Montana Sky by Nora Roberts Page B

matted fur. Cooling fast, but still warm. “I know them well enough. All but Billy have been here for years, and he signed on last summer. You’d have to ask Willa, she’d know more.” He looked down again and grieved for an old half-blind tom who had still liked to hunt. “Lily shouldn’t have seen this.”
    “No, she shouldn’t have.” Ben sighed and wondered how close she’d come to seeing who it was. “I’ll help you bury him.”
    Inside, Willa paced the living room. How the hell was she supposed to take care of the woman? And why had Adam pushed such a useless task on her? All Lily did was cower in the corner of the sofa and shake.
    She’d given Lily whiskey, hadn’t she? She’d even patted her head for lack of anything better. She had a problem on her hands, for God’s sake, and she didn’t need some weak-stomached Easterner to add to it.
    “I’m sorry.” Those were the first words she’d managed since she’d come inside. Taking a deep breath, Lily tried them again. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have screamed that way. I’ve never seen anything . . . I’d been with Adam, helping with the horses, and then I . . . I just—”
    “Drink the damn whiskey, would you?” Willa snapped, then cursed herself as Lily cringed and obediently lifted the glass to her lips. Disgusted with herself, Willa rubbed her hands over her face. “I expect anybody would have screamed coming across something like that. I’m not mad at you.”
    Lily hated whiskey, the burn of it, the smell. Jesse had favored Seagram’s. And as the level in the bottle dropped, his temper rose. Always. But now she pretended to drink. “Was it a cat? I thought it was a cat.” Lily bit down hard on her lip to keep her voice steady. “Was it your cat?”
    “The cats are Adam’s. And the dogs. And the horses. But they did it to me. They didn’t leave it on Adam’s porch. They did it to me.”
    “Like—like the steer.”
    Willa stopped pacing, glanced over her shoulder. “Yes. Like the steer.”
    “Here’s a nice pot of tea.” Bess hurried in, carrying a tray. The minute she set it down, she began fussing. “Will, what are you thinking of, giving the poor thing whiskey? It’s just going to upset her stomach is all.” Gently, Bess took the glass from Lily and set it aside. “You drink some tea, honey, and rest yourself. You’ve had a bad shock. Will, stop that pacing and sit down.”
    “You take care of her. I’m going out.”
    Though she poured the tea with a steady hand, Bess gave Willa’s retreating back a hard look. “That girl never listens.”
    “She’s upset.”
    “Aren’t we all.”
    Lily lifted the cup with both hands, felt the warmth spread at the first sip. “She takes it deeper. It’s her ranch.”
    Bess cocked her head. “Yours too.”
    “No.” Lily drank again, gradually grew calmer. “It’ll always be hers.”
    The cat was gone, but there was still blood pooled over the wood. Willa went back for a bucket of soapy water, a scrub brush. Bess would have done it, she knew, but it wasn’t something she would ask of another.
    On her hands and knees, in the glow of the porch light she washed away the signs of violence. Death happened. She had believed she accepted and understood that. Cattle were raised for their meat, and a chicken who stopped laying ended up in the pot. Deer and elk were hunted and set on the table.
    That was the way of things.
    People lived, and died.
    Even violence wasn’t a stranger to her. She had sent a bullet into living flesh and dressed game with her own hands. Her father had insisted on that, had ordered her to learn to hunt, to watch a buck go down bleeding. That she could live with.
    But this cruelty, this waste, this viciousness that had been laid at her door wasn’t part of the cycle. She erased it, everydrop. And with the bloody bucket beside her, she sat back on her heels and stared up into the sky.
    A star died, even as she watched, blazing its white trail