But since it hadn’t passed, he was going to have to poke it out of her. Now seemed like a good time.

He was enjoying a coffee break of his own, with his feet propped up on the desk.

“Are you going to keep chewing on whatever’s got your goat, or spit it out?”

“Nothing’s got my goat.” She slurped at coffee, burned her tongue, cursed.

“You’ve been in a stew since you got back from the gym this morning.”

“I don’t stew. You stew.”

“I brood,” he corrected. “Which is a solitary and thoughtful process involving finding the solution to a conflict or situation. Stewing is stirring a bubbling pot until it boils over and spills on someone. As I’m the only one currently in harm’s way, I have a vested interest about the contents of this particular pot.”

She turned back to him with a dangerous sneer. “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”

“See.” He wagged his finger at her. “You’re trying to figure out how to take it out on me. Tell me who pissed you off, and we’ll go whip their asses together.”

He had a way about him, Ripley admitted, that could make her laugh in the worst of times. She walked over to the desk, sat on the edge. “Have you met this Booke character?”

“The big brain fromNew York ? Yeah, I met him yesterday when he was out walking the village, getting his bearings. Seems nice enough.”

“Nice.” She snorted. “Do you know what he’s here for?”

Zack grunted an assent. She only had to mention MacAllister Booke for Zack to clue in to the source of her mad. “Rip, we deal with variations of this theme off and on all the time. We can’t live on Sisters and avoid it.”

“This is different.”

“Maybe it is.” He was frowning himself when he got up to replenish his coffee. “What happened with Nell last fall raises eyebrows. And not just because she came back, figuratively, from the dead, or that that bastard Remington was exposed as someone who got his rocks off knocking her around during their marriage. Not even because he threatened to kill her once he tracked her here.”

“And stabbed you.” She said it quietly because she could still see the blood on his shirt, the way it had gleamed dark in the shadows of the forest.

“All of that made good press copy,” Zack continued. “A big, juicy scandal. But you add how it all went down—”

“We kept a lid on that.”

“As best we could,” he agreed.

He stopped beside her, touched her face. He knew she’d broken a promise to herself that night. Linking hands with Mia, using what she had inside her to save Nell, to save him.

“Enough got out,” he said quietly. “Rumor and speculation, and the babblings of a madman. Enough to build more, to spark interest. You had to expect something along these lines.”

“I expected the weirdos,” she admitted. “Maybe an increase in the gawking tourists, that sort of thing. This Booke is different. He’s the serious article, a kind of, I don’t know, crusader. And he’s got credentials. A lot of people may think he’s just another nutcase, but a lot won’t. Added to all that, Mia might get it into her head to talk to him. To cooperate with him.”

“Yeah, she might.” He didn’t want to add that he was all but sure Nell would as well. They’d already had a discussion about it. “It’s her choice, Rip. It doesn’t have to weigh on yours.”

She gave her coffee a disgusted look. “He won an hour from me.”

“What?”

“Sneaky sonofabitch conned me into a bet this morning. I lost, so I have to give him an hour with his voodoo crap.”

“Ouch. How’d you lose?”

“Don’t wanna talk about it,” she muttered.

But he was already trying to work it out. “You didn’t go anywhere but the gym this morning, did you? I heard he picked up a membership there. Is that where you ran into him?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” She pushed off the desk, paced. “Who’d have thought he could move like that? At a sprint, okay, I could see it because of his height advantage. But not at a hundred sixty foot freestyle.”

“A swim race?” Zack voiced his surprise. “He took you in a swim race?”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it. I was off my rhythm, that’s all.” She whirled back with a slanted look. “Was that a laugh I heard?”

“You bet. No wonder you’re stewing.”

“Just shut up. I don’t know what he thinks he can prove in an hour anyway. With his energy detectors and spirit sensors. It’s a waste of time.”

“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about. How much he take you by?”

“Shut up, Zack.”

She decided to get it over with, the way you would a root canal. And she’d decided to walk, leaving Zack with the cruiser, because that postponed the getting-it-over-with stage just a little longer. It was full dark when she made the turn to the yellow cottage, and the moon was new and black. Another three inches of snow had fallen since morning, but the clouds had passed by evening. The clear wash of sky and stars sucked out any hope of warmth in the air. The cold was clean and sharp as a razor, slicing keenly against any exposed skin.

She walked fast, using her flashlight to guide the way.

She shook her head when she ran the beam over Mac’s Rover. He hadn’t bothered to dig it out. Typical Nutty Professor behavior, she decided. Ignoring the practical.

She stomped up to the door, pounded with a wool-covered fist.

He answered wearing a gray sweatshirt that had seen better days and jeans that looked equally well used. She caught the unmistakable scent of Nell’s beef-and-barley soup and quickly decided it was that, and that alone, that made her mouth water.

“Hi. Jesus, it’s freezing out there. Must be down around zero.” Even as he stepped back to let her in, he looked outside. “No car? You walked in this? Are you crazy?”

She studied the equipment jammed cheek by jowl into the tiny living room. “You live like this, and you ask if I’m crazy?”

“It’s too cold to be out for an evening stroll.” Instinctively, he took her gloved hands, rubbing them between his own.

“You get grabby, we’re on the clock.”