Here it is, finally! I don't love it, but it's done, and I love that.

You'll note that the resolution of the arson case subplot is very vague. I do have the whole story of that written out, but it was boring me, and seriously, who cares anyway, right? We just want to know what happened with Walt and Vic.

Thank you again for all the reviews and PMs and reads! Seven days. ; )

Chapter 14

The grayness had risen and expanded. Just before noon, the first swollen drops of late-winter rain splatted against his office window. Two hours later, it was coming down in sheets.

Vic still wasn't back.

He grabbed his hat and left through the side door. As soon as he stepped out onto the wet sidewalk, he saw the truck parked on the other side of the street. His chest tightened.

He crossed the road, cool rain pelting his face, and walked around the vehicle. There was nothing inside—no travel mug in the cup holder, no bag on the passenger side floor, not even one of those hairbands around the gear selector. He felt queasy.

When he crossed back to the station, Clay was leaning against the brick wall under the overhang smoking a cigarette. It was the last thing he felt like dealing with.

"Dude," Clay heckled, "ever heard of an umbrella?"

Walt stopped under the overhang, his shirt soaked and sticking to his chest. He imagined that smug grin had been punched off Baker's face a time or two.

"Don't tell Joey I'm smoking," Clay said.

"I won't have to," Walt said. "She'll smell it."

Exhaling a long white cloud, Clay dropped the cigarette and stepped on it with the toe of his black boot. Walt stared down at the butt until Clay got the message. He bent with exaggerated effort, picked it up, and strolled over to the trashcan. When he returned to the shelter of the building, he was about as wet as Walt was.

"You know, son," Walt said, his hand on the doorknob, "lies don't make for a solid foundation."

Clay flipped his damp, stringy hair out if his eyes. "I'm not sure you're the guy to take relationship advice from."

"Excuse me?"

"Permission to speak freely?"

"This isn't the military, Clay."

"You fucked up, man."

"Excuse me?"

"She doesn't want you to wish her luck, she wants you to ask her not to go."

Walt squinted at Clay's face. He didn't recall anyone being close enough in the parking lot to have heard what he said to Vic.

He cleared his throat. "I'm not sure what you're talking about."

"Sure you are. That's her truck. She never came back in. And you're drenched."

It wouldn't even take a closed fist, Walt thought.

"That's what you're doing to her," Clay said, more serious all of a sudden, less baiting. "It's messed up, man."

Walt started to pull the door open then let it go.

Without looking at Clay, he said, "She's focused on her career. I said I wouldn't get in the way."

"Whatever."

He thought about slamming the kid's skinny ass up against the wall, but it would only be for show at this point.

"She wants you to get in the way."

"Well, thanks for the tip," Walt said. He opened the door and held it with his foot as he turned to face Clay. "Now here's one for you: Think long and hard about who you're willing to take the fall for."

"Qué what?" Clay said.

"Your wife's an intelligent woman. Not really the type to call in a bomb threat so she can spend some quality time with her boyfriend."

It was a semi-wild guess.

"Husband," Clay said, the attitude back and the smile gone.

"Right," Walt said. "Husband."

Upstairs on the landing, Gill was sitting on the bench writing on a legal pad.

"Got what you needed on Hallywall?" Walt asked him.

Gill stood, capping his pen then scratching his head with it. His hair was the color of fire. He looked around then leaned in, and said, voice low, "I don't think it's Hallywall."

"Neither do I."

"Why didn't you say something?"

"Not our case," Walt said.

Gill nodded as though he accepted this as a reasonable answer.

"I guess you'll take a look at Bellamy's phone records," Walt added.

Gill nodded. "But what about these two?"

"Accessories at most."

"To the fires?"

"I'd be surprised," Walt said. "But Josephine knows more than Baker does."

"Yeah," Gill said. "I got that."

Back in his office, Walt took off his hat. Only his jeans below the knees were dry. He was already getting a chill.

He picked up the phone then put it down. He shifted his weight and rubbed his stubbly chin then picked it up again. He dialed Vic's number, his heart pounding so hard he could feel it vibrating in his eardrums.

It rang four times before going to voicemail. He put the phone down and scrunched his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose.

He walked to the door and stood there for a moment. McClanahan was sitting at Vic's desk rubbing his forehead with his fingertips, and Scott Hallywall was still lying curled-up on the cot in the cell, facing the wall, his breathing deep and loud. The door to the reading room was closed; he guessed that's where Josephine was.

"Ruby?" Walt said as quietly as he could and still be heard.

McClanahan startled and turned to glance vacant-eyed at Walt, then went back to his wallowing. Ruby looked up from whatever she was typing on the computer.

"Got a minute?"

Once she was inside, he closed the door. She didn't speak, just looked up at him, braced for whatever strange, unreasonable request he was about to make.

"I need to take a couple of days."

"Are you feeling all right?" she said, touching his arm.

"I'm fine," he said. "Could you just . . . uh."

"I'll get a third deputy," Ruby said. "Mutt and Jeff can manage the case."

"Well, it is theirs."

"Far as I'm concerned, they can't wrap it up soon enough."

"They'll be finished in a few days," Walt said.

"Don't worry about us, Walter. We can manage."

She smiled and started to go.

"Wait . . . Ruby . . . uh." He lowered his voice even more. "Could you give me Vic's address?"

Surprise flashed across her features then disappeared.

"Sure thing," she said.

He opened the door for her and watched as she walked to her desk and leaned over it. She tapped a few keys on the computer, and wrote something on a pink Post-it. Then she came back and handed it to him.

"Thanks, Ruby," he said.

He had a dry shirt to change into, but he'd have to deal with the wet jeans. There wasn't time to go home. Wherever she was, she was getting further and further away by the second.

Sunset was two hours off, but the sky was already dark. It was still raining steadily.

Traffic out on the highway was reacting to the storm, so the drive took almost twice as long as usual, and it was another ten minutes from the highway through the rain-battered town to her apartment complex. It was pink Deco, set back from the road with a huge dead lawn in front. The place was in dire need of renovation.

Hers was #8, upstairs. He waited in the truck for a time, watching for light or movement behind the curtains in the front picture window. There was nothing.

The rain was finally slackening.

He got out and walked up the stairs, nervous. It wasn't that excited-nervous he felt when he thought about kissing her, or when she'd moved onto his lap in the car last night, but more a terrified-nervous, like something bad could come of this, something life threatening, something a person might not want to survive even if he could.

He opened the screen and knocked on the door. There was a dry, menacing lump in his throat.

He knocked again. Then he closed the screen door and leaned back against the railing. After a few minutes, he stepped forward, opened the screen, and knocked again.

Number 7's door opened.

"Can I help you with something?" a woman's reedy voice said.

She spoke to him from behind the screen, but he could see a thick shock of white hair, bright against the darkness.

"Afternoon," he said. "Just looking for your neighbor."

"She's not home," the woman said. "And you are?"

"Walt Longmire."

"The Sheriff?"

"That's right."

"Absaroka County?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

"You her boss?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

"And she didn't tell you where she was going?"

He removed his hat. He should have done it sooner.

"She told me," he said. "I was just hoping to catch her before she left."

"Well, you're about two hours too late."

He nodded again.

"Want me to tell her you came by?" she asked.

"That's all right. I can call."

"Could've called now, couldn't you?" the woman said.

Putting his hat back on, he said, "I was in the area. Figured I'd give it a shot."

After that, he didn't think. He just drove.

When he hit Durant and merged onto 25 south, it was even darker—storm-dark combined with evening-dark.

He kept going.

At Douglas, a little after 6:00 PM, he stopped for gas and dinner. He hadn't eaten all day. Then he started off again, this time on the two lane highway that took him into the northwest corner of Nebraska.

It was no longer raining.

Mile after mile of black, shimmering pavement and the lights of small towns in the distance had him thinking over and over about what he'd done to her, what he kept doing to her, and why it was so hard to stop doing it.

He was the guy who didn't think Branch was good enough for his daughter. Branch, with his rural conservatism and pronounced chivalry, hadn't been good enough. If he'd ever known Branch to pull half the crap on Cady that he'd pulled on Vic, he would have been out for blood.

It wasn't that he didn't know how to show a woman respect. He'd done it with Martha, at least in the beginning and then in the end, and he'd done it with the doctor. For her, he'd put himself out there.

With Vic, though, he was forever on the threshold, opening up to her for only a moment then closing off tight again. It was riskier with her. There was so much more to lose.

Last night he'd told her he loved her, and he'd foolishly expected that to be enough to stop, or at least delay, her forward momentum. In reality, he hadn't offered her anything, not even dinner. He wouldn't have thought that was anywhere near enough for Cady.

He was a hypocrite.

The county seat was a town called Manilla. When he pulled onto the main drag it was close to 9:00, and most of the businesses were dark. The place appeared to be half the size of Durant, but the town center was deceptive. He'd looked it up. The county had twice the residents of Absaroka, and an undersheriff position to prove it.

He stopped at the first motel he came to: Trout Lodge. It wasn't as much a lodge as a strip motel that probably sold more rooms by the hour than the night. He went to the front desk and flashed his badge, said he was looking for a missing person. That got the woman's attention. Vic wasn't registered there.

She wasn't registered at the Jailhouse Motel and Steakhouse, or at Clare's Inn on the River, either. And there wasn't a river.

The last one on Main Street was the Meadowlark Hotel. The lot was almost full. He parked in a dark corner and went inside.

There was a long line for the one frazzled and wiry attendant at the counter.

Fifteen minutes later, he made it to the front. He had his badge in his pocket, and when he pulled it out, the attendant looked a little panicked. His pupils were dilated, and he had beads of sweat on his forehead and upper lip.

"I'm looking for someone," Walt said. "Victoria Moretti. Can you tell me if she's registered here?"

The guy dabbed his upper lip with a handkerchief. "I'm not supposed to do that," he said, as though this had come up before.

"Can I speak to your manager then?"

"I am the manager."

"I don't need a room number. A yes or no will do."

The guy dabbed his lip again, but didn't respond, possibly because he had lost track of the conversation.

In the old days there would have been a registration book open on the counter. He'd only have to glance at it to recognize her handwriting.

"You have any rooms available?" Walt asked, somewhat slower than his normal rate of speech.

"One left."

Walt gave him his driver's license and credit card. He waited. It was slow going.

"Is there a convention in town or something?" Walt asked.

The guy stopped his single-finger typing and looked up. Walt regretted asking.

"Not that I know of."

Ten minutes more and Walt had a keycard and a room number. As he was walking away, the guy said, "Yes."

Walt stopped. "Yes what? Convention in town?"

"No," the guy said.

It was an unusually painful game of charades. Walt didn't ask any more questions.

Attached to the far end of the motel was a bar called Tanya's. The air was balmy and close as he walked along the wet asphalt of the parking lot.

The second he stepped inside, he saw her.

She was at the far end of the bar talking to a guy in a sports coat. Her hair was down, and she was smiling. His stomach clenched.

Before he had time to choose a course of action, she looked up, and the smile fell from her face.

She said something to the guy like, "Excuse me," or maybe even, "What the fuck?" then got up and came over to him, quickly enough that his instinct was to protect himself, take cover. But he just stood there and waited for whatever it was that was coming.

"What are you doing here?" she said, her volume low but her eyes wild.

"I needed to talk to you."

"You couldn't have just called me, like a normal person? Or better yet, talked to me when I was standing right fucking there?"

She was angry. She had reason to be.

"I should have, Vic."

She shook her head. "Well, I'm kind of busy now."

"Oh," he said, glancing at the guy in the sports coat, who was watching them. "You're on a—"

"Seriously, Walt?" She looked at the guy, too, but she didn't wave or anything. "No. I'm here for an interview. Remember?"

"I wanted to say I'm sorry."

"You've said that before."

"It's a new apology. For this morning."

"Yeah, well. That's your thing, right?"

He scratched his head. "I don't want it to be, Vic. It doesn't have to be."

"This could've waited."

"No," he said. "It couldn't."

She crossed her arms over her chest then uncrossed them.

"Five minutes," he said. "I'll buy you a beer."

"I have a beer." She looked up at him for a long time before she said, "Fine."

She went over and talked to the guy for a minute or two, then she came back with her beer, and they sat at a booth close to the entrance. He'd bought her a beer anyway, so now they had three.

She took a sip of hers then said, "What? Speak. What's so fucking important?"

He scratched at the label on his bottle. When he noticed her watching him do it, he stopped, and he said, "I never offer you anything."

"You give me coffee all the time," she said. "And lately, soup."

"That's not what I mean."

She took another sip of her beer. He took a sip of his.

"I've been wanting you to say you'll stay, and you never do because I've never given you reason to."

She was listening now.

"That's not because there aren't reasons."

"You told me you wanted me to stay once before. That wasn't such a great gift."

"Exactly," he said. "Which is why I never wanted to say it again. But I should've said something."

"You shouldn't say something you don't mean or feel," she said, and there was a miniscule crack in her voice.

"I do mean it, Vic. I do feel it."

He took her hand. She tried to pull back, but there wasn't much energy behind it, and he managed to hold on. She didn't try again.

"I want you to stay," he said. "I want you to want to stay. With me. Permanently."

She seemed to have stopped breathing, and blinking.

"However you want it to be. We could talk, but whatever you're comfortable with. We could get a dog, or even a—"

He cleared his throat and squeezed her hand.

"A family. We could be a family, whatever that means. Whatever you want that to mean. And we can work on the undersheriff thing. I'll bring it up to the City Council. I think we have a case for it. The county's population has increased since the last review."

"And the murder rate's out of control," she said.

He smiled.

"I'm sorry I keep pulling away," he said.

"We both keep pulling away, Walt."

"We could work on that. If you want."

"I have an interview at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning. I rented a car and drove all the way out here."

"I understand," he said.

"I'm not saying anything. Just they're expecting me now."

"I know."

They finished their beers, and he told her his theory on the bomb threat and Josephine and Hallywall and Belamy and the fires. She said she'd called Gill earlier in the afternoon and told him to get phone records for Bellamy.

"I told him the same thing," Walt said.

"Warped minds think alike."

He walked her to her room which was at the end of the opposite wing from his. She opened the door, and she took his hand and pulled him inside.

"Vic," he said.

She kissed him before he could say anything else.

"Let's do this right," she breathed in his ear.

"Tomorrow," he said. "You're here, Vic. I could have said something a lot sooner. You're here and you should finish what you came for."

He was afraid she'd be hurt, but she stood up on her toes and kissed him again.

"Despite your objectionable behavior, Walt, you're a good man."

In his own room, he took a hot shower and got into one of the two queen beds. He had to lie diagonally so his feet wouldn't hang off the end.

If he hadn't been so exhausted, the fear of the next twelve hours would have been unbearable. As it turned out, he fell into a deep sleep almost immediately. He awoke, disoriented, to knocking.

When he opened the door in his boxers, sunlight streamed in, and she was standing there in a sharp black suit with a pressed white shirt under the jacket.

"Morning," she said.

"Hey."

He rubbed his eyes.

"You look like a Fed," he said. "They'll be impressed."

"They were impressed," she said, coming in and closing the door behind her.

She hugged him.

"What are you doing the rest of the day?" she said.

"I haven't made any plans."

"I got my room for another night."

He smiled.

"So maybe we could stay," she said. "In the same room."

She stripped down to her bra and underwear and got into bed with him. He lay behind her, holding her, his face against her warm neck.

She was quiet for so long he thought she'd fallen asleep. But just as he was drifting off again, she said, "Walt?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you."

"I love you, too, Vic."

Absently, she combed the hair of his forearms with her fingernails.

"We can talk," she said. "About all of it."

He pulled her even closer.

"I'd like that," he said.