She kept Flash in her peripheral vision and tried not to think about the past, but the images flickered in her mind’s eye like a runaway movie on a tattered screen. She heard Roy’s shouts, saw him bleeding in the dirt at the bottom of the ramp. She remembered swinging the trailer door closed on the trembling horse before racing to the house to call for help.
Panic, loss, and regret swirled through her heart as she gripped the top rail of the fence with white-knuckled fingers. She’d mourned Roy in the weeks that followed, but privately, in her sixteen-year-old heart, she’d mourned the horse too. He’d been a teenaged girl’s dream, the stallion only she could ride, and she’d wept to think of some other trainer making him into the miracle she’d been praying for. She hadn’t known what had happened to Flash, and she’d told herself she didn’t care.
But the truth was, she’d cared a lot. And all that caring had simmered for years behind the mask of indifference she’d put on the day the check came.
Surely the buyer knew he’d stolen that horse. Flash’s conformation and bloodlines were unbeatable. He’d been remarkable in the arena on his good days, stopping and spinning with textbook perfection. She’d been sure she could ride him to a championship if she could just find the key to calming him. If she’d just had a little more time…
Breathe, she told herself Breathe. Breathe slow. Breathe easy. Gradually her grip on the fence loosened and she felt her equanimity return. Along with it came her old confidence—a confidence she’d only ever felt with horses. Working with people was an effort; working with horses had been intuitive and easy.
The horse was three feet from the gate now. Stretching his neck, he sniffed the air in front of her face and took a step closer until they stood face to face, sharing breath. She closed her eyes.
This was the point in getting to know a green horse she’d always loved—the moment when her mind and the horse’s melded in a silent communion that was filled with promise and understanding. But in Flash, there had always been an underlying agitation, like a white-water stretch frothing over stones in a stream. It was a part of himself he hadn’t been willing to share, a secret fear he hadn’t let her see.
This horse didn’t have that. His mind was as smooth as a summer lake. It was obvious his confidence in himself had never been shaken. This animal’s past was nothing but cool breezes and sun on the meadow.
Somehow, somebody had saved her horse.
Chapter 30
Sarah stared at the horse. If she’d died and gone to heaven, this was exactly what she would have wished for: a second chance with Flash. A chance to start him fresh, before whatever had damaged him had done its work.
But it’s impossible. He’d be old. This horse isn’t old.
She shrugged off her doubts and fumbled to undo the latch. There was no point in second-guessing this. Maybe she was dreaming. Maybe she really had died.
She didn’t care. When the gate closed behind her with a metallic clang, she felt like she’d shut out the real world and walked into the dream. The round pen was its own universe, a place out of time.
She straightened her shoulders, an almost imperceptible movement, and took on the leader’s role in her mind. The horse reacted instantly, arching his neck and backing one step away. He stood stock-still, poised between submission and flight.
He chose flight. Good horses always did.
Sarah heeded him around the ring, keeping just behind his flank, urging him into a lope with nothing but her own intent and the subtleties of body position. He moved beautifully, his mane and tail sailing behind him as his hooves ate up the ground.
Anyone watching would have said they were just a woman standing still and a horse running, but there was so much more going on beneath the surface. They were testing each other, deciding who would lead and who would follow. She could feel the horse considering his options, and finally he slowed almost imperceptibly. The circle grew smaller as he bowed his body and eased into a trot, bobbing his head down once in a while and working his mouth.
He was getting tired of running. He was asking to stop.
But it wasn’t time yet. She stiffened slightly and took a step backward. Breaking into a lope again, the horse kept one eye on her, watching for permission to slow. She stepped left, and like a dance partner he caught the cue and dropped into a trot, neck arched and tail high. He was flirting with her, trying to charm her into giving way.
Not gonna happen, buddy, she thought. Not yet.
She took another step and he dropped his head and smoothed out his gait. She remembered riding in the round ring while Roy stood in the center offering advice.
Move your right leg back. He’s not flexing.
Get back on your seat-bones, girl—you’re not a jockey.
Relax. Stop thinking so hard. Let it be.
She so wished he could share this moment, see this horse. She wished she could finish this training session and sit in the barn with him afterward, dissecting every move she’d made, talking technique, figuring out what worked for the horse, what worked for her. Roy had trained her like he’d trained the horses, with deep understanding and an almost eerie sense of what she was thinking.
God, she missed him. She blinked away tears, realizing she’d lost her concentration. To work with horses you had to be present, a conscious participant in the process. She’d broken that rule and the horse had stopped. She swiped at her cheeks, chiding herself for losing focus, but when he stepped up and pushed at her with his nose the tears started again.
The horse shoved the length of his muzzle against her arm and she rested her head on his neck, feeling a rare, easy kinship with the animal. She’d never been able to bond with Flash like this. Never. He’d always held a piece of himself apart. Now he was giving his whole heart.
She buried her face in his mane, breathing in the sweet scent of him and struggling to smother her tears. He stood patiently, letting her recover, easing her turmoil with his own level calm.
Stepping back, she sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. She didn’t know where Lane had gone, but she was glad he hadn’t witnessed her emotional breakdown. And she was glad she’d had a chance to be alone with this horse—whoever he was.
Because she knew it couldn’t be Flash—he was too young. Flash had to be his sire, so whoever had bought him had bred him.
“Where did you come from, baby?” she murmured to the horse. “And what happened to your daddy?”
She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
***
Lane stood a few feet from the gate, watching Sarah perform the intricate dance of teaching a horse to be tame.
Much as Lane loved rodeo, bronc bucking was a sad reminder of the old way of training horses—the fast, brutal method of riding an animal to a standstill. In the real world, a horse that had been bucked out gave up, and then he wasn’t a whole horse anymore. He’d be your servant, but he’d never be your partner.
The new methods were respectful but not soft. There was no doubt who was the leader and who had to follow, but neither horse nor rider was diminished by the process if you did it right.
And Sarah did it right.
He’d been worried the sight of Cinnamon Chrome would freak her out. There was no way anyone who’d ever seen Flash wouldn’t know this was his colt. It was like the sire had been reincarnated into the son—like Flash had come back to life again, whole and healthy.
Lane’s grandfather had offered to buy Lane a horse the summer he’d turned twenty-one, hoping the idea of training horses would lure him away from the rodeo ring before he got hurt. He’d been willing to pay a high price to keep his grandson safe, and Lane could have bought any horse at the sale.
But the moment he’d seen the big red dun snorting and racing in manic circles around the sale barn corral, he’d thought mine.
Flash had been his first rescue. He couldn’t figure out why nobody wanted the horse, but there was no telling where he would have ended up if Lane hadn’t bought h
im. Maybe he’d have gone back to his owners, whoever they were—but it was also possible he’d end up on a truck en route to a Mexican slaughtering plant.
He’d never been able to ride the horse—but he’d been able to breed him and keep those bloodlines alive. Cinn was just one of the colts that looked like clones of their sire.
He watched Sarah crying and resisted the urge to help her. She wasn’t the kind of woman who appreciated sympathy. He should go, give her time to recover.
But if she was going to have an emotional breakdown in the ring, somebody had to look out for her safety. You never knew how that kind of thing might affect a horse. Cinn didn’t have the unpredictable blowups that had made his sire so dangerous, but he was still a stallion.
Lane watched from a respectful distance as she rested her cheek against the horse’s neck. Judging from her heaving shoulders, she was having a hard time getting hold of herself. He’d never seen her like this—broken down and utterly beaten.
He was relieved when she bowed her head, blinked, and straightened her shoulders. She patted the horse a few times as if assuring the animal that she’d recovered. Then she stepped back and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
He moved toward the gate and Cinn whinnied in recognition. Sarah spun to see what had riled up the horse, and he was hoping she’d smile when she caught sight of him. But her face was still streaked with tears, and she looked anything but happy.
“Tell me where he came from,” she said, nesting her fingers in the horse’s dark mane. “Who bought Flash? I need to know. Because whoever bought him ruined my family’s life.”
Chapter 31
Sarah and Lane squared off a mere half second before a jaunty tune cut through the air. Sarah slapped at the pockets of her jeans until she found her cell phone in her back pocket. Jerking it out, she cut off Blondie’s “Call Me” mid-song.
“Kelsey.” She stepped away from Lane. “What? No! Where is she?”
Lane frowned. Even the newest rookie trainer knew you didn’t bring a cell phone into the round pen. Maybe she wasn’t such a natural after all. Anyone could make a mistake, but she was carrying on a conversation instead of flicking the phone off and taking care of the horse. And she wasn’t even trying to project a calm demeanor. She was damn near as tense as the horse, snapping out her words, stamping a foot hard on the ground.
He was getting madder by the minute until he noticed that her face was growing paler each time she paused to listen to the caller. Finally, she shoved the phone back in her pocket and strode to the gate, opening it and sliding through. She tried to latch it behind her, fumbled with the mechanism, tried again, and failed. Lane reached over and fixed it.
“My sister’s sick,” she said. “Unconscious. She gets migraines, and Mike thinks—he thinks she’s having a stroke.”
“I’ll drive you over.”
“I’ve got it.”
She ran to the Malibu and flung open the door. With all the clothes heaped in the backseat it looked like the cars parked on the street in city alleys, the ones homeless people crammed all their belongings into. Smushed up against the window he could see a shoe, a purse, and a pack of pink girlie razors.
It took her three tries to get the keys in the ignition, and then she shoved the car in reverse and backed over a grocery bag. She shifted, lurched forward a few feet, stalled the engine, then flailed at the shift knob and backed over the bag again. She swiped away a tear while she struggled to get the car back in first and Lane tapped on the window.
“Slide over.”
She shook her head, still struggling with the transmission while he opened the door.
“I mean it. Slide over. You’re in no shape to drive.”
“She has headaches,” she said, sliding into the passenger seat. “I thought they were migraines. But what if…”
“Don’t think about it.”
He got behind the wheel and gunned the Malibu down the driveway. Sarah leaned forward, as if she could urge the car on like a racehorse.
“Drive faster,” she said. “It’s on County Road Six. You know that blue single-wide on the edge of town? That’s Kelsey’s.” She clenched her fists and pounded her thighs. “I need to be there now. Please, Lane. Faster.”
***
For once, Lane obeyed an order. He drove like he rode, careening around corners and skidding at stop signs with no regard for safety, but the ambulance still beat them to Kelsey’s. It was parked in the yard when they drove in, a boxy, decrepit vehicle with old-fashioned bug-eyed headlights and red faded paint on the side spelling out “Two Shot Emergency” arched above a first aid cross.
Sarah spilled out of the passenger seat while he threw the shifter into park. A pair of good ol’ boys in jeans and snap-button shirts had Kelsey strapped to a gurney. They were trying to load her in the back of the vehicle, one struggling to collapse the folding legs of the gurney while the other pumped up a blood pressure cuff. Mike was across from the technician, balancing Katie on one arm. The child’s sleep-flushed cheek was pressed into his shoulder, but her eyes were open, watching as Sarah ran to them. Sarah felt a squeeze in her heart at the sight of her niece limp in Mike’s arms.
Katie had been young when Mike and Kelsey had broken up, but she seemed to be wasting no time turning into a daddy’s girl—which was bad news for everyone if he left again. Sarah reached for the child, but Mike spun slightly away and pretended to be involved in stroking down her hair.
His own shaggy locks were spiked up from his forehead. Sarah knew he ran his fingers through it, front to back, when he was nervous. She knew because he was always nervous when he talked to her. Which was as it should be; after what he’d done to her sister, he should be nervous.
“One thirty over eighty,” said the EMT.
“Is that good?” Mike asked.
“It’s okay.” Sarah stepped up beside him. “Kelsey? How are you?”
“She’s not conscious, ma’am,” the EMT said.
“What’s wrong?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
She turned to Mike. “What happened?”
“Nothing, really. She just passed out. She had one of her headaches. She said it really hurt, and then she passed out. I called 911, and then I called you.” He kicked at the dirt with the toe of his boot.
“Where are they taking her?” Lane asked. Sarah had almost forgotten he was there.
“Casper,” said the driver.
“Isn’t there a doctor closer to here?”
The driver shook his head.
“Damn, Casper’s an hour away.”
“Forty-two minutes is the record,” the driver said.
Lane started to respond, but just then the second EMT managed to get the legs on the gurney to collapse and they slid Kelsey into the ambulance.
“Ready to go,” he said.
Mike turned and tipped Katie toward Sarah. The little girl stirred, blinked sleepily, and held out her arms.
“I thought you could take Katie over to the hospital, meet ’em there,” Mike said.
“You’re staying here?” Sarah knew he was a bastard, but she didn’t know he was that much of a bastard.
“Course not. I’m riding in the ambulance.”
Sarah was about to argue when the EMT crouching beside Kelsey lifted a cautionary hand. “Ma’am?” he said to Kelsey. “Ma’am? Can you hear me?”
Kelsey’s eyes fluttered open. “Uh?” She tried to talk, but all that came out was gibberish.
“Speech ataxia,” said the EMT. “Probably a vascular constriction.”
Sarah swallowed, feeling an ache in her throat as Kelsey’s eyes widened. Vascular whatever. It was a stroke. Kelsey couldn’t talk. How would things be if she didn’t recover? She and Mike would be all Katie had left.
They’d better start getting along.
“Wha…” Kelsey looked from side to side, panicked.
“It’s okay. I’m here, Sis,” Sarah said.
Kelsey moved her mouth, obviously trying to speak, but nothing came out. Finally, she closed her eyes again and clenched her fists.
“She’s trying,” said the EMT.
Kelsey opened her eyes again, and this time looking past Sarah. “Mike?” she said. “Mike?”
The exhale of Sarah’s relief that her sister could speak whooshed out, and she wished all her jealousy and misgivings could go with it. But her heart felt heavy as she took Katie from Mike and watched him slip into the ambulance and take Kelsey’s hand.
“Momma?” Katie rubbed her eyes and looked up at Sarah, puzzled.
“Momma’s resting.” Sarah patted the child’s head. “You’ve got the car seat, Mike. Come on. I’ll ride with Kelsey.”
Mike tossed a set of keys at her. They fell to the ground at her feet. “Take Kelsey’s car,” he said. “The seat’s in it.”
“But…”
“I’m not leaving her.”
Now he wasn’t leaving her. Sarah was tempted to say something snarky, but the EMT crouching on the other side of the gurney leaned out and pulled one of the doors closed. “We’re wasting time here,” he said.
“Come on.” Lane picked the keys up and tossed them in the air, nodding toward Kelsey’s gray-primered Camry. “Let’s go.”
“Let’s?”
“You’re in no shape to drive. Besides, my truck’s at the ranch, remember?”
Sarah sighed and headed for the car. She bent and slid the sleepy Katie into the car seat, struggling to fasten the belt and shoulder straps as the child slumped like a sack of potatoes. She was used to taking care of Katie, but since they never left the yard she wasn’t well versed in car seat technique. As she tried to fasten the shoulder straps into the buckle, Katie woke and widened her eyes.
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