Page 56 of Hell and Gone
“And Phillip? Your own hand?”
“Phillip? He was the one that helped me. Never underestimate hero worship. Phillip woulda done anythin’ I said. ‘N that’s why he had to die.”
Lawrence peeked over the log. Burke was sighting his rifle, aiming for the tree line, worryingly close to Lawrence’s hiding spot. He scrambled sideways, moving into an animal den cut into the dirt behind a tree trunk.
Another shot split the night. The log Lawrence had hidden behind exploded.
“I thought it would be downright poetic. Two lovesick cowboys can’t make it in the world together and end up swingin’ together. Damn it, you were supposed to hang with him, Law. Would have made everything so much fuckin’ simpler.”
“Sorry to disappoint you!” he shouted. He ran before he finished shouting, diving for a boulder that edged against the hillside down to the ranch. Burke fired, and another tree splintered, bullet shattering wood.
Lawrence wasn’t far enough away that time. A missile from the trunk launched for him, stabbing him through the side below his ribs. He fell to the dirt and managed to muffle his scream.
“You know, Carson already had that note written. I didn’t write none of that. He really was plannin’ on endin’ it all sometime. That’s hardly murder, is it? If I killed him faster than he could kill his own self?”
Lawrence fingered his wound, felt the blood, the torn skin. His nerves pounded, shrieking in pain, and he clenched his teeth so hard he thought they’d crack.Carson…
“I don’t believe you!”
“I never woulda put down that he loved you, ‘least in his own way. But he’d already written it out. All I had to was make it easy to find on his phone, once Darby grabbed it from your place.”
Agony seared through him, exploded from his chest. Was it always going to end up this way? Was he always destined to bring Carson’s body out of the mountains?
No. Carson was dead because of Jim Burke.Hewas the murderer.
Anguish was like a knife, sliding through his lungs.
The pain fed his fury. Damn this man. Jim Burke had defined his life, one way or another, since he was a boy. He’d wanted to work for the man, be one of Burke’s golden cowboys. He’d tried, damn it, hehad, but he’d been trying to outrun himself, and the only way he knew how was to fight everything in his path. Jim Burke threw him off Endless Sky before he’d even got his feet underneath him. And that had defined him, to himself, to the whole town, to every gossiper in Timber Creek, to every man whose eyes slid sideways away from him. One way or another, he’d been running away from Jim Burke his whole life.
No more.
He heaved himself up, braced himself behind the boulder. Squared his shoulders. There was fifty feet between him and Burke. Shadows covered maybe a third of that. If he ran fast, if he zigzagged—
Burke was fast with his rifle, but Lawrence had rage on his side.
Roaring, he charged around the boulder, shoulders down, storming the Devil himself as he sprinted out of the tree line. He spotted Burke and watched him swing the rifle toward him. Watched him raise it, press the stock to his shoulder. Lean his cheek against the grain and close one eye.
The roar split the pasture. Made Lawrence’s ears ring and knocked him from his feet. He sprawled on the grass, tasted dirt. Breathed in, and waited for the pain that never came.
A second boom thundered. He looked up.
Everett strode out of the shadows of the hill like a ghost, drenched in blood, his face twisted in savage ferocity. He balanced a shotgun in one arm, holding it steady and aiming straight for Burke. Smoke rose from both barrels.
Burke fell sideways from his saddle. He hit the ground and didn’t move.
Lawrence scrambled to his feet, wincing at the shrapnel embedded in his side. He checked himself, ran his hands over his body. He’d expected to die. He’d expected to be shot to hell.
But Everett had saved him.
He limped to Everett, got to his side in time to catch Everett as he slumped forward.
Everett’s eyes were wild, unfocused. His clothes were burned and stained with soot and soaked in blood. His skin was blackened from the smoke where it wasn’t soaked and stained in crimson and ruby red. He looked through Lawrence, beyond him.
He wasn’t entirely there, not right now. Lawrence set him down in the grass and took the shotgun from him. Slowly, he crept toward Burke, still and facedown in the field. Burke’s rifle was out of his reach. His empty hand clutched at dirt and air.
Lawrence kicked him. Burke didn’t move.
Burke’s horse snorted and trotted away. She was a small thing, light and good for maneuvering over hard country. Slender, though. She was a young horse, and it was a surprising choice for a man like Burke.
