Hunted

"I didn't know for sure. Young men have been brought to the ranch to service Crane and Sling and just not been there anymore after the two had gone on hunting trips up into the mountains. When I returned to the ranch last night, they were on another hunt and you weren't there. But your Jeep was still there. It took me most of the night and the rest of the day to track you up to the top of the mountain. This is my people's land. I know it better than Crane did."

"What now?" Ben asked.

"Now you stay here until your flight leaves and we'll drive down into Durango and leave off the Jeep, just like everything is normal. Then you'll be out of it. No one but Crane and Sling knew where you'd come from—or care. They'll look for them and eventually find them, but there won't be anything linking them to anybody. I'm known to be up here tonight at the reservation. No one here will say anyone else is here. They'll hide you until the day of your flight. The Jeep is in a barn nearby. No one will connect it to the men's disappearance."

They were on the Ute reservation south of the Shadow Ranch—in the compound of Ed's extended family. They had come down the mountain and, at night, Ed had gone in and gathered up all of Ben's gear and they'd driven away in Ben's jeep, with Ed's horse tied to it. Everyone else on the ranch had been celebrating the absence of the rancher and foreman and all were dead to the world after being drunk on their tails. On the way to the reservation, Ed took his rifle apart and they stopped and buried pieces here and there. The rifle that killed Crane and his foreman would never be found.

Ed rolled over and sat up on the side of the bed.

"You aren't leaving me, are you?" Ben asked.

"I have to. I have to go back to the ranch and act like nothing's happened. Someone will get you to the airport if I can't."

"I understand, but try to be there," Ben said.

"I'll do what I have to do," Ed answered. "You understand that this is it for us. For your protection, you have to go back wherever you came from—I'll forget where that is—and live your life. Just be more careful who you sleep with from now on."

"I want to sleep with you. I've never had anyone who—"

"Try to forget me," Ed said, leaning over for one last kiss, and then he was gone.

But forgetting wasn't that easy for Ed, either. The night before Ben was to fly out to Philadelphia, Ed returned, climbed into the bed, and made totally possessive love to Ben, pinning him to the bed and fucking him again and again throughout the night.

He wasn't there in the morning, and didn't take Ben down into Durango—two of his brothers did that, using another Jeep in addition to Ben's for them to have a way to get back to the reservation. But when Ben opened his carry-on bag for inspection at the airport, he found a slip of paper with a cell phone number on it. He carefully inserted it into his wallet, knowing that someday—not soon—but someday, he'd call the number.