BEFORE:

Time would prove Will's trail impossible to follow.

It was baffling. How could a man sneak off in the middle of the night, his horse leaving clear tracks which could be followed for miles and days, and then, suddenly, in the middle of seemingly nowhere, disappear? It did not make sense when Adam and Marshal Weston dismounted their horses, their eyes narrowing with skepticism as they searched for evidence of where Will had gone. His tracks had ceased in a foreboding stretch of cavernous mountains; ragged, rough, and steep, they contained both jagged rocks and a scattered collection of stubborn trees which had grown out of the vertiginous ground in obtuse manners. Their trunks were misshapen and crooked, their branches reaching out at all angles except for the sky. It was the landscape that unsettled Adam the most, this strange mixture of dry rock and parched green. It became too steep to travel at a certain point, too dangerous to try. Coming upon this point, Weston and Adam had turned around. Will, it seemed, had vanished instead.

This was not something Weston appeared to be concerned about. "He'll turn up," he said casually. "They always do. A man like him cannot disappear into the wilderness forever, eventually he'll return to civilization, and he'll find trouble when he does."

Though Adam was certain Weston's theory would someday be proven true, he was still slightly skeptical. Slightly unsettled. Will had vanished, and so had his horse. In theory, a man could have tried to scale the nearly perpendicular landscape; he may have even been allowed to succeed. A horse could not have. Like them, the animal would have been forced to turn around. They would have come upon it had that happened, but they did not, leading Adam to suspect one of two things: maybe his cousin was craftier than he had ever given him credit for, or, they had tracked the wrong trail. The latter was more believable than the former—the former was not truly believable at all—in which case, Weston was right: there was nothing to do but wait for Will to turn up again. Adam wanted to ask the lawman what would happen to Will when that day finally came, but he did not.

In the time he and Weston had rode together, each passing day seemed to awaken within him a new question which could not be answered, a new series of doubts. At first, he was preoccupied with thoughts of Ohio, the span of time he himself could not remember but both Will and his father still seemed to. Their memories, whatever they were, had been guarded, not shared openly with him. Still, he could not help wondering if there were things Pa and Will had shared among themselves.

He could not help thinking about Laura, the things she had written in her diary, how she had died and how he had found her. Peggy and Will had been absent from the Running D the day and the week which had followed Adam's gruesome discovery. Not even Pa had seemed to know where they had gone. There had been no trail to follow back then either. Nothing to calm the worry or suspicion over what had happened to Laura or why.

Sheriff Coffee had been tight-lipped on his theories, and in the absence of any clear truth, the townsfolk had decided upon their own. At first, they had blamed Will, then later, when Peggy and Will had eventually reappeared and Laura's diary had begun to make its rounds, they blamed Adam instead. Everyone, including Adam himself, had become so focused on the diary and the damning words written inside that they had forgotten to examine prior events. But it was all Adam could think about now.

What had happened to Laura? Where had Will taken Peggy? And where was he now?

Will had a history of disappearing; he had disappeared after his father's death. Adam had watched as his father searched for the teenage boy. Pa had not hired a Pinkerton to find his missing nephew, but he had employed every other avenue, even traveling to Ohio to look for him himself. It was a trip Pa had insisted on taking alone, the details of which he refused to discuss upon his eventual return. At the time, Adam had been too young, too focused on his own future, his own life to give that of his cousin. He gave his father's avoidance little thought. Those were still the days of Pa always knew best; anything he deemed inappropriate to question or share was usually accepted. But did that mean they should have been?

As a boy, Adam had always believed his father was beyond reproach. As a man, he could not help wondering what his father was hiding.

Why had Pa been so desperate to find Will after John died? Why had he been so willing to invite him into the folds of the family when he resurfaced as an adult? Why did everyone dismiss Will's mysterious, seemingly ominous past, when he and Laura fell in love and were married? Why had the suspicion surrounding Will's absence after and involvement in his wife's death been so suddenly silenced? Why hadn't Pa stepped in and removed Peggy from Will's care when it was obvious she was not being cared for? Why had he done everything in his power to keep the little girl and his son apart?

Because he knew what was happening and why, a small, insistent voice in the back of Adam's mind urged. Pa knows more than he ever intends to share.

Adam could not have thought of such suspicions before. Still standing in his father's shadow, he was too close to the situation to look at it objectively. Now that he had finally stepped away, he realized there were too many oddities to simply be dismissed. Too many things that shifted too quickly, beginning to change the moment Will reentered his father's life.

Pa had always been so protective of Will. From afar, it was clear Ben had acted as though his nephew's behavior was beyond reproach, and it was not as though Will had ever presented himself as a glaringly good man. He drank too frequently and often too much; he had always had a penchant for contracting saloon gals for services only rendered behind closed doors. It was no secret he had frequented Miss Daisy's, Virginia City's brothel on Kay Street, even after he had exchanged marriage vows with Laura. He was not good with children; he had not taken the time to win over Peggy, and he had not been excited at the prospect of him and Laura welcoming a baby of their own. Everyone knew these things; they had only acted like they did not, and Pa had acted as though he had never known them at all. What else was he acting as though he did not know?

"What do you think you'll do?" Weston asked, putting an end to the companionable silence that had settled between them as they rode.

"What do you mean?" Adam asked.

"I mean, what are you going to do now that you don't have Will's trail to follow."

"I said I was going to find him, not having a trail does not change that."

"There's no predicting if or when he might show himself again. It could be years, you know."

"I know."

"So, what are you going to do in the meantime?"

Adam shook his head. He had lists of things he intended to do, the first item of which was not to speak about his intentions.

"Don't waste it," Weston warned.

"Waste what?"

"Your second chance. Time has a habit of passing too quickly, especially out here. There's ample time for thought, there's no denying that. Wilderness provides a man the quiet to sort through the things he'a struggling with; it's easy for him to make decisions out here that he may never follow through on. It's easy to decide upon something when you're so far away from it. To tell yourself you'll make peace with your loved ones later, or plan for a distant date and time when you foresee your journey taking you back to them. It's my job to follow other people's trails; it doesn't leave me time to forge my own. I may be after one person and then someone else pops up, deters me, delays what I originally intended to do, or gets in the way of it not happening at all."

Adam cast Weston a guarded glance. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Why are you still out here?" Weston countered.

"I already told you, I want to find Will."

Weston nodded as though the explanation was expected. It should have been, Adam thought. He had said it before. Still, Weston's tone was curious, the words he was saying even more so. If Adam had no recollection of the events that had brought them together, or the one that was keeping them in each other's company now, he might have been able to interpret the man's words as friendly. He might have thought of them as friends, and maybe under different circumstances they could have been, but they were not—despite their companionable silences, or their easygoing tone of voice, or the things Weston was saying to him.

"I won't say I don't understand where you're coming from," Weston continued, "because I do. Of course, that does not mean I agree with it, because the thing is, the one I suppose I really want to say is this: I have a reason to be out here; you don't. I know you want to find your brother, but finding him is not worth giving up what's left of your life. Like I said, time passes too quickly, especially out here. You could be tracking someone for what feels like days; it's only when you find them that you realize it's been weeks or months and that they aren't really the thing you've been looking for. I know you want to find your brother, but is finding him worth what it's going to cost?"

"What do you mean?"

"Is protecting him from the consequences of his own behavior worth giving up the choice of your own? He made his choices. Don't allow your loyalty to him cost you your future. A man can lose things out here; he can spend his whole life chasing others all-the-while running away from his own truth."

"I'm not loyal to him," Adam said.

And he was not, not really. No, by staying he was being loyal to himself. How many times had he stood alone in a fight? How many times had he been the only one to advocate for an underdog? When push came to shove, he summoned strength and courage and he stood up for what was right. That was who he was; that was what he did. Although the situation with Peggy may have cost him more than he thought he'd have to lose, prior knowledge of the end result would not have changed anything. He still would have taken her. He still would have fought with his father after the fact. He still would have followed Will, because there was something else going on here. There was some bit of family history that his father had amended the story of the past not to include. Something about Ohio that Pa did not want known—that he was afraid to have known.

Whether or not Adam had followed Will immediately, or returned to San Francisco for a time would not have changed his current intention. His cousin's parting words at the Running D would have sat on his mind; the fear etched on his father's face when he looked him in the eyes and simply said "Ohio" would have sat on his heart; the memories of the two would have collided, imploring him to do something. He would have always needed to do something, not because of how Will had left things, or what he had or had not done, but because of who Adam was. There was no changing his mind, leaving Will to the wolves and the world as he turned his back on the situation and continued with his life. There was no continuing on without the truth. The truth about the past, about Will, about his father and himself. He just wanted to know the truth.

"If you aren't loyal to him," Weston said, "then why is he so important to you?"

"He's not."

"Then what is?"

"The truth. The truth always matters no matter what it is."

"The truth about what?"

Adam shook his head. He had said as much as he was going to—to the man riding beside him, at least.

"Boy, you are a hard man to figure," Weston mused. "Will hires a man to scare and lie to you, then he involves you in his crimes, and then he ditches you to suffer the consequences of said crimes alone, and you still stick your neck out for him. I know you say you aren't loyal to him, but, man, if what you're doing isn't a declaration of loyalty, I don't know what is."

"Principled."

"What?"

"I would say I am acting more out of principle than loyalty."

Weston chuckled. "Well, alright then."

They rode on for a while, their companionable silence returning, the landscape changing ever-so-slightly around them. The cavernous mountain seemed a little less steep, the trees a little less sporadic and crooked.

"What are you going to do now?" Adam asked eventually.

Pursing his lips, Weston shrugged nonchalantly. "My job. Just because Will decided to disappear, that doesn't mean I don't have others to pursue. Your false Pinkerton, Wallace Merrill, I'm still after him."

"What about Will?"

"What about him?" Weston asked nonchalantly. "I followed him as far as I could, like I said: he'll resurface, or he won't. Either way, I won't be the one looking for him."

"Why not?"

"Because he's not the one I care about. He's not the one I was tasked with finding. I know this may come as a strange notion to you, seeing how everything has gone as of late, but my presence in your life has nothing to do with Will, or you."

Halting his horse abruptly, a strange feeling gathered in the pit of Adam's stomach. Weston's mount continued walking; neither horse nor rider seemed concerned about the sudden hesitance of the man in their company.

"Then why did you look for him?" Adam asked. "Why did you come after us?"

"It was never about you."

"Then who was it about?"

Stopping his horse, Weston looked over his shoulder and cast Adam a frustrated gaze. "Merrill," he said.

"How can it be about Merrill if you came after us?"

"Will made it about you when he hired Merrill to approach you; he made it about himself when he killed that gal, and you made it about the both of you when you decided to leave town early. If you had stayed then morning would have come and you would have seen what I did. You would have known for sure what for some strange reason you're still hesitant to believe."

"You don't know that Will killed that woman."

"You don't know that I don't. Like I said, you didn't see what I saw."

"Which was what?" Adam demanded. "There was no blood in the room. No evidence of a struggle, or a fight. No evidence of anything at all."

"You think she was alive because you saw the outline of her form beneath a blanket. I saw the state of her when it was pulled off. There may not have been blood in the room, any obvious evidence of anything awry, that's because it was all hidden, not beneath just one blanket but two. There was plenty of blood. The pillow, mattress, and bottom blanket were covered. That woman in Will's employ, she was unrecognizable; she had a cavernous wound where her face should have been."

Just like Laura, Adam thought immediately, though he did not want to. "Gunshot wound?" he asked, his stomach feeling as though it was dropping to his toes. Oh, this was not good. This was not good at all.

Weston nodded.

"But there was no blood," Adam said softly. "Anywhere in the room."

"It was cleaned up."

"With the second blanket," Adam concluded.

"That was then hidden beneath the one that was clean," Weston finished. "Now, I can respect a man who declines to voice a damning opinion on events he did not bear witness to himself, but I don't know what to think of one who denies to suspect what the evidence would lead him to believe, just because it's difficult or uncomfortable to accept. You're the one who said the truth was important; it's a shame you fight so hard not to see it."

Adam wanted to refute the statement. He wanted to tell Weston where he could put his words or where he could go, but he could not, because suddenly the lawman seemed much more right than wrong. "What do you know about Will?" he asked.

"I tracked Merrill to the coast," Weston said. "He was the one I cared about; he was the one I was after. Then Will killed that woman and I had no choice but to follow the two of you."

"Why? If you don't care about finding him now, then what made you want to follow him then?"

"Like you said, the truth matters," Weston said seriously. "I knew that, under the circumstances, I would be the only one who really cared about it. I couldn't let the local boys posse up and go after the two of you, or the sheriff, for that matter. There wasn't enough time to involve another marshal and prevent that from happening. I went after the two of you, because I knew there was only one guilty party, and I wasn't gonna let an innocent man hang."

"How could you know that?" Adam demanded. "How could you have possibly known that?"

"I recognized Will's name early on. As a matter of fact, I recognized yours, too. You can run away from where you originally came from, but you can't run away from who you are. You and Will share a last name, but you're not brothers. You may be on the outs with your father, but you're not a criminal. Will, on the other hand, has been a known felon for years. I believe he was eighteen the first time he got a little carried away with a woman, left a little gal in New Orleans looking a lot like the one on the coast. There's been others, enough to glean somewhat of a pattern, enough to make him a wanted man. He got harder to track when he fell in with E.J. Butler and his crew. If one of his men worked hard enough in the right kind of ways, then Butler would protect him. Then of course, they had their falling out. Butler coming after him for taking his property was the least of Will's problems at the time. His violent tendencies were starting to catch up with him. A marshal by the name of Jennings was on his tail, and then, suddenly, Jennings disappeared and word of Will's death in Pine City started to spread around. I reckon now, Will killed him, let the town bury him under the wrong name, and then found some not-so-distant relatives to hide behind."

"But Will turned himself in," Adam protested. "He went to the Pine City Sheriff to declare himself living, turned himself in for the crimes he committed in association with Butler, and made his past wrongs right."

"He lied. He never came forward. He could not have, because if he had then he would have been hung. No, he stayed with your family. Ben Cartwright, your father, is a very respectable and formidable man, or so I am told, and so are the three sons he raised, yourself and the two brothers you do have. Word around is that you're a tight-knit group. I'm sure Will felt safe and secure, hiding in plain sight among your family."

Adam was deeply unsettled. "I thought you said you weren't tracking him. That he wasn't the one you were tasked to find. How do you know so much about him?" How do you know so much about me?

"It's my job to know these things," Weston said simply. "To stay appraised."

"Just like it's your job to bring men in?" Adam asked bitterly. "Some lawman you are. You had Will and you let him go. He escaped because you allowed him to."

"I had to."

"Why?"

"Man, I can say the words, but I cannot make you want to listen to or understand them," Weston said tersely. "I recognized your names. I am aware of Will's past, and because of that I knew you were innocent. I also knew that I could not free you because you would not have agreed to leave him, and had you stayed in his company, he would have done his best to incriminate you all over again. I could not take you both back to that seaside town under those circumstances; you both would have hung."

"You followed us to save me," Adam surmised flatly. He did not know what to think, or how to feel. He was not sure he felt anything at all, rather a strange sense of detached numbness.

How could others seem to know so much about a cousin that he knew so little about himself? Alongside this question a new one awoke; it was more haunting and disturbing than anything he had questioned before. How much of the truth about Will did Pa know? Everything? Or nothing at all?

Pa was bound to know something. After all, he had been protecting Will since the day he walked back into his life. He had protected him from everything and everyone, even Adam himself.

Adam opened his mouth to speak again, only to have his words silenced by a gunshot. Both Adam and Weston flinched, jumping in their saddles as they reached for their guns. Another shot rang out from seemingly nowhere, the sound ricocheting off the rigid mountain walls, making it impossible to decipher where it had come from.

Adam looked around frantically, struggling and failing to decipher on what side they were being attacked. "Weston," he said. "Did you see where it came from?"

Weston did not reply.

The mountains surrounded them on both sides, the side of the path they were on was jagged and tall. It seemed impossible anyone could approach them anywhere other than from in front or behind, but there was no one to be seen in either of those places. Nowhere to run or hide.

"Weston," Adam said again, casting a look behind him to stare at the man.

Looking back at him, Weston's eyes were narrow, his mouth hung agape, and a hole in his jacket was seeping blood. He moved his mouth but no sound came out as he swayed in the saddle and fell to the ground with a thud.

Leaping from his horse, Adam dragged the animal to stand in front of the side of the steep mountainside where Weston lay.

"Weston," he hissed, crouching down to assess his wound.

Blood seeped from the breast of the lawman's jacket, saturating everything it touched. There was so much blood. Too much blood to allow him to survive. Adam knew Weston was dying, and looking into the man's eyes, wide, wild, and full of pain, he knew Weston knew it, too. Oddly, for a moment, nothing else seemed to matter. Not the present or the future. Not what Will had done, what Pa had said or done, or even the truth. Not where they were, who had shot at them or why. None of it mattered as Weston sputtered on the blood filling his mouth and blindly reached for the star pinned to his jacket. His fingers were slow and inept as he struggled to detach it, his hands slick and slippery. Eventually he freed it and weakly shoved it toward Adam.

Holding the bloodied badge in his hand, Adam wanted to give it back, but he could not. Weston's eyes became dull, his body lax as the last of his breath rushed from his wounded chest. The marshal was dead.

Another shot rang out, and reality came rushing back. Dropping the badge on the ground, Adam turned away from the lawman's body, and peered at his surroundings from in between his horse's legs. He could not see anyone.

Another shot rang out, then another, and another.

Adam held tight to his gun, his eyeline dropping and then settling on the jacket he wore. The side of it was covered in blood. The placement of it was so odd, so impossible when thinking about how he had leaned over Weston. This stain was dark and wet, slowly growing and spreading to cover nearly half of his coat.

"No," he whispered almost absently as an odd ringing began to fill his ears. He did not remember being hit by a bullet, and he was not in any pain. How could he be shot? Stress, a voice in his head whispered. Shock. That whole flight or fight thing has a funny way of kicking in when you need it to.

Just because he did not want to believe he had been shot, that did not make it untrue. Just because he did not want to die out here that did not mean he was not going to.

"No," he whispered again, his perception of his surroundings becoming fuzzy as he sank to sit on his knees. He felt numb, tired, and cold as he fought to keep his eyes open. This was not happening. This could not happen. Not here. Not now. There were so many things he needed to say and do yet. What about Eddie? What about Peggy and Lil? What about Will? The truth? And the things Weston had shared? "No."

"Yes," a man's voice interjected.

Looking in between his horse's legs, Adam cast his gaze upon the bottom half of a man standing on the other side of the animal. He held his gun tightly as he shoved the horse away. He did not need to see the person who had gunned him down to know who it was. He did not need his eyes to verify what his heart already knew. Still, it stung to see Will standing in front of him, pointing his gun directly at Adam's chest.

"I'm sorry," Will said.

"Me too," Adam whispered haggardly.

They shot at the same time. Adam felt his chest explode with pain, and then the world went black.

TBC