This is a work of fiction.

All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed

in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Copyright © 2012 by Deborah Coates

All rights reserved.

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor ® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN 978- 0-7653-2898-4 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4299-8811-7 (e-book)

First Edition: March 2012

Printed in the United States of America

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 1

W hen Sergeant Hallie Michaels arrived in Rapid City,

South Dakota, she’d been traveling for twenty-four
hours straight. She sat on the plane as it taxied to the
gate and tried not to jump out of her skin, so ready to be up, to be
moving, to put her head down and go. And Lord help anyone who
got in her way.
She hadn’t been able to reach her father or anyone else by phone
since she’d gotten the news, just contact with her commanding
officer—We’re sorry, your sister’s dead. Here’s ten days’ compassionate
leave. Go home.
Three sharp bongs, and the seat belt light went out. The plane
filled with the sound of seat belts snapping, people moving, over-
head doors opening up. The woman in the seat next to Hallie’s was
still fumbling with her buckle when Hallie stepped past her into the
aisle. She felt raw and sharp edged as she walked off the plane and
up the Jetway, like rusty barbed wire, like she would snap if someone
twisted too hard.
Halfway down the long wide concourse, ready—she was—for
South Dakota, for her sister’s funeral for—
Goddamnit.
Eddie Serrano’s ghost floated directly in front of her, right in the

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middle of the concourse. She swiped a hand across her eyes, hoped
it was an artifact of no sleep and too much coffee, though she knew
that it wasn’t.
He looked like he’d just stepped out of parade formation—crisp
fatigues, pants neatly tucked into his boots, cap stiff and creased and
set on his head just exactly perfect. Better than he’d ever looked
when he was alive—except for being gray and misty and invisible to
everyone but her.
She thought she’d left him in Afghanistan.
She drew a deep breath. This was not happening. She was not see-
ing a dead soldier in the middle of the Rapid City airport. She wasn’t.
She squared her shoulders and walked past him like he wasn’t there.
Approaching the end of the concourse, she paused and scanned
the half-dozen people waiting just past security. She didn’t see her
father, had almost not expected to see him because—oh for so many
reasons—because he wouldn’t want to see her for the first time in a
public place, because he had the ranch and funeral arrangements
to take care of, because he hated the City, as he always referred to
Rapid City, and airports, and people in the collective and, less often
though sometimes more spectacularly, individually.
She spotted a woman with straight blond hair underneath a cow-
boy hat standing by the windows. Brett Fowker. Hallie’d known
Brett since before kindergarten, since a community barbecue when
they were five, where Brett had told Hallie how trucks worked and
Hallie had taken them both for what turned out to be a very short
ride. Brett was all right. Hallie could deal with that.
She started forward again and walked into a cold so intense, she
thought it would stop her heart. It felt like dying all over again, like
breath froze in her lungs. She slapped her hand against the nearest
wall and concentrated on breathing, on catching her breath, on tak-
ing a breath.

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She looked up, expecting Eddie.

But it was her sister. Dell.
Shit.
Suddenly, Brett was there, a hand on her arm. “Are you all right?”
she asked.
Hallie batted her hand away and leaned heavily against the wall, her
breath sharp and quick. “I’m fine!” Her voice sounded rough, even in
her own ears.
Dell looked exactly as she had the last time Hallie’d seen her,
wearing a dark tailored shirt, jeans with a hole in one knee, and cow-
boy boots. She was a ghost now and pretty much transparent, but
Hallie figured the boots were battered and scuffed because she’d al-
ways had a favorite pair that she wore everywhere. Even when she’d
dressed up sometimes, like no one would notice the boots if she
wore a short black dress and dangly silver earrings. And no one
did—because it was Dell and she could carry something like that off,
like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Hallie scrubbed a hand across her face. Goddamnit, Dell. She
wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t.
“I’m sorry, Hallie. I’m sorry.”
Brett said it over and over, like a mantra, her right hand a tight fist
in Hallie’s sleeve. In sixth grade after Hallie’s mother died, she and
Brett had made a no-hugging-ever pledge. Because no one had talked
to Hallie that whole week, or looked her in the eye—just hugged her
and handed her casserole dishes wrapped in aluminum foil.
Trust Brett to honor a pact made twelve years ago by eleven-year-
olds.
“Brett,” Hallie said, “I—”
“Hallie!” Suddenly someone was hugging her. “Oh god, Hallie!
Isn’t it awful?”
Lorie Bixby grabbed her around the neck, hugged her so tight,

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Hallie thought she might choke. “It can’t be right. I know it’s not
right. Oh, Hallie . . .”
Hallie unwound Lorie’s hands from her neck and raised an eye-
brow at Brett, because Lorie hadn’t been particular friends with
Brett or Hallie back in school, though they’d done things together,
because they lived close—for certain definitions of close—and were
the same age. Hallie hadn’t seen her since she’d enlisted.
Brett raised her left shoulder in a half shrug, like she didn’t know
why Lorie was there either, though Hallie suspected it was because
Brett hadn’t wanted to come alone.
They were at the top of the stairs leading down to the luggage area
and the parking lot. To Hallie’s left was a gift shop full of Mount
Rushmore mugs and treasure maps to gold in the Black Hills. To her
right was a café. It beckoned like a haven, like a brief respite from Af-
ghanistan, from twenty-four hours with no sleep, from home.
But really, there was no respite. This was the new reality.
“Tell me,” Hallie said to Brett.
Brett hadn’t changed one bit since Hallie’d last seen her, hadn’t
changed since she’d graduated from high school, except for the look
on her face, which was grim and dark. She had perfect straight blond
hair—cowgirl hair, Hallie and Dell had called it because all the per-
fect cowgirls in perfect cowgirl calendars had hair like Brett’s. She
was wearing a bone-colored felt cowboy hat, a pearl-snap Western
shirt, and Wranglers. “Tell you?” she said, like she had no idea what
Hallie was talking about.
“What happened,” Hallie said, the words even and measured, be-
cause there were ghosts—Dell’s ghost, specifically—in the middle of
the airport, and if she didn’t hold on tight, she was going to explode.
Brett drew a breath, like a sigh. “You should talk to your daddy
about it.”
“Look, no one believes it was really suicide.” Lorie leaned toward

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them like this was why she’d come, to be with people, to talk about
what had happened.
“What?” No one had mentioned suicide to her—accident, they’d
said. There’s been a terrible accident.
“No one knows what happened yet,” Brett said cautiously, giving
Lorie a long look.
“Tell me,” Hallie said, the words like forged nails, iron hard and
sharp enough to draw blood.
Brett didn’t look at Hallie, her face obscured by the shadow of her
hat. “They say,” she began, like it had all happened somewhere far
away to people who weren’t them. “She was out driving over near
Seven Mile Creek that night. Or the morning. I don’t know.” Like that
was the worst thing—and for Brett, maybe it was—that she didn’t have
all the particulars, the whys and wherefores. “She wracked her car up
on a tree. There was no one else around. They’re saying suicide. But
I don’t— No one believes that,” she added quickly. “They don’t.” As
if to convince herself.
“Dell did not commit suicide,” Hallie said.
“Hallie—”
She walked away. This was not a discussion.
She didn’t look to see if Brett and Lorie were behind her until she
was halfway to the luggage carousel.
Five minutes later, they were crammed into Brett’s gray Honda
sedan. Hallie felt cramped and small sitting in the passenger seat,
crushed under the low roof. Lorie sat in the back, an occasional sniff
the only mark of her presence.
Brett turned the key in the ignition, the starter grinding before it
caught. Hallie felt cold emanating from Eddie’s and Dell’s ghosts
drifting behind her in the backseat. Though Lorie didn’t act as if she
could feel them at all.
“She called me,” Brett said as she pulled out of the parking lot.

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“What?” Because Dell and Brett hadn’t been friends.

“Yeah, right out of the blue,” Brett said.
“When?”
“Monday morning. That morning.” Brett swallowed, then contin-
ued. “She wanted me to skip classes—I’m working on a master’s in
psychology, you know—well, you don’t know, I guess.” It didn’t sur-
prise Hallie. Brett had always wanted to know how things worked,
even people. She’d been a steady B student in high school, but she
worked until she knew what she wanted to know or got where she
wanted to get.
“I’m thinking about University of Chicago for—” Brett stopped,
cleared her throat, and continued. “She said she wanted to celebrate.”
“And she called you?”
“Shit, I don’t know, Hallie,” Brett said. “She called, said she wanted
to celebrate. Suggested horseback riding up along, well, up along
Seven Mile Creek. It was weird.”
“Maybe she didn’t have anyone to ride with anymore.”
“She didn’t have a horse.”
“What?” Because Dell had always been about horses.
“She’d been gone,” Brett said, like they didn’t have horses outside
western South Dakota.
“Did you go?”
Brett was silent while she maneuvered through the sparse late-
morning traffic and onto the interstate, headed east. They had an hour,
hour and a half depending, to get to Taylor County and the ranch.
Or to the funeral home in town. Hallie wasn’t looking forward to
either one.
“She canceled at the last minute,” Brett finally said. “I’d already
brought the horses up, was getting ready to load them in the trailer
when she called. She said she’d been mistaken.”
“Mistaken?”

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“Yeah . . . I hadn’t seen her but one night at the Bob since she’d
been home. She said she wanted to celebrate, I don’t know, some-
thing. And then she canceled.”
Hallie’s hand rapped against the underside of her knee until she
realized she was doing it and made herself stop. “Did she say any-
thing?”
“When she canceled?” Brett shook her head. “She just said some-
thing came up. But that’s where they found her, Hallie. Up on the
Seven Mile.”
Jesus.
Hallie didn’t want to be riding in this car, didn’t want to be listen-
ing to any of this. She wanted to move, to . . . shoot something. Be-
cause Dell hadn’t killed herself. She hadn’t. If no one else would say
it, Hallie would.

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