was in the open where she could easily
be seen if he was looking.
Before she dropped to her hands and knees to crawl through the lilac bushes, she glanced over her shoulder. The lights in the house were on now, and Wacey was coming out the front door. He had one hand on the screen door knob and was holding the pistol in the other. He was looking out toward the road, squinting, and she was sure he hadn't seen her vanish into the dark bushes that formed a hedge between the house and the garage.
As she weaved through the bushes toward the back--she couldn't see well but had done it so many times before--she heard him call her name. Then he called her name again.
Not really seeing but knowing, she cleared the bushes and ran across the backyard. She avoided both the light of the floodlights and the trunk of the cottonwood tree, then raced through the woodpile where the neat rows of logs had been kicked to pieces and then through the corral fence. The stall was empty and dark, and her dad's horse was gone. She pulled down a heavy horse blanket from a cross beam in the tack room and threw it over her shoulder and ran out of the stall toward the Sandrock draw and up into the foothills. She would go to the place where she once thought monsters had come from.
She heard Wacey yell her name again. He was now out on the road.
Sheridan climbed up the draw away from the house. Cactus pierced her feet, and wild rose bushes tugged at her clothes, hair, and skin as if trying to prevent her from climbing still farther, as if trying to throw her back to where she belonged. It was hard to see where she was going so she navigated blindly, using senses she didn't know she had to tell her when to turn, when to duck, and when to step over a rock. Several times, she covered her head and arms in the horse blanket to push her way through thickets that would tear her skin or trip her.
Finally, she stopped. She could go no farther. Her chest hurt from panting, and her legs and arms were too heavy to lift anymore. She sank to the ground, her back to a boulder on the side of the draw. She pulled the horse blanket around her and covered her mouth with it to muffle her racking sobs. Her mind was filled with the image of her mother on the floor. She put the fingers of the hand she had held her mom with in her mouth, and she tasted blood. And she listened, hoping she wouldn't hear Wacey coming after her.
Instead, she heard her name being called very clearly.
'Sheridan, I know you can hear me,' he yelled. She figured he must now be in the backyard. His voice carried through the draw and certain words bounced back in echoes.
'I know you can hear me, Sheridan. You need to listen to me.' Her head emerged from the folds of the blanket. 'Sheridan, I'm really sorry about what happened.
I apologize to you and to your mom. She scared the hell out of me, and I shot before I even knew who it was. Really, believe me. Please.' He sounded as if he were telling the truth, Sheridan thought.
'I called for the ambulance, and it's on the way. Your mom is going to be okay. I just talked to her, and she's going to be just fine. It looks a lot worse than it really is. She's just worried about her little girl. She needs you to come back. She really misses you. She's real worried.'
But he was a good liar. He had shot her pregnant mother, and he had come after her. The last thing her mom had told her was to get away. Sheridan believed what her mom told her. A lot more than she believed Wacey Hedeman.
'Sheridan, answer me so I can tell you're okay! Your mama needs to know.'
He went on like that for a while. She listened but didn't speak or move. Her breath was finally calming, and her chest didn't hurt as much. The blanket was thick and warm, and it smelled like Lizzie and the leather of her dad's saddle. It comforted her.
His voice got harsher. He was now demanding that she answer him. There was no mention of her mother now. That meant he had been lying all along, as she had supposed. He wanted to know if she had told him everything she knew about 'her little friends.' He had been trying to find those Miller's weasels for two straight days, and all he could find, he said, was a bunch of goddamned turds in the woodpile.
'Get your little ass down here, Sheridan. If you don't, you're going to be in bigger trouble than you ever imagined!' He sounded crazy now.
When he said that, she resolved not to move an inch. Adults could be incredibly stupid. He had almost convinced her to answer before he lost his temper.
'Okay, then,' he continued. 'If you aren't coming down RIGHT NOW you had better stay exactly where you are tonight.'
This was new. She listened. He was shouting. His voice was getting hoarse.
'Sheridan, there are going to be a lot of people here in a little while. Lots of lights and lots of policemen. You better not even think of coming down until after they're gone. If you do, if I see you, a lot more people are going to die. You're going to be the first one, and then I'm going to finish off your mother. JUST LIKE I'M GOING TO FRY ALL OF THESE FUCKING LITTLE WEASELS!'
It was the first thing he said that she truly believed.
She looked up, and the rock wall in front of her was glowing. Orange curls of light flickered across it, and for a moment she was sure she was witnessing a miracle. Then she climbed on the boulder that she had been sitting under and looked down. She was amazed at the distance she had covered, and how clearly she could see what was going on below her.
The woodpile was burning, the red flames rolling into the cold night air. Wacey was in the backyard, bathed in the light of the fire. He kept looking up into the foothills and it appeared he was looking directly at her. But he couldn't see her up there, so far away on top of that rock.
He turned and went inside the house. It was too far away to see into the house, to see her mother.
In his pickup, Joe crested the hill on the Bighorn Road and what he saw ahead in the distance was his worst nightmare come true--something that perhaps in the past he had dreamed about, or thought about just like every father inevitably does, but something he had suppressed into a place deep in his mind. But sometimes those unthinkable possibilities, no matter how far beaten back, are unleashed at terrible moments. Like now.
His house and the road in front of it was an explosion of strobing and flashing lights. Garish blue and red emergency lights spun on the tops of Saddlestring Police Department cars and county vehicles. Orange flames rose into the clear sky behind the house, the fire so large and bright it lit up the hillside beyond.
Then, from the center of it all, a Life Flight helicopter bristling with landing lights lifted off, looking clumsy as it cleared the roof of the house, then gaining altitude once it emerged from the spoor of wood smoke that was black
