by Nora Roberts
“No, it’s not.” Adam would understand, she thought. He always did. “I owe Jack Mercy, too. The anger’s gone now, and so is the grief. I owe him my life, and the lives of my sisters, and so the child I’ll be aunt to. I can be grateful for that. And maybe, in some way I owe him what I am. If he’d been different, so would I.”
“And what about the tomorrows, Will? What about your tomorrows?”
She could only see the seasons, and the work that had to be done in each one of them. And the land, waiting endlessly. “I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you tell Ben how you feel about him?”
She sighed and wished for once there could be some corner of her heart secret from Adam. “I haven’t made up my mind how I feel.”
“Your mind has nothing to do with it.” His lips curved as he kicked his horse into a trot. “Neither does his.”
And what the hell was that supposed to mean? she wondered. Her brow knit, she clicked to Moon and galloped after him. “Don’t start that cryptic business with me. I’m only half Blackfoot, remember. If you have something to say—”
She broke off as he held up a hand. Without question she pulled up and followed his gaze toward the tilting stones of the cemetery. She smelled it too. Death. But that was to be expected here; it was another of the reasons she so rarely came.
But then she knew, even before she saw, she knew. Because old death had a quiet and dusty murmur. And new death screamed.
They walked the horses slowly again, dismounted in silence with only the wind in the high grass and the haunting song of birds.
It was her father’s grave that had been desecrated. What rose up in her was disgust, chased by superstition. To mock and insult the dead was a dangerous matter. She shuddered, found herself murmuring a chant in her mother’s tongue to calm restless spirits.
Then to calm her own, she turned away and stared over the land that rolled and waved to forever.
Not a very subtle message, she thought, as the healing rage took over. The mutilated skunk had been spread over the grave, its blood staining the mound of new grass. The head had been removed, then placed carefully just under the headstone.
The stone itself had been smeared with blood, going brown now in the sun. And words had been printed over the deep carving:
Dead but not forgotten
She jerked when Adam laid a hand on her shoulder. “Go back to the stream, Willa. I’ll take care of this.”
Her weak legs urged her to do as he asked, to crawl back onto her horse and ride. But the rage was still here, and beneath that, the debt she had come to acknowledge.
“No, he was my father, my blood. I’ll do it.” Turning, she fumbled with the clasps on her saddlebags. “I can do it, Adam. I need to do it.”
She took out an old blanket, spent some of her temper ripping it. After digging for her gloves, she tugged them on. Her eyes were bright and hard. “Whatever he was, whatever he’d done, he didn’t deserve this.”
She took a piece of the blanket and, kneeling beside her father’s grave, began the filthy task of removing the corpse from it. Her stomach revolted, but her hands stayed steady. Her gloves were stained with gore when she finished, so she stripped them off, tossed them into the heap. Tying the blanket securely, she set it aside.
“I’ll bury it,” Adam murmured.
She nodded, rose. Using her canteen, she soaked another piece of the blanket, then knelt again to wash the stone.
She couldn’t get it clean, no matter how she scrubbed. She would have to come back with something more than water and a makeshift rag. But she did her best and sat back on her heels, her hands raw and cold.
“I thought I loved you,” she murmured. “Then I thought I hated you. But nothing I ever felt for you was as deep or as deadly as this.” She closed her eyes and tried to clear her lungs of the stench. “It’s been you all along, I think. Not me, but you it’s been aimed at. Dear God, what did you do, and who did you do it to?”
“Here.” Adam reached down to lift her to her feet. “Drink a little,” he said, and offered her his canteen.
She drank, gulping deep to wash the nasty taste from her throat. There were flowers blooming on her mother’s grave, she realized. And blood staining her father’s.
“Who hated him this much, Adam? And why? Who did he hurt more than me, and you? More than Lily and Tess? Who did he hurt more than the children he ignored?”
“I don’t know.” He worried only about Willa now, and gently led her back to her horse. “You’ve done all you can do here. We’ll go home.”
“Yes.” Her legs felt brittle, like ice ready to crack. “We’ll go home.”
They rode west, toward Mercy and a sky stained red as the grave.
T HE FOURTH OF JULY MEANT MORE THAN FIREWORKS. IT meant roping and riding, bronco busting and bull riding. For more than a decade, Mercy and Three Rocks had held a competition for cowboys on their ranches and any of the neighboring spreads who didn’t choose to go farther afield for holiday entertainment.
It was Mercy’s turn to host. Willa had listened to Ben’s request that they move the competition to Three Rocks that year, to Nate’s advice that they cancel it altogether. She’d considered, then ignored.
She was Mercy, and Mercy continued.
So people crowded corral fences, cheering on their picks. Cowboys brushed off their butts as they were tossed out of the saddle, into the air, and onto the ground. In a near pasture, the barrel-racing competition entered its second phase. Near the pole barn, hooves thundered and ropes flew through the air.
A bandstand was set up, draped with bunting of red, white, and blue. Music was interrupted periodically as names and places were announced. Gallons of potato salad, truckloads of fried chicken, and barrels of beer and iced tea were consumed.
Hearts were broken, along with a few bones.
“I see we’re up against each other in the target shooting,” Ben commented, slipping an arm around Willa’s waist.
“Prepare to lose.”
“Side bet?”
She angled her head. “What do you have in mind?”
“Well.” He tucked his tongue in his cheek, leaned down close so their hats bumped, and whispered something that made her eyes round.
“You’re making that up,” she decided. “No one could live through that.”
“Not chicken, are you?”
She straightened her hat. “You want to risk it, McKinnon, I’ll take you on. You’re in this round of bronc busting, aren’t you?”
“I’m on my way over.”
“I’ll go with you.” She smiled sweetly. “I’ve got twenty on Jim.”
“You bet against me?” He wobbled between insult and shock. “Hell, Willa.”
“I’ve been watching Jim practice. Ham’s been coaching him.” She sauntered away. No point in telling him she’d bet fifty on Ben McKinnon. It would just go to his head.
“Hey, Will.” A little blood drying on his chin, his arm around a blonde in girdled-on jeans, Billy beamed at her. “Jim’s in the chute.”
“That’s what I’m here for.” She propped a boot on the rail beside his. “How’d you do?”
“Aw, shit.” He rolled a sore shoulder.
“That good, huh?” With a laugh she squeezed over to make room for Ben. “Well, you’re young yet, kid. You’ll still be breaking bronc when geezers like McKinnon here are riding their rocking chairs. You get Ham to work with you.”
She looked up, saw her foreman was standing on the outside wall of the chute, snapping last-minute instructions to Jim.
“I was thinking maybe you could. You ride better’n anybody on Mercy except for Adam. And he won’t bust broncs.”
“Adam’s got a different way of taming them. We’ll see,” she added, then let out a whoop as the chute opened and horse and rider shot out. “Ride that devil, Jim!”
He careened by in a cloud of dust, one hand thrown high.
When the eight-second bell clanged, he jumped
clear, rolled, then gained his feet to the wild cheers of the onlookers.
“Not bad,” Ben said. “I’m coming up.” With manhood and pride at stake, he cupped his hands under Willa’s elbows, lifted her up, and kissed her. “For luck,” he said, then swaggered off.
“Think he’ll take our Jim, Will?” Billy wanted to know.
She thought Ben McKinnon could take damn near anything. “He’ll have to ride like a hellhound.”
Though the blonde shifted under his arm in a bid for attention, Billy tugged Willa’s sleeve. “You’re up against him in the target shooting, aren’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“You’ll take him, Will. We all put money on you. All the boys.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want you to lose it.” She watched Ben climb over the chute. He tipped his hat to her, a cocky move that made her grin back at him.
When his horse leaped out of the door, her heart did a foolish little roll in her chest. He looked . . . magnificent, she decided. Riding straight on that furious horse, one hand grabbing for the sky, the other locked to the saddle. She caught a glimpse of his eyes, the dead-focused concentration in them.
They look like that when he’s inside me, she realized, and her heart did another roll, quicker. She didn’t even hear the bell clang, but watched him jump down, the horse still kicking furiously. He stayed on his feet, boots planted. And though the crowd cheered, he looked straight at her. And winked.
“Cocky bastard,” she muttered. And I’m hip-deep in love with him.
“Why do they do that?” Tess asked from behind her.
“For the hell of it.” Grateful for the excuse to think of something else, Willa turned. Tess had turned herself out for the day. Tight jeans, fancy boots, a bright blue shirt with silver trim that matched the band on her snowy-white hat. “Well, ain’t you a picture. Hey, Nate. Ready for the race?”
“It’s a tight field this year, but I’m hopeful.”
“Nate’s helping out with the pie-eating contest.” Tess chuckled and tucked an arm through his. “We were hunting up Lily. She wanted to watch, since she helped make the pies.”
“I saw her . . .” Willa narrowed her eyes and searched the crowds. “I think she and Adam were helping out with the kids’ games. Egg toss, maybe, or the three-legged races.”
“We’ll find her. Want to tag along?”
“No, thanks.” Willa shrugged off Tess’s invitation. “I may catch up later. I need a beer.”
“You’re worried about her,” Nate murmured as they zigzagged through the crowd.
“I can’t help it. You didn’t see her the day she came back from the cemetery. She wouldn’t talk about it. Usually I can goad her into talking about anything, but not this.”
“It’s been over two months since Jesse Cooke was murdered. That’s something to hang on to.”
“I’m trying.” Tess shook herself. There was music, people, laughter. “It’s a hell of a party. You do throw amazing parties out here.”
“We can start throwing our own anytime you say.”
“Nate, we’ve been there. I’m going back to LA in October. There’s Lily.” Desperate for the distraction, Tess waved wildly. “I swear, she glows all the time now. Pregnancy certainly agrees with her.”
Nate thought it might agree with Tess as well. That was something else they could start—once he’d finished pecking away at this stubborn idea of leaving.
T HE FIRST FIREWORKS EXPLODED AT TWENTY MINUTES PAST dusk. Color leaped over the sky, shadowed the stars, then bled down like tears. Willa let herself be cuddled back against Ben to watch the show.
“I think your daddy likes sending those bombs off more than the kids like to watch.”
“He and Ham argue over the presentation and order every blessed year.” Ben grinned as a gold starburst bloomed overhead with a crackling boom. “Then they cackle like hens, taking turns lighting fuses. Never would let Zack or me have a hand in it.”
“It’s not your time,” she murmured. That, too, would come. That, too, was continuity. “It was a good day.”
“Yeah.” He covered her hands with his. “Real good.”
“Not miffed ’cause I beat you shooting?”
It still stung, a little, but he shrugged his shoulders. The two of them had whittled away the rest of the competitors until they’d gone head to head in the final round. Then head to head in two tie-breaking rounds. And there she’d squeaked past him.
“By a lousy half an inch, tops.”
“Doesn’t matter by how much.” She looked over, up at him, and grinned. “Matters who won. You’re a good shot.” She wiggled her brows. “I’m better.”
“Today you were better. Anyway, I cost you twenty when I beat out Jim. Serves you right.”
Laughing, she turned in his arms. “I made back the fifty I put on you.” When his brow lowered, she laughed again. “Do I look like a fool?”
“No.” He tipped her face up. “You look like a smart woman who knows how to hedge her bets.”
“Speaking of bets.” Despite the crowd that gasped and cheered at every burst of light, she wrapped herself around him, pressed her mouth warm and firm to his. “Let’s go inside and see if we live till morning.”
“You going to let me stay till morning?”
“Why not? It’s a holiday.”
L ATER, WHEN THE FIREWORKS WERE DONE, THE CROWDS gone, and the night quiet, they turned to each other again. Her dreams hadn’t been full of blood and death and fear this time. Finding him there, warm, solid, ready to hold her, she knew there’d be no shaking dreams that night.
S OMEONE ELSE DREAMED OF A REDHEADED WHORE AND shivered, thrilled with the memory. It had been so easy, so smooth, and every detail played back so clearly.
He’d watched her come back to consciousness, the glassy eyes, the muffled whimper. He’d driven her far from Bozeman, into the sheltering dark of trees.
Not on Mercy land. Not this time, and never again. He was done with punishing Mercy. But he couldn’t be done with killing.
He’d tied her hands behind her back, and he’d gagged her. He wouldn’t have minded hearing her scream, but he didn’t want her to be able to use her teeth on him. He’d cut her clothes away but had been careful, very careful, not to cut her flesh.
He was very, very good with a knife.
While she’d slept, he had taken his money back, and the rest of hers, which had been pathetically little. He’d bided his time, toying with her little pistol, her tube of red lipstick.
Now that she was awake, now that her eyes were wide and she was struggling in the dirt, making noises like a trapped animal, he took the tube back out of her cheap purse.
“A whore should be painted up proper,” he told her, and aroused himself by stroking the lipstick over her nipples until they were bright, blood red. “I like that. Yes, indeed.” Since her cheeks were pale, he colored them as well, in round circles like a doll’s happy blush.
“Were you going to shoot me with this toy of yours, sweetheart?” He pointed the pistol playfully at her heart and watched her eyes roll white. “Guess a woman in your line a work’s gotta protect herself in more ways than one. Told you I’d wear a rubber.”
He set the pistol aside, then tore open the foil package. “Love to have you suck me off again, Suzy Q. I do believe that was the finest blow job I ever paid for. But you might bite this time.” He pinched her red nipples painfully. “We can’t have that, can we?”
He was already hard, throbbing hard, but made himself slide the condom on slowly. “I’m going to fuck you now. You can’t rape a whore, but since I ain’t going to pay for it, I guess technically we could call it that. So we’ll say I’m going to rape you now.” He levered himself over her, smiling as she tried to draw her legs up to protect herself. “Now, honey, don’t be shy. You’re going to like it.”
In two rough jerks, he pulled her legs straight, spread them, locked them. “You’re damn well going to like it. And you’re going t
o tell me how much you love it. You can’t say much with that rag stuffed in your whore-sucking mouth, but you’re going to moan and groan for me. I want you to groan now. Like you can’t wait for it. Now.”
When she didn’t respond, he released one of her legs and slapped her. Not hard, he thought, just enough to let her know who was boss. “Now,” he repeated.
She managed a sob, and he settled for it. “You make noise for me, plenty of noise. I like plenty of noise with my sex.”
He rammed himself into her. She was dry as dust and as unwelcoming as a tomb, but he pumped furiously, working up a sheen of sweat that gleamed on his back under the scatter of stars. Her eyes rolled in pain and fear, the way a horse’s did when you dug in spurs and drew blood.
When he was finished, he rolled off her, panting. “That was good. That was good. Yeah, I’m going to do that again in just a minute or two.”
She was curled into a ball and, weeping, tried to crawl. Lazily, he picked up the gun, fired a shot at the sky. It stopped her cold. “You just rest there, Suzy Q. I’m going to see if I can work up the gumption for another round.”
He sodomized her this time, but it wasn’t as good. It took him too long to get hard, and the orgasm was small and unsatisfying. “Guess that’s it for me.” He gave her a friendly slap on the rump. “And for you.”
He thought it was a shame he couldn’t keep her a couple days like he had little Traci with an I. But that kind of game was too risky now.
And there would always be another whore.
He opened his pack, and there it was, waiting. Lovingly he slipped the knife from its oiled-leather sheath, admired the way the starlight caught the metal and glimmered.
“My daddy gave me this. Only thing he ever gave me. Pretty, ain’t it?” After shoving her onto her back, he held it in front of her face so that she could see it. He wanted her to see it.
And smiling, he straddled her.
And smiling, he went to work on her.
Now there was a trophy of red hair in his box of secrets. He doubted anyone would find her where he’d left her. Or if they did, if they would be able to identify what was left of her once the predators had done with what he’d left behind for them.