Chapter 25
“Boys, watch your flank!” Kitt yelled, keeping his eyes on the herd.
Bullet moved instinctively with Kitt’s simplest body movements.
This time, they moved toward the stray wayward cattle leaving the herd as the two boys bolted from the huddle they were talking in.
They weren’t super steady in their saddles, their horses jerked, but luckily, it was enough of a commotion for the cows trying to make their escape.
They rushed back together with the others, and it didn’t cause too big a problem.
Kitt pulled back on his reins, guiding Bullet back to his designated position of bringing up the rear.
The irony of it wasn’t lost on him. From this angle, he was forced to cover all sides, helping the kids whose cattle ran astray.
It was taxing and Kitt was exhausted. When he was a kid, he loved doing the cattle drive.
He and his buddies took it so seriously.
Kylie loved to go every year when she was in school.
She was the whole reason he’d always volunteered to chaperone.
He wanted to be there for her if she needed him.
Now, it was different. Outside of Micah’s boys and a few others, Kitt didn’t see too many of these kids being truly interested in making agriculture their life after high school.
Besides the immediate fatigue that set in under these kinds of conditions, Kitt hadn’t talked to Austin since he left a day and a half ago.
It made him edgy. No matter how he tried, Kitt couldn’t get a signal during breaks, or where they camped for the night.
Last night, he’d even gone out and up a small mountain and still couldn’t get high enough for signal coverage.
Kitt missed Austin. If they were a normal couple, Austin could be here now.
However, if they were an out couple, no way the school would have either of them here.
He couldn’t see two gay men being allowed to escort the kids out like this.
Which, at this point, didn’t seem like such a bad thing.
Damn, but he was past ready to get home.
“Jonathon, watch ahead!” Kitt yelled. He knew he couldn’t be heard.
He kicked Bullet into gear, tugging the reins to the left and galloped after the cows leaving the pack.
The teenager never saw them, just kept looking completely dazed and confused out toward the miles of nothing to the side of them.
=?=
With a swipe of his T-shirt sleeve, Austin wiped the sweat from his brow.
His breath panted, his chest heaved. Both he and Jose had been working the horses for most of the afternoon, just as Kitt instructed them to do.
Jose carried the same ways about him with these animals as Kitt did.
They responded to his every simple, gentle touch or voice.
Jose and the horses connected on a different level.
As for Austin, not so much. Every move, every instruction, was more difficult and caused him to have to do twice the work to get them to do what they were supposed to do.
“We need to let him run. He’s getting antsy,” Jose called out to Austin, motioning toward Hooch.
They were building a makeshift track between their properties.
Just dirt and a chain link fence, but something to get the horses familiar with.
Hooch was a pistol. The colt was still young, but huge, growing bigger every day.
And damn, he could run. He regularly left the others behind.
“Let’s do it, then.” Austin pushed away from the fence.
He’d do anything to exhaust himself and, hopefully, get some sleep tonight.
It had been a solid two days without any word from Kitt.
And, there had been no sleep because apparently, he couldn’t sleep without knowing Kitt was safe or tucked in beside him.
As he rummaged through the tack room for a stopwatch, he heard a noise outside.
Austin smiled and hoped Kitt had come home early.
It was gonna be hard to contain the nonchalance and not run straight to him.
He’d have to force himself not to jump on Kitt right there and kiss him with all the missing in his heart.
He rounded the corner and saw one of Micah’s sons, mounted, dirty, and looking tired. He spoke quickly to Jose before kicking the horse in the direction of his house. “What did he say?”
“They’re a day behind. It's goin’ slower than it should.
They’ll be home sometime the day after tomorrow.
” Jose continued to work the animals and didn’t pay any attention to Austin.
That was a good thing. He wasn’t sure he was hiding the emotion he felt, from the few simple words said to him. Another day? Really?
“Which one do you wanna clock?” Jose called out from behind Austin. He still stood rooted in the spot, watching the dust settle from the horse.
“You take Hooch.” Austin finally turned, ducked his face and pulled his ball cap down firmly on his head.
It was a normal move, but today it was more than that.
It was to hide his eyes. Austin honestly felt like he wanted to cry.
He had to fight back the tears. In all these months, he hadn’t gone more than a few hours without talking to Kitt.
It was such a girly response to missing your mate, but he couldn’t shake it.
He climbed on his mount and grabbed Hooch’s reins.
Austin managed to head toward the track before the tear slipped down his cheek.
“Damn it! Get a hold of yourself! God, I like it so much better when I’m the one leaving!” he muttered at himself, wiping the tears away.
=?=
“Mom, shut up, I’m working!” Dunc, aka Glenda, yelled across the basement of her parents’ home.
“I have to do the laundry!” her mother yelled back in a raspy voice. A voice hardened by age and years of smoking. She never stopped smoking the cigarette perched between her lips as she loaded the thirty-year-old washing machine that sat ten feet from Dunc’s computer equipment.
“God, Mom! You’re such a fucking pain in the ass!
” Dunc screamed although her beady little eyes never left any of the three monitors in front of her.
Her fingers skimmed over the keyboard like only a person who had spent their entire life on the computer could.
Dunc had just about gained entry into the Facebook account of Austin Grainger’s parents.
She’d been working on it for hours and finally figured out the password.
She’d read on Google that no one ever strayed from the standard birthday format.
It was just trying to figure out which birthday it could be.
This one was Austin’s, not very original of the proud Grainger papa.
“Yes!” Dunc was in! She’d hacked into a Facebook account!
Damn, she’d been trying to do this for years.
Her reputation as a badass computer genius was pretty much made up by herself.
She’d put it out there in the online groups she was part of that she was a man and the most worthy of anyone in the groups.
By God, if she couldn’t have accolades in the real world, she’d force it in the made up world of the internet.
Glenda searched the Facebook account. She went through the messages and all the groups he belonged to.
She didn’t know what she was looking for except something to feed Rich and Mercedes about Austin.
Just enough that she could toss it back in their court and not look like she just stole their money and left them high and dry.
Rich was a staunch online Dunc supporter, she didn’t need him on her bad side, upsetting the balance of her group.
Biting at her fingernail she stared at the screen. It had taken hours to break in and there was nothing here! On inspiration, she went to the account settings and pulled up the email address used to log in. Perhaps there was a secondary account that might mean something.
A grin spread easily along her cracked, dry lips when she found a company email address.
She swiped the information out of the system and quickly turned to another computer pulling up a search-and-find database.
Dunc plugged the information in, and through her advanced gold membership, she found the address belonged to a company Austin Grainger owned with his father.
Okay, now she was getting somewhere. The company’s headquarters were based in far northern California. It looked to be a ranch.
She let the system run and watched the screen. Cigarette smoke drifted her way.
“God, Mom, you’re gonna kill me with that secondhand smoke!” Her eyes didn’t leave the screen.
“You’re fifty-five years old and never go outside. Lack of sun is gonna kill ya!”
“Die already!” Dunc bellowed.
“Get a job!” her mom yelled back, moving up the steps.
Dunc lost all interest in her mom, and another grin spread across her lips.
She’d typed in the same login information she’d hacked from the Facebook account and Daddy Grainger’s company website took it.
Now, all she had to do was take a look around.
Not that she had a clue what any of it really meant.
First, she’d go through the business side of things, and then the emails, because it looked like it was all tied together.
If Austin was anywhere in here, she’d find him and hand the information over to Rich.
If it was any good, he’d be paying double to get it.
Twenty thousand dollars would buy one hell of a badass computer.
Hell, she could even get a new server and still have money left over.
Maybe there’d even be enough money to get someone to bump off her pain-in-the-ass mother. How had she not died yet?
Hours ticked by as Dunc went through every little detail.
=?=