"You killed him!" Justin had yelled-almost screamed. "We could have helped him!"
"He was dead," Ahlund had growled.
"No, he wasn't!"
"He was."
"You son of a-"
"Nothing could have saved him," Ahlund had said. "Out here, a mortally wounded man and a dead man are one and the same."
"That wasn't a man," Justin had growled through clenched teeth. "That was a kid!"
Ahlund had walked away.
At present, Justin blinked against tears and squeezed his fingers tightly around the shovel's handle. His anger overrode his other emotions for a moment, so he embraced it. He twisted his hands against the grain of the wood just to force his blisters to break. At least anger made sense. It was pure and easy. But no amount of wrath could block out the way those men had gargled as they died. The way they
