Montana Sky

pleased with the survival gear he’d packed—the food and the flashlight, the knife, the matches. He tossed her a blanket, amused when she gathered it awkwardly with her bound hands and struggled to wrap it around herself. He crouched on the floor of the cave.
    “We’ll get a little sleep. Can’t risk a fire, though I imagine those boys are way north of here.” He took out another cigarette. God knew a man deserved a drink and a smoke after putting in a long day. “In the morning, we’ll head out. I figure we get to one of these bumfuck towns and I can hot-wire a car. Then we’re on our way to sunny Mexico.” In celebration, he blew smoke rings. “Can’t be soon enough for me.” He bit off a piece of jerky, chewed thoughtfully. “Montana sucks.”
    He stretched out his legs, rested his back on the wall of the cave while she let herself drowse in the stingy warmth of the blanket. “I’m going to make me a pile of money down there. I wouldn’t have had to worry about that if you’d behaved yourself. Your share of Mercy, that was big bucks for me, Lily, and you had to fuck it up by thinking you could go off and get married. We’re going to talk about that later. A lot.”
    He took the bottle back and drank deeply again. “But a smart man like me, one who’s got luck at cards, he can do just fine down there with those greasers.”
    She needed to sleep, had to sleep to pull her strength backuntil Adam found her. Until she could get away. She curled against the side wall, as far away as the tether would allow, and wrapped the blanket tight around her.
    He would drink now. She knew the pattern. He would drink until he was drunk, and then she’d have a better chance of getting away from him.
    But she had to sleep. It was closing in on her like a fog and the chills were racking her so hard she thought her bones would crack. She listened to the whiskey slosh in the bottle as he lifted it, felt herself drift.
    “Why did you kill those people, Jesse? Why did you do all those things?”
    The bottle clinked, sloshed. He chuckled a little, as if at a small private joke. “A man does what he’s got to.”
    It was the last thing she heard him say.

TWENTY-FOUR
    O N A COLD , WINDY RIDGE , ADAM STOOD , STARING INTO the dark, trying to see into it as he might a mirror. The only relief from that dark was the strong beam of the flashlight in his hand and the beams behind him.
    “He’s veered off from the cabin.” Ben studied the sky, measured the hours until dawn. He wanted the sun, damn it. The morning might bring signs other than the scent the dogs were pursuing. Morning would bring the planes, and his own brother would be up, scanning every tree and rock.
    “He’s got someplace else he’s taking her.” Adam kept his face to the wind, as if it might tell him something. Anything. “He knows someplace else. He’d have to be past crazy to take the mountain on foot at night without a shelter.”
    The man who had ripped two people to pieces was past crazy, Ben thought grimly. But it wasn’t what Adam needed to hear. “He’s gone to ground somewhere. We’ll find him.”
    “Snow’s let up some. Storm’s moved east. She wasn’t dressed for a night in the cold.” Adam stared straight ahead, had to stare into the dark and make himself breathe nomatter how his insides shook. “She gets cold at night. Bird bones. Lily’s got little bird bones.”
    “He can’t be that far ahead of us.” Because it was all he could do, Ben laid a hand on Adam’s shoulder, left it there. “They’re on foot. They’ll have to stop and rest.”
    “I want you to leave me alone with him. When we find them, I want you to take Lily and Will, and leave him to me.” Adam turned now, and the eyes that were always so gentle, so quiet, were hard and cold as the rock on which he stood. “You leave him to me.”
    There was civilized, Ben thought, and there was justice. “I’ll leave him to you.”
    From her post by the horses, Willa watched them. She had lived and worked and survived in a man’s world her entire life. Perhaps she understood better than most that there were times a woman couldn’t cross the line. Whatever they spoke of wasn’t for her, and she accepted that. What was between them on that ridge wasn’t just between men, but between brothers.
    Her sister’s fate was in their hands. And hers.
    When they started back toward her, she took Lily’s blouse and gave both dogs the scent fresh. Shuddering with