Page 34 of Hell and Gone
They forded smoothly, Trigger snorting his way across, throwing his head and whining when he stepped on something he didn’t like. Lawrence calmed him, and Everett stroked his neck, ran his fingers through his mane. He settled and hauled them both out of the river.
“To the high camp, boy.” Lawrence pointed Trigger up the mountain.
Trigger set off on a trot, skimming through the forest and following trails he seemed to know by heart. Trails he seemed to have traveled before, many times.
What was up and what was down? What was right and what was wrong? What was true? What was fact? What did those instincts, those instincts he had been praised for and that had failed him so spectacularly, so fabulously in Afghanistan, say?
What did Everett believe?
He didn’t know anymore.
Trigger, and Lawrence’s warmth, and the sway and rock of the ride lulled him, and before he knew it, Everett had leaned into Lawrence’s chest as his eyes dropped low, and finally, shut.
Chapter 12
He woke sweating,bundled in a cocoon of blankets, and staring into flickering flames.
“You’re up.” Lawrence crouched by him, almost as soon as his eyes opened. “You passed out on the ride up. You were blue when we finally got here. You need more meat on you, Army.”
His throat was dry, ragged and torn like he’d crossed a desert instead of forded a river. “Water,” he croaked. Lawrence passed him a bottle. “Where are we?” he asked, after he drank. He was greedy, and water ran in rivers down his chin, cooling his fire-hot skin.
“At the high camp, like I told you.” Lawrence pointed across the fire. A sagging single-wide trailer squatted in the dirt, the paint flecked and missing in patches, the wood around the base rotted away. It had become one with the mountain a long time ago. “It’s not much, but it’s just a camp. Place to shelter if the weather turns, back when this pasture was used.”
“They’re looking for us by now for sure.”
Lawrence nodded. “I heard a few sirens on the ride. They echo up here sometimes. But we’re so far away we won’t hear anythin’ no more.”
“They’re going to arrest you when they find you. Or shoot you.”
The flames licked into Lawrence’s eyes. He stared at Everett. “You believe I’m a killer?”
A breath, a moment. A lifetime. The space between an exhale and the squeeze of a trigger. Everett searched inside himself, carved up his thoughts, set aside his traitorous body, the ribbon of desire that had unspooled within him and fogged his thoughts. Cleaved muscle from bone and looked deeper inside himself, down to his raw instincts. He sought the truth.
He wanted to trust himself again. He wanted to, so fucking badly.
“I don’t know,” he finally said. “You’ve got the means, motive, and opportunity for it.”
“Do I?”
He counted it off. “Motive: you’ve got reasons to want Dell and Aaron dead and there’s a lot of history between you three.” Fuck, he was sick of history, sick of small towns and the way they got their claws in a man, clung to him for his whole life. Lawrence was more than all the gossip the town made him out to be, more than being ignored and bellowed at. Wasn’t he?
“Means and opportunity? At any time you could have shot and killed Dell and Aaron in the back country and no one would know. There are drug camps in these mountains, too. Braddock sent his deputies up and they found a few, took photos. Could you be working with drug runners? Could you be trying to make some extra cash the easy way instead of the honest way?”
“You accuse me of that again, you better be standing, and you better have your gun in hand, Army.”
“High noon duel, Law? Really?” He held Lawrence’s stone-hard stare. “Which proves my final point: I know what happened between you and Endless Sky. You are a violent man, Lawrence Jackson.”
“I already told you that last bit,” he growled. “And you’d need all your fingers and toes to count up how many hands Endless Sky has thrown off their ranch. There’s a dozen cowboys who have split out of town cursing Endless Sky, damnin’ them all the way to Cheyenne. Burke and Howell are hard men to work for, but they inspire a twisted loyalty in the men they get to stay. It’s a brand of loyalty though. I never understood it, or why Carson was so devoted to ‘em. Nah, I’m glad I was thrown out when I was younger. I’m no maverick to be broken to Endless Sky’s brand. I’m my own man.”
“That you are,” Everett breathed. “But is that man a killer?”
“If you think that little of me, why’d you come along?”
“Killers behind me and you in front of me. What choice did I have?”
“I’mnomurderer,” Lawrence whispered. His words tangled with the flames, rose like smoke to the stars. He breathed like he was confessing, the words drawn from the center of his soul. “I’veneverkilled a man.”
“Ever caused a man to kill himself? Hang himself?”
