“You’re just making me mad.”

“I can live with that.” He pulled open the passenger door, dumped her on the seat. “I mean it, Lil, I’ll just haul you back.” He reached across, hooked her seat belt, then dropped her hat in her lap. Ice-blue eyes met molten brown. “Stay where I put you.”

“Oh, I’ll stay. I’ll stay because we’re not having this out here. I’m not having more of a scene here.”

“Good enough.” He slammed the door, skirted the hood of the truck, then got behind the wheel. “We’re going riding. We’re not coming back until you’ve got some color back in your cheeks.” He glanced over. “I’m not talking pissed-off color.”

“Pissed-off is all you’re going to get.”

“We’ll see.” He headed down the road. “We’ll drive to Rimrock. We could consider that neutral ground.” And miles away from where Tyler’s body had been found.

“What’s the point of this?”

“The point is you need a break, and so do I. And Lil, we’ve put this off long enough.”

“I decide when I need a break. Damn it, Coop, I don’t know why you’d want to make me so mad. I’ve got enough going on without working in a fight with you-and we were fine. Just last night we were fine.”

“You were too worn-out to get into this last night. I’d rather have you mad than almost in tears with the idea of talking to me.”

“I’ve been talking to you plenty.” She leaned her head back, shut her eyes. “Jesus Christ, Cooper, a man is dead. Dead. And you’re pushing this? Talking about what? What’s over and done?”

“That’s right, a man’s dead. And the one who did it has you in the crosshairs. You need help, but you don’t trust me.”

With sharp, jerky movements, she plucked the hat off her lap, set it on her head. “That’s not true.”

“You trust me to help you protect your place. You trust me enough to sleep with me. But you don’t trust me down in the deep. We both know that.”

He parked at the campground. Together, in silence, they unloaded the horses. “We can take the lower loop from here. It’s shorter.”

“I don’t like being handled this way.”

“I don’t blame you. And I don’t care.”

She mounted, turned her horse toward the trailhead. “Maybe the women you got used to tolerate this kind of thing. I don’t. I won’t. You’ll get your two hours because you’re bigger and you’re stronger-and because I’m not having this out in front of my staff, my interns, my guests. Then that’s it, Cooper. That’s it between us.”

“You get some color in your cheeks, some worry out of your eyes, and we clear the air between us. After that, if you say that’s it, that’ll be it.” He opened the cattle gate for her to pass through, then closed it behind them.

“You can tell me everything you know about what happened to James Tyler. I can’t think about much else. I don’t know how you could expect me to.”

“Okay, we’ll get that out of the way.”

He laid it out for her, every detail he remembered, as they rode toward the rim of the canyon. He spoke of murder and death as the trail leveled out to wind through pines and quaking aspen where flickers swooped and darted among the trees.

“Is Gull all right?”

“He’s going to see Tyler, the way he found him, every time he closes his eyes for a while. He’ll lose sleep over it, have nightmares when he does sleep. Then it’ll pass.”

“Is that the way it was for you?”

“I saw Melinda Barrett for a long time. The first time I saw a body when I was in uniform, it was just as horrible. And then…” He shrugged.

“It becomes routine?”

“No. It becomes the job, but it’s never routine.”

“I still see her sometimes. Even before all this started up. I’d think it had gone away, then I’d wake up, cold and sweating, with her in my head.” Calmer, she turned to look at him, so their eyes met. “We shared a hard thing at an early age. We shared a lot of things. You’re wrong when you say I don’t trust you. And you’re wrong to think manhandling me is the way to get whatever it is you want.”

“You’re what I want, Lil. You’re all I’ve ever wanted.”

Color did indeed rush into her face as she whipped her head toward him. “Go to hell.”

She kicked her horse into a trot.

PART THREE. SPIRIT

Nothing in the world is single;

All things by a law divine

In one spirit meet and mingle.

– PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

21

He thought: Shit. And let her take her distance. Maybe she’d blow off the steam of temper, maybe she wouldn’t, but temper was better than exhaustion. She needed to ride, he thought, needed to just breathe awhile. The air filled with the scents of sage and juniper, while overhead an eagle circled on the hunt. He heard what he thought was the drumming of a grouse from a thicket of buckbrush that looked like it wanted to open its tight buds and bloom.

Mad or not, he knew she’d take it all in and be better for it.

She might not look up and watch the eagle, but she knew it was there.

When she finally slowed, he caught up with her. No, he decided, she hadn’t blown off the steam. She rode on it every bit as much as she rode on Rocky.

“How can you say that to me?” she demanded. “All you’ve ever wanted? You left me. You broke my heart.”

“We’re remembering it differently, because I don’t remember anybody leaving anybody. And you sure didn’t act brokenhearted when we decided the long-distance deal wasn’t working.”

“When you decided. I came halfway to New York to see you, to be with you. I’d wanted to go all the way, to spend real time with you on your turf. In your place. But you wouldn’t have that.” Those dark eyes stabbed at him, lethal as knives. “I guess you figured it would be harder to dump me if I was sitting in your New York apartment.”

“Jesus Christ, Lil, I didn’t dump you.” They wounded him, those eyes, spilled blood she couldn’t see. “It wasn’t like that.”

“What the hell was it like, from your perspective? You told me you couldn’t keep doing it, that you needed to concentrate on your own life, your own career.”