Chapter 10

When I woke up in the morning, Vic was already up and dressed. She was sitting on the sofa, and pulling her boots on when I stumbled out of bed and walked into the kitchen, bleary-eyed and exhausted from a night of interrupted sleep. She looked amazing, just like she always did. She was objectively beautiful in an aesthetic sense of course, but she was also powerful, strong, and competent, a force of nature to be reckoned with – not to mention seven feet of attitude in a five-foot, six-inch package. I thought sometimes about how out of place she was in my county, and how much better suited she would be back in the city where her skills and talent could be used by a department with a bigger staff, more resources, and a greater ability to appreciate what she could bring to the table. I still marveled that she had decided to stay on in Absaroka, and even more, that she had decided to stay on with me.

"Morning," she said, and flashed me a quick smile before she went back to tying her shoes.

"Morning," I said. "You doing okay?"

"I'm fine," she said, and started on her second boot. "Coffee's made."

"You're going into work this morning?"

"I kind of have to," she said. She stood and grabbed her gun belt from the top of the piano, buckling it on as she talked. "Cady hasn't had a day off in like three weeks, and we've got a couple of new guys starting next week, so I need to get their training organized."

"You're doing their training?"

"Ha. No. Ferg is doing their training. I'm just getting everything organized for him." She reached for her coat.

"Everything that happened yesterday was pretty intense," I said. "Are you sure you're up for working today?"

"Walt," she said, sounding exasperated. "I'm fine. Really." She started pulling her coat on and I knew I was running out of time before she escaped out the door.

"We should really talk about what you're going to do, Vic." I could see the tension enter her shoulders, but I plowed on ahead. "It's just, you know, the doctor made it sound like this was something that needs to be taken care of pretty soon, so."

"We can talk about it later."

"Vic – "

She sighed and stood up, fists firmly planted on her hips. "Look, I get it, okay? This is something that has to be done. And soon. I just need…hell, Walt, I just need some time, okay? I barely had a chance to wrap my head around the idea of being pregnant, and now I have to get used to the idea of being not pregnant anymore. Again. Can you just give me a little bit of time? Please?"

I considered telling her I would give her the world, if she asked for it, but then decided that might be a little too flowery for my excessively pragmatic former undersheriff to handle. Instead I simply said, "Yep."

"Thank you." She turned toward the door, stopping to grab her keys from the desk, and then she turned back. "Really. Thank you. This is just…a lot. And I need to process, but I promise we'll talk about it later, okay?"

"Okay."

She regarded me for a moment, and then came back across the room, tangled her fingers in my hair, and pulled me down for a kiss. It was long, slow and searing, and shot through me like a bolt of lightning. Then she stepped back to survey the results of her work, nodded in satisfaction, and left.

I stood in the middle of the room feeling pleasantly as though I'd just grabbed a hold of an electric fence, while the sound of her duty vehicle roared up the drive and faded into the distance.

I was mildly puzzled a few minutes later when I heard a truck coming back down the gravel drive, and wondered idly if Vic had decided to return for a repeat performance. But when I opened the door, it was the Cheyenne Nation who was climbing out of his awful truck with my hat in his hand.

"Something is wrong," he said, as he came towards the stairs. He held my hat out. "And I do not only mean that that lipstick is not at all your color."

I took the hat with one hand, and self-consciously wiped at my mouth with the other. Sure enough, my fingers came away with smudges of pink. "Vic believes in marking her territory." I stood back to let him through the door. "What makes you think something is wrong?"

"Because in all of the years of our friendship, never once have I known you to leave your hat behind." He stepped through the door. "Coffee?"

I nodded and gestured toward the kitchen as though he might have forgotten where it was. "Fresh made."

Henry made himself at home in the kitchen, pulling mugs down out of the cabinet and pouring a cup for each of us. He handed one to me, and took a sip of his own. "You also texted me last night to see if you could use the Pony for some undisclosed reason, which, I hardly need to tell you, is also somewhat out of character."

Deciding that there was no point in prevaricating, I told him, "Vic's pregnant."

I've known Henry Standing Bear for more than four decades. I have seen him happy. I have seen him sad. I have seen him angry. I have seen him express any number of emotions along a continuum ranging anywhere from mild to extreme, and, in some cases, downright explosive. One thing I have never seen him be, however, is shocked. Surprised, maybe. Possibly even startled once or twice.

This news came entirely as a shock.

He set his coffee mug down with a thunk and took a step backwards. "You're kidding."

"Nope."

He blinked for a moment. "Walt, that is…" He blinked again, and then his face broke out into a beatific grin. "That is incredible news. Congratulations."

I shook my head, hoping to forestall any other well-wishes. "It's uh…it's not good, actually. It's dangerous – the pregnancy. The doc says…" I let out a breath and realized how hard it was for me to get the words out. I cleared my throat and tried again. "The doc says she won't be able to carry it to term. That the damage from when she was shot – it's…it's too severe. She won't be able to keep the baby. She's going to have to have a, uh, operation."

Henry's smile faded as I spoke. "Oh, Walt. I am so sorry."

I nodded, but my throat felt too constricted for me to reply right away.

"How is Vic taking it?"

I sank into one of the chairs at the kitchen table and spun my coffee cup idly in my hands. "She seems better today. We just found out, so yesterday was hard."

"I imagine so." Henry pulled out the chair across from me, and sat down. "This is perhaps a ridiculous question, but is there anything that I can do?"

"Appeal to a higher power?" I was mostly being facetious, but I also knew that Henry took the religious aspects of his heritage very seriously. And I'm not one to turn down divine help, no matter which corner of the metaphysical plane it might originate from.

The Bear nodded, and his expression was sober. "I will appeal to the wisdom of my ancestors, of course, and I will seek their guidance for your journey through this difficult time."

I tipped my chin in appreciation, and raised my cup to my lips.

Henry's dark eyes were leveled at me over the brim of my cup. "And how are you doing?"

I thought for a moment, unsure how to respond, not because I was unwilling to share my feelings with my old friend, but because I had still not entirely figured out what those feelings were. "I'm worried about Vic," I said, finally. "With what she went through with her miscarriage last year, and now this… It's a lot for her to have to deal with."

Henry nodded. "She has had to face many misfortunes in the past few years. It is good that she has you by her side, now. She will not have to go through this alone."

"I don't know how much help I'm likely to be. I'm really not good at this stuff, so."

"You do not have to be good at it, Walt. You just have to be here."

"That, I can do."

"Where is she now?"

"Working," I said, and Henry chuckled.

"Well, the two of you are certainly a pair. It would never occur to either one of you to take time off in the middle of a crisis."

"Hey, I'm retired now, remember?"

Henry smiled. "Yes, and how is that going for you, these days? Resting? Relaxing? Taking up golf?"

"Never been a fan of golf," I said, and drank the last of my coffee. "But I do rest, and I relax."

"Oh?" Henry said with one razor-sharp eyebrow raised. "Word has it that your version of rest and relaxation currently looks a lot like chasing down a horse thief."

I stood up from the table and cleared off our coffee cups. "Matthias talks too much. And I'm not 'chasing' anyone. I am merely putting in some of the legwork on an open case for the tribal police since it's out of their jurisdiction."

"Which part, the horse or the horse thief?"

"Both, I imagine." I rinsed the mugs and set them in the sink. "Or so I hope, anyway. With the roads being as bad as they've been lately, I can't imagine Reggie has had a chance to offload the thing yet."

"Reggie, again?"

I nodded. "He just can't seem to help himself."

"Paint?"

"Medicine Hat."

Henry nodded. "Of course. He would not be able to resist." He unfolded himself from behind the table. "Somebody needs to remind that man how they used to deal with horse thieves back in the olden days."

"At the very least, someone should suggest that he switch out the old bias ply tires he's got on his horse trailer. With all the snow and mud up at the Solis place, the tread marks he left behind are as good as a fingerprint."

"You just have to find the horse?"

"I just have to find the horse."

The Bear nodded and headed for the door with me following him. "Well, I will wish you good luck with your search." Then he stopped and turned back to me. "And, Walt, I will pray for you and Vic…" He hesitated and then added, "and your baby."

"I appreciate that, Henry," I said, and I meant it, because I knew he did.

He put a hand on my shoulder, and the solid weight of it felt like a benediction.

The sun was long gone by the time I made it back to the cabin. I was tired, cold, filthy and mentally cursing Matthias Long, Reggie Tall Oak, Desmond Solis and anyone else I could think of for getting me caught up in something as ridiculous as illegal show horse trading.

"What the fuck happened to you?" Vic asked from her nest of blankets on the sofa when I came blundering in the front door. Then she sat up straighter. "Is that blood?"

I held up a hand to reassure her that I was not, in fact, bleeding to death in front of her, despite all evidence to the contrary. "It's not blood," I said. "It's dye."

She eyed me doubtfully. "Did you go swimming in it?"

"As good as." I started shucking off my ruined clothing. Careful to avoid dropping anything onto the wood floors, I wadded up my jeans and shirt and dropped them straight into the trash can.

"Never a dull moment," Vic said as she settled back onto the sofa. I could tell that she'd been home for a while. The fire in the fireplace was well-established, and she had already showered. Wrapped in her white robe, with her hair floating softly around her cheeks on the draft created by the flames, only the Philly Flyers blanket in her lap kept her from looking like something out of a Bouguereau painting. She flapped a hand at me. "Go take a shower, and then you can come back and tell me what the hell happened today.

Most of the color came off in the shower, thankfully, though the hair on my chest and down my left arm would likely stay tinted a light reddish brown until the rest of the dye wore off. Reggie had helpfully assured me that it was temporary while he was being loaded into the back of Matthias' truck. I toweled off and changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt in deference to the warmth of the fire, and then joined Vic on the sofa.

She scooted forward to make room for me, so I slid in behind her, turning my body so that she could lean back into my chest, her head resting comfortably in the notch of my shoulder.

"Your arm hair is orange," she observed.

"I have been assured that the color will fade with time."

"You want to catch me up on your misadventures?"

"Reggie Tall Oak," I said grimly.

"He stole another horse?"

I nodded. "From Desmond Solis."

"Again?" Vic turned so she could see my face. "Let me guess – Medicine Hat Paint?"

"Yep."

"And this?" She feathered her hand down my arm, which was in fact more orange than red.

"Well, the horse in question was a perfect medicine hat – pure white with rust markings around the ears and top of its head. Reggie, being the clever idiot that he is, thought that if he dyed spots into the rest of the coat, Desmond wouldn't recognize it, and we would assume it was just a regular old paint. It might have worked, too. He already had a buyer lined up. We didn't even have a warrant to search the place. All he had to do was keep it in a stall until the roads were clear enough for him to make the trip to the buyer."

"Which he didn't do?"

"Which he didn't do. He let it out to pasture with the rest of his herd, where it promptly rolled in the snow, which caused the dye to run." I shook my head. "He was in the yard with the horse, trying to repair the damage when we got there."

"I take it he didn't come quietly?"

"He threw a bucket of dye at me and made a run for it."

Vic laughed. "I wish I had gotten to see that."

"I'm really glad you didn't," I said with emphasis. "The whole ordeal was extremely undignified."

She chuckled and then settled back against me, her head resting on my shoulder. We lapsed into silence, and listened together to the pop and crackle of the fire. After a long day out in the cold, it felt good to be there in the glowing pool of warmth with the weight of Vic's body pressed against my chest, feeling the gentle rise and fall of her breathing. The earthy scent of the seasoned oak firewood mixed pleasantly with the fresh, clean smell of her shampoo. I rested my chin on her shoulder and breathed deep, committing the whole vignette to memory – a little moment of perfection.

"I called the women's clinic in Laramie today," Vic said.

"Okay," I said, slowly. "Did you schedule a uh… an appointment?"

"I did."

"Okay," I said again. I tightened my arms around her. "When is it? I'll drive down with you the night before."

I felt Vic's shoulders stiffen. She sat up and half turned her body so that she could face me, though her eyes didn't quite meet mine. "I'm going to drive down on Wednesday," she said. "But, Walt – don't take this the wrong way, but I don't want you to come."

"Oh," I said. I blinked, uncertain how to proceed. "Well, it's up to you, of course, but I was planning on being there."

She reached out a hand and squeezed my arm. "I know you would be there for me. I know you would. I just – that's not how I'm wired, you know? I can't deal with having someone hover over me and make a fuss. I need to do this by myself, all right?"

"I wouldn't have to hover," I protested. "I can just be there."

She reached up and laid a gentle palm against my cheek. Her expression was soft. "I appreciate it. I really do. But I need to do this on my own."

I wanted to insist on accompanying her. The idea of sending her off to deal with the termination of her pregnancy all on her own didn't feel right. Even if there was nothing I could actively do to help her, it still didn't seem like the kind of thing she should be doing alone.

"You've always respected my choices," Vic said when I didn't respond immediately. "I need you to do that for me again now, okay?"

"Okay," I said finally, since there was really nothing else I could say. She was right, after all. She was a grown woman and more than capable of making her own decisions. I had no right to insist on anything, even if it didn't feel right to me. I took her hands and placed a kiss in the palm of each one. "But I'll be here when you get home. And if you change your mind – "

"You'll be the first to know," she said. She leaned in and kissed me softly on the lips, and then pressed her forehead against mine. "Thank you for understanding…or, at least, pretending to." I could hear the hint of a smile in her voice. "This will all be over in a couple of days, and then things can get back to normal."

A/N: When I started writing this, I was sure I'd have it all banged out in a couple of months. Clearly, I was very, very wrong about that. But even when I don't touch it for a couple of months (or years…), it's still sitting around in my brain, waiting to be finished. So, even if it's just for me, I'll keep plugging away at it until its done.