Pieces of Sky

by Warner, Kaki

  “Then I fear you’re doomed to failure, because even you cannot control everything.”

  “I don’t try to control everything. Just the important things.”

  “Don’t you? What about Sam? Why haven’t you told your brothers what happened?”

  He frowned over at her. “What’s Sam got to do with this?”

  “You’re not responsible for what happened tonight, Brady, any more than you’re responsible for what happened to him. Or Elena. Or your parents, or any one of the other dozen lives lost to this feud.”

  She wanted to reach out and gently wipe that haunted look from his face. But she sensed he wouldn’t welcome even that small comfort. Brady hoarded his pain like gold, as if the sharing of it would diminish him somehow.

  “Tell your brothers. Relieve yourself of that burden, at least.”

  “To what end?” he said in an exasperated tone. “What would telling them accomplish? And why are we even talking about this?”

  It might lessen your guilt, she thought. It might open the door to forgiveness. To love. To me. “The truth is what it is, Brady. Hiding it won’t change it, and often brings more pain than ease.”

  “And you know this how?” he lashed out in challenge. “By telling your sister what her husband did? By telling Crawford about his son?”

  She stiffened, her defenses coming up. “I’m trying to protect Adrian.”

  “And I’m trying to protect my brothers.”

  The fight went out of her. He was right. She was right. They were both wrong. “Point taken,” she said as she stiffly pushed herself to her feet. She started toward the house, then hesitated. Looking down at his bent head, she said, “But do you ever question it, Brady? Who is it we’re really protecting—them, or ourselves?”

  SANCHO CROUCHED UNDER THE OVERHANG, FEEDING THE tiny fire with sticks and dry grass. He was so furious his hands shook. Who was she, that puta who had kept him from taking what was his? How dare she raise her hand against him.

  He glanced down at the bloody kerchief tied above his knee, and his fury built until it was a white-hot fire burning through his mind. He would kill her. Peel the skin from her body. Stake her in the sun for the ants and scorpions to enjoy.

  With a shaking hand, he pulled the knife from his boot and cut away the fabric to expose the wound she had given him. Jagged and seeping, it showed splinters and bits of cloth embedded in the torn flesh. He poked at it with his finger and shuddered with pain. Cursing through his teeth, he forced himself to clean the wound. When he had finished, he slid the blade of the knife into the coals then reached into his saddlebag for the bottle of tequila.

  As he drank, he thought about the woman with the red hair. Did she belong to Wilkins? His whore? She must be. He smiled, thinking how he would use her in front of Wilkins. Before he finished with her, she would lick his feet and beg him to end her pain.

  He took several more swallows, then braced himself and poured the last of the whiskey into the wound. A cry tore through his throat. He hunched over, gasping and nauseated. After the shaking stopped, he wrapped a rag around the grip of the knife and pulled it from the coals.

  “Madre de Dios, ayúdame.” Teeth clenched, he pressed the glowing blade against the torn flesh. An instant of searing pain, a sizzling sound, then he tumbled into darkness.

  When he opened his eyes, the fire barely glowed and the stars shone high overhead. The pain in his leg was so terrible he could not move, could not think. Shaking and sweating, he stared up into the sky, breathing in that familiar sweet smell of charred meat. It reminded him of Maria.

  Whispering her name, he closed his eyes and surrendered to the pain.

  “HE WAS IN OUR HOUSE, FOR CHRISSAKES!”

  Brady rubbed the heels of his palms against eyes still stinging from smoke. He was so drained he felt like he was swimming through mud. “I know, Jack.”

  “If he came once and got away with it, he’ll come again,” Hank said, his normally mild expression hardening into an aspect as harsh and forbidding as any Jacob had presented.

  “I know.” The image of Jessica huddled over Elena in that fiery hellhole was branded into Brady’s mind forever. After that fiasco at the river, it was like losing her all over again. He sighed bitterly. The two most important women in his life and he couldn’t even protect them.

  “So what are we going to do?” Jack demanded.

  Brady rose and went to the open door onto the porch. He sensed change all around him—in this room, out there, within himself—and for the first time in a long time, he felt doubt. Maybe Jessica was right. Maybe if he stopped holding on so tight, everything would start to make sense again. But for that to happen, he would have to start with the truth and he wasn’t ready for that.

  He went back to his desk. Pulling the bottle of whiskey from the drawer, he took a sip then passed it to Hank. After the bottle made two circuits, he recorked it and dropped it back into the drawer. “Besides the ranch, what does Sancho want? Me. I propose we give him exactly that.”

  Jack snorted. “Pin a bow in your hair and stake you out for him to find? Helluva plan.”

  Brady pulled a map from the drawer and spread it open across the desk. “I say we move the Reservation herd to Vintin Canyon.” He pointed to a spot south of Blue Mesa. “It’s boxed in, broad enough to feed that many cattle for a week, has good water and sheer sides. Easy to guard if he tries to run a stampede.”

  Hank looked doubtful. “Easy for him to hide, too.”

  “But it’s not the herd he wants. It’s me. We know he watches the compound. So I make a show of coming and going to check on the herd. When he sees me ride out, he won’t be able to resist. When he comes after me, we’ll be ready.”

  “Unless he guns you down from a distance,” Hank argued.

  “A bullet wouldn’t be any fun. He prefers knives, remember, and he’ll want to work me over for a long time. I’ll stay in the open, so if he does shoot, he’ll be too far away to be accurate. If he doesn’t, and he takes the bait, he’ll have to leave cover to get me. Then we’ll have him.”

  Hank frowned. “We’ll be spread thin, guarding the house and herd both.”

  “Why are you so sure he wants you bad enough to take the bait anyway?” Jack asked.

  Brady hesitated, knowing what he said next could change everything. He could still dance around it, or he could tell them the truth and let them make of it what they would. “Because he tried once before.” Now that he’d opened that door, a feeling of dizziness swept over him. Sinking back in his chair, he gripped the armrests and tried to keep his voice steady. “He and Paco saw me ride out. They planned to ambush me when I came back. Instead they got Sam.”

  “Alvarez told you that?”

  “And Sam.”

  Jack looked at Hank, then at Brady. “I thought Sam was already dead when you found him.”

  “Not quite.” Jessica’s words echoed in his head. Why had he been withholding the truth? To shield them, or himself? The thought sickened him.

  To distance himself from it, he rose and walked to the porch doorway, turning his back on his brothers’ questioning eyes. He looked out at the lofty peaks cradling the valley and wished he could magically transport himself beyond those ridges to some clean and distant place, where everything was new and untainted and he could begin again.

  But he couldn’t. He’d started this. Now he had to finish it. Turning, he faced his brothers. “I need you to understand. Sam was in a lot of pain. He was dying.”

  Hank studied him, his sharp gaze cutting through all of Brady’s defenses. “Brady,” he said, hesitantly. “What are you telling us? What did you do?”

  “What I could. What he asked me to do.” He watched Hank piece together what hadn’t been said, and when the shock of realization came over his brother’s face, Brady turned away rather than look into those wounded eyes.

  But Jack, never subtle, made him spell it out. “What does that mean, exactly?”

  Staring out int
o the valley, Brady said, “It means I helped him the best way I knew.”

  Silence. Then hesitantly, “You . . . killed him?”

  He forced himself to turn so his brothers could see the truth in his eyes.

  Jack lurched out of the chair. “Christ, Brady! He was our brother!”

  He watched the fury build in Jack’s face. He understood it, and in some odd way almost welcomed it. “That’s why I did it. Why I’d do it again.” He braced himself, expecting Jack to come at him, wishing he would.

  But Jack’s rage and confusion were so great, all he could do was stand there, staring at him, his fists opening and closing at his sides. “But Sam . . . Jesus, Brady . . . how could you?”

  Brady’s own despair coursed through him, made his voice sound harsh and desperate. “I could because he was in agony. Because he begged me. Because it was the only peace I could give him.” Or myself.

  But Jack would never understand that, would never be able to look past his own pain to see why Brady had to do what he did. “If it’s any consolation, Jack, I’ll burn in hell for it.”

  “You’re damn right you will, you bastard!” Jack started forward.

  Hank pulled him back, his expression bleak, his eyes filled with an ancient sadness that added its own weight to the burden Brady bore. “There was no other way?”

  Brady shook his head.

  “He wanted this?”

  “He begged me. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. Don’t ask for details.”

  Whirling, Jack stomped from the office.

  “He’ll get over it,” Hank said after the door slammed behind him.

  “I doubt it.”

  Jack would never understand. Brady accepted that, but it hurt to know that because of his part in the death of one brother, today he had lost another. Feeling drained but unaccountably less empty than he had in a long time, he sagged into the chair at his desk.

  Avoiding his brother’s gaze, he took his time refolding the map. By the time he’d returned it to the drawer, that feeling of awkwardness had passed. He moved on to a safer subject.

  “Jessica said she stabbed Sancho in the leg. He may have left a blood trail. Have a couple of men look for it in the morning.”

  “If he’s hurt, it might buy us time to move the herd.”

  “How’s Bullshot?”

  “He won’t be running for a while, but he’ll make it. We were lucky.”

  Brady stared at the blisters rising on the backs of his hands and realized again how close he’d come to losing Jessica and Elena. “Yeah. Lucky.”

  Hank started toward the door, then stopped. He swung back, his face grim and resolved. “I’ll say this, then we’re done here.”

  Brady pressed his palms against the desktop, wondering if he was about to lose this brother, too.

  “I don’t know how you did it, Brady. I don’t think I could have. But I’m glad he wasn’t alone, and I’m glad he didn’t have to suffer more than he already had.”

  Brady nodded, unable to speak, staring mutely at his splayed hands.

  After Hank left, Brady felt that swell of emotion blocking his throat again. Abruptly he rose and went onto the porch. Bracing his hands on the railing, he stared out at the valley stretching before him, and felt for the first time a subtle easing of that gnawing ache inside him that never seemed to go away.

  JESSICA FELT A SENSE OF DREAD EXPECTATION SETTLE OVER RosaRoja, as if every living thing paused, breath caught, senses alert . . . waiting. Voices seemed muted, laughter stifled, even the everyday sounds of cattle and horses and chickens seemed subdued. With the brothers absent much of the time, the house felt so empty the least sound seemed to echo through the adobe halls. She never thought to admit it but she even missed Bullshot’s annoying bark.

  But she missed Brady most of all.

  One week. Two. She spent her days tending to Elena and Adrian and struggling with the endless task of bringing order to the house and garden. Her nights she spent battling confusion and despair. Should she leave? Or stay?

  She came to no decisions.

  She rarely saw Brady, and when she did, it was as if they had never shared those magical evenings on the porch or an afternoon picnic in the shade by the creek. He was politely distant, his thoughts hidden behind that expressionless mask. And each time she saw that guarded look, it tore away another piece of her heart.

  She didn’t know what to do, how to be. She just knew she couldn’t go on this way. Yet she hadn’t the strength to walk away. Odd, that. She, the one so easily driven to flight, had forgotten how to run.

  Elena, like Bullshot, recovered slowly. Her bruises faded to a ghastly greenish-yellow, and the cut on her brow and her blisters had healed well. Her fear of her brother would take longer to leave her, if ever. Ironically, talking Elena through her fears helped Jessica begin to face her own.

  Late one afternoon, Doc came by with news from the doctor in San Francisco. The surgeon, Dr. Sheedy, wrote that he might be able to do something for Elena’s hip, but required further information before asking her to make the long trip to his hospital.

  Following Sheedy’s instructions and with Jessica’s help, Doc examined Elena’s hip, taking measurements, checking mobility, probing, pulling, twisting, and gouging. By the time the examination ended, Elena trembled with exhaustion and pain, but seemed as determined as ever to see the ordeal through, no matter what.

  Jessica admired her courage. If Elena was willing to suffer the pain and uncertainty of surgery to achieve wholeness, surely she could find the strength to heal her own wounds.

  Before he left, Doc pronounced Jessica recovered and Adrian “a foine lad, blessed with the look of the Irish in his wee thatch of red hair.” She didn’t tell him the color came from Scottish ancestors, not Irish; she was just thankful it wasn’t the lackluster blond of his father.

  Having been declared fit for travel, she still didn’t know what to do, and that inability to decide kept her tossing at night. Unknowingly, Elena offered her a reprieve. Not aware of Brady’s proposal or that horrid scene at the river, she thought Jessica’s reluctance to leave was because of her missing brother. She suggested that if Dr. Sheedy decided to proceed with the surgery, and if Jessica still hadn’t found her brother, they could go to San Francisco together.

  Jessica gratefully agreed, relieved to have another reason to delay a decision.

  If Brady wondered why she made no plans to leave now that she was well, he made no comment. In fact, he hardly spoke to her all, which only deepened Jessica’s distress.

  With Jack not knowing about the surgery, and Brady not knowing about the possibility of her going to San Francisco, Jessica felt trapped in a tangled web of secrets and half-truths. She hated it. But she still couldn’t make a decision.

  How could she walk away from Brady and her daughter?

  Yet how could she accept Brady’s proposal when the thought of the marriage bed sent fear thundering through her veins?

  So she waited. And fretted. And watched Brady drift farther and farther away.

  That sense of anxious anticipation grew stronger as the days marched relentlessly toward that inescapable moment when everything would change and Sancho would be stopped and the feud would end. It seemed they were all poised and waiting, not sure what to expect but knowing the future raced toward them, immutable and unstoppable, the culmination of events put in motion two decades ago.

  Only Brady seemed unwilling to sit back and let the future unfold. Typical of his headstrong nature, he charged full force to meet it. Elena told her about his plan to set himself up as bait to lure Sancho out into the open. The idea terrified Jessica, sent her bolting upright in the night, gasping from nightmarish visions of Brady in danger, in pain, writhing in flames.

  Her first awareness of the rift between Jack and Brady came one evening almost three weeks after the fire. She had just put Adrian to bed for the evening and had gone onto the
porch, seeking respite from the heat. The rockers still sat side by side in the shadows, lonely reminders of better times. Foolishly hoping to recapture that sense of contentment, she sank into the one that so perfectly fit every contour and curve of her body. Closing her eyes, she tipped her head against the high back and rocked slowly, letting her mind drift through bittersweet memories.

  “You can’t keep at him, Jack. This has gone on long enough.”

  Startled from her reverie, she opened her eyes to see Hank and Jack coming up the steps at the other end of the porch.

  “He was wrong, Hank. You know he was wrong.”

  Hank grabbed Jack’s arm and swung him around so they faced each other. “We weren’t there, Jack. How do we know what we would have done?”

  “I damn sure wouldn’t have killed him.”

  “You’d have let him suffer?”

  “Jesus, Hank. He was our brother.”

  With those words, she understood what they argued about, and it unleashed a wave of fury that sent her out of the rocker and charging toward them. “Are you talking about your little brother?” she asked in a voice vibrating with anger.

  They turned toward her, surprise on their faces.

  She stalked forward, speaking as she went, heels hitting hard on the plank floor. “The brother whose every breath was torture, whose poor body was so flayed even the slighted breeze made him scream in agony?” She stopped before Jack, hiked her chin in challenge. “Are you talking about Sam?”

  His surprise became confusion, then outraged disbelief. “He told you about Sam? He keeps it from us for ten years, but tells you?”

  “Perhaps he knew I wouldn’t judge him.”

  “How can I not judge him? He killed our brother!”

  “At the cost of his own soul!” Feeling her temper slipping, she took a deep breath and tried for a calmer voice. “What would you have had him do, Jack?”

  He looked away, his jaw working. “He could have found a better way.”

  “Better for whom? Sam, or himself? Because I assure you, if he had been less merciful toward his brother, Brady wouldn’t be suffering so today.”