Montana Sky

leaning drunkenly against a tree.
    The thick, wet snow covered everything, and the dogs scouted through it, noses buried.
    “He’d hit her.” Adam wrenched open the driver’s-side door, terrified that he’d find blood. Or worse. “There werebruises already on her face where he’d hit her.”
    The rig was empty, with a few drops of blood near the far door. Not Lily’s, he thought. Cooke’s.
    “There was blood running down his face,” Willa reminded him. “She’d given it back, in spades.”
    When Adam turned, his eyes were blank as a doll’s. “I told her, I promised her, no one would ever hurt her again.”
    “There was nothing you could do. He won’t hurt her now, Adam. She’s his only way out of this. He won’t do to her what—”
    “What he did to the others?” Adam bit the words off, buried the thought. Without another word he mounted and rode ahead.
    “Let him have some distance.” Ben laid a hand over Willa’s. “He needs it.”
    “I was standing right there too. I had a gun on him. I’m a better shot than Adam, better than anyone on Mercy, but it didn’t do any good. I was afraid to risk—” Her voice broke and she shook her head.
    “What if you’d risked it, and she’d moved, jerked? You might have hit her instead.”
    “Or she might be safe now. If I had it to do over again, I’d shoot the son of a bitch right between the eyes.” She made herself shake it off. “Doubling back on it doesn’t help either. It could be he’s heading toward the cabin, the direction’s right enough. He’d think he could make a stand there.”
    Willa swung onto her horse. “She tried to fight him this time. Maybe running would have been better.”
     
    L ILY WOULD HAVE RUN IF SHE COULD HAVE . SHE WAS freezing, her shirt soaked through, but she would have taken her chances with the storm and the hills if running had been an option.
    He’d put the gun away, but after she ran the rig into the tree, he changed strategies. She’d aimed for the tree, hoping the impact on his side would jar him enough to buy her a lead. It had only earned her a headlong toss into the snow.
    And then he tied her hands and looped the slack aroundhis waist so that she was tethered to him. She stumbled a lot, deliberately at first to slow him down. But he only jerked her upright again.
    The snow was monstrous. The higher they climbed, the more vicious it became, with bellowing bursts of thunder following the eerie sky-cracking lightning. And the wind was so fierce she could barely hear him cursing her.
    The world was white—swirling, howling white.
    He had a knapsack over his shoulders. She wondered if there was a knife in it, and what he might do to her in the end.
    The cold had sapped her strength, leached into her bones so that they felt like brittle sticks, ready to snap. Fighting him was no more than a fantasy now, running a fading hope. Where could she run when there was nothing but a blinding wall of snow?
    All she could do was survive.
    “Thought they had me, didn’t they?” He jerked the rope so she fell against him. He had the collar of his sheepskin jacket turned up, but still the wet snow snuck in and down his neck and irritated him. “Your horseshit shoveler and half-breed bitch of a sister thought they had the upper hand. I got what I wanted.” He squeezed her breast hard through her shirt. “Always did, always will.”
    “You don’t want me, Jesse.”
    “You’re my fucking wife, aren’t you? Took vows, didn’t you? Love, honor, and obey. Till death.” He pushed her into the snow for the hell of it and rode on the power of that. “They’ll come after us, but they don’t know what they’re up against, do they, Lily? I’m a goddamn Marine.”
    He could plow through this snow just like he’d plowed through basic training, he thought. He could plow through anything and still kick ass.
    “I’ve been planning this for a long time.” He took out a cigarette, flicked on the Zippo he’d turned up to maximum flame. “I’ve been taking the lay of the land. I’ve been working at Three Rocks since I got here, practically right on your skinny ass.”
    “At Three Rocks. For Ben.”
    “Ben Bigshot McKinnon.” He let smoke pour out between his teeth. “The same who’s been bouncing on your sister lately. I’ve given some thought to that myself.” He studied Lily, shivering in the snow. “She’d be a hell of a lot more interesting in bed than you. A fucking tree would be, but