The Snow Falcon (41 page)

“You’re my first customer. That means you get your purchase free.”

She didn’t know what to say. “It’ll get busier when people realize you’re here.”

He smiled. “I don’t think so.”

His attitude was perplexing. She’d thought he would be angry and bitter—disappointed, at the very least—but she didn’t detect any of those things. In fact, he seemed amused by it all in some private way. She insisted on paying anyway, and eventually he took her money.

“Thanks for the wrench,” she said at the door.

“My pleasure,” he said.

IN THE DINER, Linda watched Susan leave the store and return to her office. She poured Coop some coffee and guessed that though he was pretending not to look, he’d seen Susan, too.

“So, what’s new, Coop?” she asked brightly.

He sipped at his coffee. “We’re busy, you know. Getting ready for the weekend.”

“How’s that young guy working out, what’s his name?”

“Miller.”

“That’s right. Miller.”

“He’ll be okay, once he stops quoting the rule book at me.”

She left him to take an order, and when she came back, she saw he was looking over at Somers’s store, and she wondered what he was thinking. There had been a certain note in Susan’s voice when she was defending Michael Somers to Carl Jeffrey, and it struck her that it wasn’t the first time she’d heard it. She knew that Jamie had

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been spending a lot of time with Michael and his falcon, and she thought that Coop hadn’t been his normal self lately. None of it added up to anything specific, but she had a feeling about it all. Three months ago, she would have bet that Coop and Susan would end up getting married, once they both stopped skirting around the edges of things. Now she wasn’t so sure.

She sat down next to him and lit a cigarette. “Are you taking Susan to the dance?” He nodded. “Yeah.”

“You don’t sound too happy about it, Coop.” “I’ve just got some things on my mind, that’s all.” That much she could tell. He seemed preoccupied, and the way he kept looking over to Susan’s office, it wasn’t hard to guess what with. She could picture Coop and Susan together. She knew Susan had her doubts about him, but maybe that was because she made comparisons to David; if she was ever going to move on, she had to put him behind her. Coop was a good guy, all things considered. He had his faults, but then, who didn’t? One thing was certain, and that was that he loved Susan and would be good to her and Jamie. Plus, he wasn’t a bad-looking guy. There were a lot worse around, that was for sure. Coop’s problem—and his undoing, she thought—was that he needed to speed things up a little.

“Can I offer you some advice, Coop?” she said. He looked at her uncomprehendingly. “What kind of advice?” “You can tell me this is none of my business if you like…” His expression became guarded. “I probably will, then.” She smiled at him. “Listen, don’t you think it’s about time you sorted things out with Susan?”

He considered her question for a moment, his eyes giving nothing away. “If I did think that,” he said slowly, “how do you think I might go about it?”

“Well, you could just figure out what it is you want to happen, and then just ask.”

He nodded slowly. “You mean, I should ask her to marry me?” “That’s the way these things usually happen.”

She saw the uncertainty in his eyes and wondered how else he thought he might resolve things. He was thinking hard about what she’d said, and she could feel him weighing it up, perhaps trying to

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think how he would go about it. She guessed he’d never talked to anybody about this before.

“Coop,” she said, wanting to help him out, “what’s the worst thing that could happen? She might say no, right? But wouldn’t it be better to know that now?”

“I’ve never wanted to rush things,” Coop said.

“Which I think was the right thing to do at first,” Linda agreed. “But sooner or later, you just have to take the bull by the horns.”

Coop thought about that, and nodded as if she was confirming something he’d been thinking himself.

“Maybe you’re right.” He got up. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“Anytime,” she said.

She smiled to herself as he left and wondered if Susan would thank her for what she’d just done. When she got up, Pete was watching her out of the corner of one eye while he scraped down the grill.

“What?” she said.

He looked away. “Hey, I didn’t say a word.”

COOP WENT BACK to the station house and sat down at his desk. Miller was writing up a report.

“Listen, we need to get something sorted out for the weekend,” Coop said. “It can get a little rowdy during the festival.” Miller looked at him blankly. “I mean, we need to figure out who’s on duty when,” Coop explained. “You might want to spend some time with your family.”

“The kids want to see the sled racing,” Miller agreed.

Coop wondered how somebody so young had come to have kids when he wasn’t much more than a kid himself. He’d mentioned it once, and Miller had said that he and his wife had decided to have them early so they would be young with them. Like everything else, Miller seemed to have had this all worked out and planned. Unlike his own life, Coop reflected, which lately had seemed to be going nowhere fast.

“If there was something you particularly wanted to do, maybe we could work our shifts out around that?” Miller suggested.

“There’s the dance,” Coop said. “Think you could manage things around here on Saturday night by yourself?”

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“Sure.”

Coop had his doubts. The festival was a time when people had more to drink than they were generally used to and occasionally it meant there were fights to break up outside Clancys. Still, he reasoned that he’d just be at the hotel if he was needed. He thought back to what Linda had said in the diner, which echoed his own ideas if not exactly in the same terms. Things with Susan didn’t seem to be getting any further ahead. If anything, he’d seen less of her lately, and when he did stop in at her office or meet her in the diner, she seemed slightly remote in some indefinable way. The weekend fishing with Jamie hadn’t exactly worked out, either, and Somers was still around, and so was his damn falcon, despite the talk he’d had with Ellis. Coop decided Ellis must have been too drunk to remember, or else in the end he hadn’t had the balls to do anything about it.

Coop tried to picture himself asking Susan to marry him. Now that he considered it, it seemed like one way to settle things. Maybe if she understood how serious he was, she’d see things in a different light; she might stop holding on to the past and think about what was really the right thing for her and Jamie. The more he considered it, the more it seemed he could make her understand that getting married would probably help Jamie to set himself straight. He’d see that there was no point anymore in pretending that what had happened hadn’t happened, and sooner or later he’d come around. Coop knew how important that was to Susan. All he had to do was ask her.

And the dance, he thought, would be the ideal time.

EARLY IN THE MORNING, THEY CLIMBED “*\ the open slope toward the ridge. There, they paused to view the lake in the valley, surrounded by dark green forest, its surface placid and ice blue. Back the way they’d come, the sky was empty.

A few days earlier, Cully had been waiting on, high above the cliffs, when a lone duck had come across the slope a hundred feet in the air, heading for the valley and the lake below. Michael had watched it approach, wondering if Cully would attack it, but the duck must have seen her and had veered away across the forest. He hadn’t wanted Cully to chase it—he was afraid he might lose her—so he’d begun swinging the lure and called her down. But it had given him an idea.

He knew that the ducks generally came by at intervals, either alone or in small groups, and his plan was to wait until the first of them had passed over before putting Cully up, in the hope she could ambush those that followed. He had to wait an hour before at last a single bird appeared. He and Cully watched it grow larger as it approached; then it flew above them, its wings making a soft whirring noise.

Cully watched it pass, curious but no more than that. Michael was concerned by this, because he’d read that occasionally a falcon trained to fly after the lure will no longer be interested in the more difficult task of catching her own prey. This was unlikely in a wild bird like Cully, but there was also the possibility that maneuvering in the air was more difficult for her because of her injury—perhaps she would

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take the easier option in the end. Either way, there was little he could do. He’d trained her hard over the past week, making her pass repeatedly after the lure until she was visibly tired. Her wing still worried him. Sometimes when she turned there was a distinct waver in her flight, and occasionally when he tossed the lure high, she missed her catch.

He turned to Jamie and said, “This is it. Are you ready?”

The boy nodded. Michael removed Cully’s leash and jesses, then raised his fist into the breeze so that she could feel it flow across her feathers. Her softly inquisitive eye sharpened with purpose and she took to the air, rising rapidly on her long pointed wings.

“Good luck, Cully,” Michael murmured.

Without thinking, Michael rested his hand on Jamie’s shoulder, and together they watched Cully circle, gaining height as she found a thermal to carry her aloft. In the distance, two small shapes appeared, headed on a course toward the lake: a pair of ducks, unaware of Cully’s presence. She was high above them, out over the valley perhaps a quarter of a mile distant, when as they flew over the ridge they sensed danger and abruptly separated, descending to find cover. The lake, however, was a mile away.

Cully seemed oblivious to the opportunity. She couldn’t have failed to see them, but it seemed to Michael as if she were waiting for the lure. Intense disappointment washed over him. Since the day he’d saved her, this was the moment he’d looked forward to: the time when she would become again what nature had intended her to be— a wild and free predator, the largest, swiftest, most beautiful of her kind. Any conflict within him had vanished. His attachment to her paled beside his desire to see her prove that she could survive again on her own.

“No lure, Cully, not this time,” he said under his breath, tightening his grip on Jamie’s shoulder, willing her to strike. Jamie didn’t notice, his attention riveted above.

The two ducks fled, quickly losing height, and it seemed certain Cully had missed her chance. Michael began reaching for the lure, thinking he would call her down and they would try again later, when abruptly she changed direction, breaking her soaring pattern. She began to fly with rapid strokes.

In his mind Michael was with her, up high in the cool air. He imagined her view of the ducks below and could see the green and

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brown markings on their backs and wings as they passed underneath, flying in a separating formation. He was with her as she fixed her focus on the one farthest from the trees and adjusted her position.

Her wings closed, and she turned earthward. As she began her stoop, the soft passage of air across her plumage became a rushing torrent. The sound it made grew to an insistent hurricane as she gathered speed.

She was perfectly streamlined, her shape honed and perfected by millions of years of evolution, the perfect predator, fast, agile, sleek with deadly grace. In command of her element she fell, armed with talons that could deal instantaneous death.

The gap between Cully and her target closed in the space of a few seconds. The duck, aware of the danger, abruptly changed course, turning at right angles, it seemed, banking at the last moment.

Cully turned in the same instant, a slight tremor in her flight. For a split second the two birds seemed to merge, but Cully passed beyond, still moving with incredible speed. Michael knew she’d missed, though it must have been by no more than inches.

The duck turned again, making a dash earthward, seeking cover. Cully came around and rose above it, pursuing from behind, her speed increasing. The duck was headed for a patch of rocks and bushes where it meant to hide, and though Cully was faster, it seemed certain she’d waited too long. Then suddenly she was above the duck, her wings folded, and this time when she fell, she didn’t miss.

They saw her strike, a cloud of feathers, and the duck dropped limply to the ground, where, a moment later, Cully landed.

Neither Michael nor Jamie moved. No more than a minute had passed since Cully had begun her stoop, but it seemed longer. Michael’s heart was beating as if he’d run a mile at full pace, and his system buzzed with adrenaline.

He grinned at Jamie, then let out a whoop. “All right!” Jamie’s face split into a grin from ear to ear, and they both started to run across the snow, their feet sinking so that they sprawled head first in their haste and reached her breathless and panting. She mantled her wings as they approached, watching them warily. Already she was busy plucking her prey, standing with one foot on its breast; the surrounding snow was littered with downy feathers. Side by side, Michael and Jamie sank down on their knees and watched her feed.

On the walk back, Jamie was subdued, kicking his feet in the snow.

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Now that the excitement had worn off a little, Michael guessed Jamie was thinking about what came next. On the way up here, he’d explained that if Cully proved she could survive, they were going to have to let her go. Maybe only now was Jamie really absorbing that, Michael thought. After a while, Michael stopped, and when Jamie noticed, he looked around questioningly.

“You’re thinking about what I said earlier, right?” Jamie looked away, then nodded slowly. Michael could see that the boy was holding back tears, and he struggled for the right thing to say.