Lois Greiman - [Hope Springs 02] (15 page)

Something escaped her throat. It might have been some kind of animalistic snarl.

Colt stepped back a pace, then laughed nervously and continued on. “Could be that was a bad choice of words. But she really is a swell girl.”

She felt her brows jump like trout at dawn.
“Swell?”

“Nice. Sweet. Kind. Thoughtful. You name it,” he said.

“How about fat chested?”

“Fat—” he began, then laughed. She swung around him, steeling herself in case he grabbed her again, but he just stepped back instead.

“Holy crap.” He barely breathed the words. “Holy . . .” She heard his footfalls stop. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

She told herself to keep walking, to march straight into the house and up the stairs. Maybe fetch Clayton’s old shotgun . . . maybe . . .

But he spoke again. “You’re jealous.”

She stopped as if she’d been shot. Her cheeks felt hot, but she swung toward him anyway. “You’re deluded,” she said.

He stared at her a second longer, then laughed again. “It’s true. Cassandra May Carmichael is jealous.”

“What would I be jealous of?” she asked. In the back of her mind she thought that if he said, “Her boobs,” she just hoped she had enough shotgun shells left to do the job right.

“I don’t know,” he said instead. “She’s a great gal.”

“Yeah? As great as Jess?”

He winced, froze, then exhaled slowly. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”

“About the mother of your child?”

“She—”

“The child you abandoned?”

“I didn’t abandon her.”

So it was a girl, she thought, and had no idea why that made things worse. Made her want to cry. “So maybe you married Jess and just forgot to tell me that, too.”

He glanced out the door, eyes haunted. “I wouldn’t have made her happy.”

She drew a deep breath. “So you talked about it. You considered it.”

“Yeah.”

“And she wanted to marry you.”

“She thought she did.”

She laughed, despite herself. “But you knew better.”

“I didn’t love her,” he said, and turned back to her. “There was someone else.” His eyes were frightfully earnest, absolutely steady. “There has always been someone else.”

She felt herself pulled in, pulled under, but she shook her head, trying to formulate the appropriate questions.

Suddenly, Emily’s voice rang through the barn. “Sophie! Soph! Where are you?”

Casie gave Colt one last look and stepped into the doorway.

“Emily . . .”

The girl turned toward her with a start. “Holy shorts!” she said, staggering away. “Scare the crap out of me, why don’t you!”

“Sorry.” She refused to glance at Colt as he appeared out of the shadows beside her.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Emily eyed him up, then shifted her curious gaze back to Casie. Her lips curved happily. “Excellent question.” Her tone was suggestive.

“Why are you looking for Sophie?” Casie asked.

“Oh.” Emily’s happy expression diminished rapidly. “She’s not with you, huh?”

Premonition cranked Casie’s stomach up tight. “She said she was planning to help you with dishes.”

“Yeah,” Emily said. “Weird, huh?”

“So she
did
go inside?”

“Ten minutes ago or so,” she said and pulled a comical face. “Have you seen any other signs of end times?”

Casie could feel Colt’s gaze shift to her face, but ignored the ongoing joke. “Where is she now?”

“I don’t know. One minute she was in the kitchen. The next I heard an engine fire up. I didn’t think anything of it for a while. Assumed it was you, but then I noticed the news clip.”

There was a lull in the conversation. A lull that Emily failed to fill.

“What news clip?” Casie asked, already striding into the yard.

Emily followed. “The TV was on in the living room. I pretty much ignored it until I heard the words
abused horses
.”

Casie felt the blood drain from her face. “What about them?”

Emily shrugged. “Apparently, there are some.”

The three of them were standing in the yard now. But Puke was noticeably absent.

“Was the trailer still hooked up?” Colt asked.

“What?” Casie asked, mind numb as she turned toward him.

“The horse trailer,” he said. “Was it still hooked up to Puke?”

“Holy Hannah!” She breathed the words like a curse. “She took the trailer? It doesn’t even have lights.”

“Where’d she go?” Colt asked.

“I don’t know. I was in the bathroom. One minutes she was there, and the next she was gone. Kind of like a stomachache.”

T
y scowled into the distance as he strode toward Red Horse Ranch.

The moon, as bright and round as an October pumpkin, flirted with blue-black clouds. Thunder rumbled overhead. Fog rolled up like lacy blossoms, slowly enveloping the cattails that grew beside the Chickasaw. But Ty failed to notice the weather as he marched along. Colt sometimes gave him a ride home from the Lazy at the end of the day, but he didn’t want to make a habit of it; he owed too many people too many favors as it was, and anyway, he needed this time alone, time to walk, to think.

Things had changed so dang much since he’d met Casie Carmichael that sometimes he still needed time to adjust, to make sense of things. He’d been beat down. Now he wasn’t. Perhaps it was as simple as that. But the whys of the situation bedeviled him. Why did she waste time on a kid like him? A kid with too few skills and too many problems. She had enough troubles of her own. Sophie Jaegar, for instance. Sophie was like a hot-blooded thoroughbred on too short a lead. Trouble on the hoof. She made his pulse race and his hands sweat. But that was just because she was so temperamental, so impossible to understand. She ran hot and cold and scary as hell. But she was also so . . .

He shook his head and exhaled heavily. God knew there were far more important things to worry about than Sophie Jaegar’s inexplicable moods. Emily, for instance, who always seemed tough and steady, but was scared spitless on the inside. Or Angel, with the dark, trusting eyes and the deep-throated nicker that made him feel needed, made him feel right. But Angel would have died days ago if it wasn’t for Sophie. She’d saved the mare as surely as if she’d performed the operation herself. And why was that? Sophie Jaegar could buy and sell a thousand Angels with the kind of money her daddy had. So why had she decided to help
his
mare?

Against his will, he remembered the brightness of the girl’s eyes when she talked about the old gray, but he was sure it wasn’t tears. Sophie Jaegar was mean, he reminded himself. She was self-centered and vain and caustic. But sometimes, when he least expected it, he would shift his gaze just so and wonder if he saw someone else in her eyes, someone vulnerable and lost. Someone who needed a champion. Someone who could
be
a champion, who could fight to the death for a broken-down old plug that wasn’t worth the price of a bullet. Someone who could fight for a guy who—

He shook his head, trying to dislodge the thoughts from his brain, but the lost little girl was stuck firm in the back of his mind.

Was that how his father had felt at one time? Had he looked at Ty’s mother and longed to be braver or better or smarter or stronger? Had he wanted more than anything to be the kind of man that she needed? He shook the idiotic thoughts from his head. It wasn’t as if
Ty
felt that way. But Gil Roberts must have had some kind of reason to marry a woman who would never be happy. Ty would be smarter, though. He wasn’t going to get caught in that trap. It wasn’t as if Sophie Jaegar meant anything to him. It didn’t matter that her hair shone like a palomino’s burnished coat or that her skin was the color of clover honey, or that now and then, when he least expected it, there was a breathtaking vulnerability to her that made him want to be something he could never be. Something better and—

A light struck him from behind. He jumped, feeling inexplicably guilty for his wandering thoughts. The pickup truck was coming up behind him. He shuffled diagonally off to the side of the road. It was darker than pine tar out here, but when he twisted toward the approaching vehicle, he recognized Puke’s single headlight without half trying. Casie’s ancient horse trailer rattled behind it, fishtailing on the gravel. Where were they off to at this hour of the—

Angel! Panic struck him like a blow. While he’d been festering over Sophie’s mercurial moods, something had happened to Angel. Another bout of colic, probably. Or maybe the laminitis had taken a turn for the worse. They must be headed straight for the vet hospital.

Fear knotted his muscles, freezing him in place, but at the last moment he reached up and tried to flag them down with both hands. It wasn’t right that they’d leave without him. She was
his
horse. He’d go with them no matter the outcome. Maybe they thought he was too weak to do what needed doing. Maybe that’s why they’d waited until he’d left. He winced, realizing the horrible limitations of their options. Spending more money was out of the question. He knew that. He wasn’t a complete idiot. Still, he wouldn’t let Angel go through anything without him. He waved again, frantic now. But the truck didn’t slow down. Instead, it swerved around him. For a second he caught sight of wide eyes and glossy hair and then dust swirled around him in a gritty vortex.

“Sophie?” he breathed, but she was already hidden from sight. Maybe it was the memory of those lost little girl eyes or maybe it was fear for Angel that made him act. He would never know for sure, but without thinking, without hesitation, he leaped toward the trailer. His fingers curled around the metal slats while his boots hit the rusty fender. His left foot slipped. For a second he was certain he would be thrown onto the gravel like a hapless grasshopper, but he scrambled for footing, tightened his grip, and managed to stay put.

Half choking on the dust and hyperventilating on the adrenaline rush, he gazed into the interior of the trailer. Nothing gazed back. He shoved his face closer to the slats and peered inside more intently, but the conveyance was empty. Even in the darkness, he could see that much. Uncertainty claimed him. Where the hell was Sophie going? And why? She didn’t have no license. For a moment he considered jumping off, but she was already picking up speed and she was . . .
Sophie
. Closing his eyes against this new insanity, he flattened himself against the side of the trailer, and hung on for dear life.

 

Inside the rattletrap pickup truck, Sophie Jaegar curled her fists around the steering wheel and tightened her lips. Anger roared like a gale force wind inside her head. Footage of miserable horses tied in stalls so narrow they could barely shift their weight stormed through her brain. The pictures melded painfully with old memories, memories of Ty with broken lips and eyes cast in shadows. Cruelty, blatant and devastating. She swallowed her bile and stepped on the gas. Behind her, the trailer swiveled wildly. She eased up on the accelerator but didn’t touch the brake. She wasn’t a complete idiot. She didn’t want to send the whole rig spinning into the ditch. That much she knew, but little else.

Rage had taken over. Standing in the living room watching the TV anchor talk about PMU horses with such bored disregard had shot her into action. Although the clip hadn’t shown the interior of the particular barn she was headed for, she had recognized the farm featured on the news clip. It was an out-of-the-way place on a little-known gravel road, a road she’d often traversed between her father’s condo and the Lazy Windmill.

Her hands shook as she turned off the highway. Puke’s right front tire hit a pothole and she gasped. The anger had worn down a little, turning to bitter uncertainty. But she drove on. Another right turn brought her onto a rutted gravel road that wound around a murky slough.

The farm stood on a small hill a quarter of a mile or so to the north. It was fully dark now, but there was a light on in the yard. A shelterbelt, a narrow band of Russian olives and blue spruce, grew beside the road. She pulled past the edge of it, shifted into neutral, and shut off the truck. She would be all but hidden from view of the house now. Still, uncertainty kept her frozen in place. Who the hell did she think she was? Some superhero come to right the wrongs of the world? She was just a kid. If she had a brain in her head, she’d go home. Then she could rant and rave and insist that someone do something, knowing all the while that no one would expect that someone to be
her
. But the image of the horses loomed in her mind again. Reaching to her right, she curled her fingers around the camera she’d taken from Emily’s room. Her left hand moved out of its own accord. The driver’s door squeaked as she stepped out of the truck. Her knees felt less than steady as she eased the door shut, trying to be silent. Her nerve, so sharp and clear when she was standing in the Lazy’s warm kitchen, seemed to have abandoned her completely. But the pictures on the television gnawed at her brain like nasty rodents.

She swallowed hard, straightened her spine, and took a step toward the farm.

“What are you—”

She jumped back with a shriek, raising her arms in a wild effort to protect herself from the monster that accosted her.

But the monster morphed quickly into human form. “Soph! Geez, Sophie!”

She stepped back, heart pounding, mind desperately trying to make sense of things.

“Ty?” The name sounded shaky and ridiculous to her ears, an unshapely meld of terror and hope. “Ty!” Anger came quickly on the heels of the relief she was sure she shouldn’t be feeling. She hated surprises, and glanced around now, sure she’d been followed, sure her plans, unformed as they were, would be thwarted. She refused to admit that just seconds ago she had desperately hoped that would be the case. “What are you doing here?”

“What am
I
doing here?” He looked around. There was little enough to see, just a lone farm with a few run-down buildings and a yard light making a poor attempt to pierce the gloom. “Where
is
here?”

Her legs felt wooden, her hands sweaty. What the hell was going on? She paced past the trailer, looking for his vehicle. “How did you even get here?”

“How do you think?” He waved wildly at nothing in particular, anger or something like it making his tone tight. “You almost ran me over. You drive like a . . .” He shook his head and blew out a breath. “What the devil are you doing? You don’t even have no license.”

“Were you . . .” Things were unclear in her mind, skewed by fear, made jagged by the sharp rush of adrenaline. She shook her head, trying to see past the tail of the trailer. “Neither do you. How—” She stopped breathing, remembering she’d passed him on the road. “Did you grab on to the trailer? Were you hanging on to the side the whole time?”

“You gotta slow down when you’re pulling a load, Soph. It can jackknife on you, you know. And if you’re hauling a horse, you can’t drive nearly so fast.”

“I didn’t have . . .” She shook her head. “You were hanging on the trailer?” She scowled at the rusty fender, the pockmarked slats. “Are you nuts?”

“No more than you, looks like. What are we doing here?”

“
We’re
not doing anything here,” she said, and gathering her nerve, skirted around him to head for the barn.

“Soph.” She could hear him turn toward her, could hear him scramble after. “Sophie! What’s going on?”

“Nothing! Go home.”

“Sure. I’ll do that.” She heard him stop. “I’ll just leave you here. But just so I got some idea what to tell Casie when they find your hacked-up body along the side of the road, where the hell
is
here?”

She felt herself blanch, hated herself for her weakness, and worked hard to dredge up a modicum of the rage she’d felt just a short time before. She straightened her back. “This is the place your hero was talking about.”

“What?” Confusion echoed in his voice.

“The farrier,” she said, lowering her voice. Off in the darkness somewhere, a dog barked. Her stomach knotted. “Sam told us about it.”

He shook his head.

“The PMU mares are kept here!” she snapped.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, but his voice was low, too.

“Pregnant mare urine,” she said, leaning close to rasp the words into his face. “I just saw it on the news. They collect the stuff here, then send it to the big pharmaceutical companies out east.”

His brows were pulled low over his thousand-secrets eyes. “So?”

“So?” She hissed the word, glared at him, then, for lack of anything more constructive, ground her teeth and ducked between two strands of barbed wire fencing. Something rustled in the scraggly sour dock that grew to her left. She jerked spasmodically, then gritted her teeth at her own cowardice and crept silently forward, though she didn’t have a reason for her stealth. She couldn’t see two feet in front of her face. A bat wouldn’t be able to find her in this darkness. Although a big dog might be able to. She winced at the thought and glanced to the side. Something slithered across the toe of her boot. She swallowed and resisted grabbing Ty’s arm, though he had caught up to her.

“Why—” he began again, but she snarled at him.

“It’s inhumane,” she said.

“What’s inhumane?”

“The way they treat these mares,” she said and turned abruptly toward him. Reminding herself with every word that she had a mission, she dredged up her anger. “It’s barbaric,” she said and winced as she saw his face. In the darkness, it almost seemed that she could still see the discoloration around his battered eye. The discoloration that his own worthless mother had caused. But that wasn’t
her
problem. Casie had come to his rescue. Sophie Jaegar wasn’t anybody’s hero. Not any human’s anyway. But horses . . . maybe horses were another matter entirely. “It’s cruel and stupid and—”

“I’m sorry.”

His simple words stopped her cold. Because he
was
sorry. She could hear it in his voice. Could feel it in his presence. How could someone who had been hurt so much by his own mother still care? She was still angry because
her
mom hadn’t given her a cell phone until her fourteenth birthday. “They’re kept in tie stalls for months at a time,” she said and carefully stifled the confusing emotions that stormed through her.

“Why?”

“Pregnant mares have something in their urine that’s used in drugs for women’s menopause problems. That urine has to be collected, and the easiest way to do it is to keep them immobilized.”