AFTER THAT, Shane started talking excitedly, telling Chase about the individual horses and how he’d be riding all of them soon. He, Chase and Gordon drifted off to look at the ones in the pasture. Blue turned on Andie Lee.
“What the hell were you thinking? What’s the matter with you? Have you lost your mind? You’re sending your kid to hang out with a murderer?”
She paled a little under the onslaught but she snapped back.
“You saw his face,” she said. “If I’d killed that hope, he’d have been at loose ends again and probably right back on the drugs. He has a goal, Blue! For the first time since he started all this trouble. What would happen to his recovery if I took that away?”
“What if I killed him instead of his hope? Aren’t you afraid of that?”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“You’d better damn well be sure, don’t you think?”
“I’m as sure as any person can be about another.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“Look,” she said, glancing toward the others as if to see if they were watching, “I’ve been in a fury with Gordon for making Shane take such consequences. You know that. But what if it’s working? What if this really is Shane’s road to redemption? We can’t screw it up now, Blue.”
He threw up his hands. Literally.
“Shane’s talking about you and the roan,” she said quickly. “Blue and the roan. He rode the horse that couldn’t be rode and he has to prove he can do it when he’s sober. And he thinks he can work hard enough to make it all up to you. Isn’t that what we want children to learn—to take responsibility and make amends?”
“Andie Lee…”
“Andie Lee,” Gordon called. “Come here. This filly’s out of that Sunshine mare you used to love so much.”
“Let’s just give it a chance,” she said to Blue. “Okay? Please excuse me.”
“You’re out of your mind,” he said, as she walked away. “I won’t be responsible.”
He looked up to see Gordon’s glance go from him to Andie Lee and back again.
THE NEXT MORNING early, Andie Lee walked Chase out to the rental car to say good-bye.
“Tell Shane ‘bye’ again for me,” he said. “I’m glad he decided to sleep in. We stayed up talking until after midnight.”
“Did he tell you anything I should know?”
He thought about that as he opened the car door and threw his bag into the back seat.
“Nah. Mostly it was, ‘I’m gonna prove I can ride the rough ones so I can rodeo’ and ‘Blue’s gonna teach me how to start colts so I can do that when I retire from rodeo.’”
They laughed.
“One extreme to the other,” Andie Lee said. “He’s gone from not caring what happens to him in the next minute to planning his retirement.”
He straightened up and turned to her, mimicking Shane’s voice.
“Does this mean I don’t have to go to school anymore, Mom?”
She laughed. “It does not. But let’s take it one step at a time, okay?”
“That’s the secret of life,” Chase said. “One step at a time.”
He took her into his arms and gave her a lingering kiss on the mouth.
Then he pulled back and looked into her eyes. “Just like we’ve always done.”
She felt safe in his arms, too, she really did. And she knew Chase through and through. She should’ve married him long ago.
“What d’ya say, Andie Lee?” he said. “Maybe one more step? When Shane’s able to get away from the rehab deal, y’all come to my place for a while.”
She reached up and touched his face. He was the one who’d been through the fire with her. Part of the time.
“Problem is, you’d probably not be there,” she said, and it came easy to smile at him. “Go, Chase darlin’. Ride the life out of every minute…”
Together they finished their old saying, “…eight seconds at a time.”
They laughed and he shook his head.
“Them seconds is gittin’ longer every year,” he said.
Behind Andie Lee, the screened door slammed.
“Gordon,” Chase said, lifting a hand to him. “Thanks for the hospitality.”
“Can’t stay for breakfast?” Gordon called, boot heels clattering across the porch. “Well, come back anytime.”
He strode up to them, his usual stainless steel insulated mug of morning coffee in his hand. He switched it to the left one and shook hands with Chase.
“Good luck,” he said. “Ride safe.”
And then, with one last brush of his lips against hers, Chase was in the car, had it fired up and was gone with only a wave when he turned up the road to the highway.
“Maybe you should’ve married him,” Gordon said. “He made something out of himself after all.”
“Oh yeah, you’ve got twenty-twenty hindsight,” Andie Lee told him. “But don’t flatter yourself. It wasn’t because you called him a saddle bum that I didn’t marry him.”
“Damn,” he said lightly and took a sip of coffee, “and I thought you always listened to me.”
“I’m not going to wrangle with you today, Gordon. I’m feeling good about my child and grateful for my blessings. You’re getting too mellow to be any fun, anyhow.”
That made him bark his scratchy laugh.
“Miss Sass,” he said, and threw her a look as he started to his truck. “Any chance that another one of your blessings is that good-looking Indian, Blue?”
He laughed some more at the look on her face. He was still grinning at her as he drove away.
BLUE HAD EXPECTED it to be a couple of weeks, at least, before Shane felt strong enough even to come up and hang around the barn, much less do any of the work. Instead, after four days and nights at the big house, he had his mother drop him off one morning. He was a help, although for the first couple of days Blue kept him away from the horses, even on the ground, so he could judge how strong he was. He had decided to accept Shane philosophically, in memory of Dannah, and simply to stay away from Andie Lee.
That first day, Shane lasted until noon before he called his mom to come pick him up. Gradually, as he felt stronger, he stayed longer and longer, mostly hanging out with the roan colt, who was accepting him—and no one else, to Shane’s great satisfaction—and watching what Blue did with the other horses.
He didn’t talk a whole lot and when he felt the need to rest, he sat staring off into the mountains. Finally, Blue began to give him light chores, which he did without a word of protest.
Micah—and according to him, Andie Lee—were beginning to truly believe that Shane was coming to his senses and well on his way to being completely clean and sober for the rest of his life. Blue didn’t talk to either one of them about it. He couldn’t forget how many times Dannie had taken a step forward, only to slide two or three steps back.
He couldn’t complain yet, though. Shane was truly sorry about hurting the roan colt, was trying to learn all about everything Blue was doing, and did more work every day.
One morning, Shane arrived even earlier than usual. Blue leaned against the edge of the barn door and watched him climb down out of Andie Lee’s truck, trying to keep from tangling his feet and his spurs. She stayed there and let the truck run until Shane looked back and motioned for her to go on.
Blue had to smile. Shane wore chinks as well as the spurs. He was trying to tighten the strap on the short chaps, keep the saddle pad that he carried folded over his shoulder from falling off and walk like a cowboy at the same time.
“The doctor said I can ride today,” he called to Blue.
“Yeah.”
Shane stopped in his tracks.
“I told Mom not to say anything!”
“She didn’t.”
“I bet she told Micah and Micah told you.”
“You told me.”
Shane walked faster.
“What?”
“The gear.”
Shane glanced down at himself. Then he gave Blue a nod and a grin.
“We got any coffee?”
“Fresh pot.”
Today must be special all around. Shane didn’t like coffee. He usually wrangled a couple of Cokes out of Micah every day and drank water the rest of the time. Maybe he thought coffee went with chinks and spurs.
The thought widened Blue’s smile. He laughed to himself.
He turned and walked with him into the barn, down the aisle to the tack room. Shane went to his saddle, threw the pad over it, and carried them both out to an empty saddle rack in the aisle.
Blue poured two mugs of coffee from the pot on the rickety table in the tack room and followed him out. He offered one of the cups and Shane took it.
“Saddle pads around here not good enough for you?”
Shane was sipping at the coffee. He shrugged.
“It’s for Roanie. The holes let more air to the horse’s back and the stuff it’s made out of takes more of the weight of the saddle.”
“Pretty pricey,” Blue said.
“My dad gave me some money.”
He grinned at Blue, raising his eyebrows as if to invite him in on the joke. “This time I didn’t use it to get high.”
“You can save a lot that way,” Blue said dryly.
“And buy a lot of stuff,” Shane said.
He took a drink of coffee and looked Shane over. He appeared to be happier. His skin had lost its pallor.
What was really different was that his eyes had come alive. They’d been so flat before he got hurt that there’d been no expression there—not even hopelessness. Now they were still twinkling with the humor of his joke. Which he’d made himself.
And he’d lost his sloppy look.
It hit Blue then. Shane looked distinctly like him. Chambray shirt, denim jeans, hat creased the same as Blue’s, chinks and spurs exactly the same type as Blue’s.
The kid was drinking Blue’s coffee when he didn’t even like it.
Damn. Look at it that way, and the morning wasn’t starting out to be quite so funny.
Damn it to hell, he didn’t want another impossible responsibility. Hadn’t he done everything in his power to keep away from it?
This just made it even more of a mistake that he’d taken the boy back into the barn. God knew, he didn’t want—or deserve—to be anybody’s hero.
He could still remember how hard and deep a fifteen-year-old’s hero worship could go. He hoped Shane’s wasn’t as fierce as Blue’s own had been for Robert Cornsilk.
Robert had been a rounder, but as far as Blue knew, he’d never killed anybody. He had stuck to every bronc and bull he rode like a tick on a dog and had won every rodeo he entered, and Blue had thought he could do no wrong. He’d won every fight, he’d held his liquor and he’d danced with the most beautiful cowgirls at the rodeo dances Blue had snuck into long before he was old enough.
The fifteen-year-old Blue had been so hungry for a father that he tried to do anything Robert did. He’d imitated his dress and his manner and his walk and he would’ve died for him, although the most attention Robert ever paid to him was a brief slap on the shoulder and a “How’s it going?” when he barely noticed him hanging around.
Blue didn’t want that kind of power over anybody. But that was the rub. The person wielding it had no control in that kind of a deal.
It must be born into every boy to hunt for a hero to teach him how to be a man. Why didn’t Shane stick to his dad? Chase should be his hero.
The only thing he could do was to keep this whole thing horses only.
“I’m thinking you might do that bay colt some good if you want to get on him today,” he said.
“I was thinking more about Roanie,” Shane said.
His tone was exactly like the one Blue had just used.
Somewhere, deep inside, in spite of all his misgivings, that warmed a tiny corner in Blue. But he wasn’t going to let that warmth grow. If he had influence over Shane, he’d use it, not to build a friendship or anything personal at all, but to try to make a horseman of him.
And to try to solidify this turn of his away from the drugs.
That’d be one for Dannie.
He could hold the kid at arm’s length and still get that done.
“But if you want me on the bay, then that’s okay,” Shane said.
“Good. I don’t want anybody on Roanie yet. Let’s give him a little more time.”
They saddled, mounted, and rode for half an hour or so with Blue coaching Shane and keeping an eye on both mounts’ progress.
“Let’s start getting them used to standing still while we’re mounted,” Blue said. “They need to learn to wait and listen for what we’ll ask them for next and it’ll rest them, too.”
He nodded at the little clutch of aspen trees on the east side of the pasture.
“How about over there?”
They sat their saddles quietly for a few minutes enjoying the breeze and watching the play of the clouds’ shadows on the valley. Shane stared across it at the mountains for a while and then he broke the silence.
“I’ve decided,” he said. “I’m gonna kill him.”
The words hit Blue like pellets of hail on a beautiful day.
“What?”
“Jason,” Shane said, meeting Blue’s eyes without a waver. “Remember him?”
It took a second.
“The guy Gordon fired from the Center?”
“Yeah. That Lininger cabin? That’s where he keeps his stuff.”
Blue drilled him with his eyes. “What stuff?”
“You know. Crack. Grass, meth, pills, whatever.”
“He’s a dealer?”
“Yeah. The whole time Gordon was paying him to keep the ranch drug free. That’s how stupid he is.”
In spite of a little laugh at Gordon, the flat determination was still in his voice. And in his eyes. This kid was serious.
“Jason’s the one who shot me and hurt Roanie. I’m gonna blow out his lights.”
The words bounced around inside Blue’s mind like gravel in a concrete culvert. What the hell?
What was this? A boy. Just a boy, fifteen years old, sitting a fine horse in a soft breeze on a warm, sunny day looking out over spectacular mountains and a beautiful valley…talking about killing another kid.
Jason might be in his twenties, but from where Blue was sitting and where he’d been, he was a kid like Shane. He pierced Shane with a look.
How could that be? To be young and strong and free to do anything you were smart enough and man enough to do, and what you chose was to take another kid’s life?
That went on all the time. Shane had probably seen it on TV.
What he hadn’t seen was the concrete years that followed. Take another kid’s life and lose your own.
And what he didn’t see was that if he really did kick his habit, his future could hold anything he wanted.
Instead of even trying to see that, he sat there mouthing off like some stupid con already in the pen for life. Like Pitbull Crawford, making a vow to a buddy in the prison yard. A vow Blue had overheard, a vow Pitbull had kept.
But Shane saying it out here in the wonderful, wide open space was so insane as to be laughable. Shane’s tone of voice and the look in his eyes, though, told Blue that he was every inch serious.
His guts shrank against his backbone. It was like hearing his own words come out of a baby’s mouth.
Shane couldn’t know he was imitating Blue in that, too.
“Why tell me?”
“Advice. I’ve gotta figure out how to do it. Where’s best, when, stuff like that. And how to get there, since I don’t have a car and Mom’s a witch about not letting me drive without a permit. If I take her truck, she’ll call the police. She told me that and she means it.”
Blue stared at him.
“If you kill Jason, somebody might call the police about that, too.”
Shane didn’t want to hear it.
“I don’t think Jason’ll come back to the cabin, so I’ll have to hit him at the Crazy Creek or the convenience store or at a rodeo or a concert—someplace he meets his customers. Or I’ll have to find out where he’s living. You can help me decide.”
“Me?” Had Andie Lee told him that Blue killed a man? No. Surely not.
She wouldn’t. Not knowing that her child looked up to him.
“I can trust you not to tell. You know stuff. You’ve been around.”
“Where do you think I’ve been?”
Shane shrugged. A shrug like Blue’s.
“At least from Oklahoma to here, Micah said. And you know just about everything and you’re not scared of anything.”
Blue sat, his whole body wanting to shiver in the saddle. He sure as hell was scared of this.
“Have you thought about what could happen when this killing’s all done?”
“Nothing will happen to me,” Shane said. “The police will think it was one of his customers. A drug deal gone bad.”
“The police know he’s a dealer?”
“No. But they’ll find out when somebody calls in that they found his body.”
“Why don’t you call in now and let them pick him up? Save yourself a lifetime in the pen. Or death.”
“He’d snake his way out of it. I mean to make him pay for saying I should get on my horse and ride away and then shooting me in the back.”
He looked up the mountain that rose behind Butte Hill, glowering as if he could still see Jason.
“You could get put to death for murder.”
Shane set his jaw.
“If I call the police, I’ll end up in jail again for horse theft and gun theft. They won’t believe what I say because I’m a thief and they won’t even look for Jason. No. I know his schedule. I can stalk him. I’m gonna make sure he gets his.”
When Blue said nothing, he added, “It’s Roanie, Blue. Think about it. He’s the one who put your horse through hell and nearly killed him.”
“Prison’s worse than jail. Revenge wouldn’t be worth going there. You don’t have a clue what you’re talkin’ here, Shane.”
“I know what it’s like to be in jail and I’m not goin’ back there, much less to prison.”
More of Blue’s own words. The kid must’ve been stalking him.
Shane met Blue’s gaze again with an unwavering one of his own.
“I’m taking care of this,” he said flatly. “For me and Roanie. Whether you help me or not. All I want’s a little advice.”
It wasn’t going to be easy to change his mind. Blue tried to think of exactly the right thing to say. In the right tone.
“Could be a dicey proposition if he got the drop on you,” he said. “He’s a fair hand with a crossbow.”
“He’s jerked me around for the last time,” Shane said. “He’ll not get the drop on me again.”
Blue’s mouth felt too stiff to speak. His brain was too stiff. Here was another situation, like with Dannie, where he was trying to clean up after a parent’s mistakes. It made him mad as hell. Hadn’t he sworn never to do that again?
Shane copying his clothes and his gear and his methods and his tone of voice were one thing but this was another. An inexplicable thing.
How could he be imitating something he didn’t even know about Blue?
Was Blue wearing the mark of Cain on his forehead for wannabe killers to see? Or MURDER branded into his hide like in the legend of the murder steer?
Was this some kind of a sign?
BLUE STOOD IT as long as he could, then he said he had an errand in town and borrowed Micah’s truck. He went into the house to change his shirt and called the number for Andie Lee’s cell phone that the old man had at the top of his list beside the phone.
She sounded pretty happy when she answered. He hated to burst her bubble, but it had to be done. Face to face.
“I have to run into town,” he said. “Want to ride along?”
There was a silence.
“Blue?”
She was probably afraid to go out with him alone.
No, if that were true she wouldn’t let her son spend every day with him.
He should’ve identified himself, for God’s sake. And it was a pretty strange invitation, considering that they’d both been avoiding being alone with each other every day when she came to the barn to ride.
Before he could say “sorry,” she was saying, “If we can grab some lunch. I skipped breakfast.”
“Deal.”
“Want me to come up there?”
He had to move, had to do something this minute.
“No, I’ll pick you up. At the main house?”
“I’m here now.”
“Meet me out front.”
And then he was in the little truck cab with her, breathing her scent and thinking about how she’d looked and felt in his bed and glancing at her beautiful profile while he drove the old truck up out of the valley and headed for the highway. Listening to her and talking to her and trying to think where to start when he told her—again—to take her son off his hands. That he didn’t want any part of trying to keep Shane from killing someone.
By the way, Andie Lee, your kid is plotting a murder.
He had to tell her. He would tell her, right now, in just a minute. She had a right to know.
But all the unaccustomed feelings and dark thoughts roiling in his gut had sealed his lips. They’d brought up memories that had thrown him back into the old habits of not wanting to talk, the habits forged by ten years of speaking only briefly to only a few other men and never saying anything important.
This was important. And it had to be said.
He just wanted to get it over with and be rid of Shane. He had enough guilt already.
But he couldn’t even form the words on his tongue. Andie Lee was happy right now but she wouldn’t be for long.
They talked about the horses and Roanie’s wounds and one of Gordon’s best broodmares who had colicked the night before. Blue drove beneath the crosspiece of the gate and out onto the highway. He needed to tell her now and get it over with.
As they drove along, she was chattering on about how hopeful she was getting to be because Shane was still clean and sober. How much Shane was enjoying riding with Blue. How much he looked up to Blue.
Blue lowered his foot on the gas and gave thanks for all the engine noise. Then he lifted it again.
Up there, on the side of the road, a sign on top of a log building. Neon sign: THE CRAZY CREEK. Cars and trucks outside. He had promised her lunch.
Blue slowed and pulled into the parking lot. Shane had named this as one of Jason’s hangouts.
“Good choice,” Andie Lee said. “The food’s better here than any place around.”
Stepping into the Crazy Creek was like stepping back in time. A long, mirrored mahogany bar ran along the wall facing the front door. Heads of elk, moose, deer, buffalo, long-horns and bighorn sheep loomed above and all around it. And on the side wall. A large dance floor stretched in front of it.
The rest of the place was a warren of secluded, high-backed booths and tables in corners. Perfect for conducting private business.
Blue looked around for Jason as they followed the hostess to a booth. If he saw him, what would he do? Tell him to watch his back? Kill him himself?
They sat down, looked at the menu, and ordered buffalo burgers and seasoned fries. Once the waitress was gone, Blue let himself lean back into the padded leather of the seat. He took a deep breath and let go a little.
They could eat first. She hadn’t had any breakfast and he felt like he’d been through some kind of an emotional wringer this morning.
Plus he’d do a better job of telling her if he had something in his stomach besides butterflies. And she’d be in better shape to hear it.
Andie Lee shifted around and curled her legs up under her on her side of the booth, then folded her long arms on the table to lean across it toward him.
“You look great,” she said. “I hate it when you avoid me.”
He laughed. It was so unexpected but so typical of her usual directness that he shouldn’t have been surprised at all.
“I thought you were avoiding me,” he said.
She laughed at that.
“You are so full of it,” she said, smiling, teasing him. “You know you’re the one who started it.”
“Andie Lee.”
He just shook his head. He couldn’t think what to say with her looking at him, smiling that way. Why did he have to catch her in this great mood? Now he’d have to be the one to ruin it.
“You know who I really am, now,” he said. “You ought to have more sense.”
“One bad mistake doesn’t make you who you really are,” she said, getting serious.
“I don’t understand why you aren’t afraid of me,” he said. “I expected you to jump out of the truck and go running to the house or at the very least tell me never to speak to you again.”
Her solemn gray gaze held his.
“Why did you do it, Blue?”
“He needed killing.”
She was looking at him like she wanted to see into his soul.
He turned up his open hands helplessly. “I don’t know how to put it into words,” he said, “but sometimes a man has to do the hard things.”
She waited for him to go on.
He didn’t know whether he could talk any more about the feelings that went so deep they lived in his bones and drove his life.
“To bring justice,” he said. “To protect the weak ones. To keep the good so evil won’t take over.”
“But it didn’t save your sister,” she said. “And you went to prison.”
“It stopped one scumbag,” he said.
She nodded. “There’ve been times I’ve wished with a passion that I could take revenge on whoever got Shane started,” she said. “I mean, I hated him. But I was thinking more along the lines of calling the police or the DEA.”
“Yeah,” he said dryly, “that’d be another way to go.”
They smiled, but the dark memories were lapping at the edges of their minds. They both saw it was true for the other. Andie Lee reached across the table and took both his hands.
He knew it well: that deep, long yearning to find something to hold on to.
“I definitely would’ve turned them in—every last one who ever sold Shane one gram of anything—but I never could find out where he was getting it.”
Let me tell you where he’s been getting it lately. And what he’s planning to do about it.
But the waitress brought their tea right then and said the food would be there soon and there was no sense ruining a nice lunch.
“What’ve you been doing this morning?” he asked. “How come you missed breakfast?”
She shifted her fingers in his palms so she could caress the back of his hand with her thumb. The slow rhythm of it started sending a calmness into his gut.
And a steady thrum of excitement, too.
“I was painting,” she said. “Trying to catch the dawn on the mountains right at the minute it turns them rose. And then I just kept on going.”
His hands tightened a little on hers, although he didn’t intend it.
“I didn’t know you’re a painter,” he said.
Bowman, you idiot. There are a million things you don’t know about her.
“What?” she said. “Do you paint, too?”
She knew by the way he said it. As soon as he said it, she knew. And there was nothing in the words themselves to tell her.
That means nothing. Stop looking for signs in everything that anybody says. And stop this getting interested in her. All you have is a few minutes more, because when you tell her the news, she won’t be smiling anymore.
“I’m a rank amateur,” she said. “And not much good. But it takes me away from my real life and I love it. Some counselor suggested it early on in my troubles with Shane.”
He nodded.
“What about you?” she asked.
For ten years, it was my life. It saved my sanity.
“I’ve done some. Did you get the rose?”
“Let’s say I’m working on it,” she said. “But I came closer than I’ve ever done.”
“That’s all you can hope for,” he said as their food arrived. “To come closer every time.”
They ate heartily and talked about painting, which made him miss it and soothed him at the same time. That refuge had always been there. He could always fall into it and forget.
When they got back into the truck, Andie Lee said, “Where’s your errand?”
Blue stared at her, blank for a moment.
“You said you have to run into town.”
“Oh. Yeah. My errand.”
She knew him too well.
She laughed. “It’s okay, Blue. You’re a terrible liar. There’s nothing wrong with a workaholic wanting to get away from the job on a beautiful day like this one.”
If only you knew what a liar I am. I do it best without saying a word.
He drove slowly back toward the ranch. They talked some, but the sun through the windshield and food in their stomachs made them drowsy and the time together had made them comfortable with each other again.
Just like that. It was so strange how he could feel so good, so…right…when he was with her.
He would give anything to while away the long afternoon with her in his bed. Or out of it.
It would upset her so much, what he was about to tell her. He’d wait until they were back on the ranch.
When he drove beneath the crossbar of the gate at the highway and started down the winding road, he watched for a good spot to pull off and talk. Three or four different creeks ran near or across the road and when he came to the spot where he’d glimpsed the deer the day Micah had brought him onto the Splendid Sky, he saw a beautiful little open spot on the opposite side.
He drove off into it.
“Let’s get out and walk a little,” he said. “Look at the creek.”
She looked at him. He made his eyes meet hers.
Was she wanting to while away the long afternoon the same way he was?
She sensed something coming, he could tell. But without a word, she just nodded and opened her door.
They walked along the creek to a big rock outcropping and stopped. He leaned back against it and then he couldn’t stop himself from taking both her hands. This would be so hard for her to hear.
“Andie Lee,” he said. “I have to talk to you.”
She moved up closer, her eyes wide.
“No, you don’t. I understand. There at the Crazy Creek, when I said that about calling the police, I didn’t mean that to sound sanctimonious.”
She squeezed his hands as if to make sure he was listening.
“There’s not a family member or a loved one of any addict that hasn’t wanted to kill the pusher. Not one. And not one who’d have hesitated to do it, given the right moment, the weapon and the opportunity all at the same time.”
It took him a heartbeat or two to change gears. Then when he could hear what she was saying, he yearned toward her voice. The loyalty in it. Loyalty to him. He didn’t even care what the words were.
He wanted her in his arms, in his bed, laughing with him, making love with him at that very moment.
And she wanted it, too. He knew it.
What made him happiest was that she understood. She knew him. She liked him. For more than sex. The real truth about him hadn’t run her off the way he’d intended it to do. She still trusted him. She still wanted him.
There was a real possibility trembling between them—in the look they shared, in the very air. They might, just might, have something that could grow and last a long time. Maybe forever.
A terrible realization washed through him with the force of a tidal wave: he would have to choose between her love and his revenge on Gordon. That she would never forgive. He slammed his mind against the thought.
“Evidently, some recovering addicts feel that same way,” he said.
Honesty, Bowman. Blurt it out.
“Shane told me this morning that he’s planning to kill Jason.”
Her eyes widened and her face paled as she tried to get her mind around the totally unexpected. She gripped his hands tighter and came closer to him still.
“What? Shane? Jason?”
“The director of the Center who called the cops on Shane that day. The one Gordon fired. Remember him? Shane says he was a pusher in disguise.”
Her mouth fell open.
“And Shane’s wanting to kill him?”
“He’s trying to make plans. Jason’s the one who shot him up on the mountain. Shane knew he kept his stash at the Lininger cabin and went up there to steal it.”
Andie Lee pulled her hands away and stepped back, but she listened with her eyes as well as her ears, nodding yes and then no, never saying a word, while he told her everything he knew about the whole story.
“I can’t be responsible for him, Andie Lee. I can’t be the one to try to keep him from becoming a killer. You’ll have to take him to ride with somebody else. Gordon said he’ll help him and give him a horse, to boot.”
She seemed not to hear him.
“Shane told you all that? Why?”
“He wants me to give him advice. Help with his plans.”
It took a few seconds for that to sink in.
“Oh, Blue! He can’t know. I didn’t tell him what you told me. I wouldn’t.”
She reached out and took his hand. Hers was trembling.
“Please don’t think that I did. Do you think that?”
“No,” he said.
Then she jerked away to bury her face in her hands.
“What I think is that I’m the only person he could turn to for help. Micah would go straight to you.”
He was trying to keep her from crying. He did not want her to cry.
She didn’t. She stiffened her back and looked at him straight.
“You’re still the only one,” she said. “I can’t talk to him because we can’t let him know that you broke his trust. You have to turn him around, Blue.”
“No. I’d feel too guilty if I couldn’t get it done.”
“You’ll feel really guilty if you don’t even try.”