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Taylor was blasted: tie loosened, hair disheveled, giggling. Giggling , for chrissake.
    And, yeah, it was mildly cute: that boyish little gurgle, and those under-lashed looks Taylor was throwing him -- like he was flirting with Will.
    “Last call for you, buddy boy,” Will had said, shaking his head, trying not to laugh when Taylor --
    leaning toward him -- nearly fell off his stool.
    And Taylor had draped an arm around Will’s shoulders and drawled, “Take me to bed, William, or lose me forever!”
    Will had laughed, and shaken his head, although that kind of thing was risky as shit in what amounted to their local hangout. It was one thing to be gay; it was another to be openly gay. The last thing they needed was to buck for Federal GLOBE poster boys.
    But Taylor was an affectionate drunk, no problems there, and he’d let Will steer him to Will’s car, let Will drive him to Will’s apartment, let Will walk him to the spare bedroom and help him undress -- like they’d done for each other plenty of times in the past three years.
    But then…then it had gotten hinky.
    Taylor had put his arms around Will and said a lot of stupid things -- drunken shit that Will had tried to ignore, tried to joke away -- but Taylor had been insistent, if a little incoherent. They had wrestled around a little, Will losing patience maybe faster than he should have.
    Because…he was tempted. He could admit that now. Sure, he’d been tempted -- what with Taylor trying to nibble on his ear and all.
    And it turned ugly fast -- with the end result of Taylor grabbing his clothes and departing into the night.
    The next day, for the first time in three years, they had nothing to say to each other. Maybe it would have worked itself out, but by lunchtime Taylor was in surgery with a bullet in his right lung, fighting for his Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    life.
    “It’s letting up,” he said, jolting Will out of his thoughts. “The rain,” Taylor said, meeting Will’s blank gaze.
    “We could make camp here tonight,” Will heard himself say. It made sense. He and Taylor had to get things straight between them, and that wasn’t going to happen once they got back to civilization.
    But Taylor was already crawling out of the tent. “May as well keep moving,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

    * * * * *
The light was beautiful. Those crepuscular rays -- golden shafts of light -- penetrating the snowy rafters of clouds. What did they call those? Jacob’s ladder? The fields around them were bathed in amber light, the trees glinting and flashing in the dueling sun and shade. The surrounding mountains looked purple and blue.
    With cold, probably.
    Taylor put that thought away. As long as he kept moving he was warm enough, and it looked like they would be moving till nightfall. But that had been his choice. All he had to do was say the word and Will would be fussing over him like a hen with one chick. And the sad thing was, there was a part of him that would have almost enjoyed that.
    He glanced at Will walking a little ahead. His face was flushed with sun and exertion, his eyes sparkled
    -- despite everything, he was enjoying himself. Will was totally in his element out here. He liked the silence, the emptiness, the loneliness. He’d have been perfectly happy on his own, whereas nothing but Will would have dragged Taylor out to this wilderness -- beautiful as it was.
    He shivered as a gust of wind -- tasting of snow and distant mountaintops -- hit him. Will glanced his way, but said nothing.

    * * * * *
“I think we should stash the money,” Taylor said, breaking the silence of nearly an hour. He was trailing two or three yards behind Will, and Will was glad to have a reason to stop and take a look at him. He looked beat, and it pissed Will off, made his voice sharper than it needed to be.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “I don’t know if waltzing into a sheriff’s