Page 53 of Coyote

"East wash. There are rabbits near the dry creek bed. I'll be back in an hour." He unclipped the radio from his belt and placed it beside my hand. "If I'm not back by then, call Sierra."

"You expect trouble?"

"No. But I promised you a direction." He tipped his head toward the trail. "Bors is tied below. He'll make noise before anything gets up here."

I picked up the radio.

Coyote leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine. "Stay here, big man."

"Come back."

He held my eyes. "Always."

He wound Nimue around his neck and stepped into the afternoon.

At the mouth of the cave, he looked back once. Then he turned east, exactly as he had promised, and disappeared behind the rocks.

The rabbit was still alive when I reached the snare, and I was glad. Killing it gave my hands something to do besides pull Sarah's report out of my pocket and carry it back to John.

It kicked when I came through the brush, winding the wire tighter around its back leg. I caught it behind the head and broke its neck with one quick twist. Nimue lifted her head from my shoulder, interested now that the work was over.

"Not for you," I said.

She slid down my arm while I carried the rabbit into the dry creek bed. There was a flat rock near the bank where I cleaned whatever I caught. I put the rabbit there, cut through the skin below its hocks, and pulled the hide down.

Nimue tasted the air beside my wrist.

I shoved her head away. "You ate yesterday."

She kept watching. Facts didn't slow her down much when she wanted something. I understood that better than I wanted to.

I opened the rabbit's belly without cutting the gut, reached inside, and removed everything I didn't want. My hands kept working. The rest of me was somewhere else. Linc or Rafe would take John to Winston's office. Sarah would put her arms around him, and John would remember all the people and places that had belonged to him before I found him in the pit.

Maybe he would come back.

And maybe he wouldn't. It was that last part I couldn't live with.

I rinsed the liver and checked it before wrapping it with the meat. John would want it cooked through. He was a doctor, which meant he could watch me eat something raw with blood running down my fingers but would start listing parasites if I tried to feed it to him.

The thought of his disgusted face almost made me smile.

I could hand John the report when I walked back up and let him make the choice Rafe said belonged to him. I wasn't going to. Rafe knew that when he let me walk out with it.

I wiped my knife on the discarded hide and folded it. The report pressed against my thigh when I crouched to rinse my hands. I had brought it with me because leaving it at the ranch had felt too much like making the decision final.Carrying it around while I lied was apparently different. People had always told me things because I never held onto anything, and now I was holding this against my leg like it was mine.

John had promised me today, and the sun was still above the ridge. Sarah could wait a few more hours. She had already waited eleven months.

I knew exactly how ugly that was, and I didn't give a damn.

I tied the wrapped rabbit to my belt and settled Nimue around my neck. Then I went back to the cave anyway.

John sat near the mouth with the radio beside his thigh. He had pulled on his jeans while I was gone but left his shirt folded on the bedroll. The dressing on his ribs was still white. No blood. No wetness around the edges.

He looked up when my boots scraped the stone and let out a breath. "You came back."

"I said I would, didn't I?" I crouched in front of him.

John caught the back of my neck before I could reach for his dressing and drew me between his knees. He pressed his nose into my hair, breathed me in, and dragged one hand down my spine.