by Lucy Connors
Anna Mae started laughing. “Brains? Yeah, I’ve always been the brains around here. It’s not like anybody else could volunteer for the job.”
Ethan, standing just outside the loose circle of people in the barn, shot his mother a look of such fierce hatred I was surprised she didn’t burn up on the spot—but I didn’t think anyone but me saw it. I was suddenly glad that he hadn’t looked at me like that—it was an expression that promised very bad things.
And she was his mother.
I almost laughed at myself. Considering my own mother, Ethan and I were zero for two on the maternal excellence scale. The thought made me realize why Mickey had been so quick to leave me to go protect his mom. I guess if I had a mom like that, I’d do the same thing.
But I wouldn’t push his father in the process. I wrenched away from Mickey. Just then Ethan glanced over and caught me looking his way, and his face changed. Anger turned to something harder to define. The moment caught and held between us, and I had to struggle to escape his hypnotic gaze.
A sardonic smile crossed his face when I turned away, as if he’d won a point in some kind of battle between us—a battle I hadn’t agreed to take part in, one in which I didn’t know the rules of engagement. But I damn sure wasn’t going to surrender, either. Not to him, his horrible mother, or even to Mickey.
I was done.
“We need to go, Anna Mae,” Mrs. Rhodale said.
“You need to shut up and listen to me. Do you think that a gang of murderous skinheads is going to hear the rumors that Ethan’s idiots blew up their trailer and do nothing about it? Or do you think we’re going to have a war?” Anna Mae stared around the room at each of us, her chin thrust out like she was ready to strap on her guns and lead the first charge.
“It won’t be a war,” the sheriff said. “It will be a massacre.”
Ethan hooked his thumbs through his belt loops in a pretty good imitation of somebody who didn’t give a damn. “It won’t be a massacre, because I’m not afraid of them.”
“Then you’re a damn fool,” the sheriff said.
“He might be, but I’m not,” Anna Mae said. “We’re getting into bed with the cartel, so you’d better back off. These people like to make examples of local law enforcement. I want you to keep your sheriff’s department flunkies off our asses, and I want you, Richie dear, to keep your grubby fingers out of my side of the county.”
Mickey’s mom gasped and turned dead white. I thought she was going to faint, but she was tougher than that. “You devious bitch. I hope you know what happens to people who play with really bad guys. They always end up dead.”
Mickey bent his head and whispered in my ear. “Anna Mae just wants an audience. She’d never actually shoot anybody, especially not with all these witnesses.”
I didn’t know how to take that. It sounded like he thought she might actually shoot someone if people weren’t around.
I had never wanted so badly to be back in my tiny dorm room in Connecticut.
“We’re leaving,” Mickey called out, loud enough to break through the intense arguments that had broken out from all sides. “All of us.”
“You don’t speak for my family,” Dad snarled at him, and I had suddenly had enough.
Way more than enough.
“Dad, why are you going along with this crazy woman? We need to go home and see if Gran is all right—”
Gran. Buddy.
“Oh, my God,” Mom said. “Buddy. We haven’t heard from your mother, Richard.”
“Did you take him, Ethan?” Mickey’s voice was a whiplash of anger that sliced through the room. “If you hurt that little boy—”
“I didn’t take him,” Ethan snapped, and then he turned those dark eyes on me and continued in a low, urgent tone. “I don’t hurt kids, Victoria.”
I froze—trapped again in his stark, bleak gaze and almost helpless to avoid believing in his sincerity. It didn’t make sense; I couldn’t figure out why he’d care what the “Whitfield princess” thought about him, but somehow I knew he did.
Even more bizarrely, I believed him.
My phone rang. It was the house number. I snatched at it to answer.
“Gran?”
“Buddy’s gone, Victoria.”
“What?” I stared up at Mickey, and he put an arm around me.
“He left a note and said that he took Heather’s Angel and went to find you.” I could tell from her voice that she was crying. “We’re short-staffed now, but Pete and the few left here who know their way around the ranch are out looking, and we called the police,” she said. “Get back here right now and bring your parents. I need all of you with me.”
“On our way,” I promised, my heart icing over, and then I looked up at Anna Mae. “Shoot me if you have to, but I’m leaving. My baby brother is out alone on a horse, in the rain, and he didn’t grow up here. He doesn’t know the ranch.”
“Or the ravine,” my mother cried out, and my dad started swearing.
I only nodded, so terrified I was almost numb.
“I’ll drive you,” Mickey said.
“I’m coming, too,” Ethan said.
“We don’t want you,” Mickey told him.
I ignored them both and started running for the truck.
“This isn’t over,” Anna Mae called out. “But I hope you find that boy and he’s all right.”
“You can go straight to hell,” I said.
Please, God, whatever you do, let Buddy be all right. I’m so sorry.
“You get in the car with us, young lady,” Dad shouted, but he was helping Mom carry Melinda, so he couldn’t come after me.
“You can go to hell, too,” I yelled back at him.
I climbed in the truck and started it up, but Mickey jumped in the passenger’s side before I could get away, and I didn’t take the time to argue with him. I reversed out of there in a squeal of tires and a splash of mud, and I could hear the cars starting up behind us.
“We’ll find him,” Mickey promised, trying to take my hand.
“Don’t touch me,” I snapped, starting to shake as the terror and the cold and the pain crashed through me. A landslide of guilt was crushing me under its weight. I didn’t deserve to be comforted. I’d kissed Mickey Rhodale, who’d shoved my father, and now my brother was missing and maybe worse.
This was all on me.
“If he’s hurt . . .” I couldn’t finish that sentence. There was no sane place to go at the end of a sentence that started with my baby brother being hurt. I pushed the accelerator a little bit further toward the floor and went back to praying.
“Victoria—”
“I saw how fast you reached for that gun, Mickey.”
He started to answer me, but then just shook his head. “I know. I’m as bad as the rest of them.”
I think he was waiting for me to deny it. He’d be waiting a long, long time.
Chapter 36
Mickey
The rain started up again, harder, and Victoria sped down the road to her place in half the time it should have taken, only glancing at me once when she was unsure of which way to go at a turn.
“Our families . . . all this hatred . . . it’s too much. Too much history, too much violence,” she said, and her voice was so empty and hollow that I knew she’d already pulled away from me, possibly beyond my reach or hope of reconciliation.
The violence inside me, hunched over like a rough, crouching beast, had ruined the possibility of something precious between us, probably forever.
Maybe it was better that way. Every time we were together, something bad happened, as if our feelings for each other were the catalyst that would power the worst kind of chemical reaction. I didn’t want Victoria to get caught in the explosion.
“If he presses charges, he’ll make sure you’re tried as an adult this time,�
� she said, and then she didn’t say anything else until we got to her house.
She slowed for the turn to her driveway, tense and leaning forward in the seat, hands clenched together, every muscle straining toward the ranch and her missing brother. She yanked off her seatbelt and was out the door almost before she’d even pulled the truck to a stop outside the barn. It was blazing with lights, probably set up as search headquarters. She ran inside and I stuffed the gun under the seat, triple checking that the safety was on, before I followed.
Warmth and the unmistakable smell of horse met me at the door. Victoria was talking urgently to a couple of guys who were leaning over a map that was spread out on a wooden table, but most of the people seemed to be congregating near a stall that was farther down. I walked across the thick rubber matting that lined the entire corridor to get to the group at the table.
“What’s going on down there?”
Victoria glanced up from the map, her face set in tight lines. “Wanderer’s Quest picked tonight to foal, naturally. She’s not having an easy time.”
One of the guys put a hand on Victoria’s arm, and I had the irrational urge to shove him away.
“We’re going to find your brother. Pete’s already out there, and nobody knows this place like he does,” he told her.
“I’m taking one of the three-wheelers,” Victoria announced. “None of the horses need to be out in this. No more of the horses.”
“Hey, Heather’s Angel might be old but she’s sure-footed,” the other guy said briskly. “I should go. You stay here to man the phone; everybody’s calling to check in when they’ve cleared a section.”
I studied the map and saw that the circled sections had been marked with names. Only two of the smallest circles had been checked off so far.
“No way. He’s my brother, and I’m going after him,” Victoria said. She headed out, grabbing a set of keys off a corkboard as she went, and I followed, taking a minute to grab a couple of rain jackets that were hanging on pegs.
By the time I got outside, Victoria had already opened a shed attached to the end of the barn and was inside, sitting on the floor, pulling on some long socks. A pair of old boots lay on the floor next to her.
“I don’t need you, Mickey. Go home,” she said, not looking at me.
“Like hell I will.” I tossed her one of the jackets. “I’m going with you and we’re finding your brother.”
She hesitated, but I could almost see the desire for extra help with the search win out over the need to get away from me. “Fine.”
She finished pulling on the boots and jacket, and climbed onto the three-wheeler. It started right away, and I swung up behind her, wishing she’d been able to find some pants wherever she’d gotten the boots. Her bare legs would soon be freezing in the cold rain.
“You need to put on some jeans,” I said, knowing it would be futile. She was already driving out of the shed.
“Later. Now we find Buddy.”
“Do you even know where to look?” I had to shout to be heard over the motor.
“I know exactly where to look. The worst possible place. Because if he’s not there, then everything gets better,” she shouted.
I understood instantly. We were headed for the ravine.
She put the pedal to the floor, and I wrapped my arms around her waist to hold on.
Please, let the kid be safe and all right.
A roar of sound swept up behind us and then passed by. I barely had the chance to register that it was Ethan on his motorcycle before he was gone, riding helmetless at a breakneck speed in the rain, heading God only knew where.
“If he hurt your brother—”
Victoria cut me off with words I didn’t expect and sure as hell didn’t understand. “He didn’t.”
Chapter 37
Victoria
I didn’t know why Ethan was there, and I didn’t care. Another body to help in the search. Mickey tightened his arms around my waist and leaned into me, and I knew I should be grateful for the little bit of warmth and protection from the rain that he offered, but mostly I just wanted him gone. Even allowing him to touch me felt like a betrayal—of Buddy, of Dad, of all my family. If I’d stayed home, none of this would have happened.
The perfect daughter had screwed up again. I was blasting through a lifetime’s worth of mistakes in the space of a few weeks, and now maybe my sweet baby brother would pay the price.
I swerved the ATV to miss a fallen tree limb and instead hit a big rock that had been half-hidden in dirt and mud. I barely had time to scream before the bike was flipping over and Mickey and I were flying off the back. Cartwheels of stars cascaded through my vision as I tumbled through the air, and I had a moment to think, so this is how I’m going to be punished, before I hit the ground, hard. I landed on soft grass, though, so I only had the breath knocked out of me. By the time I could suck in enough air to be able to sit up, Mickey still hadn’t come to find me or even made a sound, and I was terrified that he’d been hurt badly.
I made it over to the upside-down three-wheeler and turned off the ignition to keep it from catching fire. But the left front tire was shredded. So we were walking. I scanned the area for Mickey, and saw a dark shape lying against another rock—this one more like a small boulder—and I started toward him, fighting the mud sucking at my boots with every step.
He was crumpled against the side of the rock, unconscious, and I didn’t know whether to shake him or leave him where he was—what if he had a neck or spine injury? I saw a trail of dark blood running down the side of his face from a gash on his forehead, and the world suddenly swirled around me at the thought he might be dead.
“Mickey,” I screamed, as if my voice could pull him back or wake him up or I don’t even know what. I was an idiot, but I didn’t care because I didn’t want the last thing between us to have been anger and regret.
I pulled my phone out of my jacket pocket with shaking fingers and started to call the barn phone, but then Mickey opened his eyes and blinked a couple of times.
He said something I couldn’t quite make out, and I leaned closer. “What?”
“Next time, I’m driving.”
I didn’t know what to do with the tangled-up emotions threatening to tear me apart, so I punched him in the shoulder, and then I put my hands on the sides of his face and kissed him.
“I’m willing to fall off any number of three-wheelers if you’ll kiss me like that every time,” he said when I pulled away.
“Idiot. Are you okay? Your head’s bleeding. You might have a concussion,” I said, but then I forced myself to stop babbling. I had no idea what I was talking about, anyway. “I’ll call the barn and we’ll get somebody out here to take you to the doctor.”
“Screw that. We’re going to go find your brother,” he said.
He shoved rain and blood off his face with one sleeve, and then he held out a hand for me to help him up. I hesitated, not knowing what to do. What if he had a concussion? Would walking around make it worse?
Mickey didn’t wait for me to decide. He pushed up off the ground, wobbled a little, and then braced himself. “Let’s go find Buddy.”
“We’re not that far from the ravine,” I said, making up my mind. Mickey could see a doctor later, but Buddy might be in serious danger now. “This way. We’re walking. The tire on the ATV is blown.”
We were covered with mud, but I figured the pounding rain would wash some of that off. If only it could wash away some of my guilt and worry, too, I’d be happy to walk around in freezing rain and mud all night long.
“Buddy,” I shouted. “Buddy, can you hear me?”
Mickey’s deeper voice echoed beside me. “Buddy!”
We trudged on in the freezing rain, slowed down by mud and fallen debris from the storm, screaming for my brother until I thought I’d never be warm again. Deep shudders kept work
ing their way through me, stronger and stronger, until I thought they might knock me over from the inside out, and all I could think was my baby brother was out in this somewhere.
Freezing. Wet. Maybe hurt.
Determination surged through me, substituting for warmth and strength and courage. I would find him.
I would.
“Buddy!” I glanced at my phone to check the time. It had been almost two hours since Gran’s call, and Buddy had been gone even longer than that. How long did it take for a little boy to go into shock from being cold and wet?
I tripped over an uneven spot on the ground and went down face first, but Mickey caught me before I hit the ground. He pulled me back up and toward him, holding me tightly for a moment before he let go.
“He’s going to be all right,” he said again, for maybe the tenth time since we’d started walking. “We’ll find him.”
“If we don’t . . .” I couldn’t finish the thought. Pain ripped through me, and I doubled over, holding my arms over my stomach, trying to contain the terror.
“We will,” he said, so firmly that I almost believed him.
He took my hand, and I let him in spite of everything between us, and we started walking again. Another few minutes should get us to the trees bordering the ravine.
“Buddy,” I shouted, over and over and over, while Mickey did the same, but the only response was the echo of our own voices.
Chapter 38
Mickey
I was freezing, soaked, and losing hope, so I almost missed it when it finally happened. But then I heard it again. The thin sound of a horse nickering in the distance.
“That’s Angel,” Victoria said, and she let go of my hand and started running straight toward the thick grouping of trees that she’d said bordered the ravine.
I caught up to her and passed her, scanning the ground for anything that might trip her again and for any small bundle or shape that might turn out to be a little boy. She pushed me aside at the ravine’s edge and then pointed.
