Black Hills

by Nora Roberts

  “She was a hard woman to live with, and I got tired of living with strangers, then being put back with her and whoever she’d taken up with. I can’t remember many nights there wasn’t yelling or fighting going on. Sometimes she’d start it up, sometimes the man she was with would. Either way, I’d end up bleeding sooner or later. I thought about taking a bat to this one guy once, after he slapped us both around. But he was a big man, and I was afraid he’d get it away from me and bash me with it.”

  He pulled up short. “God, Lil, you’re not thinking I’d hurt Tansy, that I’d do her that way?”

  “Not in a million years, Farley. It’s something else I’m trying to figure out, trying to get a handle on. You were broke when you got out here, and hungry and just a boy. But there was no meanness in you. My parents would’ve seen it. They may be soft touches, but they have good instincts. You didn’t steal or brawl or cheat your way here. You could have.”

  “I’d’ve been no better than what I left, then, would I?”

  “You chose to be better than what you left.”

  “God’s truth is, Lil, Jenna and Joe saved me. I don’t know where I’d’ve ended up, or if I’d’ve made it there in one piece without them taking me in.”

  “I guess we were all lucky that day you stuck out your thumb and my father drove by. This man, the one we think is out there, he had it rough as a kid.”

  “So what? He’s not a kid now, is he?”

  She shook her head. It was simple Farley logic—and while she appreciated it, Lil knew people were a lot more complicated as a rule.

  Just after two, she went inside. She stowed her rifle and went upstairs. She still had some nice lingerie from her Jean-Paul days. But it seemed wrong to wear for Coop what she’d worn for another man.

  Instead she changed into her usual sleeping garb of flannel pants and a T-shirt, then sat on the side of the bed to brush out her hair.

  Tired? she thought. Yes, she was tired, but also aware. She wanted him to come to her, wanted to be with him after a long and difficult day. To make love with him while the rain drummed and night crept toward morning.

  She wanted something bright in her life, and if it was a complicated shine, it was better than the dull and the dark.

  She heard him come in, and rose to put her brush back on her dresser. Letting her mind drift, she walked back to turn down the bed. And turned to face him as he came in.

  “We need to talk,” she said. “A lot has to be said. But it’s two in the morning. Talk’s for the daylight. I just want to go to bed with you. I just want to feel, to know there’s something good and strong after a day that’s been so bleak.”

  “Then we’ll talk in the daylight.”

  He came to her then, tunneled his fingers through her hair, tipped her head back. His lips met hers with a tenderness, a patience she’d forgotten he could give.

  Here was the sweet they’d once shared.

  She lay down with him on cool, smooth sheets, and opened body, mind, and heart. Slow and soft, as if he knew she needed . . . tending. Tension slipped away, swept back by pleasure. His hands glided over her, hard palms, a gentle touch. On a contented sigh, she turned her head as his lips explored her throat, her jaw.

  No need to rush, to take and take, not this time. This was silk and velvet, warm and smooth. Not just sensation now, not just desires met, but feelings. She slid his shirt away, traced her fingers over the scar at his side.

  “I don’t know if I could have stood it if—”

  “Shh.” He brought her hand to his lips, kissed her fingers, then her mouth. “Don’t think. Don’t worry.”

  Tonight he could give her peace, and take some for himself. Tonight he wanted to show her love as much as passion. More. Tonight they would savor each other. Skin, sighs, scents.

  She smelled of the rain, somehow both dark and fresh. Tasted of it. He drew her clothes away, touching, tasting the newly exposed flesh, lingering when she shivered.

  Scars crossed her, too. Scars that hadn’t been there when they’d first become lovers and all that lovely skin had been unmarred. Now she bore the marks of her work. Just as, he supposed, the scar left by a bullet had been a mark of his.

  They were not what they had been, either of them. And yet she was still the only woman he’d ever wanted.

  How many times had he dreamed of this, of loving Lil through the night? Of having her hands run over him, of having her body move with his.

  She rolled, shifted to trail her lips over his chest, to bring them back to his and sink, sink, sink into the kiss while her hair fell around him in dark curtains. Beneath her hands, her lips, his heart tripped and stumbled. He rose up to wrap his arms around her, to rock and hold as his mouth found her breast.

  Here pleasure was thick, movement slow, and every nerve alive.

  She watched him as she took him into her, watched as her breath caught, then shuddered out again. Her lips came to his, trembling in the kiss. Then her body bowed, her eyes drifted shut.

  She rode, gently, gently, drawing out every drop of pleasure. Slow and silky, so the beauty of it had tears rising in her throat. Even as her body released, her heart filled.

  She let her head rest on his shoulder as she drifted down again. He turned his face into the side of her throat. “Lil,” he said. “God, Lil.”

  “Don’t say anything. Please don’t.” If he did, she might say too much. She had no defenses now. She eased back to touch his cheek. “Talk’s for daylight,” she repeated.

  “All right. There’ll be daylight soon enough.”

  He lay down with her, drew her close. “I need to leave before dawn,” he told her. “But I’ll be back. We need to have some alone time, Lil. Uninterrupted time.”

  “There’s so much going on. I can’t think straight.”

  “Not true. You think straighter than anyone I know.”

  Not about you, she admitted silently. Never about you. “The rain’s slowing down. Tomorrow’s supposed to be clear. We’ll work things out tomorrow. In the daylight.”

  But the daylight brought death.

  20

  Gull found Jim Tyler. It was more luck than skill that brought him, his brother Jesse, and one of the greener deputies to the bend of the swollen waters of Spearfish Creek. They were walking their horses through the mud on a morning hazed with fog like a window steamed from a shower. The water, churning from the rain and snowmelt, beat like a drum, and above its rush thick tendrils of mist wound in long gray ribbons.

  They were well off the logical route Tyler would have taken to the summit of Crow Peak and back to the trailhead. But the search had spread out through the tree-covered slopes of the canyon, with small groups combing the rocky high ground and the brown, deadwood shale of the low.

  Gull hadn’t expected to find anything, and felt a little guilty about enjoying the meandering ride. Spring was beginning to show her skirts, and the rain teased out the green he loved in the hills. A jay shot—a blue bullet through the mists—while the chickadees chattered like children in a playground.

  Rain had stirred up the waters, enlivened them, but there were still places the creek was as clear as gin in a short glass.

  He hoped he got himself a tour group soon who wanted to fish so he could spend some time reeling in trout. Gull figured he had the best job in the whole damn world.

  “That man got himself all the way over here from the marked trail, he’s got no more sense of direction than a blind woodpecker,” Jesse said. “Wasting our time.”

  Gull glanced over at his brother. “Nice day to waste it. Besides, could be he got turned around in the storm, in the dark. Zig insteada zag, and he kept going the wrong way, he might’ve come this far off.”

  “Maybe if the idiot’d find a rock and sit still somebody’d find his sorry ass.” Jesse shifted in the saddle. He spent a lot more time shoeing horses than riding them, and his sorry ass was sore. “I can’t take much more time riding around looking for somebody hasn’t got the sense t
o get found.”

  The deputy, Cy Fletcher—the baby brother of the girl who owned the first pair of breasts Gull had ever got his hands on—scratched his belly. “I say we follow the creek another little while, then we’ll circle back around.”

  “Fine by me.” Gull agreed.

  “Can’t see shit on a stick in this fog,” Jesse complained.

  “Sun’ll burn it off.” Gull shrugged. “It’s breaking through here and there already. What the hell better you got to do, Jesse?”

  “Got a living to earn, don’t I? I don’t got some lazy-ass job where I ride around with numbnut tourists all damn day.”

  It was a bone of contention between the brothers, and they poked each other about it as the sun strengthened and the fog thinned. As they approached one of the little falls, the drop and tumble of water made shouting insults at his brother over the noise too much trouble.

  Gull settled down to enjoy the ride again, and thought about the whitewater outfits who’d start gearing up soon. Weather might turn again, he thought, more snow was every bit as likely as daffodils, but people sure did like to strap themselves into rubber rafts and shoot down the creek.

  He didn’t get the appeal.

  Riding now, or fishing, that made sense. If he could find a woman who appreciated both, and had a nice pair on her, he’d marry her in a New York minute.

  He took a deep, satisfied breath of the fresh and warming air, and grinned happily as a trout leaped. It flashed, shiny as the good silver his ma used for Christmas dinner, then plopped back into the busy water.

  His eye followed the ripples all the way to the foaming white of the falls. He squinted, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

  “I think there’s something down there, down in the falls there.”

  “I don’t see dick.”

  “You don’t see dick doesn’t mean I don’t.” Ignoring his brother, Gull guided his mount closer to the bank.

  “You end up in that water, I ain’t coming in after you.”

  It was probably just a rock, Gull thought, and then he’d feel like a numbnut and have to suffer Jesse’s ragging for the rest of the ride. But it didn’t look like a rock. It looked like the front half of a boot.

  “I think that’s a boot. You see that, Cy?”

  “I can’t tell.” Cy peered with eyes shaded by his hat and not especially interested. “Probably a rock.”

  “I think it’s a boot.”

  “Alert the freaking media,” Jesse proclaimed, boosting up a little to rub at his worn-out ass. “Some asshole camper lost a boot in Spearfish Creek.”

  “If some asshole camper lost a boot in the creek, why’s it just there? How come it’s not floating off, pushed along by the falls? Asshole,” Gull muttered as he dug out his binoculars.

  “’Cause it’s a freaking rock. Or it’s some asshole’s boot that’s stuck on a freaking rock. Hell with this. I gotta piss.”

  As he stared through the glasses, Gull’s face went pale as wax. “Oh, Jesus. Mother of God. I think there’s somebody in that boot. Holy shit, Jess. I can see something under the water.”

  “Oh, bullshit, Gull.”

  Gull lowered the glasses, stared at his brother. “Do I look like I’m bullshitting?”

  Studying his brother’s face, Jesse set his teeth. “I guess we’d better get a closer look.”

  They tethered the horses.

  Gull looked at the deputy—the scrawny build of him—and wished he didn’t feel obliged. “I’m the best swimmer here. I’ll go.”

  The breath Cy let out held both resignation and nerves. “It’s my job.”

  “Might be your job,” Jesse said, as he got his rope, “but Gull swims like a damn otter. Water’s pretty rough, so we’re going to get you secure. You’re an asshole, Gull, but you’re my brother and I’m not going to watch you drown.”

  Fighting off nerves, Gull stripped down to his jockeys, let his brother secure the rope around his waist. “I bet that water’s pretty fucking cold.”

  “You’re the one who had to go see something.”

  Since he couldn’t argue with that one, Gull eased over the bank, picked his way over the rocks and shale, and stared at the fast water. He glanced back, reassured himself that his brother had the rope secured.

  He went in. “Pretty fucking cold!” he shouted. “Give me some slack.”

  He swam against the fast water, imagined his toes going blue and just falling off. Even with the rope, he banged against the rocks, but pushed off them again.

  He went under, pushing, pushing against the current, and in that gin-clear water, he saw he’d been right. Somebody was in the boots.

  He surfaced again, choking, flailing. “Pull me back. Oh, holy bleeding Christ, pull me back.”

  Panic buzzed in his head, nausea churned in his belly. Slapping and clawing at the water, swallowing it, choking it out again, he relied on his brother to get him back to the bank.

  He crawled onto a rock, heaved up water and his breakfast until he could only lie panting. “I saw him. I saw him. Oh, God, the fish’ve been at him. At his face.”

  “Call it in, Cy. Call it in.” Jesse slid and slipped his way down to wrap a saddle blanket over his brother.

  WORD SPREAD AS word did. Coop heard about Gull’s discovery from three sources, with varying details, before Willy hunted him down at the stables.

  “You’d’ve heard.”

  “Yeah. I’m going by to check up on Gull.”

  Willy nodded. His voice was still rough, but he was feeling better. “He’s pretty shaken up. I’m going over to his place, get a formal statement down if you want to come along. The fact is, Coop, I’d appreciate if you did. Not just because he works for you. I’ve worked killings before, but nothing like this. We’re going to have a lot of fingers in this pie. I’d like to have yours—unofficially.”

  “I’ll follow you over. Did you notify Tyler’s wife?”

  Willy’s mouth tightened. “Yeah. Worst part of it. I guess you did your share of notifications back east.”

  “Worst part of it,” Coop agreed. “I’ve heard different versions. Do you have the cause of death?”

  “Coroner has to give us that. He’d been in the water awhile—you know what happens. But it wasn’t a fall, and it wasn’t the damn fish that slit his throat. It wasn’t either that weighed the body down. Flooding hadn’t stirred it up, and Gull didn’t have eyes like a damn hawk, God knows when we’d’ve found him.”

  “What did he use?”

  “Nylon rope, rocks. Thing is, the way it was situated, it looked to me like the bastard had to get in the water to do it. Sick son of a bitch. Took his wallet, watch, pack, jacket, shirt. Left him with his pants and his boots.”

  “Must’ve been the wrong size. He’d have taken them otherwise. No point in wasting anything.”

  Gull had a little place on the other side of town, over a bar and grill. The narrow apartment smelled like him—horses and leather—and was furnished like a college dorm. With castoffs from his parents, his brother, and anyone else who wanted to upgrade a chair or table.

  Jesse, despite his bitching about having to earn a living, answered the door. He hadn’t been ten feet from his brother since he’d come out of Spearfish Creek.

  “He’s still a little shaky. I was thinking I’d haul him over to our ma, have her pat his head awhile.”

  “That might be just the thing,” Willy said. “I’m going to get his statement now. I got yours, but could be you’ll think of more.”

  “We got coffee on. He’s been sucking on that Mountain Dew of his. Christ knows how he chokes that down, but that’s what we’ve got.”

  “Wouldn’t say no to coffee.” Willy crossed over to where Gull sat on a saggy plaid couch, his head in his hands.

  “I still see it in my head. Can’t get it out.”

  “You did a hard thing today, Gull. You did the right thing.”

  “Can’t help wishing somebody else’d seen that damn boot p
oking out of the water.” He lifted his head, looked at Coop. “Hey, boss. I was going to come by, but . . .”

  “Don’t worry about it. Why don’t you tell Willy everything. Just say it straight through. You’ll feel steadier after.”

  “I told you,” he said to Willy. “And the rangers, too.” He blew