?" Fraser asked me.

"Yeah, just a minute."

I looked at him. Just looked at him for a long moment. Mr. Picture Perfect Mountie. Except he isn't, and I wouldn't love him if he was. There was a loose thread at the shoulder of his brown uniform, which I only saw because I was staring at him so hard. It'd been a long day and he could have used a shave, though not as bad I could. His hair was a touch longer than regulation and there was a thread or two of gray in it. The crinkles around his eyes were deeper. He wasn't a kid anymore, not that he was when we met either.

It's safe to say Fraser's old enough to know what he wants, just like I am.

He's made it pretty clear more than once that what he wants is me.

Every time, I've made some excuse, found some reason why we couldn't, though I never lied and said I didn't want to. Only now, standing so close I can hear him breathing, I have to believe that none of that matters. I'll deal. Later. I'll figure out something.

"You know this ain't a fairy tale, Fraser, right?"

Fraser looks at me and says, perfectly bland, "In fact, Ray, if I understand the vernacular correctly and we are about to indulge in the activities I believe we are, this is indeed a fairy story."

I growl. "Geez, I'd forgotten how annoying you are."

He gives me a sexy smile, the sort that would have melted poor Frannie into a puddle of goo, if she'd been lucky enough to see it. I feel pretty gooey inside myself and smile back.

"Ray, I've missed you more than any words can possibly convey. If this isn't what you want—-"

"Oh, I want, Frase. I most definitely want. It's just—everything else."

"I heard Lt. Berquist offer you a job with the department here, Ray. I think you may have already found our solution."

I blink at him and realize he's right. I don't have to go back to Chicago to be a cop. I can be one right here if I want to. Canada and Alaska are about as close as it gets. It doesn't matter where the border is under a hundred miles of snow.

"Okay."

I step up to him and kiss him, sweet and true and certain, because I know it doesn't matter where I am. As long as I'm with Fraser, I'm home. It's a love thing. Then I step back and unlock the door.

"Shall we?"

"Whatever you say, Ray."

With a mock bow, I let Fraser step inside ahead of me, then followed.

The door shuts behind me and, slam, Fraser has me pinned against the wall next to it, his pack and mine dropped on the floor. His mouth was on mine about the time I recovered enough to say, "Hey—-"

Heat flashed through me and I was locked onto him, tasting tea and oranges, and underneath that the sweet true taste of Fraser. He was intent, careful, but determined; it shouldn't have surprised me. Fraser kissed like a guy, going for what he wanted, but this guy was Fraser and he didn't want anything that wasn't freely given.

I gave and gave and gave.

I found a spot at the back of his neck where his spine crested in a knob just under his skin. I ran my fingers up and down there, teasing under his collar, then back up and into his silky hair.

He was pressing me back against the wall, like a wall of heat and want himself. I let my other hand just rest against his hip, suddenly feeling so tender that I couldn't take it any faster. I'd wanted to kiss him forever, I thought, as I did my best to do just that. Just fell into the kiss and let it take over, because that connection was all that mattered.

When we finally drew back from each other, I couldn't stand even that much separation. I pulled him back with my hand at the back of his head and pressed my cheek against his. The soft rush of his breath touched my ear.

I felt warm for the first time since I went south.

"Ray," he whispered.

"Yeah?"

"You could really use a shower."

I tried, but I couldn't help it, I laughed. "Way to be romantic, there, Frase," I choked out and let go enough to lean back and look at him some more. So fucking gorgeous, like Prince Charming with Snow White's hair and eyes and skin. Man, I'm so tired I'm getting really goofy.

Fraser was worried he'd offended me, of course. "It's just that it's, well, it's rather distracting, Ray," he explained. I kept on laughing and he started to smile.

"All the things you've sniffed and licked, and now you don't like a little Eau de Piscine?"

Fraser's smile got a little wider. "Piscine, Ray?"

"What, I've got a vocabulary too," I protest. "Just 'cause I act dumb, don't mean I am."

Fraser takes my face in his hands, stroking it with his thumbs, which makes me shiver. He looks at me completely serious. "I've never thought you were dumb, Ray."

I smile brilliantly at him. "I know."

"And do you know," he asked, leaning close and starting nibble on my lips again, "that when you," his tongue began tracing my smile, "use that vocabulary—"

"Umhmnn," I sort of moaned in approval of what he was doing.

"—it makes me want to do this?"

Tongue, electrical sockets—bad. Tongue, Ray's mouth—oooh, good. Pretty electric too. We spent another piece of forever proving this theory, then headed for a mutual date with hot water and soap.

I'm pretty sure I'd have never made it back from Canada the first time if I'd seen Fraser all naked and wet and hungry for me even once back then. Gave me a whole new appreciation of indoor plumbing and hot water heaters. And hotels that stock hand lotion. Bath time fun was followed by bed time fun.

I took a long time touching Fraser that night, learning what made him arch his head back and buck against me all out of control, what just made him purr. He made me babble and twist and sweat in return. I've always been impatient, but I couldn't hurry Fraser. And in between we cuddled together, dozing and talking about nothing in particular, until one of us started again. Once, when I ducked into the bathroom for a washcloth, I found Fraser remaking the bed, since we'd wrecked it so thoroughly.

Only Benton Fraser would bother with hospital corners while standing bare ass naked in a hotel room after making out with undercover cop who still smelled faintly of fish.

He's perfect. Perfectly insane, that is, and that's the way I want him.

Life is sweet.


I took the job Berquist offered me. I had to go back to Chicago, close or hand off my other cases, and testify in what I still called the Case of Crabs in my head. Ended up doing some testifying in Canada too, as Fraser and the RCMP had shut down the Canadian side of Ellsmore Oil's little pharmaceutical sideline.

After that, I went to Welsh and laid it out for him. The lieutenant did right by me. Welsh called some people and checked out Berquist, found out the man's a good cop to work for. Then he pulled strings with the Feds and they twisted some arms, and when I got my new detective's badge in Anchorage, all my accumulated pension benefits for time served in the CPD had been transferred with me. I even ended up on the new cross-border investigations unit, handling cases that start in Alaska and end up in Canada, or vice versa, working right along with a bunch of Mounties that included Fraser.

Half the shift at the 27th showed up for the unofficial going away party Frannie insisted on having at Huey and Dewey's One Liner Club. Surprised me. Frannie made me take lots of pictures of Gabby to show Fraser. Then Gabby spit up all over Dewey when he was holding her, which made my night. Elaine showed up, laid a big smacker of a kiss on me, and told me with a sly wink to pass it on to Fraser. Elaine's going to be a great detective.

Fraser and I never took out a billboard or made an announcement, but slowly our relationship has become an open secret. Everyone knows he stays with me when a case brings him here and I bunk with him whenever something takes me into Canada. A three day weekend sees me calling Denny Tenia up and hopping a flight to Three Forks, heading out to the cabin we've been fixing up for when we retire.

When I'm stuck on a case and Fraser's free, he joins me in Anchorage.

It works for us.

No one minds, no one makes a fuss. Folks up north know how to mind their own business. Most of them are people who ended up there because they didn't like anyone telling them how to live, too. I suppose that makes it easier to be tolerant.

I'm happier than I ever had a right to be. Fraser has gone right on trying to convince me to come away with him, asks me to stay every time before I head out, but I know he's been happy too.

And you know, there really isn't anything in Chicago that could compare to Fraser laying in bed with me in my apartment, the heat high enough we're both wearing nothing but sweaty skin, and listening to him recite ever so seriously:



Or the way his eyes go all smoky and dark when I mutter, "That's Marlowe , right?" Fraser gets all hot and bothered when I come out with stuff like that. It's enough to make it worth the razzing at the station because I've always got some book of poetry with me anymore. Stuff sort of grows on ya after a while, anyway.

"Yes, Ray," Fraser says and starts doing stuff guaranteed to drive me out of my mind very quickly. I have to retaliate. I'll show him proof.



Yep, that distracted Fraser. He's got to remember which poem that's from or his brain will overload and go bang. While he's thinking, I'm tasting the dip over his collar bone, the strange scar where he got hit with a frozen otter, tracing it and others, old and new, with my hands. The map of a life lived for more than mere existence, traced onto the silk of his skin. Touching Fraser is a sweet joy that feeds my heart. My heart's been working over time since the first time we went to bed together and I need that now.

"That's—that's Raleigh, isn't i—it, Ra—ay," he pants.

"And bing, we have a winner, folks," I tell him, lifting my head just enough I can look through my lashes at his him. He's all flushed. Yeah, that's the way I like him. Warm and open. No one else gets that look, not the lust and not the love.

I am so lucky.

"So, Ben-ton—" I make his name into two separate words, "—you want your prize now or later?"

"Now, Ray, please."


Oh, yeah, so lucky.


When Fraser wrapped me up and tucked me into the sled and told the team to mush, starting out on our adventure, I didn't have clue one that he was figuring out the same shit I was. But I knew if I'd have gone back to Chicago alone, it would have been colder than the artic circle.

Of course, it was a dingbat thing to do, taking off on both our jobs, heading north looking for the frozen remains of some guy who wasn't even a perp. The north can kill ya faster than you can turn around. Fraser might have known what he was doing, but I sure as hell didn't. Hell, hard as he worked to stay fit, even Frase wasn't really ready for it.

We both about froze to death a couple of times and I could not get enough to eat—I was ready to fight Dief for whatever was at the bottom of the stewpot most nights—because I was burning off the calories faster than I could take them in.

But it was worth it. Worth it just to be next to Fraser, but right along with that, I found out something about me. I could do it. I could hack the north. The physical stuff is only part of it, you see. Some people just can't bear the size of it, the sheer empty, no one to rely on but yourself and your partner and the dogs, bigness of it, the fact that nature's boss there and ain't making no allowances. Some folks it just makes them feel small and scared and sends them running for the nearest city with a beach.

Me, I never thought I was that important anyway, so I could take it. I could fit myself in. Some place out on the snow and the ice with the Northern Lights dancing across the stars, I figured out exactly who I was. I was the guy that loved Fraser, the guy that was a cop, the guy who finally figured out the sextant on the fourth try. I was always going to be that guy, whether Fraser was there or I was undercover again. Once I had that, even being trapped in a cabin with no indoor plumbing through the winter solstice couldn't make me flip my gears.

I think now, if I hadn't learned all that, if I hadn't gone back to Chicago afterward, I couldn't have what I have now. I'd be checking over my shoulder, waiting for something to jerk it away from me.

Fraser and me, we both proved we could live without out each other. It sucked, but we could do it. Some how, knowing that makes being together better. We're equals and we're together because we want to be.

It's taken me too many years, but I understand it all now.

There's nothing in my life to regret. Every choice led me here, to Fraser's side, riding over a potholed road in a antique jeep, with an aging half-wolf resting his muzzle on my shoulder.

I know this must be the place, the place I want to be.

It's good. It's greatness.

The cabin looks about like it has the last few times I've made it this far. Last time I got some time freed up, Fraser was testifying against gallbladder poachers in Whitehorse, so I headed there and spent my days poking around town like a tourist and the nights with Fraser at his hotel. It was still better than anything I could have done alone.

I grab my duffle and head for the little porch Fraser and me put on the front a couple of summers back. It's a got a steep overhead to help shed the snow, so it's dark, but it gives us a place to stamp the snow off our boots and coats before heading inside and that makes for less housekeeping. Which I tell you is a good thing when you live with a neatnik like Fraser, because no one's getting any kissing until the puddles on the floor have been mopped up.

So the porch was my idea. Preventative housekeeping, I called it. Fraser got a kick out of that, with his proper preparation thingamajig he's always saying. Says he always knew I was listening.

Well, I was. Just not listening listening.

Just like every other door to any place Fraser lives, this one is unlocked. I stomp the worst of the mud off my boots before opening it and going inside. Fraser's crowded up behind me as I kick them off, warm and insistent. Always knew there was more under the Mountie calm of his. Bet I'm still the only one that really gets to see these sides of Fraser; the sarcastic, hungry, sometimes bored, sometimes insecure and lonely man, who was always too smart, too white, too ethical to quite fit in anywhere. Like I'm the one who gets why he never laced his hiking boots in Chicago, that that was his silent rebellion against those lace-up to his knees uniform granny boots he wears with the serge. Means he can get them off as fast I can get out of mine, too.

Fraser's one of a kind.

I drop the duffle and he's shuffling me backwards to the bedroom with his hands already under my T-shirt. I start to laugh.

"Impatient, much?"

"Always, Ray, for you," Fraser says. Epilogue

Fraser's smiling at me.

He's gonna say it, the same thing he's said every time. Think I'd die inside if he ever didn't. It hurts when he says it, but it's a good sort of hurt now. It's a—a promise.

"Ray."

Denny's already in the plane. He's probably impatient, wanting to get out before the weather front moves in.

"Yeah?"

"Don't go back."

And yeah, I'm a sap, because that just makes my heart go pittypat, the same way it did the day we stood at the edge of the Beaufort Sea and Fraser said it.

I look at him and think of the shit we've both gone through. I think about my not so lousy apartment in Anchorage. I think about the cabin. I drop my duffle in the mud.

"Yeah?"

I'm starting to smile, really smile.

"Why not?"

"Because I love you and I want you to stay," Fraser says quietly.

Oh. Okay. To hell with going back even one more time.

"Was that hard to say?"

"Not at all."

So I stay.

It isn't hard to do, either.

Not at all.

 

---

The poets quoted are by Christopher Marlowe, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Ben Jonson