“You were. But I’ll shut up about it. For now.”

“How about for good?”

His snort says Not a chance. Then he points up. “That was a great horned owl.”

I peer into the night sky.

“It’s gone now,” he says. “I’m changing the conversation. But as long as you’re looking up, do you see that?”

I follow his finger to see a distant strip of swirling green through the clouds.

“Is that …?” I begin. “The northern lights? I didn’t think I’d be far enough up for them.”

“You are. It’s just coming into the right season, so you won’t get a lot of good views yet. It’s been overcast, too.”

“What causes it?”

As we continue walking, he explains that it’s electrically charged protons and electrons from the sun entering the earth’s atmosphere at the poles. I’m so engrossed in looking up that I nearly bash into a tree. He gets a chuckle out of that. When we reach my yard, he says, “There’s your fox,” and I see it slipping from the forest edge.

“It’s not mine,” I say, giving him a smile. “Because that would be wrong. A wild animal is not a pet.”

He shrugs. “Can still be yours. Just don’t try domesticating it.”

We watch as the fox trots back to its den with something in its mouth.

“Grouse,” he says.

“Which is a bird, right?”

He sighs.

“Hey, you promised me a book. I haven’t seen it yet.”

“Been a little preoccupied. And I’m making sure you actually want it and aren’t just trying to be nice.”

“I’m never nice.”

“You’re always nice, Casey. Or at least you try your damnedest to fake it, because you think that’s what people want from you. Don’t give me that look. If you walk into it, I’m allowed to analyze.”

“Dare I invite you in for coffee?”

“Depends. Are you asking to be polite?”

“No.”

“Then yeah, I’ll take coffee. And don’t ever ask to be polite, because then I’ll say yes and you’ll be stuck with me, and it’ll just be …”

“Awkward?”

“For you. Nothing’s awkward for me.”

I smile. “Well, then, speaking of awkward, I’d be able to see those lights a lot better from my balcony, but that would mean inviting you up to my room.”

“Through your room. It’s not the same thing.”

“True. Is that a yes?”

“It is.”

We sit on my deck. Literally on my deck, because while I offer to bring up a chair, he refuses and grabs extra blankets from under my bed, which I didn’t know were there. We sit on blankets with more wrapped around us. Or wrapped around me. He seems fine with just the coffee to keep him warm. We sit and we talk, and I watch the northern lights dance, and it doesn’t matter how horrible my day became, this is as damned near perfect an ending as I can imagine. The wolves even start up, as if to prove to me that as good as things get, they can always be better.

Eventually the talking stops, and we just sit and watch and listen, and the next thing I know, I’m waking at dawn with the blankets pulled up to my neck and an extra one draped over me. The deck is empty except for my gun, now lying just out of reach. I smile, take it, and head inside to get ready for work.

There’s an angry mob outside the station. Well, actually, three somewhat-annoyed citizens, but Dalton still intercepts me and takes me in through the back.

“They’re pissed off about Hastings,” he says. “They want a statement, whatever that is.”

“It’s where the police explain the situation, usually to the press.”

“We don’t have press.”

“True, but you really should explain—”

“To three people?” He snorts. “I’ll be doing it all day. Like one of those damned cuckoo clocks.”

“We’ve had two murders in a week. The more you ignore that, the more rumours are going to fly, and soon we really will have an angry—”

“I’m not ignoring them. I’m waiting until there are more so I don’t have to keep explaining. The more times I say it, the more it’ll sound like there’s a serious problem.”

“Um …”

His look darkens. “Fine, there is a serious problem. But they don’t need to know that.”

I open the door and call out, “We’ll be giving a statement at nine. Please make sure everyone knows, because we’re obviously very busy investigating this tragedy, and we can’t keep explaining.”

Dalton appears behind me. “She means that. You don’t want to spread the word? Fine. But I’ll tell everyone in town that you three know, and I might offer the opinion that it was awfully suspicious, you coming by, looking for information and not wanting to share it with others.”

They’re gone before he can close the door.

I sigh. “That’s not how it’s usually done.”

“Welcome to Rockton, detective.”

Back inside the station, I ask Dalton whether Val should join us, and add, “But I understand if you’d rather she didn’t interfere.”

He makes a noise at that. It’s like a snort, but it’s also akin to a laugh. Then he shakes his head and walks to the fireplace.