Red Thunder Reckoning

This time, she got up slowly and dusted off the seat of her jeans while she rounded up her scattered thoughts.

“I just lost my balance is all. I’m sorry.” She puffed out a long breath. “Look, why don’t I—”

A whinny of terror rent the air.

The dog shot forward to respond. A motion of the man’s hand stopped him cold. Crouched low on his haunches, muscles shaking, Blue waited for permission to herd.

Without thinking, Ellen raced toward the pasture behind the barn. Her leg muscles protested. She ignored their complaint. Her vision couldn’t adjust to the rapid change of focus and began to blur. She shook her head. Not now!

A thunder of hooves stampeded her way from the far end of the main pasture. What had set the horses off? Luci veered right as the fence approached. C.C. swerved left. But head high in the air, Apollo kept running straight.

“No, Apollo, no!” She blinked madly to refocus. “You can’t jump. Not with that leg.”

Trying to stop him, Ellen flagged her arms. But he was wild with panic and paid her no heed. She could do nothing to stop him.

The chestnut horse tried in vain to jump. Somehow, he caught his right front leg between the top and the second rail as he crashed into the fence. Wood cracked as his full weight barreled into the rails, but held. His panic doubled. He fought and lunged and skidded in the mud with his hind feet, but remained stuck.

Ellen stopped in her tracks. “Whoa, Apollo, whoa. It’s okay, boy.” Slowly, knowing that a fast approach could alarm him even more, she talked to him in a soothing voice. “Well, you’ve got yourself in quite a fix. How are we going to get you out of there?”

The mad scrambling to free himself only got worse.

“Back away,” the man behind her said in a low, assertive voice.

“I can’t leave him like this. He’ll hurt himself more.”

“In his mind, he’s in a life-and-death situation. His leg’s caught and he’s got a predator rushing at him.”

“I’m not a predator. He knows I won’t harm him.” But did he? Was a week long enough to trust someone with your life when you’d suffered abuse?

“He’s in a panic. He’s not thinking.” The voice stroked her as surely as a caress. She shivered. “He’s reacting with nature’s programmed response for survival. Flight. To calm him enough to free his leg, you’re going to have to make him think the threat is moving away.”

In a twisted way, what he said made sense. But she couldn’t just leave Apollo like this. He needed help. He needed it now. She took a step forward. Apollo’s head whipped from side to side, looking for escape. He pulled on his trapped leg, scraping skin and jamming the limb in tighter. One back foot skidded from under him and thwacked against a post. She stopped.

“Apollo.” Her heart wrenched with helplessness. “Let me help you.”

“Back away,” the man said. There was something compelling, seductive almost, about the sandy scrape of his voice.

Suddenly, she was back in the nursing home, strapped to a bed, fighting for her life. Just like Apollo. Garth’s drawling voice had tried to control her and she’d had to battle it with every ounce of her will. Now, the need to move away from the danger this man presented made her muscles twitch. What she wanted, what she had to do, dueled inside her.

Reluctantly, she took a step back, moving closer to the stranger with the gritty voice, giving Apollo the relief she herself had not found.

She kept her gaze fixed on the struggling chestnut horse, ready to rush in should the situation change.

Slowly, the panic in his eyes ebbed. His breathing slowed. His ears flicked back and forth. Then he stood still. With a groan and a puff, Apollo pulled his leg free. Unbalanced, he scampered backward, fell on his hip, then rolled onto his side. Almost immediately, he was back on his feet and running with a jagged gait toward the shed. There he stopped. Huffing and puffing, he scanned the area, then bellowed.

Luci, the dappled gray mare covered by a crust of mud, answered, and ambled toward the frightened horse. Her presence seemed to calm him. He glued himself to her side. C.C., the Appaloosa, grazed his way closer to them, but kept his distance.

“I need to look at his leg,” Ellen said, hitching a foot on the lower rail of the fence.

A hand on her elbow held her back. “Give him a minute to calm down, then I’ll go fetch him for you.”

She twisted, turning away from the touch that shot through her like a firecracker. “That’ll make things worse. Luci’ll freak when you get close and that’ll send Apollo into another panic.”

“What’s her story?”

Ellen glanced at the mare grazing peacefully. “She’s a track reject. She was beaten over the poll by a male trainer because she was afraid of the starting gate.” She snorted. “Like that was going to help. I can’t wear a hat around her. She doesn’t let a man get within ten feet of her.”

The silence beside her was midnight deep. Ellen had to fight the urge to look back at the man with the damaged face and seductive voice. But she felt him—almost as intimately as if he were a lover. His presence pressed against her with a magnetic force that felt oddly familiar and had her holding her breath, waiting for something. What, she wasn’t sure.

“If I can get past her and bring in Apollo, will you reconsider me for the job?”

“Why do you want to work where you’re not wanted?”

“Your friend said you’d had some trouble and could use a hand.”

Taryn had said that? To a stranger? Why? Bancroft had the influence to cause her trouble, but he wouldn’t resort to a physical attack. Would he? “Nothing I can’t handle.”

“This stampede wasn’t natural.”

She shrugged, hating that he echoed her own fear. She’d seen the look of pure panic on all the horses’ faces. How far would Bancroft go to get these horses back? “Anything could have caused them to run. A deer. A skunk. A snake in the grass.”

He nodded.

“I can handle it,” she said.

“I didn’t say you couldn’t. I’m just offering a helping hand.”

She looked at Apollo. If he were human, he’d be the type to wake up in the middle of the night, sweating from the terror of reliving his trailer ordeal. Since the accident, he’d refused to bed down in a stall. Just getting him inside the barn’s wide center aisle to doctor his cut back leg took an infinite reserve of patience.

She looked at Luci. The pain the mare had suffered had altered her permanently. The mere sight of a saddle, any weight on her back, glazed her eyes and sent her into a shocked stupor. Even six months of care and patience hadn’t convinced her it was safe to wear a halter.

Then forearms leaning on the top rail, she looked over her shoulder at the man and his canine companion. He wasn’t Garth Ramsey come back to haunt her. He wasn’t Bancroft threatening to take the horses by force. He was just a ranch hand. The only thing he wanted from her was the dignity of working for his supper.

Like her horses, he was broken. Being judged by his scars rather than his skills was more than likely an everyday battle. The haunted look in his dark eyes was one she’d seen in every horse in her care. One meal. What would it hurt? “Every horse here has suffered either physical or mental abuse, most often both. I won’t stand for any strong-arm tactics.”

“I don’t believe in violence.” A ghost of pain shadowed his eyes, making her wonder what curve life had thrown him.

“If you can get past Luci and bring Apollo in without using force or violence, I’ll look at your references.”

He nodded. “Fair enough.”

ELLEN HAD NEVER KNOWN anyone with such an instinctual understanding of horses. Phone in hand, she stared at Kevin through her kitchen window. Out in the pasture, a silent conversation was taking place between Luci and Apollo and the man. He balanced approaching and retreating with the horses’ curiosity and fear. There was a racehorse-like ripple of power to his muscles when he moved that warmed her with unwanted pleasure.

“What’s going on?” Taryn asked on the other end of the line.

“I’m not sure.” She gave Taryn a blow-by-blow account of the slow developments.

Kevin was standing head to chest, shoulders rounded and motionless, waiting for the horses to make the next move. He’d removed his baseball cap, and his jet-black hair seemed to absorb the early-evening light. Luci was the first to give in to curiosity. She took three steps toward Kevin. Then she took another. Ever so slowly, she approached until she stood a few feet from him. Another few steps and she was standing next to him, head low. Five minutes later, he was touching her. In another ten, she was following him back to the pen behind the barn as if mesmerized.

Ellen gasped.

“What?” Taryn asked. “What happened?”

“Luci’s following him like a puppy.”

“Wow!”

“It took me a week to get her to let me touch her. A month to get her to follow me.”

Taryn chuckled. “I’m sensing a bit of jealousy.”

“Of course not.” She wasn’t jealous, was she? Luci was finally starting to trust. That was good. I’m cheering her progress. I’m not jealous. Frowning, she turned to the stove and stirred the spaghetti sauce she’d thrown together for dinner. “Why’d you send him out here?”

“Chance said you needed some help.”

“But why him?”

Ellen heard Taryn take in a long breath. “I don’t like the idea of you being out there alone with Bancroft making trouble for you. Kevin looks more than capable.”

Too capable. “I can handle Bancroft.”

“But can you afford to? Remember the talk-show host he sued last year for disparaging beef? He dug out every bit of dirt possible on her and flung it all over the air. She’s still trying to do damage control.”

“Having a man around the ranch isn’t going to solve that type of attack.” Ellen blew out a breath. “He’s a stranger, Taryn. I can’t have him stay here.”

The sounds of Chance and Shauna playing filtered through the line. The baby laughed wholeheartedly at Chance’s baby talk, tugging a reluctant smile from Ellen.

“I know,” Taryn said. “But I like him.”

“Didn’t his face throw you off?” Ellen frowned at the pot and stirred the thick red sauce.

“You know, after a couple of minutes, I didn’t even see his scars. He’s got a great laugh. In a way, he sort of reminds me of Chance.”

Ellen’s frown deepened. When she thought of Kevin, it wasn’t his face that came to mind either. Since feeding time, it was his hands. He had the most beautiful hands she’d ever seen on a man. The horses seemed to love his touch. Some ancient-Greek sculptor would have paid a small fortune for the privilege of immortalizing them in bronze or marble. Then there was the voice. She shook her head and turned down the heat under the sauce.

“Still,” Ellen said, not quite knowing what it was she wanted from Taryn.

“You checked out his references.”

Oh, yeah, she’d checked. Staring at the spice shelf, she couldn’t remember what she’d wanted. Everyone had spoken of Kevin Ransom in glowing terms. The praise had sounded genuine, the pleasure in his skill heartfelt. They’d made a Ransom-raised horse sound like a true prize. She’d heard enough stories of the horses he’d helped to fill a book. “Yes, but…”

“But what? You need help and he’s obviously qualified. How can Judge Dalton use your rehabilitation against you when you’ve got Kevin around?”

Oregano in hand, Ellen turned to the window. If anything, Kevin was overqualified to work as a mere ranch hand. Something wasn’t right. But what? Letting Apollo set the pace, Kevin was luring him into the net of his spell. A shiver danced across her shoulders.

That was it, she decided. Kevin could cast a spell.

He’d done so with his dog, with Taryn, with the horses. And she was afraid that, in her weakened state, she could easily fall prey to it, too, and lose the ground she’d fought for in the past year. The way he moved made her uncomfortably aware that he was a virile man. His voice made her shiver even in the heat. The keenness of his gaze made her feel a peculiar combination of desire and fear. Reacting so intensely to a man she didn’t know was insane.

The last thing she needed right now was another con man around. She needed to be by herself. She needed to concentrate on the horses. She needed to know her own mind, her own strength, before she allowed another man to touch her life. “I’ve got to go.”

“Ellen?”

He had to leave. Tonight. Bancroft and his manipulations were giving her enough to worry about without adding a man like Kevin to the mix. “He’s got Apollo in the barn. I need to go check on his legs.”

“Sure.” Taryn hesitated. “Ellen?”

“What?”

“You can’t judge every man by what Garth did to you.”

“I know that.” She jerked the pantry door open and snatched a box of spaghetti from the shelf. Horses, dogs and otherwise smart women trusted him. “He’s not Garth. I can see that with my own eyes.”

“But can you see it with your heart?”

She slapped the box of pasta onto the counter. “Of course.”

Taryn sighed. “That’s what I thought.”

Ellen muttered a curse. “All right, I’m going to prove you wrong. I’m going to let him stay.”

Where had that come from? Was she so easily influenced that she could change her mind in the space of a second? Shaking, she turned to the window. Her gaze scouted through the encroaching darkness. Kevin’s bent silhouette walked the pasture as if he was searching for something.

She’d forgotten about the trigger. What had started the mad stampede? Apollo was still too hurt to run for the sheer pleasure of it. Where was her mind? Why hadn’t she thought to look for the cause? Was her memory affected as well as her balance and her ability to focus her eyes?

The shroud of evening tightened around the ranch. Shadows lengthened and stretched across the yard like the bars of a cage.

“That’s a good start,” Taryn said. “But don’t do it for me.”

“For the horses.” I’m healthy. I’m strong. I can take care of myself. I can handle having a simple ranch hand doing chores around the ranch.

“Of course.” Taryn sounded amused.

Ellen rolled her eyes. Why was it that married folks were in such a hurry to have you join in their misery? “Go back to your husband and baby. I’ve got a pair of legs to go doctor.”

“Let it never be said I stood in the way of a good vetting.” Taryn’s voice warbled with laughter.

“Tell me again why I called you.”

“For my unbiased opinion about your stubbornness.”

“Right. Remind me not to do that again.”

“It’s a question of balance, Ellen.”

“I know.” And right now, she was on the wrong side of the fulcrum.

Chapter Three

In the pasture, Kevin crouched beside an old feed bag. Blue sat at his side. Stuck in a clump of grass at the edge of the field, the paper wrapping crinkled with each puff of breeze. With a finger, Kevin widened the scrunched opening. A rusty piece of barbed wire fell from the tangle of junk inside.

He followed the line of fence at the back of the field. Blue dogged his every step. Two more bags rolled through the pasture like noisy tumbleweeds. Blue sniffed at the trash inside them—bits of wire, jumbles of old rope, dried horsetail weed. All potential dangers to the horses.

Ellen had set up her grazing fields well. Two were in use. Well-maintained fences with rounded corners kept the horses safe and enclosed. Posts waiting for rails outlined a future third pasture. A dirt road formed a T, providing easy access to all three fields. Each had a hedge of mesquite and oak at one end to provide a windbreak and shade. Each contained an open shed for shelter from the rain. This field had a watering trough. The other had a pond fed by a brook.

Everything was neat, ordered, well kept…safe.

The garbage-filled bags were out of place.

From where he and Ellen had stood in the yard, a small rise of land in the middle of this pasture had hidden the horses resting in the shade out of sight.

Whoever had set the bags free had done a good job. He’d started the stampede out of sight with means that would startle the horses without attracting Ellen’s attention to what had frightened them—at least not right away. Someone had known the horses would be her first concern.

The question was why?

The answer’s there if you ask the right question, Nina’s voice echoed in his head.

Kevin rose. Stuffing his hands in his jeans pockets, he studied the pasture again. “The hard part is knowing the right question to ask.”

What if a horse had tangled a leg in a piece of wire or rope from the bag? Had someone meant to hurt the horses? Or just scare them?

Again, why?

Kevin piled the bags out of harm’s way and signaled to Blue. “Let’s go.”

One thing was sure, he decided as he made his way to the barn, someone had deliberately induced the panic.

He glanced at Luci, Apollo and C.C. huddled by the manger at the end of the field closest to the barn. Why would anyone want to hurt these horses? Hurting the horses would hurt Ellen. Why would anyone want to hurt her?

He’d failed to protect her sixteen years ago. This time he’d get it right. Somehow he had to convince her he had to stay.

Time, patience and understanding the other’s point of view, that’s how it goes, Nina’s voice reminded him.

He was short on all three.

ELLEN SAW to Apollo’s legs. Despite his wild thrashing, he’d only skinned his foreleg. The back leg simply required the usual icing, massage and change of bandage. She fussed over him, then turned him back out with C.C. She groomed Luci—for all the good that would do—then turned her out with the others. Because of her sensitive skin, Luci rolled in dirt as soon as she was released.

Kevin and Blue were still stalking the pasture. What was taking him so long? Her mouth went dry. Her palms itched. She rubbed her wrist with the fingers of her opposite hand. What had he found?

She’d fallen in love with this piece of land the moment she’d seen it. The little house with its sunny rooms and open spaces had reminded her of the one she and Kyle had drawn on the ground one night under the stars—right down to its porch and beds of moss roses. All that was missing was the two rockers on the porch to enjoy the view of their spread after a long day’s work. The barn, the pastures had seemed just right to breed a horse or two and give training a try. Nothing fancy. All she wanted to do was make dependable saddle horses for girls with dreams of riding.

Then Luci had come along. Then C.C. Then Pudge. They’d needed her, and it seemed she’d needed them, too. Watching them heal gave her a sense of purpose she’d almost given up finding.

Now, she reflected as she headed out of the barn, a slight tarnish marred her simple joy. The spiked shadows of the barn, fences and trees creeping black over the pens and pasture seemed to snap at her boots like greedy vampires wanting to suck her energy. Something wasn’t right and she wanted nothing more than to head for the house and hide in its cozy light. Instead, she crawled through the gate and headed toward Kevin and Blue coming her way.

“Got a wheelbarrow?” he asked.

She nodded. “What did you find?”

“I’ll show you.” From the barn he retrieved the wheelbarrow, then led her to the far corner near the windbreak of trees. There, he lifted a feed bag. “Someone wanted to scare your horses.”

Suddenly shaky, she crouched to examine the contents of the bag.

“Barbed wire,” he said. “Old rope and horsetail.”

Rusty wire, frayed rope, poisonous weeds. She’d sent Bancroft’s minion away. Had he wanted to punish her for defying him by harming Luci or C.C.? “Maybe the bags blew out of one of the neighbors’ Dumpster.”

Kevin gestured for her to follow him. On the other side of the fence, he showed her tire tracks. They led from the road to the fence, then back again. “They look like they were made by an ATV. And here…” He pointed to tracks in the mud. “Boot prints. Man’s size ten or eleven.”

It didn’t make any sense. As much as she hated to admit it, the law was on Bancroft’s side. All that stood between him and getting his horses back was time. Why would he resort to dumping trash in her pasture?

But if not Bancroft, then who would do such a cruel thing? “I didn’t see any cars or anyone prowling around.”

Kevin straightened and hooked his thumbs into his jeans pockets. “Who owns the land behind your pasture?”

“Mike Stockman. He runs a few head of cattle. It’s mostly a hobby, though. He runs some sort of computer-support company.”

“Do you know him? What about your other neighbors? Have you had any problems with them?”

She’d barely said hello to any of her neighbors. They minded their business and she minded hers. Eyebrows knit, she shook her head. “I don’t see why any of them would want to scare the horses. They’re all small-time ranchers, just like me. They all love their animals.”

“No water-rights feud or access disputes?”

“No.”

“How long have you lived here?”

“I bought the ranch nine months ago.” She’d bought it with the out-of-court settlement from her suit against Garth and the nursing home. She could have gotten more if the case had gone to trial, but she didn’t have the energy and she’d wasted too much time to scatter another couple of years in court. Getting on with her life had seemed more important. “I moved in six months ago and Luci arrived a week later.”

“Ever have any problems before?” Kevin piled the three bags into the wheelbarrow.

“None.”

He jerked his chin toward Luci and C.C. grazing the grass in the middle of the field, swishing their tails in slow arcs against the bugs. “What’s the story with your horses?”

“Luci, Pudge and Chocolate Chip, also known as C.C., are mine.” She wasn’t about to tell him she’d heard about Luci from a jockey at one of her weekly physical therapy sessions. “Luci came by way of a friend. The humane society contacted me about C.C. and my vet sent me Pudge. No one else wanted them.”

“What about the Thoroughbreds?”

She looked at Apollo, standing on three legs, resting. If she closed her eyes, she could still see the panicked look in his eyes, the blood mixed with the rain, hear his trumpet of fear. “There was a wreck last week. Where my road meets the highway. It was horrible. I’m taking care of them until they can travel again.”

“How badly does the owner want his horses back?”

Her heart thumped hard once. That was the question of the day. “They’re all hurt. I can’t see what use they are to him. Some might race again, but most probably won’t.”

“Breeding?”

She snorted. “Four geldings won’t get him too far.”

“Then why doesn’t he wait until they can travel again?”

The helpless feeling wrapping around her was suddenly turning her ranch into just another cage. “I don’t know.”

Kevin picked up the wheelbarrow handle. “I think you should call the sheriff.”

She looked at him long and hard, then nodded and headed for the house. She didn’t know what to make of Kevin Ransom yet, but at least he had his priorities right.

The horses came first.

WHILE SHE WAITED for water to boil to make spaghetti for the sauce she started earlier, Ellen fought the urge to run a brush through her hair and change her shirt.

“Because I’ve been out all day and I’m hot and sweaty,” she told her reflection on the microwave’s black door. “Certainly not for a ranch hand.”

Her image called her a liar. She stuck her tongue out at it, then plunged dry noodles into the boiling water. What did she care what he thought? He was a temporary necessity. That was all. Having a hand around might just make the difference in convincing the judge she could handle the workload these special horses required. Nothing more.

Chance had promised to come out in the morning to look at the tracks and the evidence Kevin had collected from the pasture. Until then, worrying would do her no good.