Montana Sky

And as tenderly as if she’d been a child, he tucked her under the blankets. “Put it away for now.” Sitting on the edge of the bed, he stroked her hair.
    “Just let it go and sleep.”
    “He blames me.” Her voice was thick and drunk with exhaustion.
    “Who blames you?”
    “Pa. He always did.” And she sighed. “He always will.”
    Ben left his hand on her cheek a moment. “And he was always wrong.”
    When he rose and turned, he saw Nate in the doorway.
    “She out?” Nate asked.
    “For now.” Ben laid the dress over a chair. “Knowing Will, she won’t sleep long.”
    “I talked Tess into taking a pill.” He smiled wanly. “Didn’t take much talking.” He gestured down the hall. Together they walked to Willa’s office, shut the door. “It’s early,” Nate said, “but I’m having whiskey.”
    “Hate to see you drink alone. Three fingers,” he added when Nate poured. “Don’t think she was from around here.”
    “No?” Neither did he, but Nate wanted Ben’s take. “Why?”
    “Well.” Ben sipped, hissed through his teeth at the lightning bolt of liquor. “Fingernails and toenails painted up with some shiny purple polish. Tattoos on her butt and her shoulder. Looked like three earrings in each ear. That says city to me.”
    “Didn’t look more than sixteen. That says runaway to me.” Nate drank, and drank deep. “Poor kid. Could have been riding her thumb, or working the streets in Billings or Ennis. Wherever this bastard found her, he kept her awhile.”
    Ben’s attention sharpened. “Oh?”
    “I got a little out of the cops. Abrasions around the wrists and ankles. She’d been tied up. They couldn’t say for sure until they run the tests, but they seemed fairly sure she’d been raped, and that she’d been dead at least twenty-four hours before he left her here. That adds up to being kept somewhere.”
    Ben paced it off for a moment, the frustration and disgust. “Why here? Why dump her here?”
    “Someone’s focused on Mercy.”
    “Or on someone at Mercy,” Ben added, and saw by the look in Nate’s eyes that they agreed. “All this started after the old man died, after Tess and Lily came here. Maybe we should start looking closer at them and who’d want to hurt them.”
    “I’m going to talk to Tess when she wakes up. We know there’s an ex-husband in Lily’s past. One who liked to knock her around.”
    Ben nodded and absently rubbed the scar across his chin.
    “It’s a long jump from wife abuse to slicing up strangers.”
    “Maybe not that long a jump. I’d feel better knowing where the ex is, and what he’s up to.”
    “We feed his name to the cops, hire a detective.”
    “We’re on the same beam there. You know his name?”
    “No, but Adam will.” Ben downed the rest of the whiskey, set the glass aside. “Might as well get started.”
     
    T HEY FOUND HIM IN THE STABLES , EXAMINING A pregnant mare. “She’s going to foal early,” Adam said, as he straightened up. “Another day or two.” After a last stroke, he stepped out of the foaling stall, slid the door closed. “Will?”
    “Sleeping,” Ben told him. “For the moment.”
    He nodded, moved down the concrete aisle to the grainbin. “Lily’s in on my couch. She wanted to help with the morning feeding, but she dropped off while she was waiting for me to change. I’m glad she didn’t see it. Tess either.” His usual fluid movements were jerky with tension and fatigue. “I’m sorry Will did.”
    “She’ll get through it.” Ben moved to a hay net, filled it with fresh. “How much do you know about Lily’s ex-husband?”
    “Not a lot.” Adam continued to work, as unsurprised by the assistance as the question. “His name’s Jesse Cooke. They met when she was teaching, got married a couple months later. She left him about a year after that. The first time. She hasn’t told me much more, and I haven’t been pushing.”
    “Does she know where he is?” Ignoring his best suit, Nate filled a feeding trough.
    “She thinks back East. That’s what she wants to think.”
    For the next few minutes they worked in silence, three men accustomed to the routine, the smells, the work. The stables were lit with the morning sun trailing through the open corral door with hay motes dancing cheerfully in every slanting beam. Horses shifted on fresh bedding, munched on feed, blew an occasional greeting.
    From the chicken house a rooster called, and there was the jangle of boots on