Macon (Black Butte Ranch #2)

Prologue

Macon

AJA FOXX

~ Carter ~

No one tells you how loud thunder gets in Montana, or how the air changes when the sky cracks open and rain sheets down, angry as hell. Maybe you’re supposed to have family who explains these things, or maybe you’re just supposed to care.

The Steele family, as it turns out, didn’t do a lot of explaining, or caring.

If they had, someone would have noticed that I’d slipped out of the house barefoot, pants rolled to the knee, and was standing in the mud with the rain stinging my scalp, squinting at the lightning as it stitched the prairie horizon into sharp black-and-white slices.

“Carter!” my father called from inside, voice ricocheting through the warped floorboards.

He sounded more annoyed than worried—one of those inefficiencies of parenting that he resented but endured, like owning a timeshare or buying commemorative plates.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. Dad’s not the type who expects to be heard, only obeyed.

I yanked the door shut behind me, hard enough that the glass rattled in the frame, and pressed my back against the wet wood. Just inside, the front hall smelled like a hardware store—the sour tang of wet canvas duffels, floor polish, and old cedar.

My family loomed in the foyer like a bunch of wax mannequins that someone had posed for a lifestyle catalog: Dad at the bottom of the staircase, black coat snapped to the neck; Barrett with his laptop open and phone jammed to his ear, too busy closing deals or crushing souls to notice he was thirty miles from cell reception; and Vivian, perched on a packing box with her knees together, like she could contract plague if she let them drift apart.

I had no idea where everyone else was.

Barrett looked up from his call and made a face. “You’re soaked,” he said, as if I’d waded through the river just to inconvenience him.

“Raining,” I said, monotone, and didn’t break eye contact.

He shook his head with a sigh and pivoted his attention back to his phone. “Yes, we’re just about done here. Estate matters, yes. No, it’s not a problem. Just a lot of rain.”

Vivian gave me her practiced, icy once-over. “You’re getting mud everywhere, Carter.”

She was wearing a Chanel suit. It was the wrong shade of blue for Montana and the right one for a corporate boardroom, which summed up her entire aesthetic. Every part of her was correct and unyielding, except for the way her right eye twitched at the edge.

“I’ll clean it,” I said, which was as much a lie as it was a concession.

“Don’t you dare,” Dad said, not looking at me. He was staring out the window at the driveway, where the two town cars idled, red taillights bleeding into the early night. “We’re leaving in ten. Barrett, you’ve got the last will and keys?”

Barrett lifted the battered briefcase in a showy arc. “I’ve got it.”

“Vivian?” Dad said, and she smiled with all her teeth and none of her heart.

“Ready.”

No one asked me anything.

I drifted to the stairs, peeled off my shirt, and left it draped over the banister. My skin prickled from the cold, but it felt better than being inside with them.

I fished in my duffel for the thermal undershirt—black, with holes chewed in the cuffs. It still smelled faintly like home. Or what used to be home. I pulled it on, thinking of the goats out in the barn. No one else would bother to check them, not tonight. Not ever.

Dad herded us out the front door as if the thunder was targeting our bloodline personally. “Let’s go, let’s go,” he barked, and we skidded down the porch steps, shoes slicking against the pooled water. Rain sluiced from the eaves, drenching us all in a single, perfect volley.

Barrett, in tasseled loafers and pale khakis, gave a strangled yell and leaped for the gravel drive. The shoes would never recover. Good.

Vivian swore, the word lost in the wind, and held her Birkin bag over her head like a shield.

Dad had his arm around her waist, steering her to the backseat of the first town car as if she was an irreplaceable asset that might depreciate in value if allowed to get wet.

The driver, hunched and glowering, scuttled to open the door for them.

I stood at the porch edge, feeling the storm run through me, every flash of lightning reflected in the windowpanes behind. My reflection was a pale ghost in the glass—skinny, wiry, hair a sodden tangle.

No one’s idea of a Steele.

I waited until Dad finished barking instructions at the drivers, waited until Barrett slammed the trunk and sloshed back to the sedan with his precious briefcase, waited until Vivian’s silhouette vanished behind tinted windows.

No one looked back at the house. No one looked for me.

Perfect.

I turned and loped for the side yard, bare feet slapping against the flagstones, the rain cold enough to make my bones ache.

The old barn squatted at the far end of the lot, doors half ajar, light spilling out in an uneven triangle.

Every step squelched through mud, each stride further from the family I was supposed to mourn and closer to something like relief.

The wind whipped the smell of wet hay and manure toward me, grounding and honest. I ducked into the barn, blinking water from my eyes, and called, “Hey, ladies,” soft and low.

The goats huddled at the far side of the stall, eyes rolling white at each boom of thunder. They bunched up, nervous, like a single furry organism. One of the kids—a pale runt with a lopsided ear—bleated and pushed its nose through the slats.

“Hey, little guy,” I murmured. My voice was steady and unhurried, the way you talk to animals and not people. I knelt in the straw and let him nose at my fingers. He smelled like sour milk and wet wool and something almost human.

The wind slammed the barn door open, and a jagged spear of lightning illuminated the world outside in a moment of surgical clarity.

In that flash, I could see the house—every window dark, no silhouettes moving, no one watching. The cars at the end of the drive were already just taillights in the rain. Already gone.

I petted the goat’s ears, felt the heartbeat quick and frightened under my palm. “I know, buddy,” I whispered. “I get it.”

The old stall, usually warm with animal funk, was clammy and tight tonight. I leaned my head against the wood, the cold seeping into my scalp, and breathed in the smell of hay, diesel, and old cedar.

Every so often, thunder rolled over the roof and the goats shuddered in response, but after a while, they started to settle.

The family would be halfway to the airport by now. Or already gone, for all I knew. Maybe for all they cared.

I stayed in the barn a long time, fingers tangled in the goat’s fur, letting the rain soak my legs and numb my feet. It felt better than being inside. Better than being anywhere with them.

No one came looking for me. I’d known they wouldn’t. Some things, you could predict with the precision of a Montana thunderstorm.

After a while, the goats fell asleep—one by one, their bodies folded against the straw, their shivering replaced by the heavy, mechanical rhythm of animal dreaming.

The storm was a little less sharp now, the thunder spaced apart, but the flashes of lightning made the barn’s shadowy corners twitch with phantom movement.

I should have gone back to the house, or at least the porch, but my legs felt heavy and I was content to stay there, knees tucked up, a goat’s nose nudged against my palm like a weirdly insistent heartbeat.

That’s when I heard it: not the wind, not the familiar rattling of the old roof, but a human sound. A sharp, strangled breath, almost a yelp, echoing from the far end of the barn.

I froze, muscles buzzing with the kind of panic that runs on autopilot.

I knew that noise. I’d made it myself, at night, when I thought no one could hear.

Years of private school taught me how to hide, how to make yourself a ghost in a crowded room.

But whoever was here was not hiding. They were coming undone.

I slid out from the pen, ducked low, and padded down the row of empty stalls. The barn felt twice as long in the dark, every step an eternity. There was a toolbox by the tack wall, and I grabbed the old ball-peen hammer.

For all I knew, some tweaker had broken in from the highway. Or maybe one of the ranch hands, desperate enough to risk Dad’s wrath for a place to ride out the storm.

The next flash of lightning lit up the corner stall, and I saw him—huge, hunched, arms wrapped around his head. He was shaking, body racked by spasms like a boxer taking gut-punches.

I’d seen the guy before.

Macon O’Reilly. One of Rawley’s old Navy buddies, brought in to help Rawley fight to keep his ranch and his family safe. He was built like a cryptid, broad and blocky, with a beard you could lose your car keys in.

Now, he was folded down on the straw, sweat slicking his scalp even though the barn was freezing. His hands, those thick-joined carpenter’s hands, pressed so hard against his skull that the knuckles blanched white. He was making these little staccato noises, animal and desperate.

I put the hammer down and edged closer, keeping my palms open. “Hey,” I said, as quietly as I could, like I was talking to a wounded dog. “It’s just me.”

No response. He just curled tighter, breath coming in ragged gasps.

I crouched a few feet away and waited for a break in the thunder. “You’re okay,” I said. “You’re not in any danger.” Not sure if I believed it, but it’s what you’re supposed to say, right?

He jerked his head up, eyes wild and glassy, fixed on a point behind me. His face looked wrong—like someone had drawn it from memory, all the pieces there but put together at weird angles.

“Don’t touch me,” he barked, voice hoarse.

“I won’t,” I said, sitting down cross-legged. “I’ll stay here.”