Chapter 12 #2
Grace watches Waylon sleep from outside his stable.
Tears stream down her face as she wonders what they all must’ve thought, watching each other drop like flies.
These beautiful, majestic creatures, cut down by some invisible evil.
By someone’s cruel heart. Her teeth grind together in pure fury, and she resists the urge to punch a fist straight through the wood of the stable.
Forty tells her to go, there’s nothing more she can do here.
She doesn’t want to leave Waylon, but the vets reassure her that he’ll be cared for, watched around the clock until he’s back to his normal, grumpy self.
After a long, lukewarm shower, Grace is wringing water out of her hair with a raggedy towel when someone knocks on the bunkhouse door.
Strange—no one ever knocks. Especially strange considering it’s almost ten in the morning and everyone is out working.
Grace slips on her boots and walks toward the door, finding Renata on the other side.
She’s wearing sunglasses despite the overcast day, and she jerks her head toward the patio surrounding the bunkhouse, a silent invitation.
They sit beside each other in a pair of rocking chairs, and for a long moment, neither woman speaks.
When Renata breaks the silence, her voice doesn’t sound like her own—there’s no lightness, none of her usual breezy elegance.
It’s firmer, deeper, with an ominous edge.
“Grace, I’m going to ask you something right now, and I don’t think you’re going to like the question all that much. All right?”
Heat encases the porch, buzzing around them like an errant fly.
Grace can feel it seeping into her bones, melting away all of her resolve.
She knows what Renata’s going to ask, knows that it’s well within her rights as the owner and operator of Halcyon Ranch to investigate every angle.
But she’s right. Grace doesn’t like it very much at all.
“All right.”
The balls of Renata’s suede boots press against the wood slats, rocking her chair backward. Her chin dips to her chest, and it takes a long moment before she finally asks, “Do you know anything…anything at all about what happened to the horses?”
The question hooks its claws into Grace’s stomach, and the world suddenly feels very big and very small all at once.
Countless miles from here, in a hellhole of dead grass and sprawling weeds and malnourished animals, is her uncle.
Right now, he’s probably reaming his underlings or swindling some poor bastard out of their life savings.
It’s implausible at best to think he’d come all the way here, sneak onto the property and into the stables to poison the alfalfa.
He’s a cruel bastard, but he isn’t that smart, or sly, or in the physical shape it would take to walk all the way to the main grounds undetected.
Even with his vague, threatening texts in the back of her mind, Grace finds it highly unlikely that he’d work that fast or that strategically.
So when she answers Renata, it’s with a half-truth.
A single word shrouded in fear and omission. “No.”
“I hope you don’t take this to mean that I am suspicious of you,” Renata adds, perhaps sensing Grace’s unease. “Because I’m not. I know you didn’t hurt them. I know you would’ve stopped it if you could have.”
Grace swallows, and her throat feels dryer than soil baking in the sun. “I would have.”
“But is there a chance that someone could be trying to send us—you—a message?”
Grace feels the urge to tell the truth warring with the paranoid, insecure side of her brain.
She has too much baggage—too much for the Caldwells to tolerate for a lone horse trainer, especially when hundreds of more experienced ones would be lined up to take her place.
If she tells Renata about the texts, there’s a very distinct possibility Renata will deem her not worth all of this trouble and send her packing.
Grace stares out at the barn, watching as the vets walk back and forth from the van, hoisting plastic cases, half-empty Gatorade bottles, boxes of latex gloves.
On a shaky exhale, she says, “I don’t know, Renata.
I wish I could say no without a shadow of a doubt, but I can’t.
” Her jaw tics; her hands curl into fists at her thighs.
Renata presses back again, then swings forward, the movement as clipped and restricted as her tone. “You think your uncle would punish you for leaving?”
Grace looks down at her boots, her sockless feet and haphazardly tied laces. “I think anything is possible when it comes to evil. There’s no rulebook.”
Grace looks at Renata processing all of this, noticing the line of her jaw is a much straighter edge than usual.
The veins in her neck are more prominent for it, and for the first time since she’s known her, the woman actually looks her age.
The fear, the stress, the unknowable danger—it has erased all her lingering youth.
Renata claps her hands together and sits up.
“Here’s what we’re going to do.” She reaches out, grips the handle of Grace’s chair.
“I’m going to bring in some extra security for a while.
It’s something I should’ve done a long time ago.
Clint will be over the moon—he’s been begging me to get around-the-clock patrols for years.
I’ll make another phone call to the troopers, too.
Paul Freeman has some explaining to do as to why they didn’t haul that man into jail last month. ”
Grace blinks, stunned. “That might—” The thought alone has her stuttering. Catastrophizing. Seeing her uncle’s train of thought even from hundreds of miles away. Her thumbnail digs into the skin of her palm, and she clears her throat and tries again. “That might make things worse.”
Renata looks invigorated by the statement, and it should’ve occurred to Grace that telling this woman she shouldn’t do something would only make her want to do it more.
Backtracking may be a futile effort, but she attempts it anyway.
“I just mean…adding fuel to the fire could be dangerous.” Grace clamps her mouth shut, tears forming at the corners of her eyes.
She won’t let them fall, even if the bastard isn’t here to see it happen.
Her nostrils flare. “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. Maybe it’s better if I go—”
“Stop.”
Grace doesn’t look at her, doesn’t want to see the look on her face. That stubborn Caldwell resolve. “What if it isn’t the animals next time? What if—”
“There won’t be a next time, Grace. Enough. It’s out of the question.”
Grace laughs at that, but it’s watery and humorless, more baffled than anything else.
“How can you be so sure about this?” Finally, she turns to the matriarch of this gilded Eden and finds nothing but certainty in her dark eyes.
The kind of self-assuredness that tells Grace, Sure, you can argue.
But you won’t get very far. “How can you think that I’m worth all of this trouble?
” She nods toward the veterinarians and thinks about the security detail they’ll have to pay handsomely to guard the grounds at all times. “All this money.”
“Grace,” Renata says calmly, and she reaches out to halt the manic motion of Grace’s rocking chair. Though completely still now, Grace feels like her body is somehow still moving, buzzing and antsy and ready to bolt. “Look at me,” the woman demands.
Grace does, through gritted teeth and red eyes.
“When I offer someone a job at this ranch, there are certain…unwritten conditions that go along with the agreement,” she explains carefully, slowly.
“One of those conditions is that, upon accepting, you are acknowledging that my family and I are a selfish bunch. We don’t like to share, and we’re very particular about who we choose to bring into our lives.
Because of that, there’s an expectation that when you agree to be here, you’re also agreeing to stay.
It’s a long-haul kind of commitment.” Grace searches her face for some sign of hesitation, some signal that she’s rethinking her resolve.
She finds nothing. “My point is,” Renata continues, now reaching for Grace’s hand, then gently unfurling her tightly wound fist, “you aren’t going anywhere.
This is your home.” Renata squeezes Grace’s hand.
“I expect you to protect your home. In return, we’ll protect you. You hear me?”
Grace looks down at their intertwined hands, staring at the way Renata’s knuckles are slightly bulging from the tight grip. She squeezes back and gives a single nod. “I hear you.”
“Good.” The woman releases her hand and pats the top of Grace’s thigh as she lifts off the chair.
The heel of her boot clunks against the wood slats of the front porch, and for a moment, she just stands there, looking out at the scene before her.
A queen surveying her kingdom. “You know, my son didn’t even want me to have this conversation with you. ”
“What do you mean?”
Renata turns, folding her arms over her chest. She leans back against one of the unvarnished support beams placed evenly beneath the eave.
The decisiveness in her expression has shifted into something a bit softer, more open.
“He didn’t like that I was going to question you.
” She smiles now, looking down at her boots, remembering.
“Didn’t like that I was insinuating you had something to do with this. ”
Grace swallows roughly, unsure of how to respond. Picturing Crew coming to her defense, irritated with his mother for even considering this line of questioning—the thought fills her with a welcome warmth, an unexpected balm to the morning’s bitterness.
“He’s a lot like me in that way,” Renata says, her smile turning into a knowing thing, like she’s in on a joke of which Grace is wholly unaware.
But she has to know. “In what way?”