“Where?” he asked.

“The Broadmain Hotel. In Colorado.”

Meryl laughed again. “You mean the Broadmoor?”

“Yes! Annabelle is giving me five days there.”

She’d inched it up from three days.

“On your own? Without Hugh-Jay?”

“Uh-huh. You could come, too. They’d never know.”

“Why would she do that?”

Laurie grinned. “Because she loves me best.”

“Everybody does,” he said, and pushed in deep enough to make her squeal.

Even now, when Meryl was an attorney with the potential for making okay money, she still felt she’d made the right and practical choice in marrying Hugh-Jay. Maybe she could have had it all by marrying Meryl, but the “all” that Meryl could offer wasn’t anywhere near as much as being a Linder could do for her-and for her children’s future, she thought with righteous virtue. And marrying her wasn’t anywhere near as helpful to Meryl as marrying the Linders’ only daughter might be. He would be their attorney, the ranches’ main attorney, recommended to all their friends; his future was made, as was hers…

Provided Hugh-Jay overlooked that little money thing…

“Think about it,” she murmured, meaning the trip.

“Are you kidding? That’s probably all I’ll be thinking about now.”

She laughed, and made excited noises to encourage him, which made him groan and work harder. He imprisoned her wrists above her head, slamming them hard against the backboard of the bed, which startled and thrilled her. She played as if she were trying to get away by twisting and turning beneath him, and that turned him on more. He told her she was the most beautiful, sexy woman in the world and no other woman would ever be as good in bed as she was, and he would always want her, and that she would always know this was what he was thinking of whenever he looked at her, wherever they were, in church, at their in-laws’ house, across a supper table, even when he was standing at the altar of his own wedding, and when she heard that, she let him do whatever he wanted to do to her.

It was just for fun, no harm intended, no feelings to be hurt.

39

IN SPITE OF THE STORM-or because he was so worried and anxious he was oblivious to it-Hugh-Jay made a quick stop at Bailey’s for a shot of courage and a hamburger before going home. There, he heard from several people about the argument-and near physical fight-between Billy Crosby and his brothers. He heard about the swing Billy took at Laurie, and how he got tossed out into the driving rain by his youngest brother and Bailey. He heard that his father and brothers were staying at the motel, that Belle had gone to spend the night at her bank/museum, and that his brother Chase had seen to it that Laurie got a ride home.

He stayed for a second beer, just to hear about the whole thing.

By the time he left, whatever small bit of tolerance Hugh-Jay had left for Billy Crosby was gone, just as all sympathy for Billy had disappeared from the hearts of the rest of his family and from nearly every other person in Rose.

He felt so angry about Billy’s swinging at Laurie he could have killed him.

He ran through the rain again, climbed into his truck one more time, and drove home past the motel where the other men in his family were. When they wanted to know in the morning why he was home, he’d tell them he started to Colorado late and the storm had prevented him from going all the way. He hoped he could lie about it. According to his mom, he was terrible at lying.

He parked behind his house and hurried from his truck to the back porch with his head down against the rain, seeing nothing but the ground ahead of him, which was how he noticed boot prints in the mud. Some man had come this way, running at a loping trot, from the look of the spacing and depth of the prints. Hugh-Jay stepped into them, squashing them to flatness and mixing them with his own prints. They were filled with rainwater almost a second after he lifted each boot, and eventually they disappeared as the rain flattened the mud and everything ran and eroded. At the porch, Hugh-Jay took off his own wet, muddy boots and then his socks, which would only get soaked on the floor of the porch if he left them on. He looked for the boots the other person had worn but didn’t see them. Maybe whoever it was had knocked, Laurie didn’t answer, and he left again. Hugh-Jay looked back for prints going in the other direction, but it was too dark to see.

He stepped into his house barefoot and dripping.

A lightning flash showed him a picture that jolted his adrenaline.

Beside the table where’d he sat for lunch, a chair was overturned.

A familiar straw hat with a tightly rolled and blackened brim lay on the floor, as if it had fallen off its owner’s head and then been crushed, as if somebody had stepped on it during a struggle.

Billy’s hat.

The moment Hugh-Jay saw it, he panicked and thought, Laurie!

Billy was drunk, he was angry, he was crazy, and he’d already tried to attack her at Bailey’s.

He raised his face to the ceiling, heart pounding, listening.

He pulled off his rain slicker, let it fall, and kept moving.

He wanted to shout his wife’s name but didn’t dare. What if Billy had a gun?

Desperate to find and rescue his wife, terrified of what kind of revenge a drunken Billy Crosby might be taking on her even at this moment, but also realizing the urgent need to move silently, Hugh-Jay took long strides to his office on the first floor and went immediately to his gun case, where the key was in the lock.

He pulled out a long-barreled pistol, his favorite of his small arms.

It was powerful, sharp of aim, straight of shot, and after the thirty seconds it took him to arm it, loaded.

The gun held in front of him, he hurried down the first-floor hallway, finally grasping that the noise of the storm covered every sound he made, though that meant it also covered every sound that might be coming from upstairs.

What if Billy hadn’t taken her to the second floor?

He raced through the other rooms on the first floor, cursing himself for the delay when he didn’t find anyone. He reached the upper landing and quickly checked the rooms there. Master bedroom and bath, second bath, large guest room, Jody’s room, leaving only one to go. With a speed born of fear and fury, he covered the remaining few feet of carpet, burst into the room, and saw the two figures on the bed, the man on top of the woman. His heart clenched with the pain of heartache, betrayal, and outrage as he yelled, “Billy! Get off of her!”

Hugh-Jay’s voice-harsh, furious, frightened, and sounding nothing like normal-was unrecognizable to the couple in bed. Laurie, seeing a dark and threatening figure in the doorway, screamed. Meryl, rolling off of her, saw the same shadow, but also saw the shape of the gun, and he lunged at the man’s waist. As they fell together to the floor, Hugh-Jay pointed the gun down at the man he still thought was Billy Crosby, but the man moved at the last moment, shoving the gun backward. The bullet fired into Hugh-Jay’s own abdomen, knocking him back onto the carpet.

Deafened and shocked by the noise and light of the shot, Meryl saw and heard darkness for several moments. It was only when Laurie began screaming Hugh-Jay’s name that he realized whose blood he had all over him.

“Oh, my God,” he said. “Oh, my God. Oh, no. Oh, God, please no.”

Meryl Tapper helplessly watched his friend and his future bleed to death on the carpet.