Lauren, you’re dead. Just deal, huh?

  Curious how the brain worked. Grasping at straws even when they didn’t exist.

  Megaphone: “Stop right there!”

  Lauren risked two more steps before she obliged. Close enough? No. But might have to do.

  “The rest of you, come out! Right now! This is your last warning!”

  “What the hell are you giving them a warning for?” a deep voice called. “Just shoot the bitch!”

  “I told you, mother fucker, you’re not in charge here!”

  Blinded by the lights, Lauren couldn’t see who the second speaker was.

  She took the distraction to ease forward another step and lower her arms. Felt the grenade slip down the inside of her sleeve to rest in her palm.

  Lauren shivered.

  Manford must realize she wasn’t close enough. He yelled, “We got wounded in here! We’re trying to get ’em up!”

  One more quiet step forward. Suck in a breath.

  No one seemed to notice. Lucky, lucky.

  At least she’d made it outside into the sweet mountain air, where she could look up at the night sky. Only the brightest stars burned through the haze. The cold wind felt good on her hot face.

  Her fingers went tight around the heavy grenade.

  “Leave the goddamn wounded behind! We’ll collect ’em later.”

  Just a small step. And then a half step, as if she were nervously shifting. Forward.

  “We’re sending the horses out first,” Manford bellowed angrily. “Don’t shoot the horses, you hear?”

  Good thinking on Manford’s part. It bought Lauren another step.

  It hit Lauren like a thrown brick: She couldn’t remember what day it was? Maybe it was Sunday? The holy day? It made her feel better to think it was. Somehow salvation didn’t seem so implausible.

  She would die here. She would never get on her bike and ride to the Tappan ranch in northern Wyoming. Never watch the wildflowers from the rocking chair by the big front windows.

  Tyrell would understand.

  She wrapped her fingers around the lever, freeing its pressure on the pin. All she had to do was reach over with her other hand and pull it. Maybe she could run the last twenty feet to the big guns? Doubtful. Looked like she’d have to try and pull the pin, lift the grenade, and throw it before they shot her to doll rags.

  She took one last look over her shoulder, saw movement in the rear, horses maybe, shaking their heads in the shadows behind the tractor.

  A curious numbness filled her.

  “Listen!” one of the men in the vehicles called. “Hear ’em?”

  “’Bout time our birds got here. They’ll have fuel and ammo. We’re saved.”

  “Yeah,” megaphone agreed. “Guess we don’t need hostages anymore.”

  Lauren’s heart sank.

  Dear God.

  The sound of the helicopters rose. As they cleared the ridge, the thunder grew louder. Nothing more than three dark specters against the haze-black sky, the Blackhawk helicopters came dropping down over the tree tops, sundering the smoke as they cut arcs through the feeble moonlight.

  The choppers swung around and dove straight at the yard. Surprised men leaped inside trucks or ran for the trees.

  Megaphone: “What the hell kind of stupid-ass antic is this?”

  Lauren pulled the pin, charged for the closest vehicle. The bullets cracked by her ear. Close. So close. Then she was between the LTVs. Grabbed the door handle and got one foot on the driver’s step. Rising as high as she could, she slam-dunked the grenade down through the vehicle’s open turret.

  The shocked gunner screamed something, clawing at his crotch. She swore she heard the grenade thump onto the floor.

  Then her foot slipped off the step. She fell as bullets ripped through the space where she’d been.

  On the ground, she scrambled toward the other LTV. Caught a glance as she rolled under the other vehicle: the gunner, leaning out from his turret, a pistol in his hand.

  Counting down, ...two, one.

  The explosion hit her like the fist of God. Bounced her up and hurled her face-down. In that flash of an instant, frozen, the JLTV above her was blown onto its side.

  And then the blow to her head made the world go away. Blasted heterodyne. Floating into a cloudy...

  She came to in front of a red Dodge truck. Her first sensation is damning pain in her chest. Excruciating. Hard to breathe.

  Darkness.

  Lit here and there by burning wreckage.

  Hellish images in her swimming vision. Broken trucks.

  Fires flickering, illuminating bent and twisted bodies.

  Whimpering, she drags herself underneath the truck’s bumper and curls up on her side. Cradles her broken and bleeding chest, gasping for breath.

  Movement catches her eye.

  Horses burst out of the barn and thunder past her with their tails flying. Muzzle flashes. Manford shooting. Methodical, like he had all day now. Taking down any enemy soldier he could.

  The endless fucking ringing, like an amp on overload, threatens to split her skull.

  Must have turned her brain to mush.

  She tries to understand the LTV burning off to the right. The doors have been blown open. The armored windows blasted out and shattered.

  The second LTV lies on its side, wheels sticking out. Looking so odd in the jumping and leaping firelight.

  Grenade couldn’t do that.

  Lauren shakes her head hard but can’t make sense of what is happening. Worse, she’s gone deaf. She can’t even hear the helicopter blades cleaving the air right over her head. The downwash is beating at her, rocking the truck above her.

  Practically on top of her…

  Startled men in fatigues fire wildly at the choppers as the aircraft swing around to make another pass, and the pilots open up, strafing the positions below.

  The mini-guns chew the earth to pieces. The air becomes metal-flavored sand, and Lauren feels herself sinking. Her strength leaving her.

  Red froth bubbles at her lips. Is she hit? She hasn’t felt the shot. In the light, she stares down at the warm blood on her hand. Understands it’s from the pain in her chest.

  Idly, she tries to determine: Is it just one or both lungs? The macabre debate amuses her. At this point, does it really matter? How long before she suffocates on her own blood?

  Lying back on the cold ground, she watches the choppers cut across the face of the haze-choked moon, and elation washes through her. One after another, the Blackhawks sail by. As each momentarily blocks the moonlight, the whirling smoke turns cobalt blue, and she sees the insignia on the helicopter’s side.

  Wyoming National Guard.

  Always ready. Always there.

  Oblivion is closing in around her, and she smiles.

  The angels have come after all.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  An earsplitting security alarm rang, going on and on. Why didn’t someone shut that damned thing off? The ringing made Lauren sick to her stomach.

  She tried to sit up, but couldn’t budge her arms or legs. Was she paralyzed? Strapped down?

  Where am I?

  She had no sense of time or place. Just floating misery. Breathing was agony.

  Struggling, she managed to open her eyes, and the white light in the room felt like stilettos being plunged through her eye sockets into her brain. She closed them again, and fought down the wave of nausea.

  Hospital room. Should have known immediately, just based upon the astringent smell.

  Why was she in the hospital?

  Slitting one eye open, she examined the tubes dangling from hanging bags. What the hell…?

  She commanded herself to see. Tubes in her arms, chest. The one in her nose fed her oxygen, which she’d started gulping in great desperate breaths. The blood pressure and heart rate monitor to her right were flashing red.

  A woman charged into the room. Tall. Dark haired. Her mouth moved. Lauren couldn’t hear her. The woman hurried over to her bed and leaned down close to Lauren’s ear.

  “Calm down! You…all right. I know…barely hear me.” Her voice was so faint Lauren almost couldn’t make out the words. “…an explosion,” “…hearing…back soon…”

  “Explosion?” she asked, stunned by the news. “What happened?” She couldn’t hear her own voice. Which meant the woman must be shouting at the top of her lungs.

  “Seven days ago… Firefight. …Shrapnel lodged in your lungs. Chest trauma…four broken ribs. Surgery…”

  She frowned up at the woman, not understanding. She had no memory of such an event. “Hurts…to breathe.”

  The woman nodded. “…Out of danger now. Stable. Keeping you sedated…few more days. Rest.”

  Lauren sank back into the white pillows and nodded. Okay. She’d been hurt in an explosion. She needed to rest.

  While the woman listened to her heart and used a penlight to check her pupil dilation, Lauren fought to recall some shred…

  “Manford?” she asked. “Did he make it?”

  The woman straightened up, stared at Lauren, then nodded, and mouthed the word, “Yes.”

  “Okay.” Lauren closed her eyes, felt the warm tears drain down her cheeks, said, “Okay,” again and drifted back to the sweet oblivion of sleep.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  “Davis? You awake?”

  Lauren knew that voice. Had heard it... Where?

  “Doc said you were conscious. They did surgery on your ears. You’ll be able to hear again.”

  When she squinted through rheumy eyes, a face drifted out of the ocean of light: Captain Ragnovich. His white hair had a bluish sheen in the fluorescent lights, and his camo clothing had been freshly pressed. A new look for him. She hoped he hadn’t done it for her.

  “Davis, can you hear me?”

  “Yeah. Barely.” Made her aware that her ears hurt, like a deep dull ache. It barely stood out against the other pain.

  “Good. Don’t try and pull the bandages off your ears. They’re there to keep them from getting infected and to allow the eardrums to heal.”

  She roused herself, tried to roll over to face him where he sat at her bedside. Froze and gasped. It fucking hurt too much. “Kids?” she asked. “Make it out?”

  “All but one,” Ragnovich’s voice barely penetrated the ringing and thick bandages. “Little boy. Rest are safe and sound with their families in Laramie.”

  “Guard lose anyone?”

  “Few gunshot wounds…choppers are going to need a shitload of paint. Otherwise…all right.”

  “Militia?”

  His voice had dropped to a mumble.

  Lauren licked her dry lips. “Can’t hear you, Captain. Sorry.”

  Ragnovich dragged his chair closer and leaned forward, toward her right ear.

  “How are you feeling?” He spoke slowly, enunciating each word.

  “Like I was run over by a fucking dump truck and jumped on by an elephant, okay?” she said. When she took a deep breath, her chest hurt like sin, but it was bearable, and this was the first day she could say that. “Thanks for sending the choppers.”

  Ragnovich’s mouth quirked. “Didn’t have much choice. I’d have had a mass mutiny if I’d let Lauren Davis, Queen of the Fourth Quadrant, die at the hands of raiders.”

  A smile touched Lauren’s lips. “Some hero.”

  “Yeah. Some hero. You know what would have happened if they’d turned those two M2 Brownings on the helicopters? I got the full report from Manford. You took them out before they could do any damage. Don’t know what they had in the LTV. Mortar rounds? C-4? Whatever it was, your grenade detonated a whole load.”

  Guilt carved his wrinkled face. “Wish I’d known earlier, I would have…”

  He let the sentence dwindle to nothing, and as Lauren studied his downcast eyes and the hard set of his jaw, she said, “What about the Militia? How many did they lose?”

  Most of her memory had returned, but not all. Everything between the explosion and waking up in the hospital was a complete blank.

  “Twenty-two. Seven more wounded.” He hesitated. Looked up at her and took a deep breath. “No easy way to say this. Trevor Phillips died getting the children up the ravine to the ridge top.”

  Lauren suddenly felt lightheaded. “How?”

  “Guess five men were chasing them. Phillips got down behind some rocks and made a last stand. Bought time while his fiancée herded the kids up the trail. Killed every one of the raiders, but they’d shot him up pretty bad. Once Tiffany got the kids to safety, she took a horse back for Phillips. He didn’t make it to the hospital in Laramie.”

  In her imagination, Lauren is in the high mountains with Tiffany, strapping Trevor’s body over the back of a horse, and starting down the trail. Being there, she is going to make the difference. She will get him to the hospital in Laramie.

  But she wasn’t there. Can’t go back and change the past.

  Her heart breaks for Tiff. Had she and Trevor talked? Gotten to say goodbye? At least been able to hold each other one last time?

  If only Lauren could get a deep breath into her lungs…

  There is no respite. No pause in the onslaught. Terror, grief, love, anguish. Far horizons. Experience pushed to the outermost limits a human being could stand and survive.

  Ragnovich gave her a little while to absorb the news, then he said, “Got more bad news. Mike Vinich passed. Lauren, his heart just couldn’t seem to catch up with the trauma. For what it’s worth, the cardiologist said he’d never seen such a fighter.”

  Lauren is falling, weightless, dull-gray and empty. Even the ringing in her ears seems to fade into nothing.

  She tries to sob, spears of pain like stabbing agony in her chest.

  Closing her eyes, she turns herself into a bird. Stretches her wings to catch the air and rise. Only she just…can’t…seem to get off the ground.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  A wheelchair squeaks as it rolls down the hall outside. I hear a soft voice speaking with someone, and I close my eyes to listen. It sounds like Mike Vinich. His voice eases the dark fluttery monster that inhabits my chest. The unbearably heavy thing that relentlessly twists and untwists inside me. For weeks, I’ve endured its faint motions. Feathery. Malignant. At night, it slithers up and transforms into a cry that I keep locked behind my clenched teeth. Terrifies me. This thing that sleeps coiled around my heart.

  When the nurse wheels him into my room, Mike’s face lights up with a huge smile. “Hey, you look like hell. How you feeling?”

  “Like hell. You?”

  “Better now.”

  The nurse pushes his wheelchair up to my bedside and leaves the room. An antiseptic smell trails after her.

  Mike’s brown eyes fill with warmth. He exhales, as though relieved to see me. For a while, we just smile at the other.

  “Tiff came to see you a few days ago. She sat by your bedside for hours, hoping to talk to you.”

  The monster moves.

  Some part of me knows that this isn’t true. I’m just drifting in a misty cloud of drugs and pain. How do I justify this? What does it mean?

  “Probably wanted to be the one to tell me about Trev.” Pain etches my voice, and I slip away to be with Trevor on the starlit mountaintop, patiently listening to him trying to talk me into staying out of the fight. He was willing to die to save Tiff, but he didn’t want me to.

  Coiling. Around my heart.

  I lie here, waiting for it to end, but it never ends…it never ends…

  “How is Tiff?”

  “Broken. Grieving, but she’ll make it. She’s damned near as tough as you are.”

  Tears burn my eyes. “I wish I’d…”

  “Don’t. Don’t do that.” The voice has changed. Deeper, filled with that faint accent. So familiar. It warms my heart.

  When I turn and open my eyes, Tyrell leans forward in the wheelchair and reaches out to take my hand in a grip that hurts. “Your friend Trevor knew exactly what he was doing, Lauren. Don’t second-guess his decision. He knew it was worth it.”

  Tyrell pauses, his dark eyes glinting. “Just as you did when you walked out of that pole barn with that grenade.”

  I have such vast empty space to cross before I find my voice. “Don’t even remember that.”

  Deliverance. This cold forgetfulness. My soul must be certain I couldn’t bear to live through it again.

  “You don’t have to. Hey, chica mia, you’re a fucking hero. I guarantee that you’ll be hearing different versions of the story for the rest of your life.”

  “Which means I’m forever condemned to wonder which one is true.”

  Ty laughs from the belly. I see his teeth, the lights glinting in his coal-black hair. And I remember why I fell in love with him.

  He gives me that teasing grin. “Yeah, being a legend will be a curse.”

  Utter despair hollows out my insides, then slowly bleeds out into the room, giving the white walls a watery sheen. I never wanted any of this.

  I have so much to tell Ty, but when I look, my brother Jimmy is sitting in the wheelchair. His tan-brown Davis eyes are taking my measure, an amused smile on his lips. I can see the scar on his chin from where he fell on the sidewalk when he was five.

  Jim studies my expression, and quietly says, “Hear that the Tappans have sent word. Heard you were in the hospital. Said you had a place at the ranch. Do you know when you’ll be going?”

  “I…I… What day is it?”

  “Friday.”

  Shaking my head, I breathe the words, “I don’t even know what that means.”

  “Ragnovich came to see you yesterday, Lauren. Told you that Governor Agar was flying up to Cody, and you could ride along. Special. You know how important it must be. The state jet is too important a piece of equipment these days.”

  “Okay.” My head weakly rolls to the side.

  Jimmy rolls his chair as close to the bed as he can. “Sis, Breeze forgave you. I was the one who fucked up that night. I wouldn’t have come back to tell you, but you’re such a god-damned dense knot-head sometimes. Send word. Tell Agar you want to go.”