Chapter 12
Caia leaves the next morning before dawn.
Crew’s taillights beam as they drive away from the property, painting the gravel below the tires in a blanket of red.
The ranch hands have already begun to scatter, trudging toward the first of their duties for the day.
They are a symphony of yawns and hungover groans.
Forty walks with Grace toward the stables.
He’s been tasked with cleaning the pens and grooming the horses—they’ve got a group of potential buyers coming in from Fort Worth later in the day, and everything needs to look presentable.
Not that it ever doesn’t—Crew runs a tight ship—but if a little extra elbow grease gets them a better deal, Forty will happily oblige.
“Have fun last night?” he asks her in a thick morning voice.
Grace, having slept fitfully after staring at Bellamy’s texts for hours on end, manages a sleepy smile.
Her eyelids feel heavy, ready to shut, even as she plods toward the barn.
If given the chance, she could lie down right here in the grass and take a long, hard nap. “Yeah,” she says. “It was nice.”
Their boots scuff the ground in unison as Forty clicks his teeth. “Get lots of compliments?”
Grace chuckles. “There was a line of suitors hoping to court me. Didn’t you see them?”
“Right, right.” Forty nods. “The line. Of course.”
With a sigh, Grace says, “Everyone was really sweet once the initial shock wore off.”
Forty huffs knowingly. He lets a beat pass before speaking again, and his tone is gentle, as if he’s trying to avoid spooking her.
By the time he gets to the end of it, Grace understands why.
“Maybe there was someone in particular you were hoping to get compliments from.” It’s a question but it isn’t—one of Forty’s musings that always seem to ring true, even when the person on the receiving end doesn’t want to hear it.
Nerves and embarrassment and anxiety all rear their ugly heads instantly, ready to fight to the death to be at the forefront of Grace’s brain.
She’d bitten her nails down to the quick the night before, replaying their dance in her head more times than she could count.
Wondering if she’d been too bold, if she’d misread the moment entirely and made a complete fool of herself.
After all, once the song had ended, Crew had practically bolted away from her, retreating to the safety of his siblings without a word.
He’d stuck around for only ten minutes or so after that, and then he’d pulled an Irish goodbye and slipped away from the party, Boone at his heels.
Grace had stood there, alone amid a crowd of people, bereft and reeling.
Anxiety drips like acid into her stomach. “Not especially,” she lies, hoping Forty won’t see right through her. Hoping that, even if he does, he doesn’t call her on it.
The fib hangs in the air between them, Forty allowing it to sink in, allowing her the opportunity to correct it.
When she doesn’t, he sighs, throaty and raspy from sleep and age and a past life where he smoked a pack of Marlboro Reds every day.
“For what it’s worth, Grace,” he begins, slowing his steps slightly.
Grace follows suit, and soon, they are facing each other in the dark.
He looks younger in the predawn light, like the shadows and moonbeams are working in tandem to erase the years of lines and scars from his face.
Even his hair looks brighter, and if she squints, it’s less like the familiar shades of gray and more like the sandy blond it once was.
“I’ve been working here a long time.” He smiles wryly. “I watched the Caldwell kids grow up.”
Grace nods, her thoughts immediately going to those sudsy kids in that photograph in Crew’s house.
Soap coating their hair and faces, smiling at the camera without a worry in the world.
She imagines them running amok on the grounds, grass-stained clothes and scraped knees.
And a younger Forty, still spry and able to chase them away from dangerous things like rattlesnakes and rusted wind turbines.
“In my years here, I’ve seen every version of Crew Caldwell,” he states, his smile growing slightly wistful. “The good son, the reliable brother, the brave soldier.”
She doesn’t know where he’s going with this. Doesn’t know what she did to deserve this little glimpse into this past, this nugget of knowledge. But she listens intently anyway.
“I’ve seen the way his view of the world has evolved over thirty years.
The way he looked at things before the war and after…
he was—is a different man. There’s a hardness there.
Some of it he’s always carried, as the eldest, the most responsible.
A self-imposed duty. But most of it came from a place none of us have ever been. And it came to stay.”
It feels wrong, talking about this. Like she’s pulling back a curtain and seeing something wholly private. Too precious to gossip about at six in the morning. “Forty—”
He raises a hand to stop her. “Last night, I saw an old version of him. His steps were lighter. His smile was easily earned. When I saw him look at you in that dress…”
Grace holds her breath, bracing for whatever he’s about to say.
She can’t hope, or wish, or wonder, because that only ever leads to disappointment.
And Crew had run—he’d left like he couldn’t get away from her fast enough.
Maybe he’d held her, touched her with a strange dichotomy of a firm grip and soft caresses, but it had been the dance. The moment. That’s all.
Forty kinks an eyebrow at her, as if to say, You better be listening. “I saw a Crew that I thought we’d lost many years ago. I saw it in his eyes.”
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·
They approach the barn together once Forty has sufficiently assured Grace that she doesn’t have to do anything about the observation, but that he’d just wanted her to know.
Felt like she had the right to understand her obvious effect on Crew, and to not hold it against him when he shied away from it.
“He’s a little out of practice when it comes to the fairer sex,” Forty had advised.
“This place—this life. Not exactly a chick magnet.”
Grace had snorted at that.
She’s content to not pay this any mind. Sure, maybe her feelings toward Crew have shifted away from the general unease he’d caused her at first, but, if asked, she wouldn’t be able to put a name to what those feelings are now.
There are too many—a complicated and indecipherable mix that spans from physical attraction to downright terror.
A fear so potent that she decides quickly to not unearth the rest. If she were to take Forty’s words to heart, she’d look Crew in the eye and see a long-lost man who’d returned home simply by looking at her.
The consequences of a look like that could be catastrophic.
To gain him, to know him, to touch him would mean that when she inevitably lost him somewhere down the line, she wouldn’t survive it.
Too lost in her own thoughts, Grace doesn’t realize right away upon entering the stables that something’s off. Something’s wrong. Forty senses it immediately, straightening his posture and speeding up his steps, which yanks her out of her reverie.
It’s too quiet—too still for a place full of life. They round the corner and Grace’s stomach sinks. “Holy shit,” Forty says quietly, his face twisted up in pain and horror.
“Oh my God,” Grace says breathily, and she has to lean against a doorframe to keep from falling to her knees.
Forty places a hand over his mouth, his eyes widening as he takes in the scene—the horses not upright and eager for breakfast, not brimming with life and impatience.
Waylon and Duke are standing, but barely, both teetering on the edge of crashing to the ground at any second.
Cash and Marquis, too. But the rest—Grace’s heart thunders against her ribs.
“Go,” Forty says, not looking at her, the word clipped and hard. “Get Crew. Now.”
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·
Two white vans sit parked near the stables.
Equine veterinarians, a whole five of them, had piled out about an hour earlier, ready to help.
The ranch hands are gathered in little clusters, none speaking louder than a whisper.
Grace sits off by herself in the grass, knees pulled to her chest as she watches the doctors shuffle back and forth between the barn and the vans.
When she sees one of them emerge with a pained frown, shaking his head, she barely makes it to the giant trash bin before vomiting up her breakfast.
It takes almost three hours for the vets to feel comfortable enough to walk away, and even then, they agree at least two should stay behind to monitor overnight.
Whatever it was the horses ingested—a bad, moldy batch of alfalfa, most likely—proved to be too toxic for three of them.
Stringer, Abraham, and Carrot had all succumbed in the small hours of the night.
The rest were critically ill, now heavily medicated and sleeping.
Renata, Clint, Crew, and Cooper surround the lead vet, and Grace can pick up about every other word or so, enough to know the man is adamant they get the police involved because this doesn’t look like an accident.
One horse could maybe be explained away, but all of them—it looks premeditated.
That, coupled with the fact that it happened on a night when everyone was far away, distracted with alcohol and dancing and birthday cake, leaves little room for doubt.
While they were all looking the other way, someone tried to murder all of Halcyon’s horses.