10. Chapter 10
Rebel
By the time the truck rolls back through the gates at Wild Mercy, I’ve already spent the drive trying to put the day back in a box I can use.
No glances that linger. No edge in my voice sharp enough for somebody else to enjoy.
No reason for Cassie to start inventing a version of events that gets funnier every time she tells it.
I want the morning back under routine, under work, under the old rules that usually keep a place like this from turning stupid.
The yard is already awake from the storm.
Water still sits in the low spots, black and slick, and the truck throws it up against the wheel wells as I cut past the main barn.
Somebody is dragging wet bedding out in a wheelbarrow.
A pair of broodmares are being walked out one after the other while one of the barn hands eases a feed cart through the center lane, careful of the puddles.
I pull up near the broodmare side and kill the engine.
For a second neither of us moves.
Montana is looking straight ahead through the windshield, one hand still on the prospect file between us, the other resting near the door handle without taking it.
In the yard outside, people are already working.
Rhodes is crossing from the foaling barn with his vet bag.
Cassie is half turned in conversation with one of the grooms. The whole place is close enough now to make one wrong look feel expensive.
I reach for the file at the same time she does.
The back of my hand catches her wrist.
Not a grab. Not even enough to call it a touch. Just bad timing and too little space in the cab.
Still, she goes very still.
I pull back first and hand her the file. “You’ll need that.”
She takes it without looking at me. “I know what paperwork is.”
The bag is down by her boots. She bends for it, comes up with the strap in one hand, then finally turns her head.
“We doing this?” she asks.
I keep my eyes on the yard. “Doing what.”
“The part where we act like I’m just here for orientation and you’re not already irritated to find me in your truck in daylight.”
That gets under my skin because it’s too close to true and too early in the morning for either of us to say it.
“You’re here for work,” I say. “That’s the part I’m interested in.”
She gives a short nod, but there’s no agreement in it. “Good. Then you can stop sounding like you regret the drive back.”
I look at her then.
She’s already got the strap over one shoulder and the file tucked to her side, chin up in that way that says she’s set for a hit and daring it to come.
“I don’t regret the drive back,” I say.
“No?” Her hand closes around the door handle. “That’s not how your silence reads.”
“You want me friendlier?”
“I want you less weird.”
The line almost gets me. On another morning, maybe it would have. Not this one.
Outside, one of the broodmares tosses her head against the lead rope and the groom checks her with a hand at the cheekpiece.
A hose starts up near the wash rack. Somebody shouts for Rhodes.
Morning is already moving, and we are still sitting in the cab like neither of us has figured out how to step back into the day without tracking the night in after us.
I rest one hand on the wheel and look at her. “What exactly were you expecting this to look like?”
Her fingers tighten once on the handle before they ease. “Not easy.” She glances out at the yard, then back at me. “But maybe a little less like you’re trying to nail boards over it.”
That one lands.
I don’t answer right away, because the truth is I have spent the whole drive trying to do exactly that.
She shakes her head once, small and impatient, then pushes the door open. Cold air comes in around her immediately.
“Right,” she says. “Thought so.”
She steps out, swings the bag up higher on her shoulder, and shuts the door with more control than force. By the time I open my side, she is already heading toward the broodmare barn with the prospect file tucked to her ribs and no sign in her walk that she intends to wait for me.
Cassie sees us first and comes off the broodmare side at a half jog, braid half out, one sleeve streaked with chaff.
“Well?” she calls. “Was the miracle horse worth the motel, the flood, and whatever this is?”
Montana swings the truck door shut with her hip. “Depends,” she says. “How much money do we usually spend proving instinct is just bad judgment dressed up nicely?”
Cassie’s mouth drops open in delighted horror. “That bad?”
“It could be,” I say, and put enough weight on it that the next question dies in her throat.
That should have bought me a minute. It doesn’t.
Wade steps off the office porch with a mug in one hand and takes in the truck, my face, and Montana, who is now already half way across the yard.
“You bring back a horse,” he says, “or just more trouble than you left with?”
I shut the truck door harder than I need to. “Really? Don’t you ever think about what you’re going to say before you say it?”
Wade’s mouth hooks at one corner. “Too late.”
After I unload my gear from the truck, I head down to check on the horses and find Montana in the east barn with Sable.
The mare is tied loosely in the grooming bay, with one hind leg resting and the other cocked just enough to remind everyone to watch themselves. Sable’s been a problem horse since day one after her purchase.
Montana stands at Sable’s shoulder with a curry in one hand and all the patience in the world in the other.
I stop outside the bay and watch without announcing myself.
Montana works slowly, asks for the mare’s foreleg, gets it, and gives it back before Sable protests.
Then a feed cart rattles past the open end of the barn.
Six weeks ago that would have sent the mare sideways.
Once again, I’m impressed by her improvement.
Twenty minutes later Wade is waiting outside the breeding office with a legal pad bent in one hand and a cup of coffee he has clearly been too busy to drink.
“I wanted to touch base with you about something, now that you’re back. The good news is that Sable’s been more rideable in the last three days than she has in three months,” he says. “The bad news is you’re letting one employee become the answer to too many questions at once.”
“She’s useful,” I say.
Wade gives me a look like I’ve just called a lightning strike inconvenient. “Useful is patching a hole in the fence before somebody notices. This is different.”
I stop at the bottom of the steps and turn toward him.
He shifts the legal pad against his ribs and goes on. “Capable staff fill holes. They don’t become the thing everything starts leaning on. Not this fast. Not in a season this tight.”
That gets in because I know exactly what he means.
I look out over the yard and try the thought on anyway. Pull her back. Keep her out on the edges. Give her smaller work, cleaner work, the sort that doesn’t put her in the middle of every moving part.
The whole idea dies as soon as I picture the day without her in it.
And worse than that, yanking her back now would feel too much like punishment dressed up as management.
The porch rail bites rough against my palm when I lean on it.
Out by the broodmare barn, Montana is bent over a feed chart with one of the younger hands crowding too close at her shoulder.
She taps the page once without looking up, and he takes off at a jog like she lit a fuse under him.
Wind snaps the office flags hard enough to crack the fabric.
Wade follows my line of sight. “That’s the problem.”
I don’t look at him. “No. The problem is that you’re enjoying this.”
His mouth twitches. “Not enjoying it. Just noticing it before you say something dumb and make me fix that too.”
By late afternoon, I end up back at the office with the prospect file open in front of me and two separate notes in Montana’s handwriting clipped to the top … one on the maternal line, one on the hay order mistake that nobody else caught.
I look out through the office window. Montana is crossing the yard with Cassie, talking low, one hand lifting once as she makes a point before dropping back to her side.
It unsettles me how little thought it takes for my mind to turn toward her now when something at Wild Mercy needs reading cleanly. I’ve been resisting that fact since the day she got here, and it has kept getting truer anyway, and I no longer know how to keep that separate from everything else.
That is what makes her dangerous to me.