Forsaken

He smiled as she walked over and climbed fully clothed into the sleeping bag on the other side of the fire. She lay down, her back to him.

“The woman has a sense of humor after all,” he said loud enough he was sure she could hear. He considered sitting on the overturned stump by the fire until the blaze burned out. He felt antsy, certainly not ready to go to sleep this early.

Looking up, he caught a glimpse of stars through the swaying pine boughs. The sky seemed alive with them. He stepped out of the trees so he could see the amazing sight. It was magnificent. He gaped at the ceiling of darkness and light in awe. He’d never seen so many stars. Nor had he ever seen such an expansive sky. It arced between the horizons, a midnight-blue canopy bespeckled with millions of twinkling stars.

Away from the fire, though, he was instantly cold. Even standing by it, only the parts of his body near the flames were warm. He walked back, but the fire had died to only a few glowing embers that gave off little heat.

Maddie hadn’t made a peep. He wondered if she was asleep. He thought about looking for more wood for the fire, but changed his mind.

He’d never slept in his clothing in his entire life. Even as cold as it was up here, he slipped out of the canvas coat she’d lent him, then the flannel shirt down to his T-shirt. Goose bumps rippled across his skin. He considered taking off the jeans she’d provided for him, but one glance around and he decided he might have to get up in a hurry, and would be better off at least partially dressed.

The lining of the sleeping bag was ice-cold against his bare arms, and it took him a moment to warm up. He rolled up his coat and shirt for a pillow then curled on his side to watch what was left of the fire die away. He thought about what they might find tomorrow and how he would handle it.

It kept his mind off everything but Maddie Conner.

* * *

SHERIFF FRANK CURRY couldn’t help being mad at himself on so many levels. Right now, though, it was the way he’d handled things with Lynette.

After their run-in, he’d gotten something to eat at the café, half hoping Lynette would come over and join him. She hadn’t. Too upset to go to his empty house, he’d driven over to Bozeman and gone to a movie. Now, on the way home, he couldn’t even remember what it was about.

Driving through the darkness toward his ranch east of Beartooth, he mentally kicked himself for not calling Lynette. He could have patched things up by asking her to the movie. What would it have hurt? He could have called her, apologized... But what did he have to apologize for? She was the one who’d rented her apartment over the store to J. D. West and thought nothing of it.

His chest ached at the thought of J.D. pulling the wool over her eyes. Why was Lynette so blind when it came to men?

“So what are you going to do about it?” he demanded of himself as he drove down the narrow dirt road toward home. What could he do?

Nothing right now. He felt like a single parent. He knew that was silly. But he now had all the responsibilities that came with being a single parent. Tiffany needed him since Pam had deserted her daughter. He was all the girl had now. So when he wasn’t working, he went up to the state hospital to see her.

But that wasn’t the only reason he’d stayed away from Lynette. He was afraid for her because of Pam and Tiffany. He thought that if he put distance between them, then maybe it would keep her safe.

So the situation frustrated the hell out of him when he was around her. He wanted Lynette, needed her, but right now the best thing he could do was give her a wide berth. Who knew what would happen with Tiffany’s case? What if she did get out of this?

He couldn’t forget that Tiffany was a danger to Lynette. And Pam...well, who knew how dangerous she was to them all?

When he’d found out about Tiffany, he’d tried to find Pam. Apparently she hadn’t wanted to be found, which shouldn’t have come as a surprise after what she’d done.

He’d hired a private investigator to get her number for him. He’d talked to her once—for all the good it had done. She had pretended not to know what he was talking about when he’d accused her of poisoning Tiffany against him, programming the child to kill him.

Months later he’d called again and found the line had been disconnected. Which was just as well, he told himself. He was afraid of what he would do if he knew where she was.

He figured she’d probably taken off. Done her damage to him and Tiffany and then gone off, her mission over. But to add fuel to the fire, she’d managed to tell Tiffany that the reason she was running away was because she was afraid of him. Tiffany, unfortunately, believed her mother’s lies.

Sometimes in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep he thought about how to find her. The fantasy—he had to think of it as that—always ended the same. It ended with him murdering Pam with his bare hands.

It was those dark thoughts that plagued him, that and worry over Tiffany. Worry also about Lynette.

“With good reason,” he muttered under his breath as he turned into his ranch. Lynette had proven she had terrible taste in men when she’d married Bob thirty years ago instead of him. Now she’d rented her apartment to J. D. West? Worse, she thought the man deserved a second chance?

He felt himself getting upset again. J.D. had gotten more chances than he deserved before he had even left Beartooth all those years ago. To think Lynette might be taken in by him upset him more than he wanted to admit.

And she thought he was merely being jealous? He let out a curse as he neared his house.

Automatically he slowed. Not that long ago, he would have been anxious to return home. He liked his small house, his few animals, the wide-open spaces the ranch provided him.

Back then he’d had a family of sorts waiting for him. A family of crows had taken up residency in his yard. He’d come to think of them as his own and had spent years studying them, intrigued how much they were like humans.

They would always be waiting for him as he drove in and would caw a welcome. He’d gotten where he could tell them apart by their greetings.

Now, though, the telephone line was empty, just like the clothesline and the ridge on the barn. Tiffany had killed one of them to get back at him. Crows, being very intelligent birds, had left. He’d learned from studying them that they would warn other crows about the danger at his house. They wouldn’t be back nor would others come if they felt threatened.

With a heavy heart, he pulled in and climbed out. The night was dark here in the valley with clouds shrouding the stars. He stood for a moment, staring up at the empty telephone wire, feeling the terrible weight of all his losses.

The sudden sound of glass breaking somewhere inside his house startled him from his dark thoughts. Drawing his gun, he sprinted toward the open front door.

* * *

MADDIE LISTENED TO the wind whipping the tops of the pines. Closer, the fire crackled softly as it burned down. The familiar sounds were comforting—unlike the sound of the deputy across the fire from her. He moved restlessly in his sleeping bag. She’d bet this was the first time he’d slept under the stars—let alone in the middle of nowhere on the side of a mountain.

She could have erected the tent that was kept here along with a few supplies. It hadn’t been all orneriness that had made her dismiss the idea. True, she hadn’t wanted to take the time to put up the tent. Nor had she wanted to expend the energy, and she’d figured the deputy would have been no help.

But those weren’t the real reasons. If she was being honest, she hadn’t wanted to be in the close confines of a tent with her worries—or the deputy. Not tonight.

She mentally cursed herself. What was she doing here with such a city slicker? He didn’t know the country. Worse, he didn’t know how dangerous it could be. What was he doing in Montana, anyway?

It irritated her that she’d had to bring him. But her other choice was letting him look for the sheep camp alone. Better to take him up here to alleviate his concerns. She desperately wanted to prove him wrong.

Jamison was the least of her problems and she knew it. She closed her eyes against the fears that had haunted her from the instant she’d seen Dewey in the back of that stall.

What had happened? She clung to the hope that when they reached the camp, they would find Branch sitting outside his sheepherder wagon whittling on a piece of pine, his dog, Lucy, at his feet, and all two thousand sheep in a grassy meadow behind him, safe and growing fatter.

It was conceivable that the boy had gotten scared when he couldn’t find Branch. When he found a dying lamb, just as he’d said, he would have foolishly thought he could save it. Failing that, he’d panicked and hightailed it out of there. It could have happened just that way, she told herself.

Which meant that when they reached the sheep camp, Branch would give her hell for hiring Dewey, something she had to admit she deserved. She’d take the deputy back down out of the mountains and get Branch a new tender, someone older, someone with experience.

Even as she thought it, she knew how hard it was going to be to find a tender. No one wanted to spend three months back in the wilds. Even sheepherders were hard to find, for that matter. Good thing Branch enjoyed it, but he was getting old—just a few months short of his sixty-eighth birthday. It wouldn’t be long before he couldn’t make the trek, she thought, refusing to let herself accept that this might be his last year—no matter what they found back in the mountains.

All good reasons to give up herding the sheep to high grazing pasture each summer season, she told herself.

She heard the deputy roll over again and felt a stab of guilt. She shouldn’t have mentioned grizzlies, but smiled even as she chastised herself for purposely trying to scare him. He was probably worried about bears and wouldn’t get a wink of sleep.

Maddie thought about telling him that she had her shotgun as well as her .357 Magnum pistol within reach. Also, she could mention that with two thousand sheep not far away, the grizzlies would rather have lamb than either one of them.

But a moment later, Jamison seemed to settle down, and as he did, she heard him snoring softly.

Irritated he could fall asleep so quickly, she snuggled down in her sleeping bag and prayed. It had been so long since any of her prayers had been answered, though, that she didn’t have much hope these would be, either.

* * *