It was nearly midnight. Sheridan, Lucy, and April were back in the motel. Marybeth had come to say goodnight before she left to join them. She looked at Joe with sympathy and curiosity.
“And I’m so sorry about your horses,” he said.
“After the girls are gone, all I’ll have are my horses,” she said. “But you seem determined to kill them all off.”
He winced.
“I’m sort of kidding,” she said.
He squeezed her hand. “We’ll get more horses. I know you’re always on the lookout for good ones.”
“In fact,” she said with a sly smile, “there are a couple of fine little quarter horses down on this ranch in Colorado between Boulder and Longmont. . . .”
He asked, “How is my dad? Have you heard?”
“He’s failing fast.”
“Have you talked to his doctors?”
She nodded.
“Any hope?”
She shook her head.
After years of estrangement, Joe had become reacquainted with his father, George, on a case three years before, when he’d been assigned to Yellowstone Park by Governor Rulon. Days after they’d made contact, George had been severely beaten, because he’d made the mistake of holing up in Joe’s room and men who’d come after Joe had found George instead. He’d never fully recovered and had been in a senior care facility in Billings since. Joe and Marybeth had paid for George’s care with money they didn’t have. In addition to the injuries he’d sustained, George had dementia and his body was rotted by alcoholism.
“Maybe I can see him,” Joe said. “He’s here somewhere in this hospital, right?”
“Yes. But I don’t know if that’s a great idea right now in your condition—or his,” she said.
“Still,” he said.
“You chanted my name?” she said, changing the subject.
“It was my mantra. You and the girls. I said your names over and over again to myself. Like this:
“I’m touched,” she said, but he knew from her furrowed brow she was holding something back.
“What?” he asked.
“Joe, I’ve got to ask you, is something wrong? You seem different somehow. I’m more than a little worried about you.”
“In what way?”
She rose, took his right hand, and squeezed it with both of hers. “This thing you went through with those brothers. It seems to have affected you very deeply. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.”
She breathed deeply and looked longingly into his eyes. “Not really,” she said.
“I’m fine.”
Said Marybeth, “The girls noticed it. They asked me if you were going to be all right. Sheridan especially said she thought there was something different about you.”
He waved it off. “Look, I’m hurting. I have holes all over me. I’ve been through quite an experience and I’m trying to sort it all out. I hate it that my daughters—and you—are saying these things.”
“Is it because they hurt you, those brothers?”
“I’ve been hurt before.”
“Then what?” Marybeth kneaded his hand and pursed her lips.
Finally, he said, “I guess I feel like I left a piece of me up there on that mountain. I don’t feel completely whole.”
“You’ll heal up.”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what?”
Joe shook his head. “I’m still sorting it out. I feel like I missed something obvious. Something right in front of my eyes. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out what it was. I feel like I asked them all the wrong questions, and I couldn’t see what was in front of my eyes. Not that I can see it now, either. But those brothers—they beat me at every turn. They were faster, smarter, and meaner. I was outgunned and outmuscled.”
Marybeth frowned at him. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. Plus it doesn’t help that McLanahan and the sheriff in Baggs think I made it all up.”
“McLanahan’s an idiot.”
“There was a DCI agent here today,” Joe said. “Or someone claiming to be a DCI agent. He asked some pretty strange questions, and I felt he was trying to trip me up for some reason. And no one seems to have ever heard of
