“You need a goddamn keeper, that’s what you need.”

Will’s heart started pumping at his brother’s words. “Oh, shit, it’s the voice of doom!” he pronounced, cringing dramatically. He shot J.D. a look. “What you gonna do, J.D., ground me?”

J.D. ignored him, turning instead toward the women. “You slumming tonight, Mary Lee?”

“I’m a social egalitarian,” she declared, refusing to be baited. “What’s your excuse?”

“Thirst.”

“Why don’t you go on over to the Moose?” Will said irritably. “You can run into Bryce and chew his ass instead of mine for a change.”

“Yeah,” J.D. sneered, taking a step toward his little brother, “the taste of yours is getting pretty old.”

“So why don’t you back off?”

“So why don’t you straighten up?”

Mari put a hand on his arm, trying to draw his attention away from Will. He shot her a ferocious look. “Ease up, J.D.,” she said softly. “He’s had a little too much to drink.”

“Will’s always just had a little too much to drink. It’s the one thing he does really well. That and fucking up. You’re just a regular wonder at that, aren’t you, Willie-boy?”

“Shut up.” Inside his head Will felt ten years old, sick of looking up at his big brother and always falling short of J.D.’s standards. His temper swelled and he reached out and shoved J.D.’s shoulder. “Shut up, John Dick-head. I’m sick of you.”

“Then you finally know how I feel,” J.D. growled. He was tired and his temper was run ragged. The stock-grower’s meeting had netted him nothing but sympathy and a headache. He needed a fight with Will like he needed dysentery, and the absolutely last thing he needed was Mary Lee sticking her pretty little nose into the fray. That was too reminiscent of Sondra coming between them as boys, always taking Will’s side, protecting him no matter what he’d done.

“You been down in Little Purgatory again?” he said to Will, his gut knotting at the possibility. “What’d you lose tonight, hotshot? The shirt off my back?”

Mari tugged on his arm, trying to pull him back a step. “J.D., maybe you should just-”

“Maybe you should just butt out, Mary Lee!” he roared, wheeling on her. “You don’t know a damn thing about this.”

Mari backed away with her hands raised in surrender. “Fine,” she said tightly. “Knock each other out. Nora, I think we missed our cue to leave.”

Nora gave J.D. a look that had reduced lesser men to squirming pulp. “Yeah, I get enough senseless violence on TV. Let’s go, honey.”

It was nearly one when Mari stepped out of the elevator on the seventh floor of the lodge. She felt beaten, exhausted, hurt. Being hurt was pointless. If she had an ounce of sense, she wouldn’t let J. D. Rafferty hurt her. Trouble was, she wasn’t sure she had an ounce of sense left. She was running on empty in too many respects.

“Tomorrow is another day, Marilee,” she muttered, digging her key out of her purse. “Isn’t that a pleasant prospect?”

She flipped the switch for the entry light and got nothing. Swell. Sighing heavily, she toed off her sneakers and left them in the doorway to keep the door open and let a sliver of light into the gloom so she could navigate her way to a lamp.

She sensed trouble a second before she saw it. The hair on the back of her neck went electric. She turned instinctively toward the bed and started to scream.

The large, dark shape hurtled into her with all the force of a linebacker, driving her back against a side table, knocking the telephone off onto the floor with a clatter. Her heart racing out of control, Mari grappled with her assailant, struggling to stay on her feet, fighting to draw in a breath. Their arms and legs tangled and they tumbled sideways. She landed on her back, the last of the air from her lungs whooshing out. Colors burst and swirled before her eyes as she wheezed and gasped.

Fight! Fight!

Her brain screamed the message. She thought her arms and legs were flailing madly, trying to fend off the attack, but the fall seemed to have severed her mind’s connection to sensation. She wondered wildly if she would feel anything while she was being raped and killed.

Suddenly her lungs reinflated and adrenaline surged through her in a powerful rush. The smell of sweat and fear burned her nostrils. She swatted the attacker with one hand and groped for a weapon with the other, her fingers stumbling over the body of the telephone. Grasping it frantically, she swung it as hard as she could. The bell jingled as the phone smashed against the man’s shoulder and he grunted in pain.

Fight! Fight!

Her feet working frantically to gain purchase on the carpet, she tried to scoot out from under the attacker as she hit him again and again with the telephone. He blocked the blows with his arms, leaning back, taking his weight off her. Sensing a chance at escape, Mari twisted onto her belly and shoved herself toward the door.

Stand up! Run!

The light from the hall beckoned like a beam from heaven and she headed for it, trying to crawl, to run, to escape.

Run! Run!

Something large and hard connected violently with the side of her head, and everything went black.

The intruder ran into the hall and to freedom.

Mari lay on the carpet, motionless, the telephone a foot out of reach, her mind floating in a void.

A voice came over the receiver sounding pleasantly concerned. “Front desk. How may we help you?”

DREW WAS despondent over the attack. He paced back and forth along one end of the room in a black Reebok warm-up suit. His shoes were untied. His hair stood up in tufts that he continuously ran his hands back over as if to soothe himself. “This is terrible,” he said for the fourth time. “We’ve never had anything like this happen.”

Mari tried not to watch him pace. Moving her eyeballs intensified the pain drumming relentlessly in her head. Sheriff Quinn had been rousted out of his bed for the event-on Drew’s insistence. He leaned against the dresser, looking glum, while a deputy poked around the room. Raoul the night manager hovered outside the open door, trying not to appear superfluous.

“God, I feel so guilty,” Kevin said. He reached for Mari’s hand and gave it a squeeze. He sat beside her on the disheveled bed, looking like an ad for Calvin Klein nightwear. A navy blue silk robe was loosely belted at his slim waist, the V opening revealing a smooth, tightly muscled chest. Baggy beach shorts stopped just short of his knees. He was barefoot. “We’ve been talking about replacing these old locks with card keys for months. Maybe if we’d done it, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“It’s not your fault, Kev,” Mari murmured, tightening her fingers around his, offering him more comfort than he was giving her.

“You didn’t get a look at the fella at all?” Quinn said on a yawn.

She started to shake her head but caught herself. “It was dark. I hit the first switch when I came in, but the light bulb was burned out. At least, that’s what I assumed. Then everything happened too fast. He had on dark clothes and a ski mask. That’s all I can say for certain.”

“Was he tall, short, big, small?”

“Taller than me. Stronger than me.” At the moment she figured anyone not on a life support system was probably stronger than she was. Nausea swirled through her head and stomach. Her skull felt like a cracked egg. She gingerly touched the sore spot just behind her right temple. Her fingers came away sticky with congealing blood.

Kevin turned a little gray at the sight. “I’ll go get you an ice bag,” he offered, and left the room, nearly bowling Raoul over on his way out.

“Can you tell if anything was taken?” Quinn asked, rubbing the bridge of his crooked nose. He looked as if he had been sleeping in his uniform shirt. His hair was a field of wheat stubble that had been ravaged by cyclone winds.