Montana Sky

her home.”
    Adam rose, lifting Lily into his arms. When his eyes met Willa’s, the sun flashed into them as it would on the edge of a sword. “He’s already dead, isn’t he?”
    “Yes, he’s already dead.”
    “I wanted it on my hands.”
    “Not like that you didn’t.” Willa turned and went to her horse.
     
    W ILLA PACED THE LIVING ROOM OF ADAM’S HOUSE . SHE was useless in a sickroom and knew it. But she felt worse than useless out of it. They’d barely been back an hour, and she’d already been dismissed. Bess and Adam were upstairs doing whatever needed to be done for Lily. Ben and Nate were dealing with the police, and her men were taking the rest of the morning to recover after the long night.
    Even Tess had been given an assignment and was in the kitchen heating up pots of coffee or tea or soup. Something hot and liquid anyway, Willa thought, as she paced past the window again.
    At least she’d had something to do before. Streaking down from the high country to alert the police, to call off Search and Rescue, to tell Bess to ready a sickbed. Now there was nothing but useless waiting.
    So when Bess came down the stairs, Willa pounced. “How is she? How bad is it? What are you doing for her?”
    “I’m doing what needs to be done.” Worry and lack of sleep made her voice sharp and testy. “Now go on home and go to bed your own self. You can see her later.”
    “She should be in a hospital,” Tess replied, as she came in with a tray, the bowl of soup she’d been ordered to heat steaming in the center.
    “I can tend her well enough here. Fever doesn’t break before long, we’ll have Zack fly her into Billings. For nowshe’s better off in her own bed, with her man beside her.” Bess snatched the tray away from Tess. She wanted both of these girls out of her hair, where she wouldn’t have to worry about them as well as the one upstairs in bed. “Go about your business. I know what I’m doing here.”
    “She always knows what she’s doing.” Tess scowled after Bess, who flounced back up the stairs. “For all we know Lily might have frostbite, or hypothermia.”
    “Wasn’t cold enough for either,” Willa said wearily. “And we checked for frostbite anyway. It’s exposure. She’s caught a bad chill and she’s banged up some. If Bess thinks it’s worse, she’ll be the first to send her to the hospital.”
    Tess firmed her lips and said what she’d been harboring in her heart for hours. “He might have raped her.”
    Willa turned away. It had been one more fear, a woman’s fear, that she’d lived with during the long night. “If he had, she would have told Adam.”
    “It isn’t always easy for a woman to talk about it.”
    “It is when it’s Adam.” Willa rubbed her gritty eyes, dropped her hands. “Her clothes weren’t torn, Tess, and I think there was more on his mind than rape. There’d have been signs of it. Bess would have seen them when she undressed her. She’d have said.”
    “All right.” That was one hideous little terror she could put aside. “Are you going to tell me what happened up there?”
    “I don’t know what happened up there.” She could see it, perfectly. It was imprinted on her mind like all the others. But she didn’t understand it. “When we found them Lily was delirious, and he was dead. Dead,” she repeated, and met Tess’s eyes, “like the others were. Pickles and that girl.”
    “But—” Tess had been sure that Adam had killed him. That they would put a spin on it for the police, but that Adam had done it. “That doesn’t make any sense. If Jesse Cooke killed the others . . .”
    “I don’t have any answers.” She picked up her hat, her coat. “I need air.”
    “Willa.” Tess laid a hand on her arm. “If Jesse Cooke didn’t kill the others?”
    “I still don’t have any answers.” She shook her arm free. “Go to bed, Hollywood. You look like hell.”
    It was a weak parting shot, but she wasn’t feeling clever. It felt as though her legs were filled with water as she trudged across the road. She would have to talk to the police, she thought. She would have to bear that one more time. And she would have to think, to get her mind in order and think of what to do next.
    Too many rigs in the yard, she thought, and paused to study the official seals on the sides of the cars flanking Ben’s truck. If there had ever been a police rig on the ranch when her father had been alive, she couldn’t recall it. She