Page 35 of Hell and Gone
Lawrence’s eyes flashed. “I hadnothin’to do with Carson’s death.” He looked away. His eyes pinched. “I thought I could save him, when I saw ‘im through the trees. He didn’t come back the night ‘fore, and I stayed up all night, till the first hint of light. Rode out, searchin’.” He shook his head. “When I found him, I grabbed his legs and lifted, as hard as I could. Yelled at him to hold on, just hold on, I’d figure somethin’ out. But his hand was cold ’n covered in mornin’ frost when it touched me. Knocked my hat off. I can still feel his fingers, like ice, runnin’ through my hair.”
Lawrence’s eyes, filled with firelight, met his again. “I was just holdin’ dead weight.”
“Why did he ask you to meet there?”
“I don’t know.” Heaving a sigh, Lawrence shook his head, flicked his eyes from Everett’s and stared into the flames. “I thought—” He cleared his throat. “I thought he was sayin’ goodbye. I thought he was gettin’ ready to leave. We had an understandin’, and it worked, for the most part—”
“What thefuckdoes that mean?” Everett exploded. He sat up, pushing the blankets off his naked shoulders until they pooled at his waist. The night’s chill bit into his skin. “Why the fuck does everyone say that? You two had anunderstanding?”
Lawrence stared at him for a long, long moment.
And then he lowered his eyes, dragging his gaze over Everett’s shoulders, his naked chest. He traced the heave of his breaths, the swell of his pecs. Fell lower, all the way down until they stopped at Everett’s waist, pinching like they wanted to keep going, look deeper. Lawrence’s hands closed into fists, and he swallowed. Licked his lips. Finally, looked away, down into the dirt.
Oh.
Everett’s breath hitched. “You two were lovers.”
“We—” Lawrence laughed bitterly. “Had an understandin’. Cowboys sometimes will help each other out on the range, you see. It’s a hard life, and you only see a woman when you go into town or if you can convince one to marry you and she wants to saddle up to that kind of life. Me, I never was for women. Knew it all my life. But there weren’t many cowboys who wanted to go as far as I did. Or who looked at things out there as anythin’ other than gettin’ some relief.”
“And you wanted…”
“What anyone wants. Someone special.” Lawrence shrugged. “I just wanted that someone to be a him.”
“And you and Carson?”
Nodding, Lawrence said, “We figured it out slowly. Met up in town, drank some beers. Fooled around in the back of our trucks. We were too shit scared to bring it up to each other, but we just kept slowly doin’ more, until—”
That’s why Lawrence had unloaded so much fury on Dell and Aaron. That’s why he’d come for Carson.
“After Howell fired them all, Carson came to me. We thought…” He sighed. “We thought maybe we could make a go of it, I guess. Keep it secret. Turns out we wasn’t all that good together. I mean, good enough. But… It didn’t feel right, us together. And Carson was still wrestlin’ with gettin’ fired, havin’ to leave Endless Sky. Yeah, he was depressed all right.” His expression twisted, fell. “We both knew it. We both felt it. We wasn’t goin’ nowhere together. He’d packed his things up already. We used to ride up to the northern pastures together, just gaze over the hills, the fields. It was so fucking beautiful up there, before—” He swallowed hard. “He texted me to meet him up there when we was both in town runnin’ errands, and I was too chicken shit to go when the time came. I didn’t want to hear it, even though I knew what was what. He was endin’ everythin’. He was leavin’. I didn’t need him to tell me that.”
The fire crackled. A log split in half.
Lawrence’s hands fisted, trembled in front of him. “You think there’sanypossibility that Carson really killed himself? You think… I coulda stopped it?”
He’d been agonizing over the same question, the same thought. Was it a murder or was it a suicide? What about the note? Where did the slender-footed horse come from? Why was the same track at the second murder?
He closed his eyes. Felt his way through to the truth. “No. I don’t think he killed himself.”
Lawrence paced to the other side of the fire. His face was carved from the night, half shadow, half flame. “I didn’t kill Carson,” he growled. “I got history here, and every time someone looks at me, all they see is my past. Gettin’ thrown off Endless Sky, fightin’ until my knuckles are raw, gettin’ in my own way more times than not. Now some people are thinkin’ that makes me a killer. I’ll ask you one more time, Everett: are you one of them?”
Their eyes met over the flames. Everett’s skin prickled, like he was prey exposed to the circling hawk.
“No,” Everett said. “I’m not.”
Lawrence breathed out slowly. He tipped his head back, the long line of his neck, scratchy with stubble, rising and falling as he swallowed. He stared at the star-strewn sky, the velvet river over their heads. “Thank you,” he said, looking down again. “It’s nice to have one person believe in me.”
“I don’t think you’re a killer. I didn’t say anything else.”
A sad smile smeared across Lawrence’s face, like an echo. “You know, I envy you. You get to ride on out of here when this is done. You’ll be nothin’ more than a memory passed around the bar soon, five seconds of someone askin’ someone if they ‘member the time that Stock Detective from Helena poked around. You won’t linger here. You won’t be remembered, not really.”
“Why don’t you leave?” Everett’s breath hitched. “Why don’t you run? If you had nothing to do with this, then get out of town. Leave and never come back. Start over somewhere else.”
“I can never leave. This land, it’s in my bones. Once you come to the Crazies, the Crazies get inside of you. I’ll die in these mountains, I know it.” He pursed his lips, stared at the flames. “I just hope I don’t die this week.”
Silence. The fire spat sparks.
“Odd advice, a lawman tellin’ me to run.” Lawrence peered at him, the kind of stare that could see inside a man. “You know, since you came here, I ain’t been able to figure you out. Not one damn bit.”
