Page 58 of Coyote

He didn't take it.

"That's what I've been hearing every time you move," he said.

"Yes."

His gaze stayed on the paper. Sarah's name showed through one of the folds along with the top of John's photograph.

"Is she all right?"

"She's safe," Linc said. "Scared and angry, but safe."

John nodded once. He looked past us, down the trail, toward town. His fingers tightened on the rock.

I wanted to touch him. I wanted to put his hand on my neck where it belonged and promise I could make Sarah safe too, if that was what he needed from me.

Instead, I held out the report.

John finally took it. He opened the first fold and stared at the picture. They'd pulled it off his medical license. Sarah's sat beside it. She had John's eyes and the same line between her eyebrows.

His thumb moved over her face.

"She filed this eleven months ago?"

"Yeah," Linc said. "A few weeks after you left."

"I didn't tell her I was going anywhere." John looked down at the page again. "I didn't know I was going."

"I know," I said.

His head came up. "You know because I told you. After you already had this in your pocket."

My stomach twisted, but I didn't look away. "Yes."

John folded the report along the same lines I had, taking his time with every crease. His hands were steady. That was worse than if he'd torn it. "You brought me here because she was coming."

"You asked me to take you somewhere quiet."

John's eyes hardened. "Did you choose this cave because my sister was coming?"

"Yes."

Nobody spoke.

I could've told him about Zaroff and the tracker. Men might have been watching the road. Winston's office might not have been safe. All of that was true, and none of it was why I had kept my mouth shut.

"I thought if you saw her, you might remember you had somewhere else to go. I wanted another night before you had anybody to choose but me."

John pressed the folded report against his thigh. His face changed then, the anger giving way to something that made me wish he would hit me instead.

"Coyote… I had already chosen you."

The words hit hard enough that I closed my hand around the knife.

John looked at it. Then his gaze moved past me to the gelding's saddle under the overhang.

"You put that knife against the cinch earlier."

I said nothing.