Chapter 31
aria
It’s the day of the auction, and I’m hyped. I wake up with a spring in my step.
“Mornin’.” Earl steps in beside me with a cigarette in one hand and a checklist in the other.
“You know those things are gonna kill you?”
He holds up the cigarette. “This? Nah! You know what they say.”
I grimace, brace for whatever pithy nonsense he wants to impart early in the freaking morning. “What do they say?”
“That bein’ healthy is just the longest way to die.”
That brings a chuckle out of me. “Let’s get movin’, old man. We’re tagging the last group. We keep back any underweight or limping.”
He studies me, eyes narrowing. ”Where’s that beau of yours?”
I burst out laughing. “Beau?”
“Well, I ain’t callin’ him your boyfriend, that’s all kinds of wrong ‘cause Mav’s a man, not a boy.”
I’m still shaking with laughter when I tell him Maverick went back to Kincaid Farms to check on a few things before he comes back and spends the day with us, as part of our team. He’s not selling or buying at Gunnison, but he’s coming along for me, for Longhorn.
Tomas is in the pens already, moving the cattle into sorting lanes. Nadine is helping him. She glances up and gives me a nod. I nod back.
“First trailer leaves at five,” I remind them. “We’ve staggered the hauls, mapped the unloading lanes, and scheduled the auction check-in with an hour buffer.”
Earl runs his palm over a slick hide, checking for swelling. “Del Rio came through with the second trailer.”
“Yep. Vera dropped off a big batch of lemon squares for him.”
“That’ll keep the deal solid,” Earl says with a smirk.
We work in rhythm.
I run through the feed checklist, double-check the ration amounts, and confirm the final mineral drench schedule. Dr. Sarah Kirk has been out already—checking temps, eyes, joints. She even came back a second time on her own dime after I told her about the audit scare.
It’s all lining up.
“It’s lookin’ good, boss.” Tomas sounds almost gleeful as we pass each other near the feed bins.
“Yeah, it is.”
We start tagging the next group, careful not to stress the cattle too much. I adjust the chute. Tomas wrangles a stubborn steer, cursing under his breath but gentle with the rope.
I take a long breath, eyes scanning the hills, watching the sunrise cut through the mist. I feel the pressure of it—my father’s legacy, the ranch’s future, the scars of the past. Heavy it may be, but it isn’t a burden.
The buzz of activity builds as the sun climbs. Tomas runs a dry rag over his saddle horn, humming. Earl heads to the trailer with the clipboard, muttering about the last round of checks.
“I’m gonna walk the hauler,” he tells me. “Make sure the rig’s sound before we start.”
“You sure?” I call out. “We already checked the coupler and brakes last night.”
“I don’t trust things that should be double-checked,” he grumbles, already stomping toward the Del Rio trailer, parked and gleaming in the yard.
I give Tomas a look. He shrugs. “You know how he is.”
I smile faintly and keep moving.
Nadine’s laying out paperwork near the tack room. I glance over the manifests, triple-checking health certs.
I’m smiling when I hear it. A metallic groan. Then a sickening pop. Then Earl’s voice—sharp, ragged, wrong. “Shit—”
It all happens in a breath.
I turn and see the trailer hitch jack collapse. The whole front end of the loaded trailer slams down, axle twisted, the weight jerking it forward just enough to crush Earl between the front rail and the tongue.
“Earl!”
I run—dirt sprays under my boots.
Tomas yells. Nadine screams. The cattle spook and start lowing wildly in the pens.
Tomas and I reach Earl together.
He’s on the ground, his body curled, one leg grotesquely angled. Blood is blooming fast under his ribs, soaking into the dust.
“No, no, no—Earl, stay with me!” I drop beside him, my hands shaking as I take my jacket off and press it against him where the blood is seeping. “Call 911.”
His eyes are open, blinking slow. “Aria….”
Tomas pulls out his phone and starts shouting into it. Ambulance. Ranch address. Come now.
Nadine kneels beside Earl, tears already falling.
She knows this is bad.
It is bad.
But if I keep the pressure, hold, he’s going to be fine.
Earl’s going to be fine.
Tomas comes around and shakes his head at me. “Trailer hitch…,” he murmurs. “Someone…loosened…bolts….”
This can’t be happening, I think. Not Earl. He was supposed to retire and….
Earl’s hand grips mine, tight. “You did good, Aria…you brought Longhorn back.”
I sob. “Don’t do this, Earl. You’re not allowed. We’re almost there.”
But his eyes have that look—that faraway flicker, like someone already slipping down the road you can’t walk with them.
Then…his hand goes still.
His chest doesn’t rise again. And just like that…the heart of this place, my second father, is gone.
Nadine and I stay with Earl as Maverick’s truck comes barreling down the road, tires screaming.
His face breaks when he sees Earl, limp in my arms, blood on my shirt, my hands, my face.
He drops to his knees beside me, his expression raw and stricken. “Oh, baby….”
“He saved the trailer,” I whisper. “He was doing one last check. One last stupid check.”
Maverick doesn’t speak.
He pulls Nadine and me into him. We sit like that, the three of us.
“What happened?” Maverick asks.
I can’t think. My head is pounding. Not a migraine. Grief. Is Longhorn worth all these lives? Earl’s? Papa’s? Mine?
“The bolts on the jack. They’d been loosened. And no one checked them because they’d already been checked,” Tomas tells him. He’s crying. Earl was his mentor, his teacher, and his father when he’d had no one.
I see Maverick hug Tomas as he crumbles.
Nadine and Vera stand together, crying. I watch them with my heart so heavy that I’m going to collapse under its weight. They take Tomas into their fold.
Maverick reaches for me. I let him hold me anyway because I’m shaking too hard to stand. His arms wrap around me tight and solid, his voice whispering something low that I can’t quite hear over the pounding in my skull.
I don’t know how long we stay like that, wrapped in grief and failure and the unbearable weight of loss.
But I do know this.
Whoever did this didn’t just sabotage a sale. They took something from me.
I’m just about to let go of Maverick and salvage—
I don’t hear the explosion.
I feel it.
It hits like a thunderclap from the inside out—first a vibration in the ground, a dull roar in the chest, then the world lurches sideways.
A bloom of orange and black lights up the pre-dawn sky, and the barn—our old red-sided, weather-beaten barn—rips open like paper, wood, flames, and shrapnel flying into the air like shattering bones.
The shockwave knocks us both flat. I scream. My ears are ringing. Smoke is already crawling along the field like a hungry thing.
“Maverick!” I cry, gasping, coughing. “The animals—”
“They’re out!” he yells back, dragging me to my feet. “Earl moved them all to the south pasture last night, remember?”
He did. Oh, God.
I stare in horror as the barn that housed generations of equipment, saddles, feed, and history collapses inward, beams folding in on themselves, flames devouring everything. The heat stings my cheeks. I smell burning hay, diesel, rubber, something sharp, and chemical.
“Aria! There’s someone in there!” Tomas shouts in horror.
I whip toward his voice. “What?!”
He’s pointing toward the side of the barn, by the back entrance. The door is blown off, the hinges warped, the frame split down the middle like it was punched from inside.
Maverick bolts.
I follow.
The smoke stings my eyes as we skid around what’s left of the entrance, the edges still glowing. Maverick stops short.
I do, too.
There, half-buried under debris, is a man.
A familiar one.
Hudson.
His hand is charred, twisted around a blackened device still partially intact—some kind of makeshift ignition switch. His chest is unmoving. His mouth is slack.
He’s dead. I know it. I’m sure of it.
Maverick leans in, checks for a pulse anyway. “Son of a bitch,” he says under his breath.
I stagger back, one hand over my mouth, bile rising in my throat. “He was going to blow us all up.”
I look up at what’s left of Longhorn’s barn—half a roof. A wall burned black and splintered. Smoke curling into the morning like the ghost of everything we lost.
My soul feels scorched.
I’m shaking. I can’t feel my legs.
This was the endgame. If all else fails, blow the animals up.
I sink to my knees, hands buried in ash and splinters and earth, as tears burn down my face.
For Earl. For the barn. For everything we’ve lost.
Maverick crouches next to me, and we hold each other.
“I won’t let this be the end,” I whisper, not even sure who I’m talking to. Earl. My father. The land. Myself. “They can’t take this from me.”
“I won’t let them,” he promises.
I smile sadly at him. “For the first time, I don’t feel alone.”
“You’re not, and you’ll never be.” His eyes are moist with emotion.
I cup his cheek. “They tried to burn it all down. But we’re still standing.”