CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN #2
This never would have happened a month ago—hell, two weeks ago. I never let myself get distracted. My life was about the animals and the land. About preserving my wife and son’s legacy. And now … now, I couldn’t figure out what my life was about anymore.
Danica gave my arm a gentle tug. “Let’s go,” she said softly.
I hadn’t even noticed, but we were the only ones left in the barn.
Everyone else had already left. Several trucks started up, and gravel crunched beneath tires.
We were just outside the door, Portia dutifully beside me, when I stopped in my tracks, causing Danica to lurch a little. “What’s wrong?”
I shook my head. “I have to stay here.”
“What? Why? I don’t think he just ran away and will eventually make his way back. He was horse-napped, Tom. Everyone saw the footage from the security cameras.”
“They did? When?”
“I showed them. Don’t you remember?”
I was in such a fugue state at this point, doing everything I possibly could to keep myself from letting the panic attack completely take over, that I had no idea what time it was, or how long any of those people had even been here.
“But what if they come back?” I said, my voice sounding like it was in a tunnel.
“The people who stole him?” Her brows pinched in disbelief. “You think they’d be that stupid?” She glanced up the driveway, then back at me. “You don’t think it was Vincent, do you? That he’s going to use Midnight as leverage. Ransom him back to you for the property?”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore.” I untangled our fingers and grabbed the security system tablet from under her free arm, then headed to the front steps of the house. Portia never left my side, and when I sat down on the top step, she sat on the one below and rested her chin on my thigh.
Danica stood in the driveway, watching me. But I couldn’t bear to lift my gaze to hers and see the confusion and disappointment staring back at me. Because I knew it would be. I was confused and disappointed in myself at how everything had transpired. How I’d handled all of this.
Clearly, I wasn’t meant to have more in my life than the animals.
“Tom?” she said, her voice cracking with emotion.
I refused to look at her.
“It’s not your fault. You know that, right?”
I still didn’t say anything or look at her.
“These things happen. You’re still getting used to having an alarm system. You’re bound to forget to set it once in a while.”
“I forgot because I was distracted,” I said softly. “Because I confused my priorities. Forgot what was important.”
“Y-you mean me?”
I lifted my gaze to her for just a moment, but the look of hurt on her face was too much to bear, and I dropped my focus back to the tablet in my hands.
“Whether I was here or not, you would have slept through the break-in because the alarm wasn’t set.
It’s a new system; you’re still getting used to the habit and are bound to forget once in a while.
And besides, someone trespassed on your property, broke in, and stole something from you.
None of this is your fault. It’s not mine either. And we will get Midnight back.”
I clenched my jaw to the point where I could very well have chipped a tooth. I deserved it. A throbbing pain formed in my temple, but I ignored it, even when my vision went a little blurry.
“So you’re staying here then?” she asked, her voice hurt and tight.
I nodded once.
“Right.”
A moment later, my truck engine started, and she drove away in it, having obviously grabbed my keys from inside the house at some point. Something else I didn’t remember happening.
Portia snorted and nudged my hand, prompting me to scratch her ears.
“What are we going to do, my love?” I asked her in Italian.
She blinked up at me.
A moment later, Maverick’s truck, with Gabrielle in the passenger seat, came crawling down my driveway.
He parked it, and they both climbed out.
A third car door slammed, and Sam came running at me.
She slid onto the step beside me, wrapping her long, spindly preteen arms around my shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Tom.”
Gabrielle and Maverick came to stand in front of us.
“This is fucked up, man,” Maverick said.
“Who steals a baby orphan horse?” Sam asked with anger in her tone. She shook her head and reached across me to say hello to Portia. I could tell my pig wanted to go greet Maverick and Gabrielle, but she also didn’t want to leave me.
I gave my pig a nudge, letting her know she could go give her greetings. She grunted, then with her tail wiggling, she went to sniff out the new arrivals.
Gabrielle didn’t seem to know what to do or how to handle a pig, but Maverick crouched down and demonstrated that you didn’t treat Portia any differently than you would treat a dog.
While they were busy with my pig, Sam grabbed my attention, and I faced her. “This is weird,” she said, glancing down at the screen. “Is that the video of it happening?”
I nodded and started the video from the beginning at five times speed so we weren’t dealing with hours of empty footage.
“Hang on.” She pointed at the screen. “Look. Pause it. Please.”
I paused it, and she used her thumb and index finger to zoom in. I didn’t even know I could do that. “Look at that. Do you see it?”
“See what, kiddo?” Maverick asked, standing up and leaning over so he could get a glimpse of the screen too. Gabrielle had apparently completely gotten over her fear or apprehension around Portia and was scratching my pig’s back and above her butt with both hands and calling Portia a “good girl.”
Butt scratches and bananas were the way to my pig’s heart, and Gabrielle was delivering one of them in full force. Portia would love her forever now.
“That … that flash,” Sam said. “Like something shiny, or glittery. A gemstone or a jewel. Do you see it? Something caught the camera at just the right angle, that there was a sparkle. Just for a second. But it’s there.”
Maverick nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I see it. Rewind it and play it again.”
I went back a frame, and by that point, Gabrielle was watching too. And sure enough, just before the two hooded figures came into view, there was a flash of something.
“A watch face, maybe?” Maverick mused.
“Or an engagement ring?” Gabrielle suggested.
“You hinting at something?” the young hockey player asked.
She elbowed him and rolled her eyes. “Maybe not an actual stone, but something synthetic? Like a rhinestone?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“It’s something though.” Maverick scratched the back of his neck. “They’re both in baggy black clothes and keeping their heads down. So it’s tough to tell if it’s two dudes, a guy and a girl …”
“Does Vincent have a partner?” Gabrielle asked me.
I shrugged again. “No idea.”
“Everyone else is out looking,” Maverick said, his eyes still on the screen. “But Sam asked to come see you.”
“Where’s my mom?” Sam asked.
I swallowed and glanced back down at my screen. “She, uh … she went searching. Took my truck. I don’t … I don’t want to leave the animals. I don’t want to leave Raven.”
“Oh my god, Raven!” And with that, Sam took off back to the barn, flinging open the door and running inside.
That left me with Gabrielle, and her penetrating eyes that seemed to know everything about everyone in just a few blinks, and her golden retriever hockey player.
Danica’s cousin studied me like a bug under a microscope, her hands on her hips, until I did everything but squirm like that tortured bug pressed between a slide and film. “Something happened …” she finally said.
“Yeah, a horse was napped,” Maverick said.
“No … between you and Danica.”
I cleared my throat and stood up. “I need to go check on Raven. Thank you both for your help.” Then without looking back at either of them, I headed for the barn, Portia right alongside me again.
My emotional support pig grunted at me with each step.
Which I took as her lecturing me for being such an idiot, but also understanding that it wasn’t her place to judge, even though she actually was.
Yeah, well, nobody was judging me more than myself right now, and at the moment, I was a shit person in every sense of the word, and there wasn’t much anybody could do to convince me otherwise.
I found Sam in the stall with Raven and Kenny.
Since Raven’s arrival, Kenny had become a different horse.
He still didn’t particularly like the other horses, but he didn’t avoid them like he used to.
And he tolerated people besides me coming into his stall.
He actually seemed to enjoy the attention from Danica and Sam.
As they often did, Sam had her forehead pressed to Raven’s forehead, and the two just stood there. Sam’s eyes were closed, and Raven seemed almost in a trance.
“We’ll find him, sweetie,” Sam said softly, petting the sides of Raven’s neck. “We’ll find your baby.”
“Has anybody walked around the property to look for clues?” came Gabrielle’s voice behind me.
I spun around to find her and Maverick there with concerned, but also reserved, looks on their faces. They knew something was up between Danica and me, but also knew that now was not the time to discuss it.
I shook my head. “Not that I know of.”
“Jagger messaged that they found the point of entry,” Maverick said, leaving our group of three on the outside of Kenny and Raven’s stall and heading toward Ginger’s. “A good place to start, I’d say.”
Gabrielle followed him, her amber eyes flitting across the faces of each horse, and softening as they all watched her in turn. “They’re all so beautiful,” she mused. She turned around to face me. “You’re doing good work here, Tom.”
I focused back on Sam, with Raven and Kenny for a moment before snapping out of my useless trance and making an attempt at being productive.
I opened up the back sides of all the stalls so the horses could come and go into the fields of their own volition, then went to the other barn to release the donkeys, goats, and ponies. I also needed to collect eggs.
I had absolutely no patience for Pinata today. So when that asshole tried to bite my shirt, I grabbed him by the ear—not aggressively, but forcefully—and looked him right in the eye. “Not today.”
He blinked his long lashes at me, and for the first time ever, that beast seemed to actually show signs of a soul. Then he shook himself free of my grasp and sprinted off to the other end of the field like he was being chased by his withered sense of decency.
I checked on the ducks, collected eggs, and then Portia and I returned to the main barn. Maverick and Gabrielle were wandering the field near the tree line that separated my property from Otto Pickford’s.
Maverick stopped for a moment and called Gabrielle over, then they both bent over to study something on the ground.
Did they find something?
All the horses were in the field now except for Raven and Kenny. They remained in Kenny’s small stall with Sam.
I went to Sam. “You hungry?”
She shook her head.
“You have breakfast?”
She shook her head again, her eyes rimmed red from crying. “I’m fine.”
My fingers bunched at my sides again, and Portia rested one of her muddy little trotters on the top of my dew-soaked loafer.
Well, if I couldn’t leave my animals and join the search party, the least I could do was feed those that were helping me. This feeling of being useless ate away at me like a colony of termites on a house.
Nodding, I headed back to the house, Portia right beside me.
I was halfway through making a big pot of Tuscan portobello stew when my phone rang.
I thought it might be Myla Bruce, one of the police officers on the island, checking in, or one of the lawyers since I had emailed them to let them know what happened.
But it was a blocked number.
Ordinarily, I let those spam calls go to voicemail, or I just declined them, but with Midnight missing, I had to answer every call. Even those I didn’t know.
Swallowing, I picked the phone up off the counter and answered it. “H-hello?”
“If you want your horse back, you need to hand over the property,” came a distorted voice.
“Vincent?”
The line went dead.
Fear and anger coiled around my insides like two snakes fighting.
My gut told me it was Vincent from the beginning, but I just didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to think that he’d stoop so incredibly low. But I shouldn’t be surprised. The man was desperate and stupid, and that was a lethal combination.
And now, Midnight might be the one to pay the ultimate price.