A/N: this one probably makes more sense after reading 'Ricochet'.

A/N2: ending changed a little because... I forgot. Sorry.

Chapter 11 Roll Me Away

"It's beautiful," Dana gushed. Gushed as much as burning lump in her throat allowed. She blinked back tears. Her bike, her worn out, abused and unloved, twenty year old cheap-to-begin-with Suzuki – had been turned into a shiny classic road bike, chromed and even the plastic fairings and windshield were somehow restored to almost new. "You didn't have to do all this."

"Yeah, well." McCutcheon wouldn't look at her.

Cathy stood there, beside her dad, looking like it was a gift for her, not Dana. "We replaced the front bearings – they were nearly gone," she said. She reeled off the whole list of repairs and improvements made, while Dana stood and listened, patient with the teenager's excitement. She was grateful, she was. She was astonished. What she'd done was so easy… and this, this was too much.

"I don't believe it," when Cathy stopped for a breath.

"It's Haven. It's magic." The girl bounced on her toes, until Dana realized what she wanted. She opened up her arms, and Cathy nearly launched herself. They hugged, tight, and meaning it.

"Thank you," Dana whispered. "Thank you. You don't know what this means to me."

"Yeah, well," Cathy said, when they broke apart, cheeks flushing in embarrassment.

Dana laughed. Like father like daughter. Peas in a pod. It wasn't magic, of course, and Dana knew exactly how much work it was. My work here is done, she thought. And then - how odd that thought was.

"Try it out." McCutcheon handed her her helmet.

Put the helmet on, started the bike with a touch and a wish, grinned wide at the music of a well-tuned engine. Far better than her own amateur efforts had ever managed. She'd kept it running, but this was how the pros did it.

He nodded at her to take it out, stepped back.

The renewed power caught her by surprise and she laid a little rubber, but soon had it back in hand. Did it again turning out onto the main road as a demonstration to her gifted mechanic of his fine work. Their fine work. Maybe he'd test ridden it himself, but she doubted it. She knew for certain Cathy was never going to be allowed to ride, but that was for them to work out.

Haven was a small town. She rode up, just up, until she came to a lookout, King's Point. Pulled over there, pulled off her helmet. It looked even smaller from here, spread out below. Quaint, small, impossibly pretty. She'd roamed over five continents and this was just one of hundreds, thousands, of pretty small towns she'd passed through, met a guy, and moved on. Just one guy…

Stop it, she told herself. Just go. Put the bike in gear and go.

She had her bike. The tank was full. She could figure out the rest.

Just go.

He was just one guy and there would be another one along soon enough. That thing that had clicked between them, the one that would hurt when it broke, was broke and it hurt.

Because whatever they had had, it was over now. She didn't know why or how, and somehow that bloody cop was part of it, but something had changed between her and Duke and she didn't know how to fix it.

Help me out here, she whispered to her voices. They were so not talking right now, though.

She'd waited at the table for almost an hour until finally getting up and going to look for Duke. He was gone, the bartender told her. Almost an hour ago. Gone back to his boat. Right after the Chief left.

Left her there looking like a fool.

Worse was when she'd gone to his boat, walking the whole way because she didn't have a bike, following the bartender's astonished directions that she didn't already know where it was. She didn't even know that Duke had a boat, let alone a hundred-something foot rust bucket of an ex-trawler. As a freaking liveaboard.

Worse was the kiss that had turned punishing and hard, and Duke had stumbled, falling hard as she pushed him away. "Not dead yet," he muttered clearly as she checked him for head injuries. She left him there, on the floor in the stateroom, turned him over on his side. The bottle was empty. He deserved whatever came next.

Two days later and she didn't know what came next. She hadn't seen him or heard from him and he wasn't answering her calls. But she had her bike and the whole rest of the world. Haven was such a tiny little part of it and she could and would leave it behind. Leave him behind.

She put the helmet back on. Put the bike into gear and followed the signs out of town.

*.*.*

The road north was blocked by a massive forest fire. All traffic rerouted south and around it. Dana mentally shrugged. She had no preference which way she went.

The road south was blocked by two tipped over semi-trailers, ran into each other head-on, both with live chickens that had broken loose during the accident. The highway was covered in feathers like a snowstorm. Why two trucks had been heading in exactly opposite directions with the same load, Dana didn't know. No traffic was getting through at all. It was going to be hours to clean up the mess.

The road west was completely grid-locked, and Dana stared in astonishment at the TV reports of an actual freakish snowstorm on the road ahead, in July, when she finally stopped at a diner along the way.

"Go home," the waitress told her, taking one look at her helmet and jacket, already breathless from the crowd who'd had the same idea for a break as Dana. "You'll never make it."

*.*.*

Back in Haven, back in Audrey's old apartment, back in Audrey's claw-footed monstrosity of a tub, the water nearly scalding, Dana hugged her knees and tried to shake off the squirming snaky feeling that something really really weird had just happened.

It was coincidence.

Why the fuck couldn't she get warm again, then?

She did not discount the stupidity of truck drivers anywhere, but how could there be a snowstorm and a forest fire on the same day, within fifty miles of each other?

When the forces of the universe aligned to tell her to stay in Haven, surely it was some ridiculous level of arrogance to want to tell them all to go to hell.

It was also a sign of incipient insanity to think that it was all directed at her.

Either she was losing her mind, or the universe was out to get her. Those were her choices.

A knock at her door made her jump. A knock that rattled glass in frame, door on hinges and resonated a wave in the tub. "DANA!"

She answered it wearing only a towel, still dripping. Duke looked her up and down, a disturbing, nasty expression in his eyes that made her feel sick all over again. "Can I join you?" he asked. Intimated. Snarled. Same difference. Like he would regardless of her answer.

She let him in. Let him pull the towel off. Stood by while he pulled his own clothes off, filthy and stinking, then carried her back to the bath. Let him go in first, cringing at the heat, and then crawled in with him, on top of him.

He just held her at first, and she him. They said nothing. Then he started to stroke her face, her back, and she started to cry. He made love to her until she stopped crying, started demanding, started slopping water over the rim with their movements.

He carried her to the bed.

She bit at him. Hit at him with her closed fists. He'd left her, abandoned her. Embarrassed her. She raked her face away from him when he tried to kiss her. He'd tried to kiss her stupid drunk and it disgusted her. He pinned her hands to the sheets with one fist, lifted her leg around his waist and penetrated her with one easy stroke. She cried out and writhed away from him – two days and he'd avoided her and it wasn't. that. easy. He pinned her and held her, ignored her whimpers as he ground her beneath him, harsh groans in his throat, until he came with shocking force, thrusting painfully into her and throwing her over the edge with him.

*.*.*

"Where were you?" Duke asked.

Where was she? She looked at him, astonished. Of all the colossal nerve. Two days without a word and he could question her? "I went for a ride. Where were you?"

"Out hunting with Nathan."

*.*.*

The cabin faced the lake, presenting Nathan with only the back end of a truck and camper, and a tiny window that was probably a bathroom, in the middle of a blank wall, as he drove up.

Around front, Nathan walked the narrow path the threaded there, it was much more comfortable – a wide deck doubled the size of the small building, a small lawn where the weeds were winning, a floating dock where a canoe waited with a single paddle.

Vince Teagues sat behind a typewriter, on the deck, staring out at nothing. Nathan cleared his throat.

Vince struggled painfully to his feet. "Chief Wuornos. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Nathan took that as about as close to an invitation he was going to get, and stepped up on the deck. It was easier than watching the old man try to come down to him. Vince had aged terribly in the year since he'd last seen him.

It wasn't a pleasure for either of them, talking now, and Nathan saw no need to pretend otherwise. But even so, he was moved to pity. They had gone to war, and while neither of them had won, perhaps Vince had lost more. And – like many wars – it had solved nothing. Nathan needed him now.

"She's back."

"Ah," Vince said, not pretending to not understand, and leaned up against the railing. "That's… interesting."

"Why? Why is it interesting?"

"She's early."

"I know that!" Nathan bit down on his shout. He was not here to argue. He needed information. "Why is she back early? Why is she back at all?"

Vince looked out over the lake. "If I knew that…" He shook his head. "I would tell you. I'm not your enemy, Nathan."

Well, they sure as hell weren't friends. Not since he'd found out about Vince's attempt to bring his father back from the dead. All the way back, not just his ghost. Not since four people had died in that attempt.

"You and Sarah…?"

"That," and the big man seemed to somehow shrink, grow even older. "That was a long time ago."

"But you knew her?"

"I asked her to marry me." Huh. Nathan shifted his weight, foot to foot, crossed and uncrossed his arms. He hadn't known that. "But, like I said, that was a long time ago."

"Lucy and the Chief?" That wasn't actually the information he'd come here to get, but … it had been on his mind.

Vince actually smiled, affectionately, at the memories evoked. "She was a firecracker, that one. They were always, always at each other. About everything. Hurricane Lucy. She'd storm into the station and everyone would duck-" He stopped himself, saw Nathan again, and the twenty-first century. "Not like you and me, if that's what you're asking. She was reporter, he was a beat cop. They ran into each other. I don't think it was personal."

Vince was wrong, Nathan thought. His father would have loved a woman who could match him beat for beat, argue and yell and stand up to him. Someone who challenged him, thrilled and surprised him. Someone the polar opposite of his sweet, pliant, helpful mother. Maybe Vince didn't know about his father's ring. They may or may not have gotten around to being lovers, but it was definitely personal.

Lucy had been a reporter. Vince and Dave ran the only newspaper in town. Vince must have worked with Sarah's reincarnation on a daily basis… the same way the Chief had worked with, at least supervised, Audrey. Seeing not-her every day and somehow being okay with that. Maybe the twenty-five years made it different somehow. Made the scar tissue thicker.

"Why did you push me at her?" That was out of his mouth too soon, too. Plaintive.

"You needed to be pushed. You weren't going anywhere on your own."

Nathan clamped down on the rage that threatened to erupt from him. How dare he manipulate – everyone – like they were toys he could play with – for what, just to sit back and watch them cry and scratch at each other, fall in love and suffer and die? For his amusement?

"What about the Crockers? All the different generations?"

Vince nodded. "Now you're getting closer."

"Meaning what?"

"They are somehow at the center of all this. Of the Troubles themselves." Nathan stuck his hands in his back pockets and waited. Vince had a terrible habit of doling out only what was asked. If you didn't know the answer already you almost never asked the right question. Nathan was fed up with his games. Either he would tell him or not, but Nathan was not going to be trapped with words. "Do you remember Ian Haskell?" Vince asked.

"Yes." Blunt and flat. He wasn't likely to forget. He'd absorbed Nathan's Trouble - and even though he'd been threatening Audrey and Duke with a gun, even though he'd murdered innocents and was intent on more - killing him had clung like tar. Slow and sticky and poisonous. He'd only finally shed that with the birth of Natalie, his goddaughter.

"The Crocker curse is evil and subtle. Think about it. Killing someone to save them? The real curse is what it does to the man himself. Even if he starts out with good intentions, just the fact of killing someone – it eats away at even the best of men." He turned a steely eye on Nathan. The body was wracked with arthritis, a legacy of long ago abuse. The mind was obsidian, sharp and dark. "And the Crockers were never that."

"Duke is."

Vince snorted. "Listen to you. You've changed your tune."

"Duke has absorbed more curses –" than he'd killed. "He doesn't have to kill." But he had killed. And this time he'd walked away and left Nathan to clean up the mess.

"How many more before it drives him insane?" Vince stung like a wasp. "How many more before it is just easier to kill than to carry all that weight himself? It always goes like this, Nathan. Simon wasn't evil, not at first. He wanted to help. The same with his father. The same with his father. It's called a curse for a reason. Using it to help, using it at all only makes it worse." He sat back down behind the typewriter. Nathan noticed that the page was entirely blank. "You can't change that. Duke can't change that."

"How many men have you killed?"

"Far too many," Vince answered, almost casually. "I will tell you this. When this new one –"

"Dana."

He nodded. "When she kills Duke, the Troubles will end. I don't know the whys or hows, but the pattern is consistent."

It didn't actually surprise him. He hadn't known, but he wasn't surprised. "Then Haven is in trouble. Because they're already in love. With each other."

Vince shrugged vaguely. "Love and hate are not as distant or different as you might imagine."