C. Box - Cold Wind

Joe shook his head. He said, “So you set yourself up. You made it plain and simple. So simple, that people like your daughter and me would automatically assume there was more to it. That you’d been framed.”

She was quiet, because there was no need to say anything.

“Hand’s investigators learned there had been a contract put out on Earl in Chicago,” Joe said. “That’s what they told him in the courtroom yesterday. If you’d just waited, it would have all been taken care of without you even getting involved.”

She said, “That came as a surprise, but what if they’d botched it?” She looked squarely at Joe. “I don’t count on people to take care of me, I never have. I’m the only one who will take care of me, Joe, and I trust no one but me. If my daughter had learned that lesson, maybe she wouldn’t be what she is today: a part-time librarian in a crappy little town with you as a husband.”

“I know,” he said. “And against my better judgment, I was burning up the miles and my reputation trying to get you off.”

Nodding, she said, “I knew I could count on you, Joe. I knew you’d dig into the wind farm scheme and lead Marcus to it. So even if Bud died or forgot about our agreement or went back on it, I was covered. There would have been reasonable doubt.”

She paused and looked at her hand, assessing the shade of red on her painted fingernails. She said, “I’ve spent my life working simple men like you and Bud.”

Joe reached over and wrapped his hand around the shotgun and pulled it up.

She looked at him with disbelief. “You’ll never do it.”

“I might surprise you,” Joe said through clenched teeth.

“The offer still stands,” she said, suddenly shaken. “If you do this, you get nothing. Your family gets nothing.” Then: “Does Marybeth know?”

“Not yet. But we talk to each other. Imagine that .”

“So you’ll tell her?” Missy said. “You’d tell her that her mother is a murderer after all? You’d tell my granddaughters?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” he said. “It depends on you.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, tears in her eyes. “What do I have to do?”

He couldn’t determine if the tears were authentic, and he didn’t care.

He outlined his proposal.

When he was done, he said, “If you don’t do the right thing here, you’re dead. And in the future if you try to go back on what’s right, I’ll let my friend Nate know who was responsible for Alisha.”

The porcelain mask was off. She said, “You’re such a bastard, Joe Pickett. You’re as conniving as I am.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” he said. “You’re in a class all your own.”

The sounds of motors rose outside. Headlights flashed in through the windows as Marcus Hand and his associates arrived.

“They’re here,” she said.

“And I’m gone.”

Joe slipped into bed as quietly as he could, but Marybeth reached over and put a warm hand on his thigh. With a voice drugged by sleep, she said, “You’re really late.”

“Openers,” he said. “Lots of hunters out there. I also stopped by the hospital to see Bud.”

“How is he?”

“Dying.”

“Mmmmmm, that’s so sad. I’m glad his kids came back, though. That probably made him feel good.”

“He was a simple man,” Joe said. “He took care of his family.”

She yawned and said, “I’m exhausted. This has been a long couple of weeks.”

“Yup.”

“Dulcie called,” she said, more awake now. “She feels terrible how this all went. She said she let her competitive nature get the best of her. It was kind of an apology and I told her we were still friends. That seemed to make her feel better. And she is a good person, Joe.”

“I agree.”

He reached over and pulled her to him. She was wide awake. “Mom called, too,” she said ominously.

“Really?”

“She said she’s thinking about going on a long cruise around the world, then selling the ranch and moving. Something about how everything around here reminds her too much of Bud and Earl. She sounded a little drunk.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” Joe said.

“She said she’s creating a college fund for our girls and a trust fund for Alisha’s ward,” Marybeth said. “She’s going to talk to Marcus Hand about setting them up before she goes. I’ll tell you all the rest in the morning. I’m too tired now. I guess that means her offer for the ranch is off the table, but this is better and she sounded very humble. Even thoughtful.”

“That’s great.” He buried his face in her hair. “I’m tired, too,” he said.

“She was very sweet,” Marybeth said in a whisper. “It was an odd conversation, because it seemed like she had a lot more to say. And it almost seemed like she was saying good-bye.”

Joe didn’t respond.

“I might even miss her a little,” Marybeth said.

“Yeah,” Joe said. “Me, too.”

Nate Romanowski once lived in the stone house on the banks of the North Fork of the Twelve Sleep River. Across the river, to the east, a steep red bluff rose sixty feet into the air. The morning sun lit up the red face of the bluff. The river was so low that it was no more than a series of pocket water pools kept on life support by an artery of underground springs. To the east was a long flat dotted by sagebrush. A two-track cut through the flat from the highway and was the only road to the place.

Nate awoke in his blankets near the trunk of the single ancient cottonwood on the side of the house to discover that the peregrine had found him during the night. The falcon sat high and silent above him on a branch of the same tree. The bird didn’t look down and acknowledge him, and Nate didn’t call to it. It was just there. That was the nature of their partnership.

He kicked off his blankets, hung his weapon from a peg in the bark of the tree, and stood up naked and stretched. Although the stone walls of his house still stood, the rest had been vandalized over the years he’d been gone. The windows had been kicked in. There were two dozen bullet holes in the front door and a few shotgun blasts. Someone had entered the place and started a fire on the floor, which had burned down through the joists. A family of skunks now lived under the floorboards, and an owl nested in the chimney.

Nate walked down to the river and lowered himself into one of the deeper pools. The water was icy and bracing, and he washed his skin and most of the black out of his hair.

Shivering, he dressed in his best shirt and jeans. Then he pulled on his boots. He cleaned and roasted a sage chicken he’d killed the night before. He ate all the meat and tossed the bones aside for his falcon.

Joe and Marybeth were due anytime. They’d agreed to go with him to the res and to help him find the right words to use with Alisha’s mother. He was curious to hear more about the trial, too. He already knew the result. And he knew that Bud Longbrake Sr. had died three days before. He’d never come out of the coma, and to Nate it was a bittersweet ending. An incomplete ending. He was not satisfied.

When Nate heard the sound of a car motor coming from the west, he wasn’t alarmed. He squatted and repacked his things into his duffel bag. When he returned, he’d begin rebuilding his stone house, making it habitable and secure for the winter ahead. He’d need to lay in meat and wood, and repair the well that had been knocked over by yahoos.

Although he couldn’t see the vehicle yet, he recognized the particular sound of the motor. It wasn’t Joe’s pickup or Marybeth’s van.