Red Thunder Reckoning

by Sylvie Kurtz

  Garth smiled and gave a low chuckle. “It takes more than brains. It takes vision. And patience.”

  “Considering how much you achieved in your life, you must have both.” The words scratched her throat, chicken-bone sharp.

  “More.” The smile lingered. A light gleamed in his eyes. “I can shape a vision into reality.”

  Low self-esteem had never been Garth’s problem. “Is that so?”

  The gleam in his eyes quickened. He’d caught on to her game, but for now was willing to play. “Senior year in college, I met two very interesting people. They wanted to change the course of history. One concerned herself with the question ‘How can I feed the hungry?’ The other with ‘How can I make livestock sturdier?’ I gave them the space and the means to make their dreams come true.”

  “I don’t understand.” Behind her, she felt Kevin’s hands curl around the back of her chair. His tension coiled around her, but she shrugged it away. She needed answers.

  “Drugs can be traced,” Garth said. “That does me no good. Plus, they make for a short career, and good racehorses don’t come cheap. I wanted predictable performance enhancement. There are two ways to get there.”

  He was going to make her pull every bit of information out of him. She clenched her teeth. “How?”

  “Breeding for speed. And feeding for speed.”

  “You forgot training.”

  “Training is incidental. Raw talent gets the glory every time.”

  Slowly, his “system” dawned on her. The fish gene spliced into the tomato. “You used genetic engineering.”

  “You were always a smart girl.” He tilted his head and looked away as if he were seeing his dream in living color. “I found the best stock available, paired it with the best research team available. And what I got was a winning combination.”

  “Tell me more.”

  He lifted an eyebrow in what looked like amused improbability. “Why should I?”

  “Because they’ve got nothing to do with what’s between us.” She swallowed her pride and resorted to a bit of honest begging. “They’re dying, Garth.”

  He shrugged. “What can be done has already been done.”

  Frustration buzzed down her spine. She flicked her watch a glance, flipped her braid back. Her time would soon be up and she wasn’t even close to the answers she needed. Her shoulder blades brushed against Kevin’s fingers. The touch sparked renewed strength. She licked her lips and tried a new tack. “Who’s on your research team?”

  “Lillian Harmon and Silas Warner.”

  Dr. Warner. The Bancrofts’ vet. Tessa’s protocol book. “Are you involved with Tessa Bancroft in any way?”

  “Did I screw her, you mean?” He didn’t give her a chance to reply. “Yeah, I screwed her. So has everyone else. She’ll spread her legs for any man she thinks can give her something she wants. She thinks she can buy respect, but she’s usin’ the wrong currency.”

  “She’s married.”

  Garth shook his head. “You are still so naive. Sex is nothing more than a commodity. And a good marriage is nothing more than a business transaction. Love just confuses things.” He grinned jovially. “Look where it got me.”

  “You being here has nothing to do with love—”

  The smile melted from his face. His gaze narrowed. “I loved you. I still do.”

  His admission repulsed her, but she tried not to let her disgust show. “Then answer my question. What’s wrong with the horses?”

  He waved at her dismissingly. “There’s nothing wrong with the horses. At least not as far as I know.”

  She leaned forward. “The Bancrofts aren’t continuing your project?”

  “Darlin’, the only project I’m involved in now is tryin’ to free myself from this unfair incarceration.”

  “Unfair?” She swallowed the bile surging in her throat. “You earned every year you’re going to spend here. You’re not going to beat this.”

  “I’ve still got a few aces up my sleeve.”

  The law’s straight flush still beat ill-gotten aces. But that was neither here nor there. “What about Harmon and Warner?”

  Garth shrugged. “Without money they won’t get far.”

  “They’re not working for you?”

  “I let them go last year.”

  Had the Bancrofts hired them and taken over Garth’s “system?” Now she simply had to decode it. “So your research and breeding got you speed. But something went wrong.”

  “A few glitches,” he admitted, then leaned forward. “One that proved useful.” His eyes danced with perverse pleasure. Involuntarily, she shivered. His lips seemed pressed against the speaker. She leaned back against the poison they would spew and pressed into Kevin’s fingers on the back of the chair, seeking reassurance. His thumbs skimmed her collarbone. She relaxed a notch. “Do you still like oatmeal cookies, darlin’.”

  His laugh reverberated through the room. The tentacles of his evil crept through the glass, wrapped themselves around her and seemed to crush her. A helpless cry escaped her.

  “That’s enough.” Kevin’s voice came low and strong from behind her. His hands clasped protectively around her shoulders. She leaned into him, drawing strength from the solidity of his taut body. “She asked you a simple question. Answer it.”

  Garth eyed Kevin up and down, amusement still evident on his face. “Have you heard about the salmon project up in Canada?”

  “Just get on with it,” Kevin snapped. The tips of his fingers tightened around her shoulders.

  “They’ve engineered it so that a year-old salmon now weighs the same as a four-year-old salmon. That way they go from egg to table faster.” Garth shifted in his seat, clasped his hands in front of him. “If a two-year-old has the heart of a four-year-old, if his lungs have more breadth, if his muscles have more mass, then he’s going to win more races.

  “And that’s exactly what we did. Look back at the records and you’ll see Legacy horses have won all the major Thoroughbred races in the area for the past eight years.” He ground a finger on the counter. “That, darlin’, is called success.”

  That, idiot, is called arrogance. “What went wrong?” Ellen asked, her voice catching past the constriction in her throat. All this manipulating of genes so he could feel like a winner. But the deep lines carving the side of his face also told her that winning all those races hadn’t been enough. Maybe nothing ever would.

  “Thoroughbred breeding has to be done with live cover. Genetic engineering would have required artificial insemination. So we had to find a way around that. We tried the feed. For whatever reason, the genetically engineered oats tend to cause anemia. So we added extra iron to the feed and that seemed to work for a while.”

  “But there was something else.”

  One of his shoulders jerked up. “The big heart and muscle mass that made them winners as two-year-olds started to become a liability by the time they turned four or five.”

  “So you killed them.” Her heart sank. So much sacrifice for nothing.

  “An autopsy’s the only way to learn what went wrong and improve the next batch.”

  Simple as that. Life was disposable. Use and discard. If the horse doesn’t fit, well then, there was always next year’s foals to splice and design. Then the cruelty of his manipulation doused her like a bucket of cold water.

  “You used the same oats for the cookies you brought me.” Every week. And like a fool, she’d eaten them. There’d been something irresistible about the buttery sweetness of the treat against the nuttiness of the toasted oats. A bit of heaven in hell. Nausea rolled in her stomach.

  “An early version that caused the horses’ mind to fog.” He crossed his arms. “I had some put in reserve just for you, darlin’.”

  She hesitated, knitted her fingers together and frowned. “Am I going to age prematurely, too?”

  His voice held a surprising gentleness. “I don’t know. It’s all research.”

  Ellen’s mind reeled.
The whole room started to spin. She wasn’t sick all those years; she’d been rendered catatonic by Garth through the oatmeal cookies he brought her in order to keep her mind scrambled so he could avoid punishment for his crime. Her. The horses. Dr. Warner and his partner. They were all pawns in Garth’s pursuit of validation. Disposable.

  Swearing viciously, Kevin stepped forward, coming between her and Garth. “Haven’t you done enough damage?”

  Garth slanted Kevin a dismissive glance. “I was wonderin’ how long it would take you to spring to the rescue. You held out longer than I thought. Only reason for a man to be so patient with a woman is that he’s whipped.”

  Kevin’s jaw twitched. “You haven’t changed. You’re still picking on those who can’t fight back.”

  “It’s called survival of the fittest.” A feral spark glinted in Garth’s eyes.

  Kevin pounded a fist against the glass. Garth flinched. “You feel safe picking on her because you’re behind bars. You wouldn’t be so brave if it was just you and me face-to-face. You always incited fights, then left me to catch the punches.”

  Ellen gaped at the man standing in front of her. Leaving him to catch the punches? What was he talking about?

  Garth stood and narrowed his gaze. “Well, well, well. So Tessa was right. Another Makepeace has come back from the dead.”

  Silence, heavy and thick, filled the room. Everything seemed to flow in slow motion. The shock of realization on Kevin’s face. The spreading grin on Garth’s. The bottom falling out from under her. She bolted out of the chair. The metal frame clanging against the tile joined the cacophonous ringing in her ears.

  Kevin stood still, staring at her. “Ellen.”

  Everything suddenly became clear. All the emotions he could arouse in her. All those times she’d thought of Kyle in Kevin’s presence. All those times she thought she’d seen a glimpse of him under the scars. That familiar gesture. They hadn’t been wishful thinking, but clear vision.

  His shoulders had broadened. His muscles had defined. His body had hardened. He’d been a lean and lanky boy sixteen years ago and he was a solid man today. The black hair was cut differently, shorter, less shaggy. But those dark eyes looking at her now held the same look they had all those years ago when she’d begged him to reconsider leaving and he’d implored her to understand.

  “Kyle?” Her voice sounded far away. She barely heard herself over the thunder of her heart.

  “You didn’t know?” Garth’s satisfied smugness jabbed her like needles. “This is rich.”

  Kyle was alive. Kyle was here. And Kyle had lied to her. All those days, all those nights, they were a lie.

  “Ellen…” His face contorted into the picture of anguish. He reached out for her.

  She spun on her heels, wobbled to the door and yanked it open. Her boot heels pounded against the hallway tile, gunfire fast. Garth’s laughter chased her. Kyle’s curses battered her. Hands pressed against her ears, she shut them both out and sprinted past the guard and into the breath-robbing heat.

  For a moment she hesitated on the front steps. The asphalt road leading into Ashbrook shimmered under the sun, unbalancing her. Hands on knees, she forced herself to breathe in and breathe out.

  Kyle was alive. He’d helped her. He’d loved her. But he’d said nothing. Knowing her feelings for him, he’d still chosen to pretend he was dead. He’d made love to her. How could he have done that with the lie between them? Her hands fastened around her stomach as if letting go would allow her guts to spill out over the stairs, her heart to roll out onto the road. He’d made her fall in love with him all over again, then betrayed that love—just as he had all those years ago. Unshed tears bled her throat raw. “Kyle!”

  With a growl, she strode forward. She had survived before. She would survive this time, too.

  She wasn’t going to let this betrayal shake her. She couldn’t. She had to drive home. She had to find Dr. Warner. He was the key. From him, she’d get an explanation, some help. Getting those horses healthy again was her priority. Then she’d force him to testify on the horses’ behalf to the judge.

  And later, much later, she’d let herself sort out what had happened with Kevin.

  The horses would never suffer again.

  She had no other choice. To let anything other than the pressing need to help the horses crowd her mind would invite a breakdown. And she was never setting foot inside another institution. The horses, her ranch, were her link to sanity.

  Hands shaking, mind blank, she stepped into the truck, turned on the engine, then drove off. But try as she might to outrun him, Kevin mutated into Kyle, and the man and the boy rode as passenger ghosts beside her.

  Chapter Twelve

  Stranded in Ashbrook, Kevin shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and started walking with no destination in mind. He hunched his shoulders against the sun beating down on his bare head. His boots were made for riding not walking. Each step jarred boot heel into bone and concussed all the way to his calves. Sweat soon stained his dark T-shirt front and back. Nina’s feather went round and round in his hand, but provided little comfort. Every muscle braced against the assault on his mind, but he couldn’t stop the flow of thoughts.

  Like a truck mired in mud, his mind grooved deeper and deeper into what had gone wrong at the jail. Anger had once again gotten the best of him. He’d love to hold Garth accountable for this mistake, but he knew he had no one to blame but himself. He’d never forget the look on Ellen’s face, her helpless cry, the instinctual rounding of her body as if he’d punched her. He’d hurt her, cut her where she was most vulnerable.

  What right did he have to follow her home?

  Nina was wrong. He wasn’t healing his past. He was reopening wounds. Coming back to Texas had been a mistake. Chance and Ellen had carved new lives for themselves. All he’d managed to do was upset their balance.

  On the edge of town, he found himself turning down Gum Springs Road. After a long stretch of pine lots, he came to a white picket fence. He hesitated, then went through the cemetery gate.

  In the thick heat, no birds sang, no insects chirped. Only the dull thump of his boots on the sun-softened asphalt path made any noise. The creek on his left was nothing more than a layer of green slime on cracking mud. The stench of rotting vegetation seeped into him and abscessed in the gangrene of his errors. The sun scratched out black fingers of shadows, crooked like the limbs of the oaks they mimicked. Too tall, yellowing grass encroached on tombstones, obliterating dates beneath names.

  He came to a statue of an angel, patched green with moss, and turned off the path. Beneath an oak, he found the markers he’d come to visit—and three more he hadn’t expected.

  Lloyd and Sarah Makepeace. When things got unbearable as a child, he’d found his way to this back corner of the cemetery and opened his heart to his dead parents, especially his mother. When she was alive, she’d always known what to say to soothe his sorrow. Dead, she’d given him no answers, but still provided a safe place to cry. He crouched beside the granite and ran a finger along the letters chiseled into the stone. Tears burned his eyes, but refused to fall. He wasn’t a boy anymore.

  Then his gaze fell onto another marker inscribed with John Henry Makepeace.

  Buck up, boy, his grandfather’s hard voice came to him. Real men don’t cry—only sissies. Are you a sissy, boy?

  Kevin’s jaw tightened. An army of unexpected emotions blitzed him, rocking him back on his heels. His mind conjured up his grandfather, stern and unyielding. His ghost scowled at him as he had in life. A slice of rebellion rose from the ashes of childhood submission.

  “I hated you for always taking Kent’s side.” The words ripped out of him like scabs peeled from a ragged cut. “I hated you for liking him better than me. I tried, you know. I tried to make you proud. But you didn’t care. You expected trouble and that’s all you saw.”

  Kevin punched the ground beside him. “I hated you for living when Mom and Dad died.”

  His
childhood anger festered and oozed until the infection finally ran clear. Drained and spent, Kevin swiped back hair wet with sweat, then he reached out for the two smaller plaques bearing his and Kent’s names. Dead, but alive—both of them. Kent was Chance now, and it suited him better. And Kyle had found a measure of peace as Kevin.

  “That little boy deserved your love.”

  A breeze ruffled his cheek and Nina’s voice whispered to him, It was safer not to love, Pajackok. A lesson you learned much too well.

  “I can love. I loved you. I’ve always loved Ellen.”

  Then take off your armor and leave it here. Go back and finish what you started.

  He shook his head, frowned. “I hurt her.”

  Ah, Pajackok! What is the basic lesson?

  Kevin shot up from his crouch, turned away from the graves and stepped back onto the asphalt path, hoping to outrun Nina’s voice on the breeze of his memory.

  How do you turn a horse into a partner?

  He ignored the voice of Nina playing conscience, hunched his shoulders and strode on.

  The basic lesson is trust, son of my heart. Only when you trust enough to open your heart will you find your peace.

  He sneered, kicked at a rock on the path. “What about Ellen? Hasn’t she been hurt enough?”

  What has she got now but half a lie? The truth is basic. What works for one works for all. Trust.

  “She’ll never trust me again.”

  Open your heart and trust.

  His pace slowed. Ellen would never trust him. But truth was simple. Whether she wanted to or not, Ellen still needed help handling Bancroft until the horses’ fate was settled. She didn’t have to like him. She didn’t have to forgive him. She simply had to accept his help for the horses’ sake.

  And for the horses, she would do anything—including get herself in trouble.