A gust of wind blew her hair away from her face. She wrapped her arms around herself and stared out over the water, her face faraway. Like she was waiting for something. Or someone.
He heard a car coming up the driveway. He leaned out the open door of the Chevy and peered down the road It was Connor's car. He clicked away the video clip and snapped the laptop shut. Comments from Connor about his obsessive pastime were the last thing he needed.
Connor got out of his car and limped over to the Chevy. He leaned on his cane and nodded. “Hey.”
“What's up?” Seth was having a hard time feigning interest in the mopping-up details, but he tried, out of politeness.
“I just got a call from Nick, down at the Cave. Novak's going to make it. Sean's shot to the chest just hit Kevlar. Paranoid bastard. And your shot to the thigh barely missed the femoral artery. Bummer.”
Seth grunted in disgust. “I should have aimed for his head.”
“Console yourself with the fact that he lost a few more fingers on his left hand, thanks to you. That's going to piss him off no end, once he comes to his senses.”
How about Riggs?”
“In jail, licking his wounds. No bail.”
“And his daughter?”
Connor's face tightened. “Erin's fine. She hates my guts, of course, but that's to be expected. She told me that Georg never touched her, but I rearranged his nice and various other parts of his body anyhow, just for thinking about it. He'll be pissing blood for a while yet.” His lips curved in a small, grim smile. “The big house should be a lot of fun for a pretty yellow-haired boy like him.”
Seth took hold of Connor's cane, and jerked it out of his hand. “Do you use this thing for show, to get workman's comp, or do you just get off on carrying around an extra weapon?”
Connor yanked the cane back and twirled it with eye-blurring speed. “You can do a lot of damage with this baby if you're quick.”
A deer wandered through the meadow, about twenty yards away from them. They watched it stroll by, calm and unconcerned. The world went on. Jesse was still dead. Novak was still alive. The deer munched idly on the yellowed tips of the meadow grass.
The screen door slammed. The buck sprang up and bounded into the trees, swift and silent Sean sauntered over to the Chevy. “Hi, Connor. Yo, Seth, your buddy Kearns just called, for the sixth time. Call him back, for fuck's sake. He’s worried about you.”
“He'll live. Besides, I'm leaving. I'll talk to him when I get home.”
“Sure you will. You've been saying that for eight days. Not that it's a problem. Stay as long as you like.” Sean grinned and stuck his hands in his pockets. “As long as it takes to work up the nerve to go get her.”
Seth slanted him a stare that made most people start stammering and backing away. It had no effect upon Sean. He just flashed his dimples and waited.
“Mind your business, Sean,” Connor said.
“I've been minding my business all week. I'm bored,” Sean said cheerfully. “What's the hold-up? I'd be prostrated in front of that dynamite babe with my tongue rolled out like a red carpet if I were you.”
Seth thought of Raine's parting words. “She's Lazar's daughter.”
Sean cocked his head, looking baffled, and bounced up and down restlessly on the balls of his feet. “So? What of it? The guy's dead, right? He’s not going to bother you.”
Connor gave him a pained look. “Sean—”
“Our dad was completely bonkers, but nobody holds it against us,” Sean observed. “Or if they do, fuck 'em. Come to think of it, your own daddy wasn't much of a prize either. And we've established that she never screwed you over, right? So?”
There was no arguing with Sean's hammer-blunt logic. He did not feel like trying to explain the anger, the remote, glittering coldness he had seen in her eyes as she looked at him over her father's dead body.
He resorted to simple rudeness. “Piss off, Sean.” Sean's eyes narrowed. “You do still want her, right?”
“That's not the problem!”
Sean snorted. “Nah. The problem is that you're a gutless wuss with shriveled little balls the size of peach pits.”
Connor turned away, making a choking sound.
Sean flashed his Wonder Boy grin. “Too much woman for you, huh? Great news. Maybe I can catch her on the rebound. Mend her broken heart. I'll put my all into it, know what I mean?”
Suddenly he was holding a fistful of Sean's faded Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, dangling him six inches off the ground. “Don't even think about her that way,” he hissed. “Or I will take you apart. Got it?”
Sean grabbed Seth's fist and hauled himself up so that he could breathe. “Baiting you is so satisfying,” he croaked. “Davy and Connor are so jaded, they don't react at all, but you, whoa. You're a sure thing.”
Seth flung him away. Sean rolled smoothly up onto his feet and brushed the pine needles off his jeans, unperturbed. A good sport. He had to be, with Davy and Connor for brothers. Something cramped inside him, hard and painful, at the thought. He'd been hard on Jesse, too. Jesse had been a damn good sport Jesse had forgiven him, even when he didn't deserve it. He turned his back on them and struck out into the meadow. “If Kearns calls, tell him I'm driving back today,”
“Chickenshit,” he heard Sean mutter.
He didn't turn around. He couldn't handle brotherly banter. He'd rather stare at rocks or trees. After ten months without Jesse, he was out of practice at being nagged and teased. He pushed through the fir trees, cursing as they slapped at him. Goddamn nature. He'd never figured out why people went out and wallowed in it voluntarily. Jesse had tried to get him to go hiking, but Seth had resisted to the bitter end.
The way he resisted everything. Always.
That thought stopped him cold, right in the middle of a clump of baby trees. Their pointy tops were about as high as his heart. They trembled in the breeze. He stared at them, wondering why he'd pushed away Jesse's efforts to help him. Just like he pushed away the McClouds. He pushed away the whole damn world. He beat the world to it, every time, before it had a chance to give him the old heave-ho.
The same way he'd pushed away Raine.
A strong gust from the snowy peaks swept through the grove, setting the baby trees swaying. They sprang back upright, soft and flexible. He shivered without his jacket, but he couldn't go back for it, and face the bright, probing eyes of the McCloud brothers. Not yet.
The van was packed and ready to go. His business needed him, after all those months of neglect. The routine of his life was waiting for him, safe and predictable.
But day followed day, and he kept replaying the same footage in his mind. Every single time he'd made love to Raine was imprinted on his memory. Every word, every scent and sigh. Her textures and colors, her tenderness and courage. The woman was incredible. She deserved better than an evil-tempered, foul-mouthed son-of-a-bitch like him.
Amazing. He was having a pity party. He could hear Jesse sniggering in the back of his mind, telling him to stop jerking off.
Seth stepped out of the trees and found himself on a wide, grassy shelf. It dropped abruptly into a canyon where a waterfall leaped and gurgled. It wasn't a tall, impressive waterfall, but still he stared at it, startled. Almost hypnotized by the milky cascades of foam that spilled down on either side of mossy green fingers of rock. The water tumbled into a churning pool below, where it glowed a deep, transparent green.
For the first time, he got a glimmering of a clue as to why people went out, braving bug bites and boredom, to look at stuff like this. It really was pretty. Spectacular, even.
He wandered closer and stared at it for a long time. The constant rushing, pounding sound of the water created space and quiet in his mind. Enough space to watch a new idea unfurl without flinching from it.
He pushed Raine away because some part of him was sure that she would end up pushing him, sooner or later. He couldn't risk the abandonment, the bewilderment. He would rather skip that part, and cut directly to the frozen solitude phase.
A flash of movement caught his eye. The buck had stepped out of the forest. The two of them looked at each other, a long, cool moment of mutual distrust. The buck melted discreetly back into the trees, drawing Seth's
