Montana Sky (8 page)

He moved fast. When she found herself trapped under him, Willa thought, even a snake rattles before he strikes.
Now she could only be disgusted with herself for being pressed into the couch by a wiry male with blood in his eye.

“You didn't see that coming.” He handcuffed her wrists, hauled her arms over her head. Her face was flushed, but he didn't think it was only temper. Temper didn't make her tremble, didn't put that sudden female awareness in her eyes. “Are you afraid to let me kiss you, Willa? Afraid you'll like it?”

Her heart was beating too fast, felt as though it would shatter through her ribs. Her lips were tingling, as if the nerves centered there were revving up for action. “If I want your mouth on me, I'll tell you.”

He only smiled, leaned down closer to her face. “Why don't you tell me you don't? Go ahead, tell me.” His voice thickened as he nipped lightly at her jaw. “Tell me you don't want me to taste you. Just once.”

She couldn't. It would have been a lie, but lying didn't worry her. She simply couldn't get a word through her dry throat. So she took the other option, and brought her knee up, fast and hard.

She had the pleasure of seeing him go dead pale before he collapsed on her.

“Get off me. Get off, you goddamn idiot. You're crushing my lungs.” Desperate for air, she arched, bucked, making him moan. She managed to gasp in a breath before she grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked.

They rolled off the couch and crashed to the floor. She saw stars as her elbow hit the edge of the table. It was pain and fury that had her tearing into him. Something shattered on the floor as they wrestled over it, grunting and cursing.

He was trying to defend himself, but she was obviously out for blood. And proved it by biting his arm just under the shoulder. Yelping, certain that she was going to take a chunk out of him, he managed to get a grip on her jaw and squeeze. Under the pressure the tear of her teeth loosened.

They rolled, boots clattering and digging for purchase, elbows jabbing, hands grappling. Willa didn't realize she was laughing until he had her pinned. She kept right on
laughing, helpless even to stop for breath as he stared down at her.

“You think it's funny?” He had to squint, then huff out a breath to get the hair out of his eyes. But all in all, he was grateful she hadn't managed to tear it out of his head by the handful. “You bit me.”

“I know.” Her voice hitched as she ran a tongue over her teeth. “I think I've got some of your shirt in my mouth. Turn me loose, Ben.”

“So you can bite me again, or try to kick my balls into my throat?” Since they were still aching—more than a little—he narrowed his eyes, sneered. “You fight like a girl.”

“So what? It works.”

His mood was shifting again. He could feel that hot, slick transition from temper to lust, from insult to interest. The way they'd ended up, her breasts were pressed nicely against his chest, and her legs were spread with his snugged between them.

“Yeah, it does. You being female seems to suit the situation.”

She saw the change in his eyes, teetered between panic and longing. “Don't.” His mouth was barely an inch from hers now, and her breath was gone again.

“Why not? It's not going to hurt anybody.”

“I don't want your mouth on me.”

He lifted a brow, and he smiled. “Liar.”

And she shuddered. “Yeah.”

His mouth was only a whisper from hers when she heard the first piercing screams.

B
EN ROLLED
,
GAINED HIS FEET
.
THIS TIME
,
AS WILLA RAN
behind him she could admire the speed with which he could move. The screams were still echoing when he wrenched open the front door.

“Christ.” He muttered it even as he stepped over the bloody mess on the porch and gathered Lily in his arms. “It's all right, honey.” Automatically he shifted so that he blocked her view and, with his hands stroking easy down her back, looked over her head into Willa's eyes.

The shock was there, but it wasn't the quaking, glassy-eyed horror of the woman he held. This one was fragile, he thought, whereas Willa would always be sturdy.

“You ought to get her inside,” he said to Willa.

But Willa was shaking her head, staring down now at the mangled and bloody mess at her feet. “Must be one of the barn cats.” Or it had been, she thought grimly, before someone had decapitated it and cut its guts open and left it like a gory gift at her front door.

“Take her inside, Will,” Ben repeated.

The screams had brought others running. Adam was the
first to reach the porch. The first thing he saw was Lily weeping in Ben's arms. The quick hitch in his gut had almost as much to do with that as what he saw spread on the porch.

Instinctively he stepped up, laid a hand on her arm, soothing when she jerked. “It's all right, Lily.”

“Adam, I saw . . .” Nausea churned a storm in her stomach.

“I know. You go on inside now. Look at me,” he murmured, carefully easing her away from Ben and leading her around and toward the door. “Willa's going to take you inside.”

“Look, I've got—”

“Take care of your sister, Will,” Adam interrupted, and taking her hand, placed it firmly over Lily's.

Willa lost the battle when Lily's hand trembled under hers. With a mumbled oath she tugged. “Come on. You need to sit down.”

“I saw—”

“Yeah, I know what you saw. Forget it.” Willa closed the door with a decisive click, leaving the men to ponder the headless corpse on the porch.

“Christ, Adam, is that a cat?” Jim Brewster swiped a hand over his mouth. “Somebody sure did a number on it.”

Adam glanced back, studying each man in turn: Jim, face pale, Adam's apple bobbing; Ham tight-lipped; Pickles with a rifle over his shoulder. There was Billy Vincent, barely eighteen and all eager eyes, and Wood Book, stroking his silky black beard.

It was Wood who spoke, his voice calm. “Where's the head? Don't see it there.” He stepped closer. It was Wood who oversaw the planting, tending, and harvesting of grain, and his wife, Nell, who cooked for the ranch hands. He smelled of Old Spice and peppermint candy. Adam knew him to be a steady man, as implacable as the Rock of Gibraltar.

“Whoever did this might like trophies.” Adam's words stopped the murmurs. Only Billy continued to babble.

“Jee-sus Christ, you ever seen anything like that? Spread
the guts all over hell and back, didn't he? Now who'd do that to some stupid cat? What do you think—”

“Shut the hell up, Billy, you asshole.” The weary order came from Ham. He sighed once, took out his pack of smokes. “Get on back to supper, all of you. Nothing for you to do here now but gawk like a bunch of old ladies at a fashion show.”

“Don't have much appetite,” Jim murmured, but he and the others drifted back.

“Sure is a sorry mess,” Ham commented. “Guess a kid might do this. Wood's boys are a little wild, but they're not mean. You ask me, it takes mean to do this. But I'll talk to them.”

“Ham, mind if I ask if you know what the men have been up to for the past hour?”

Ham studied Ben through a haze of smoke. “Been here and there, washing up for supper and the like. I haven't had my eye on them, if that's what you're asking. The men that work here don't go cutting up a cat for frolic.”

Ben merely nodded. It wasn't his place to ask more, and they both knew it. “It had to have happened in the last hour. I've been here awhile, and this wasn't here before.”

Ham sucked in more smoke, nodded. “I'll talk to Wood's boys.” He gave one last look at what lay on the porch. “Sure is a sorry mess,” he repeated, then walked away.

“You've had two animals torn up in a week, Adam.”

Adam crouched down, laid his fingertip on the bloody fur. “His name was Mike. He was old, mostly blind in one eye, and should have died in his sleep.”

“I'm sorry about that.” Ben understood the affection, even the intimacy, with animals well and dropped a hand on Adam's shoulder. “I think you've got a real problem here.”

“Yeah. Wood's boys didn't do this. They've got no harm in them. And they weren't up in the hills slaughtering a steer either.”

“No, I wouldn't say they were. How well do you know your men?”

Adam lifted his gaze. Whatever the grief, it was hard,
direct. “The men aren't my territory. The horses are.” Still warm, he thought as he stroked the matted fur. Cooling fast, but still warm. “I know them well enough. All but Billy have been here for years, and he signed on last summer. You'd have to ask Willa, she'd know more.” He looked down again and grieved for an old half-blind tom who had still liked to hunt. “Lily shouldn't have seen this.”

“No, she shouldn't have.” Ben sighed and wondered how close she'd come to seeing who it was. “I'll help you bury him.”

Inside, Willa paced the living room. How the hell was she supposed to take care of the woman? And why had Adam pushed such a useless task on her? All Lily did was cower in the corner of the sofa and shake.

She'd given Lily whiskey, hadn't she? She'd even patted her head for lack of anything better. She had a problem on her hands, for God's sake, and she didn't need some weak-stomached Easterner to add to it.

“I'm sorry.” Those were the first words she'd managed since she'd come inside. Taking a deep breath, Lily tried them again. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have screamed that way. I've never seen anything . . . I'd been with Adam, helping with the horses, and then I . . . I just—”

“Drink the damn whiskey, would you?” Willa snapped, then cursed herself as Lily cringed and obediently lifted the glass to her lips. Disgusted with herself, Willa rubbed her hands over her face. “I expect anybody would have screamed coming across something like that. I'm not mad at you.”

Lily hated whiskey, the burn of it, the smell. Jesse had favored Seagram's. And as the level in the bottle dropped, his temper rose. Always. But now she pretended to drink. “Was it a cat? I thought it was a cat.” Lily bit down hard on her lip to keep her voice steady. “Was it your cat?”

“The cats are Adam's. And the dogs. And the horses. But they did it to me. They didn't leave it on Adam's porch. They did it to me.”

“Like—like the steer.”

Willa stopped pacing, glanced over her shoulder. “Yes. Like the steer.”

“Here's a nice pot of tea.” Bess hurried in, carrying a tray. The minute she set it down, she began fussing. “Will, what are you thinking of, giving the poor thing whiskey? It's just going to upset her stomach is all.” Gently, Bess took the glass from Lily and set it aside. “You drink some tea, honey, and rest yourself. You've had a bad shock. Will, stop that pacing and sit down.”

“You take care of her. I'm going out.”

Though she poured the tea with a steady hand, Bess gave Willa's retreating back a hard look. “That girl never listens.”

“She's upset.”

“Aren't we all.”

Lily lifted the cup with both hands, felt the warmth spread at the first sip. “She takes it deeper. It's her ranch.”

Bess cocked her head. “Yours too.”

“No.” Lily drank again, gradually grew calmer. “It'll always be hers.”

The cat was gone, but there was still blood pooled over the wood. Willa went back for a bucket of soapy water, a scrub brush. Bess would have done it, she knew, but it wasn't something she would ask of another.

On her hands and knees, in the glow of the porch light she washed away the signs of violence. Death happened. She had believed she accepted and understood that. Cattle were raised for their meat, and a chicken who stopped laying ended up in the pot. Deer and elk were hunted and set on the table.

That was the way of things.

People lived, and died.

Even violence wasn't a stranger to her. She had sent a bullet into living flesh and dressed game with her own hands. Her father had insisted on that, had ordered her to learn to hunt, to watch a buck go down bleeding. That she could live with.

But this cruelty, this waste, this viciousness that had been laid at her door wasn't part of the cycle. She erased it, every
drop. And with the bloody bucket beside her, she sat back on her heels and stared up into the sky.

A star died, even as she watched, blazing its white trail across the night and falling into oblivion.

From somewhere near an owl hooted, and she knew prey would be scrambling for cover. For tonight there was a hunter's moon, full and bright. Tonight there would be death—in the forest, in the hills, in the grass. There was no denying it.

It should not have made her want to weep.

She heard the footsteps and hastily composed herself. She was getting to her feet as Ben and Adam came around the side of the house.

“I would have done that, Will.” Adam took the bucket from her. “There was no need for you to do this.”

“It's done.” She reached out, touched his face. “I'm sorry, Adam, about Mike.”

“He used to like to sun himself on the rock behind the pole barn. We buried him there.” He glanced toward the window. “Lily?”

“Bess is with her. She'll do her more good than I would.”

“I'll get rid of this, then check on her.”

“All right.” But she kept her hand on his cheek another moment, murmured something in the language of their mother.

It made him smile, not the comforting words as much as the tongue. She rarely used it, and only when it mattered most. He stepped away and left her with Ben.

“You've got a problem on your hands, Will.”

“I've got several of them.”

“Whoever did that did it while we were inside.” Wrestling, he thought, like a couple of idiot children. “Ham's going to talk to Wood's kids.”

“Joe and Pete?” Will snorted, then rocked on her heels to comfort herself. “No way in hell and back, Ben. Those boys like to run wild around here and regularly beat the hell out of each other, but they aren't going to torture some old cat.”

He rubbed the scar on his chin. “Saw that, did you?”

“I've got eyes, don't I?” She had to take a steadying breath as her stomach tipped again. “Cut little pieces off of him, and it looked like burns, probably from a cigarette on the fur. It wasn't Wood's boys. Adam gave them a couple of kittens last spring. They spoil those cats like babies.”

“Adam piss anybody off lately?”

She didn't look down at him. “They didn't do it to Adam. They did it to me.”

“Okay.” Because he saw it the same way, he nodded. And he worried. “You piss anybody off lately?”

“Besides you?”

He smiled a little, climbed up a step until they were eye to eye. “You've been pissing me off all your life. Hardly counts. I mean it, Willa.” He closed a hand over hers, linked fingers. “Is there anybody you can think of who'd want to hurt you?”

Baffled by the link, she stared down at their joined hands. “No. Pickles and Wood, they might have their noses a little out of joint now that I'm in charge. Pickles especially. It's the female thing. But they haven't got anything against me personally.”

“Pickles was up in high country,” Ben pointed out. “Would he do something like this to get at you? Scare the female?”

She sneered out her pride. “Do I look scared?”

“I'd feel better if you did.” But he shrugged. “Would he do it?”

“A couple of hours ago I'd have said no. Now I can't be sure.” That was the worst of it, she realized. Not being sure who to trust, or how much to trust them. “I wouldn't think so. He's got a temper and he likes to bitch and stew, but I can't see him killing things for no reason.”

“I'd say there's a reason here. That's what we have to figure out.”

She angled her chin. “Do we?”

“Your land marches with mine, Will. And for the next year you're part of my responsibilities.” He only tightened his grip when she tugged at her hand. “That's a fact, and I
imagine we'll both get used to it. I aim to keep my eye on you, and yours.”

“You keep it too close, Ben, it's liable to get blackened.”

“I'll take that chance.” But just in case, he took her other hand, held them both at her sides. “I have a feeling I'm going to find the next year interesting. All around interesting. I haven't wrestled with you in . . . must be twenty years. You filled out nice.”