Jace
The bay gelding in trailer six still wouldn't back out.
He'd planted his hooves on the trailer floor with the particular stubbornness of an animal who'd decided the world outside the trailer was worse than the trailer.
Eleven horses already unloaded, three vendor trucks moved, one panicked volunteer talked down off a bull pen rail, and it was still ten minutes shy of seven a.m. The gelding was the tenth thing on my morning checklist and the first thing that wasn't going to work on schedule.
"Easy." I kept one hand flat against his shoulder, my voice in the lower register horses settle into. "Nobody's asking you to like it. I just need you to move. Backward. One foot at a time."
His ears swiveled, but his weight stayed put.
Behind me, the grounds were already roaring.
Generators chugged, gates clanged into place, somebody's truck radio bled country music into the dust-thick air. We’d had months of planning compressed into one Memorial Day weekend, and every seam showed if you knew where to look.
I knew where to look. That was what they paid me for.
I let the gelding stand. Pressure wouldn't move him. Only time would and time wasn’t really on my side.
I scanned the grounds while I waited. Two handlers walked broncs from the north lot — on schedule.
Concession trailers lined up along the east fence — on schedule.
Dawson's crew bolted the last panels on the catch pen — behind by maybe twenty minutes, but they'd finish.
The vendor with the lemonade rig was supposed to be parked thirty feet east of where she'd parked, but I'd let her find that out when the corn dog truck showed up at seven thirty. Some lessons stuck better that way.
Then a flash of red on the south side caught my eye.
A woman with a telephoto lens crouched behind the trailer Dawson's crew was working.
Her blonde hair was coming loose from a knot, and she had on fitted jeans and a press lanyard half-tucked into her tank top.
She was framing a shot of the catch-pen build with the focus of someone who hadn't lowered the viewfinder in over a minute.
I clocked her, filed her, and moved on. Press credentials meant Slade had cleared her. It also meant she wasn’t my problem. Good, because I had enough of them to last me a lifetime.
The gelding shifted his weight. I felt it through my palm before he committed to it.
"There you go." I guided him backward one step, then another, until his hooves hit packed dirt and the trailer wall stopped being his horizon. His head dropped. Tension bled out of his neck the way it always did for a horse once they remembered what sky looked like.
I clipped on a lead rope and walked him toward the holding pens.
The photographer had moved.
I tracked her on instinct with the same scan I ran on every body within forty feet of an active gate or pen.
She'd worked her way along the trailer line and now crouched behind trailer eight.
It was the two-horse bumper-pull with the roan mare and the paint gelding needed for the barrel warm-ups.
It was also the next rig I had to open. The rig whose rear gate, when released, swung in a hundred-and-twenty-degree arc that needed to clear the patch of ground she was kneeling on.
I settled the gelding fast. Latched the pen. Started walking.
She was still crouched down when I got there with her camera pressed to her face. Both knees rested in the dirt and her boots were angled wrong for a quick rise. Her whole body had committed to the shot.
"Hey."
She didn't hear me. Or registered the sound and filed it under not-relevant. Her finger pressed the shutter. Click. Click. Click.
I reached for the latch with one hand and caught the gate with my forearm before it could swing. Three hundred pounds of steel jarred up through my shoulder and stopped six inches above her head.
“You need to move."
She startled. Jerked the camera down and twisted, her eyes wide — hazel, gold-green in the early light — and found me holding the gate with one arm and my body angled between her and the metal.
"What—"
"You're in my swing zone." I kept my voice level. The mare inside the trailer stamped at the noise. "If I open this gate, it hits you. You need to move. Now."
She scrambled up. Caught her boot on something and stumbled sideways. She steadied herself against the trailer fender and straightened fast. Color climbed her cheeks.
"I didn't see—" She stopped. Reset. Squared her shoulders instead of shrinking. "Okay. That was my fault. I wasn't paying attention.”
I let the gate swing the rest of the way. Guided it with both hands now that she was clear. The mare inside shifted, eager to move.
"You can't kneel behind active rigs," I said. “Stay clear of anywhere on the grounds where a gate or a panel can swing. Same rule applies to the catch pens, the bucking chutes, the loading ramps. You stand or you stay out."
"I said it was my fault."
I glanced over. She had the camera cradled against her chest now, her chin lifted.
"I know what I did wrong. I won't do it again. You don't have to walk me through it."
I held her gaze for a beat, then two. She didn't look away.
The mare nudged my shoulder, impatient with the delay.
"Fine."
I turned back to the trailer, unclipped the mare, and backed her down the ramp. She came willingly, calmer than the gelding had been. Some horses just needed somebody who wasn't in a hurry.
I expected the photographer to leave. She didn't. When I led the mare toward the pens, she followed at a safe distance, about ten feet back, off to one side. She stayed far enough back that I wouldn't have to ask her again.
"You're Jace Walker, right?" she called.
I didn't slow down. "Who's asking?"
"Bella Robbins. I’m from Western Dust magazine. Slade cleared me a couple of weeks ago." She held up the lanyard so I could see the badge. "I need handler access."
I’d assumed she was a photographer, but I didn’t realize she was on assignment.
That meant she'd be poking her lens into every corner of these grounds all weekend long. I couldn’t deny her access because Slade had already handed it to her.
The only thing left to negotiate was how much trouble she was going to get into using it.
I settled the mare in her pen. Latched it. Checked the water level in the adjacent pen because I needed something to do besides standing still in front of Bella Robbins.
Then I turned.
She’d moved to about six feet away and stood studying me with the same focus I'd seen through her viewfinder a minute ago. Her hands rested on the camera strap, fingers calloused along the pads, two knuckles on her right hand scabbed over from something recent.
She'd taken a fall recently. Or pulled a camera out of a place it shouldn't have been. I filed that, too.
"Handler access means you stay behind the painted yellow lines at all times," I said.
"If someone tells you to move, you move first and ask questions later.
You don't kneel within a gate's arc. You don't cross between a handler and an animal.
You don't put your eye to a viewfinder in any space where I haven't said you can plant yourself. "
“Sounds fair." She nodded.
Then her hand drifted to her camera. She lifted it, framed me against the pen rail, and fired off three shots before I'd registered the movement.
I stepped sideways out of her frame. Fuck. "Don't."
“Why not? I’ve got natural light and a good angle.” She lowered the camera, but her mouth tilted up at one corner. Not apologetic. Not quite amused. Just acknowledging that she'd done it and wasn't going to pretend she hadn't. "It's a great shot. The hat shadow across your jaw, the—"
"I don't want my picture taken."
"Why?"
“It doesn’t matter."
"Okay." She didn't push. Just held the camera at her side. "I'll mark them as no-publish. Reference files only."
I should have walked away. My phone pinged with another message and I was running behind. The south gate hinges were sticking, and the paint gelding still needed unloading. Instead I stood there, because she was still watching me with that careful systematic gaze.
"You hold everything in your shoulders," she said.
"What?"
"Your shoulders." She gestured toward her own. "Everyone else out here is wearing the stress on their faces, in their voices, in their hands. You're calm everywhere except right there where you’re locked in."
I stared at her.
How had she noticed that? In less than two minutes? Without me saying a damn word?
She'd already cataloged something I worked to keep below the surface. From being responsible for a system that could fail in fourteen different directions before lunch.
“Do you always profile strangers?"
“It’s an occupational hazard." She lifted one shoulder. "Photographers read bodies. The way somebody carries weight tells you what kind of shot they'll give you. Yours says you don't relax. Even when you're standing still."
My jaw tightened. I didn't like being read. I especially didn't like being read by a woman who was going to be inside my operational radius for the next seventy-two hours.
"Stay behind the lines, Ms. Robbins."
"Bella."
I didn't repeat it.
She waited another beat, her gold-green eyes holding mine with something I might have called a challenge if she'd put any weight behind it.
She didn't have to. She just stood there until the silence belonged to her, then turned and walked toward the arena, her camera already rising, her loose hair catching the sunlight as it slipped from its knot.
She walked confident and unfussy, like somebody who'd never doubted whether the floor would hold her.
I watched her longer than I needed to.
She paused near the bleachers to frame a shot of two volunteers stringing bunting along the rail.
Then she crouched low again, but in open space this time.
There was nothing behind her but packed dirt and sky.
She'd taken the warning and adjusted. Maybe she was competent after all.
Just reckless about what she'd put her body between when the image had her.
Someone called my name from the south gate. Slade's hinges. The paint gelding still in the trailer. Fourteen things in the next hour that needed my attention.
I turned away. But the image of her stayed. I could still see her crouched in the dust, her camera up, seeing what most of the grounds didn't see they were showing her.
Including me.