Chapter One

One

“Do you have your paperwork?”

Melanie passed over the proof that both her horses had been tested for coggins and found clean and watched as the thickset Georgia State Patrol officer behind the desk gave the results a cursory glance. The tidy green file folder also contained LT and Roman’s vaccination records, negative results for any and all disorders that might have been found in the blood samples that had been drawn from each gelding. Their total health workups, proving that she transported two strong, disease-free animals across the Florida state line into Georgia.

Healthy, but not necessarily happy.

The weigh station was a cramped, smelly, cheaply carpeted little box set up on stilts so the sliding windows were accessible to the truckers who usually passed through to have their loads calculated. Mel twisted around, sending a shower of rain droplets flying off the hem of her black rain slicker, so she could peer through the station’s windows and glimpse her rig parked beneath the floodlight outside.

The rain was vengeful tonight, chasing her away with as much ferocity as the Carlton family. It pummeled the sides of the station, its fat drops rattling the windows in their panes. The thin walls of the building groaned against the wind. Lightning cleaved the dense summer night sky and in its flash, Mel imagined she could see Roman’s black head whipping back in fear through the trailer’s window.

She had a modest white bumper-pull trailer with a small dressing room. But it had sliding windows and a ramp, half doors that closed above it. It was spacious enough for Roman’s massive frame and still gave LT enough traveling room. Her F250, the bed heavily-laden with all her possessions and covered with a blue tarp – one end of which was starting to come loose at the wind’s urging – rocked on its axles as the trailer pulled at it. Even through the walls and the torrential rain, she could hear Roman striking the floor of the trailer with an impatient hoof. She couldn’t blame him. She’d roused him from a nap in his stall and loaded him up as the storm had started licking across the horizon. Their sudden departure coupled with the weather had left him a bundle of nervous, angry energy.  

“Some weather, huh?” the officer said as he shuffled her paperwork back into the folder. He had a wide, jowly face and no neck to speak of, so when he turned to hand her the folder, fat rolled out over the collar of his uniform. He looked every inch the country cop, like he’d come straight from casting with a resume full of Law & Order appearances.

Mel would have agreed with him if she’d felt like making small talk. Instead she said, “thanks,” through chattering teeth and took a shaky hold on her horses’ file.

“You been through an ag check before?” he asked her, sitting back in his rolling chair until it groaned in protest.

“Yes, sir.” And she had, on her way into Florida. She’d hated to stop on her way back out, but knew she’d had to.

He nodded. “’Kay. I’ll send Jody out with ya. Gotta check the livestock.”

Again, too tired to argue, she let livestock slide and zipped up her slicker. The officer’s counterpart stood stiffly over by the water cooler, making covert glances she’d seen from the corner of her eye. He looked younger than her, maybe twenty if she was being generous in her estimation of his age, and had to be a rookie. His uniform hung on skinny shoulders and was badly in need of pressing, big wrinkles marring his dark blue pants. Unlike the senior officer, he wore his hat and reached now to scratch at his head beneath it, resettling the cap when he was done with a nervous twitch.

Mel waited while Jody – who knew if that was a first name or last – tugged on a clear plastic rain poncho and produced a flashlight from a metal cabinet. “You ready, ma’am?” his voice was nervous.

She wanted to roll her eyes at being called “ma’am” but nodded and pulled her hood up, cinching it tight with the little toggles on either side. “As I’ll ever be,” she said on a sigh. As an afterthought, she reached beneath her jacket and tucked the folder in the front waistband of her breeches so it wouldn’t get wet, then followed Jody out into the stormy night.

Thunder boomed the moment a sharp gust of wind snatched the door back, slamming it against the handrail. Mel left the officer to struggle with it and ducked her head as she dashed across the wet pavement, paddock boots splashing water up her legs. Lightning again turned the night to day and she heard Roman squeal. Hooves thumped against the trailer floor. The rain was blowing sideways, stinging her eyes, plastering the jacket to her body.

Holding her hood in place with a hand, she walked around to the far side of the trailer where she and Jody would be protected from the wind, and where she could open the escape door on LT’s side of the trailer. A much safer choice.

The patrolman came to stand behind her, crowding her so he could lean forward and shout above the wind. “You got a red and a black one, yeah?”

“Yeah!” she had to shout.

Mel lifted the safety bar and popped the latch on the side door. Jody’s flashlight beam landed on the side of LT’s face, his deep brown eye going white around the edges as his pupil contracted. The little chestnut gelding snorted, a rare display of nerves for him, and twisted his head against his trailer tie, the light sliding over the crisp white stripe that ran down the center of his face.

“Chestnut,” she said, reaching in to pat him on the nose.

In the stall beside LT, Roman lunged against the breast bar, squealing at the sight of a stranger. The solid black gelding towered above his trailermate, the whites of his eyes rolling. Mel saw the ivory flash of his teeth as he bared them.

“And black,” she said, slamming the door. She slid the lock into place before the cop had a chance to protest. “You good?” she asked him over her shoulder, anxious to be back inside her truck. Rain was running over the edge of her hood and trickling down the sides of her face, wetting her hair, slipping down over her shoulders. She was soaked.

Jody touched the brim of his hat. “Yep.” Then he ducked his head so their faces were closer. “Where you goin’ in this rain?” he asked. “You headed up the road to the rodeo?”

She didn’t like to have her personal space invaded like this – it was part of the reason she was fleeing through the night, in fact – but her mind latched onto the word “rodeo” and a shred of hope unfurled in her chest. Rodeo meant lots of actual livestock. And it meant stalls. As lightning flared above them again and the next boom of thunder sent Roman into another fit of stomping and squealing, she asked which rodeo Jody meant.

She lingered long enough to get directions and then she waved and climbed back in her truck.

When the door was shut, Mel sat, her wet slicker dripping water all over her cloth seats. She felt rain run off her jacket and puddle in the seat beneath her butt, felt the moisture all the way through to her skin. She breathed through parted lips and the sound was loud inside the closed cab despite the steady drumming of rain on the windshield, the roof, the blue tarp in the bed that was hopefully keeping her stuff dry. The rig moved, bounced on its shocks in rhythm with Roman’s pawing hoof. She curled her hands on the wheel, watched Jody disappear back inside the weigh station, and allowed herself a moment of raw, terrified self-pity as she thought about how upside down her life was at the moment. Then, because she hated self-pity, she cranked the engine and the Ford rumbled to life.

Jody’s directions were good. She went three miles up the interstate and got off at the next exit, driving about twenty miles under the speed limit because the road had turned into a swamp, complete with washed vegetation, and visibility was zero. She turned right off the ramp and sat forward in the seat, both hands on the wheel, squinting to see ahead of the meager swath the headlights cut. There was the white church on the corner and the road beside it. Half a mile later, she heard the road turn to gravel beneath the tires and she eased off the gas, put the truck in four wheel drive and prayed she’d make it all the way up to the fair grounds.

Through a tunnel of dense shrubs and saplings, the spasms of lightning only making her more desperate when they revealed the washed-out, rutted drive that lay before her, she finally emerged at the top of a low rise and lights blazed through the dark night, the sight easing the knot of tension between her shoulder blades.

Melanie drove a full lap around the facility to scope out the best point of entry. The arena was a huge metal pavilion that covered the arena itself along with all the appropriate corrals and cattle shutes, two wings of bleachers and what looked like an office. The stables were nothing fancy: long wood shedrows with generous overhangs to keep horses and equipment dry. At the moment, it looked like heaven.

She parked at the end of the row of trucks, trailers and RVs and then groaned when she thought about moving her horses in this weather. Normally, she would have led them together, one on either side, but with Roman so agitated…

Not allowing herself more time to dwell, she pulled up her hood and climbed out, landing in ankle-deep mud that covered her pretty black Ariat paddock boots and spattered her breeches. “Damn it!”

Roman whinnied, the sound echoing inside the trailer, and her boots were forgotten. “I’m coming, baby.”

Mel prided herself on her foresight, on her ability to plan, her logical approach to always keeping humans and animals safe. But tonight she didn’t feel quite like herself, so it was fatigue and stress that led her to unhook both her geldings from their ties and snap on their lead ropes. When she lowered the ramp, Roman went berserk.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she chanted above the roar of the storm. This is so stupid, she told herself, knowing she could potentially be flattened right here in the mud. But she moved up the ramp and dropped LT’s butt bar.

The gelding backed off the like the gentleman he was and she caught his rope. His tiny ears swiveled back and forth and his nostrils flared as he took a deep breath. She saw the muscles jump beneath his coat as the rain struck him, but he didn’t move. “Good boy.” Holding the end of his line, she took a deep breath and dropped Roman’s butt bar too.

The black came scrambling down the ramp, head thrown back. In the vibrant glare of lightning, Mel saw his lead line slithering through the air like a snake and made a wild grab for it. Her fingers closed around the nylon rope and she rolled it around her wrist, not caring if her whole arm was dislocated as he reached the bottom of the ramp.

But the thing about Roman was, he wasn’t stupid. He was proud, superior, very self-entitled, and he was the boss, no contest. The grooms at Carlton had called him “Widowmaker” without a trace of affection because he hated strangers and hated male strangers even more. He was furious to be traveling at night, disturbed from his sleep, but when he reached the foot of the ramp, he threw up his head, snorted like a deer, nosed his friend LT, and then sighed, totally calm, totally smart the way Mel needed him to be.

“Thank God,” she sighed, shoulders sagging with relief. “Okay. Come on, boys.”

The nearest barn had four empty stalls on the end and Mel could have danced when she realized that, not only were there no other horses’ halters or ropes hanging on the doors, but that they were already bedded down with shavings. She put LT and Roman side-by-side, then made trips back to her rig for hay, water buckets and her purse under cover of darkness. Someone had fitted a hose to the water pump and she borrowed it, filling her boys’ buckets, thankful when both of them took a drink.

Roman had a deep gash on one of his forelegs that needed cleaning, so that was another trip back to the trailer for supplies. She flushed it, smeared it and wrapped it up tight, praying it didn’t swell. She didn’t want to ship a wounded horse.

When she realized that both horses were secure for the time being, her last reserves of adrenaline drained out of her and left her limp with exhaustion. In her sopping wet clothes, she locked herself in LT’s stall and sat down in the corner, her purse clutched against her chest. Her beloved chestnut came over and sniffed her once, nudged at her as if asking for a treat, then ambled back to his hay.

She couldn’t stay here because she hadn’t paid to stable her horses and would surely be found. Possibly arrested. The storm would blow over soon and she just needed a moment to catch her breath. To rest her eyes. She wouldn’t stay here long. Just a moment.

Those were her thoughts as sleep claimed her.