somewhere else, but that was the least of our problems. I headed down the middle of Huron Street, Vinnie right behind me. The street was empty. It looked even lonelier than the last time I had been there.
One hotel in the center of town seemed to be open for business. Every other building was dark, until we got to the restaurant at the end of the street. I pulled over and came to a stop in front of it. Vinnie pulled up beside me. There were a dozen other snowmobiles parked along the street here. It was obviously the only place to be on a February night on Mackinac Island.
I got off the sled and stretched for a moment. I was stiff and cold, even with the space suit on.
“Is this where we’re going?” Vinnie said. He took off his helmet and shook out his long hair. The snow clung to his suit, making him look like a walking snowman.
“No, it’s up the hill,” I said, pointing to the road that led up to the Grand Hotel. The huge building looked even more foreboding at night. “I just wanted to stop for a second, so we can figure this out.”
“What’s the plan?”
“I’m not sure if we should take the machines all the way up,” I said. “The noise will give us away.”
“There’s a few other snowmobiles here. We won’t be the only people buzzing around.”
“You may be right,” I said. “Although the house is way up there, just past the Grand Hotel. Everything’s locked up tight.”
“If it’s on the main road, I’m sure the riders go up there. Even at night. You know how it is.”
“You’re right,” I said, remembering all the times I had lain awake at night, swearing at the snowmobiles tearing down the trail behind my cabin. “It would be a long hard walk in this snow, too.”
“You need something before we go up?” he said, nodding toward the front window of the restaurant. “Some water? Some food in your stomach?”
“No, I’m good,” I said, which was far from the truth, but I didn’t feel like waiting another minute. I took one glance inside the place, seeing the warm light, the men sitting around the fireplace, other men drinking at the bar. It made me feel even colder.
“Okay,” he said, putting his helmet back on. “Let’s rip it up.”
I brushed the snow off my helmet and lifted it over my head. Then I stopped dead.
“Alex,” Vinnie said from behind me. “Are you all right?”
Inside the restaurant, sitting against the back wall…
It was Natalie.
I didn’t believe it at first. I thought maybe after everything that had happened that day, I was having some kind of hallucination. But then she moved. She looked up and took a quick scan of the room before going back to her drink. It was her.
“Alex, what is it?”
“She’s here.”
“What?”
“She’s here,” I said. “Come on.”
He looked confused as all hell, but he put his helmet on his sled and followed me into the bar. From one second to the next, the air felt seventy degrees warmer. It smelled of cigarette smoke.
“Gentlemen!” the bartender called to us. “Wipe off the snow please!”
I ignored the man. I walked through the room in my ridiculously large snowmobile suit, leaving a trail of snow with every step. The faces were all turning to look at me, but she hadn’t seen me yet. She didn’t know I was twenty feet away from her and closing in.
She didn’t notice me until I was standing right next to her. When she finally looked up at me, it all hit me at once. This was the woman I had spent every waking hour worrying about, the woman I had almost killed myself trying to find. Now here she was, sitting at this table. The light picked up the red in her hair. She stared at me with those green eyes until finally she cleared her throat and spoke.
“You’re here.”
There were seven or eight things I wanted to say. I picked one. “So are you.”
“Hello, Vinnie,” she said, looking past me. “Did Alex drag you all the way out here?”
“He didn’t drag me,” Vinnie said.
“Natalie,” I said, “everyone’s been looking for you.”
“Who’s everyone?”
“All the police in Michigan and Ontario. Your old commander. Me.”
“I haven’t been gone that long.”
“Natalie, he’s alive.”
“That suit’s a little big on you,” she said.
“You already know that, don’t you…”
“Yes.”
“And your mother…”
“Don’t, Alex. Please don’t talk about that, okay? I’m trying to hold everything together here.”
“I was there,” I said.
She looked at me. “You saw her?”
“Yes.”
“I shouldn’t have left her alone,” she said. She looked at the bottom of her glass. “By the time I got back, it was too late.”
“For God’s sake, what’s going on?”
She didn’t look up.
“Natalie, please,” I said. “Tell me why you’re here.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” she said, standing up and grabbing her coat. “I’ll let our old friend Simon Grant tell you.”
Chapter Twenty
She led us both through the bar, out onto the cold street. The snow was falling even harder now. There was nothing but the faint light coming from the front window, a light at the small hotel in the middle of the block, another far down at the end of the street. Everything else was dark. Empty buildings. Mountains of snow.
We stopped to breathe in the cold air, all three of us. Outside the bar it was quiet. A faint wind made the snow swirl around our heads.
“Natalie, what are we doing?”
“You’ll see,” she said. “You have to trust me.”
“What do you mean, Simon Grant’s going to tell us? He’s dead. I mean, not like your stepfather. I went to Simon Grant’s funeral.”
“Please, Alex. Just come with me before you say anything else.”
I turned to Vinnie. “Just go,” he said to me. “She asked you to trust her.”
“Vinnie, you come with us,” she said. “I’d like you to hear this, too.”
She set off down the street, back toward the center of town, moving quickly down the path we had just cut with our sleds. I zipped up my ridiculous suit and tried to keep up with her. I was tired, more tired than I wanted to admit to myself.
“Where are we going?” I said. “The Grants’ place is up the other way.”
“We’re not going to the Grants’ place,” she said.
She stopped in front of the hotel in the middle of the block, the Chippewa. She pulled the door open and held it for us. A woman came to the counter in the tiny lobby, rubbing her eyes and looking past us, out the front door.
“Still snowing out there?” she said. She was a big woman, in her sixties. I would have bet anything she was an Ojibwa.
“You could say that, Mrs. Larusso,” Natalie said. “We’re going up to my room for a while.”
“Are you sure, hon? We have other rooms, you know.”
