The Final Mission

Morning arrived in twilight, early it seemed, but she could hear voices downstairs, and the wonderful aroma of cooking bacon. Her mouth started watering almost before her eyes opened. How long had it been since she had allowed herself a strip of bacon?

She heard the light patter of young boys’ voices, answered by the deeper tones of their father. The sounds were as inviting as the smells, and she hopped out of bed, heading for the bathroom.

She’d barely noticed last night, but she noticed this morning: the bathroom was spotless, as if awaiting a white-glove inspection. It struck her, because this was a bachelor household now, and most bachelors she knew didn’t care much about such things.

But as she walked downstairs, she noted that the entire house seemed to be orderly and spotless, far more than her own apartment and she thought she was a clean freak.

Entering the kitchen, she found the twins sitting at the oak table and Dominic standing at the stove, frying eggs. The boys immediately fell silent, and Dom turned. His smile seemed small but natural enough.

“Boys, this is Ms. Tyson. She knew your mom.”

The boys surprised her by pushing back from the table and politely standing. “Hi, I’m Kyle,” said one and his clone said, “I’m Todd. Nice to meet you.”

Kyle bounced around the table to hold a chair out for her and she sat. Two pairs of dark eyes, very like their dad’s, stared at her.

“Your mom showed me pictures of you,” she ventured. “I always asked how she could tell you apart.”

Kyle scoffed. “She never had a problem. We’re not exactly the same. Dad can tell us apart, too.”

“That doesn’t keep you from trying to fool me,” Dom remarked, which got him a pair of laughs.

There was already a hefty platter of bacon on the table, and now Dom brought her a cup of coffee. She reached for it, holding it in both hands as she tried to figure out how to talk to the boys. She didn’t have a lot of experience with kids.

Todd spoke. “Lots of Mom’s friends came to visit. I guess they liked her a lot.”

“I certainly liked her. And I admired her. Your mom was a hero.” She saw Dom’s back stiffen as he stood at the stove, and realized he feared she might get into her purpose in coming. She felt a moment of annoyance that he might think she was that insensitive, then reminded herself he didn’t know her at all, and she had come barging into his life with an upsetting story and no prior warning.

“Yeah,” said Kyle. “We have her medals. And a flag.”

A pretty pathetic substitute, Courtney thought, then looked down for fear her face might give away her darkening thoughts.

She was saved by the arrival of a platter of cheesy scrambled eggs on the table, and as soon as Dom sat, the platters began to move her way. She took a slice of buttered toast, a strip of bacon and a spoonful of eggs, trying not to think about cholesterol.

“You don’t eat much,” Kyle remarked.

“I don’t work as hard as you guys do.” Safe assumption, she supposed, although at her last physical the doctor had told her to gain some weight, that she’d slipped far enough for it to be a concern.

It wasn’t as if she was trying to lose weight. She just didn’t feel like eating much anymore. This whole thing with Mary gnawed at her like a hungry shark.

Conversation came to a halt as two ravenous boys ate, then jumped up to grab jackets and backpacks. She watched as Dom made sure they had everything.

“I’m going to take them to the bus stop,” he told her. “Back in about twenty minutes.”

She watched them go out the back door and felt an ache she couldn’t quite explain to herself. She had never been interested in the whole marriage and family thing. Not ever. All her life she’d been oriented toward other goals, and toward her career.

But she ached anyway at the sight of a big, strong man ushering two small boys gently out the door to catch a school bus.

Man, she was losing it.

Losing it enough that she helped herself to a second strip of bacon and another spoonful of eggs. Damn the cholesterol anyway. Enough was enough.

And enough was the entire reason she was here. She had helped lead Mary to her death, and she wasn’t willing to let the culprits go free. No way.

Dom returned in twenty minutes as he’d promised. His booted feet clomped on the mudroom floor as he doffed his jacket and hung his keys on a wall hook. He gave her another reserved smile and a nod before he went to freshen his coffee.

He was such an attractive man, attractive in a way she wasn’t used to: weather and work hardened, lean-muscled, not bulked up. And there was the easy way he walked across the kitchen, a man at home in his body.

She supposed she should feel guilty for even noticing. Guilty for a helpless, unwanted sexual response.

“I should clear up the dishes,” she said, feeling awkward about imposing again.

“Naw, it’ll keep. If you don’t want any more, I need to add it to the compost.”

“You made enough for an army,” she tried to joke.

A flicker of humor danced across his face. “Those two kids usually eat like one. And I made a bit extra because I don’t know your appetite.”

“Not usually good. But I enjoyed breakfast. So … do you have a lot of work to do? Ranching must be loaded with it.”

“It is. Less at the moment than other times of year, but yeah, I’ve got plenty to do. After you finish your coffee, I’ll introduce you to the rest of the family.”

“The rest?”

“The horses, of course. And a handful of dogs who seem to prefer equine company to human.”

“I can sympathize with the dogs.”

“Me, too, a lot of the time.”

A smile flickered across his face again, and brief though it was, it lit him from within. She couldn’t imagine the world he lived in, the way he must view things compared to her, but whatever his ranch life was like, sorrows aside, it seemed to have given him some kind of ineffable … understanding? Peace?

Crazy thinking, she told herself. Last night she had seen him furious. This was no Zen monk living above it all or beyond the reach of life’s misfortunes. Yet this morning he seemed quiet within himself, a state of mind she could only envy.

Maybe it was just the early hour.

He startled her by looking her over suddenly, as if measuring her. Before she could instinctively draw back, he said, “Do you have any jeans with you?”

“Yes.”

“And socks. A good pair?”

“I’m a jogger. I buy good socks.”

“Well, go get on some jeans and socks, then. I’ll find you a pair of boots, and then we’ll go out to meet the herd. Shoe size?”

“Nine.”

He nodded. “I can do that.”

So she went back upstairs and pawed through her suitcase, pulling out some faded jeans, a sweatshirt and a windbreaker she’d stuffed into a corner of her suitcase at the last minute. She didn’t think her long wool coat would be suitable for meeting his horses. She almost laughed at the thought.

When she came back down, he had a pair of rubber boots ready for her. “This way if you step in something we can hose you off.”

She hadn’t thought about that part, but she wasn’t squeamish by nature. If she had been, she wouldn’t have survived her job for long.

They exited the house through the mudroom into a crisp morning and warm light from the still-rising sun. He paused, using his arm to point things out.

“Arena and barn over there. I don’t usually need to stable the horses unless there’s a problem of some kind.”

She looked at the buildings, the barn an identifiable shape with a gambrel roof, the arena obviously the big round, weathered building. She glanced toward the pasture where she could see horses by the dozens if not a hundred. “How could you stable so many anyway?”

“They don’t need stabling. But a good number of them will be sold next month. Too bad you can’t be here for the shindig.”

“What kind of shindig?”

“I’ll probably have about forty buyers here, maybe more. They’ll come in RVs mostly, and I’ve even got power hookups for them out thataway.” He pointed. “This place is going to look like a campground on steroids, or even some kind of fair.”

She looked around trying to imagine it. There were two huge corrals, neither one of them occupied by a horse at present. All the horses were farther away, in what she assumed was a pasture.

“Is the arena for the buyers?”

“Yup, and for training. We put the horses through their paces one at a time in the arena, and interested folks can watch and come down to check on them more closely. Then we spend most of the winter on training.”

“How many will you sell?”

A quiet laugh escaped him. “That’s always the question, isn’t it? I hold back my youngsters unless I’m sure they’ll be handled properly.”

“What do you mean?”

“You can cut five years off a horse’s working life by overworking her during the first four or five years. I don’t like that.”

She looked at him, feeling a twinge of real respect. “That makes it harder on you, doesn’t it? All those extra years of looking after them?”

“Well, I won’t have to hold back many. I know the folks I invite to my sale, and most of them agree with my philosophy. I’m not saying you can’t work a young horse, but overwork is another matter. So I choose to let them go to buyers I can trust. It makes them healthier. It makes them better and happier. I don’t just own them, you know. I’m a steward.”

She nodded, liking his attitude. “So exactly how does this work? You keep the babies until they’re grown enough? You train them?”

He shook his head. “I keep a certain number for myself but I sell a lot of my mares while they’re in foal for the second or third time. That means they’re pregnant. But I make darn sure I know who I’m selling them to. Most folks want a good mare already in foal because they can get an idea of the quality of the foal from the mare, and because the mare is a proven breeder. It’s all about quality, and folks who respect quality are going to take good care of that foal.”

“Okay.” They were walking toward the pasture fence now, past the corrals. The horses began to take note of them, and there was a slow but steady gathering in the general direction of the fence where a huge wooden box sat just outside. “And the rest?”

“I keep most of my geldings to train, some to show. I can sell them to stables, to rodeos, to ranches, places where they don’t want to do the hard work of initial training. It takes a lot of work to train these horses to be the kind of animal you want. And of course I keep my best mares for breeding, and a handful of youngsters for showing. Have to keep my bloodline in good condition.”

“It all sounds complicated.” She glanced his way and saw his face, shadowed by the brim of his cowboy hat. He smiled faintly as he looked out toward the horses.

“Only if you aren’t familiar with it.”

“Still, it sounds like you have to weigh a lot of things.”

“I suppose so. But I’ve been weighing them for so long it kind of happens in the background.”

She looked out toward the pasture again, at the coalescing herd. “So most of them will be gone in a month?”

“That’s always the question. The word I’m most focused on is enough.” He let out a piercing whistle, and most of the horses heading their way picked up their pace. Like moles popping out of the ground, three black-and-white dogs appeared, running along with them. Border collies, she thought.

When they reached the fence, he lifted the lid on the big wooden box and began to pull out carrots. “Help yourself. They love them.”

She wasn’t ready to do that. She hung back a bit, aware that she was being regarded suspiciously by dozens of equine eyes even as they edged toward Dom for their treats. He seemed to enjoy handing out the carrots, and even gave one to each of the dogs.

“Dogs eat carrots?” The notion amazed her. She’d never had a dog, and mentally she associated them with bowls of dog food and scraps from the table. Which, she decided, made it rather silly of her to be surprised that they liked raw carrots.

“Dogs’ll eat most anything. They even to try to swipe watermelon when I give it to the boys.”

Watching, Courtney noticed that not all the horses came to the fence. Plenty hung back, as if interested but not hungry. Many of the hangers-back were still young-looking, coltish, and they seemed to hug the sides of mares.

After a bit, Dom stuffed some carrots in the back pockets of his jeans, closed the box and said, “Come on, let’s go see how the gang is doing.”

Passing that fence was a big step for her. She knew that horses were big, had even ridden a few times, and while these weren’t as big as draft horses she’d seen, they were big enough in their current numbers to intimidate, especially when they seemed to be regarding her suspiciously.

Or maybe that was her imagination. Maybe they were simply curious. They didn’t run away or anything. They shook their heads at her and made quiet little nickers but no threatening moves. Dom interested them more anyway.

For them he had plenty of pats and scratches and he called each by name. She couldn’t imagine how he told them apart but gradually realized that for all they looked the same, they weren’t.

They had different markings, sometimes subtle differences, different ways of standing and approaching Dom. They stood patiently as he lifted their feet and checked their hooves, nuzzled at his pockets for a carrot, and sometimes even nudged him gently. He always chuckled when that happened.

After a while, she began to feel more comfortable moving through the herd and apparently her comfort communicated because one mare with a light brown forelock came closer.

“That’s Marti,” Dom said. “She’s one of my oldest mares and you want her approval.”

“How do I get that?”

“Just hold still. If she comes close enough, pat her flank, not her head. Stay to her side and don’t get directly in front of her.”

She stood very still and waited. Marti edged closer, tossing her head in a manner that seemed almost like a greeting.

“Easy,” Dom said. “I think she likes you.”

Courtney wasn’t as sure about that, but surprisingly enough, she felt relaxed and not at all threatened. Maybe she was picking up on the horse’s energy?

At last Marti edged in until she stood only a foot away. Her big soft eye watched Courtney.

“You can pat her now,” Dom said. “Don’t move fast.”

So Courtney slowly extended her arm and gently patted the mare’s shoulder. Marti tossed her head again and edged a little closer. The message was unmistakable. Courtney tried to imitate Dom’s firm hard pats and Marti apparently liked it because she turned her head until it was behind Courtney and blew hot air between her lips before giving a quiet nicker.

Courtney felt a gentle nudge, possibly the horse’s version of a pat, then Marti pulled back, tossed her head once more, and meandered away.

“Good job,” Dom said. “You’ve been approved.”

Courtney felt a silly grin spread across her face. “Why does that make me feel like a million bucks?”

“Because it should.” He was smiling at her, the most natural smile she’d gotten from him, and it warmed her.

After a moment he spoke. “Okay, I’ve got to gather them in and check them over. That’s going to take most of the day.”

“Getting ready for the sale?”

“Partly. Partly it’s just normal care. Some of these head just came in from summer pasture, and while I check on them often, it’s not always as close and personal as I can get at this time of year. I need to move them into a pen and look them over.”

“What do you want me to do?”

He hesitated. “I’ll take you back to the house. You can look through that stuff of Mary’s that I kept.”

She had come here to do precisely that, so why did she all of a sudden feel so reluctant? Maybe because for a little while out here with the horses she’d forgotten everything else.

Smothering a sigh, casting a look back at Marti, who was still watching her, she followed Dom back to the house. He led her to a downstairs room that was clearly his office.

“I’m going to set you up on the boys’ computer,” he said. “It’s a good one, but the other is for my business and I just don’t let anyone touch it.”

“I understand. I wouldn’t let anyone else touch it, either.”

He pulled down a letter-size file box from a shelf. “This is it. Everything’s on CD, but I printed out a lot of it so the boys could look it over when they want because I’d rather not risk them messing up one of the CDs. She also sent a bunch of snapshots.”

“You need backups.”

“I’ve got it all backed up on an external hard drive, but nobody but me touches that.”

She looked at him as she accepted the box. “Are you sure?”

The last of the relaxation had disappeared from his face, and she could see that he was at least as tense as she. Damn. She thought she had known what she would do to this man by coming here, but now she wondered if she had even come close to imagining the pain she was inflicting.

“The videos are on the CDs, too. I take it you know your way around a computer?”

“Intimately.”

“Okay.” He paused just long enough to start his sons’ machine, give her a nod, and leave.

Her heart grew so heavy she couldn’t face the task she’d come to do. Not immediately. Instead she went to stand on the mud porch and watch Dom.

She heard him give a whistle, a different one that he’d given earlier, and the three dogs immediately dashed his way.

“Away to me,” she heard him call.

The dogs immediately separated, and she watched in amazement as they began to gather the herd, cutting back and forth, bringing the outliers in, and then gradually moving the entire group toward the east end of the pasture.

The horses didn’t seem bothered in the least, as if they were accustomed to being herded by the dogs. And she noted the dogs didn’t exactly seem aggressive in their behavior, just insistent.

Little by little, the herd coalesced. Then the dogs changed strategy. When Dom whistled and pointed, they began to line up all those horses so that soon they were filing toward the pen to the northeast. Amazing. She could have stood and watched all day.

Especially since it had been a long time since she had noticed an attractive man in this way. And he was attractive. Guilt pierced her again as she felt the unmistakable prickling of sexual interest. No. Not Mary’s husband. Talk about betrayal.

She was dragging her heels, she realized. She didn’t want to dive into Mary’s past, didn’t want to taste the sorrow once again. Didn’t want to be reminded of all that had been destroyed by a sniper’s bullet.

God, she still had nightmares about it, moments when she would simply freeze up, imagining how it had all played out. And she hadn’t even been there. She looked at the box full of Mary’s memories, the memories that were all her children and husband had left, and she felt a burst of self-hatred. But for her genius suggestion, Mary would probably still be here. Out there even now helping her husband with the horses.

But she didn’t know how much time she had. Dom might give her another night here, but there was no reason to expect he’d want her around tomorrow. He was a busy man, and she was a reminder of bad things. Things he probably couldn’t afford to think about too often.

Things she needed to take care of so they would stop haunting her.

She understood him. Oh, she definitely understood that much.

Outside, Dom walked down to the pen where he was going to process the horses one at a time. Ted, his only full-time help, was already waiting.

Times had changed enough that he could no longer afford to keep a full-time staff of hands to help him out, but all the local ranches were suffering to one degree or another, so they shared their hired help. Today he’d have three or four guys he knew well from a couple of his neighbors’ places. One of these days, he promised himself he was going to do well enough again to keep a couple more hands on permanently. In fact, judging by the response to his recent invitation to the sale, he might be right on the cusp of becoming one of the best breeders around.

It was his goal. When he’d been very young, and Granddad had run the ranch, selling horses had been simpler. Cowboys hadn’t yet faded into the mists of memory, rodeos had been more popular, and horses hadn’t been entirely about breeds and bloodlines. Good workers had been what most people wanted.

As times had changed, though, he had changed with them. A lot of his stock now was show stock, the kind people bought to strengthen their own herds in order to win prizes because those prizes meant good stud fees. He showed some of his own horses every winter and had gotten enough recognition that his line was doing well.

He still had his regular customers, too, everything from guest ranches, to rodeos, to people who just liked horses and could afford to keep a stable. Sometimes he even thought about branching out into draft horses, Belgians maybe, because there was a pretty firm market for horses that could pull wagons, sleighs and carriages.

So far his quarter horses hadn’t made a big showing on the race circuit, but they were getting closer. He had mixed feelings about that, so he was reluctant to push in that direction.

He paused, just before he reached the pen, aware that the horses were steadily closing in from behind at the dogs’ urgings. Ted gave him a quizzical look.

Why was he thinking about this right now? His business plan was pretty clear, and so far seemed to be working well enough that he was able to keep the ranch and keep his sons’ futures bright.

He was just distracting himself, he realized. Trying not to notice the anxiety churning in the pit of his stomach because that bit of a woman had walked through his door and opened up all the barely healed wounds once again.

She was kind of pretty, but he would have thought her a whole lot prettier if she weren’t so thin. The way she’d pecked at breakfast this morning had been disturbing. He wondered if she was one of those health-food nuts.

People like that always made him shake his head a bit. Of course, as Mary had always said, “If folks worked hard enough or exercised enough, they wouldn’t have to worry about everything they put in their mouths.”

True, he supposed. His family had always worked hard on this ranch, and most of them had lived to a very ripe old age. Right now he should have been working alongside his dad and granddad, and would have been except for an accident on an icy mountain road eight years ago.

Cripes. He caught himself, wondering why he couldn’t stay away from the paths of grief and loss. He’d made peace with all that. It was the way of life. All life.

Relief filled him as he heard the sounds of an approaching truck engine. His help was arriving, and now they’d be so busy he wouldn’t have time to think.

No time to think of lost family and wife, no time to try to avoid noticing that Courtney was appealing in a way he’d never thought he’d feel again.

Thinking had become an enemy of sorts. Something to be dodged unless it was squarely focused on work or the boys.

Well, he had plenty to do today and that would prevent him from having to play hide-and-seek inside his own head. Thank God.

Chapter 3

The boys came home from school between three and four. Evidently they must have a rather long bus ride. Courtney heard their return with relief, because other than an offer of lunch she had skipped, she had spent the day being a voyeur in the life of a dead friend.

It hurt. She felt guilty. But she also felt envious. Mary’s emails to her sons had been both beautiful and touching, and incredibly upbeat. Given that Mary’s days had been almost entirely devoted to dealing with the ugly consequences of the worst side of human nature, the tone of her communications was remarkable. She always found some cute and funny story to tell the boys, often about a dog some of the hospital members had adopted.