Chapter 18 #2
Maybe I wasn’t the only nervous one.
Somehow, that thought made me feel a little bit better. If I wasn’t the only one suffering alone, I’d be happy.
Shaking the thought off, I moved back to the tack room, ducking through the doorway and scanning the walls where we kept our harnesses hooked up. I grabbed one and a lead, testing the moleskin on both with a few quick jerks in my hand before slinging the lead over my shoulder.
Stepping back out into the stables, I made my way back to the front of them. As I passed by the alcove where we kept the feed, something caught my eye; a flicker of movement that had me instinctively slowing my steps.
I turned my head just in time to spot Carter bent over one of the barrels, his back half-turned toward me.
My brow lifted.
What the hell was he doing hiding out back here?
It wasn’t unusual to find one of the guys hanging around the feed storage. This part of the stables was away from most of the chaos and provided a nice retreat if you needed a minute to relax. Or stopped to double-check the rations for the day before heading up to the bunkhouse for food.
He always stuck to the front of the ranch where the breeding stock was kept. Handling the studs, overseeing the mares, working on whatever Sully assigned him.
There was no reason for him to be near the feed storage at all.
And yet, the way he leaned over the barrel, his shoulders tense as he moved, scooping up pellets into a metal feed scoop, sent a quiet alarm bell ringing in the back of my mind.
Just as I opened my mouth to greet him, something else caught my eye: a bottle sitting open right next to the barrel. The label was a bright neon green, the bold face words on the front of it unmistakable: Weed killer.
My stomach tightened.
On its own, it wasn’t the most suspicious thing to have lying around. There were plenty of reasons for us to have herbicides and pesticides stored around the ranch. But not here. We never kept any kind of chemicals near the feed.
Not because we were paranoid, but because cross-contamination was too fucking easy to happen. One wrong move, one spill or bad mix-up and an entire batch of feed could get ruined. Or worse, contaminated enough to actually hurt the animals if we didn’t catch it in time.
So what the hell was Carter doing with it out and open, this close to the feed?
My grip on the lead rope tightened.
Something wasn’t right.
“The fuck are you doing?”
Carter jumped a mile, nearly knocking into the barrel as he spun around to face me. “Fucking shit, Torres. What’re you doing sneaking around like a fucking ghost?”
I crossed my arms, letting my gaze drop pointedly to the bottle before coming back up to him. “Could say the same for you. Is there a reason you’re messing with the feed?”
His jaw tightened.
And there it was.
That split-second hesitation before he answered. A too-tight shift of his shoulders while his fingers twitched at his side like he was considering whether or not to lie.
“What, you think you can leave for a month and then come back here and start demanding answers? Get a life.”
I frowned. “Deflecting from my question is only making you look more suspicious, you know.”
His lips curled into a sharp-edged smirk. He held up his hands, the handle of the metal scoop dangled from his thumb. “Sully asked me to prepare some of the feed for later. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Sully’s at an auction with Wilder,” I corrected. “So, there’s no way he told you that.”
He rolled his eyes. “You think you know everything. He asked me before he left.”
I narrowed my eyes.
Bullshit.
None of this was adding up.
He tossed the scoop back on top of the feed. “Whatever. You know what? I’ll tell him you volunteered to do it yourself. Since you’re so eager to get involved in everyone’s business the second you come back from your little vacay.”
I said nothing as he stormed past me, knocking his shoulder against mine in an effort to send me stumbling back. I locked my knees and kept my balance, refusing to give him even an ounce of satisfaction for being petty.
I tracked him with my eyes all the way until he was past the entrance into the stables. Only when he was fully out of sight did I drop my arms back to my sides, flexing my fingers around the lead still draped over my shoulder.
Moving into the alcove, the barrel of feed he’d been messing with looked normal enough. There were no weird signs of discoloration, no obvious odor coming from the individual pellets when I scooped a bunch into my hand to sniff.
Lifting the lid on the other two barrels, they also looked the same. Nothing wrong or out of the ordinary.
If I hadn’t caught Carter over here, I never would’ve thought twice about rationing this out to the horses at dinner. The thought sent an uneasy shiver up my spine.
Bending down, I reached for the weed killer, lifting it off the ground. While there was no cap on it, it felt full.
So, if he hasn’t been pouring it into the feed, then what the hell was he doing?
Unless I’d caught him at the right moment...
Rotating the bottle, my eyes caught the bold DO NOT CONSUME warning.
What were the chances that this wasn’t the first time Carter had been messing with the feed?
Weeks ago, Pelly and a few other horses had gotten mysteriously ill with no obvious explanation.
Had Carter messed with the feed back then, too?
Dread pooled in my stomach.
I didn’t want to believe someone working on a ranch would do something so heinous.
What would be the point when the entire reason we all had jobs was in order to take care of the livestock?
What purpose would it serve to make our horses sick?
To hurt them?
Bankrupting Wilder with an avalanche of vet bills seemed stupid, if not completely absurd.
If he went under, we all did. No one would win in that scenario.
I exhaled sharply, my jaw tightening as I kept my grip on the bottle of weed killer tight, my fingers pressing into the plastic hard enough that it crinkled under the pressure.
Whatever Carter had been up to, I wasn’t about to take any chances.
Turning back toward the feed, I flipped the lid back over the barrel, sealing it shut with a firm snap before stepping out of the alcove.
Striding toward the back office, I grabbed the legal pad from the desk and flipped it open to tear off a fresh sheet of paper.
I moved my hand quickly over the paper, writing in big, bold letters: DO NOT TOUCH FEED.
Until we knew for certain whether or not any of it had been tampered with, I’d make damn sure this didn’t get ignored. If it needed to be tested to see if I was being paranoid or not, keeping it away from the horses until then was the most important.
I slipped the edge of the paper underneath the first barrel lid, letting it hang down before securing the lid once more.
The second Wilder got back, we were gonna have a long, serious talk about Carter.