Chapter Four
Dawn on the river road was Tessa's church.
The sky bleeding pink over the cotton fields. The mist rising off the Mississippi in ghostly ribbons. The sound of her horse's hooves on packed gravel, steady as a heartbeat, eating up the straightaway one stride at a time.
This was where she came to pray—not with words, but with speed and precision and the perfect communion between rider and horse that made barrel racing feel less like a sport and more like flying.
She'd been out here every morning since Thursday, split lip healing, palms scabbed over, fury compressed into the kind of focus that won championships. The fisherman had been there too—she'd catch glimpses of him on the riverbank below, line in the water, watching without watching.
He never waved. Never called out. Just existed in her peripheral vision like a promise she hadn't asked for but was starting to count on.
Sunday morning, she pushed the horse harder than usual.
The qualifying math was brutal. Sixth in the region meant she needed to climb two spots in three months, which meant shaving fractions of seconds off her barrel times, which meant training until her arms shook and her horse was blowing and every muscle in her body screamed for rest.
She didn't rest.
Rest was for people who had safety nets. Who had backup plans and family money and options that didn't involve sleeping in a truck cab between rodeos.
Tessa had the horse, the trailer, and the straightaway.
That was it.
She was running the horse back toward her parked trailer when she heard the engines.
Two trucks. White pickups with Tatum Construction logos. Coming fast from the north, dust billowing behind them like a warning.
Not again.
She pulled up hard, the horse dancing beneath her, and assessed. The trucks were maybe half a mile out. Her trailer was a quarter mile behind her. The riverbank was to her left, steep and brush-covered.
No good options.
The trucks closed the distance faster than she'd hoped. Four men this time—she could see them through the windshields, construction vests and hard expressions. They weren't slowing down.
Tessa wheeled the horse toward the trailer. If she could get him loaded, get the truck started—
The lead pickup cut her off, skidding to a stop across the road, blocking her path. The second truck pulled up behind her, boxing her in.
Four doors opened. Four men stepped out.
The one in front was big, broad, with the look of someone who'd been swinging hammers his whole life. Frank Hebert, she remembered from what Muddy had told her. The foreman who ran intimidation like a construction site.
"Miss Mayhew." Hebert's voice was friendly, almost pleasant. "Mr. Tatum's getting tired of asking nicely."
"Then maybe Mr. Tatum should learn to take no for an answer."
Hebert smiled. It didn't reach his eyes. "See, that's the thing. Mr. Tatum doesn't take no. Never has. It's what makes him successful."
The other men were spreading out, flanking her. One of them had a knife—not threatening with it, just holding it loose at his side. Another was moving toward her horse.
Tessa's blood went cold.
"You touch my horse," she said, "and I will kill you."
"Big words from a little girl on a big animal." The man with the knife laughed. "Maybe we just need to remove the animal from the equation."
He reached for the bridle.
And that's when the riverbank exploded.
Muddy came up the slope like the water rising—no warning, no sound, just sudden and inevitable. He hit the man with the knife from behind, one arm around his throat, and the sound of impact was wet and final.
The knife-man dropped.
Hebert spun, eyes going wide. "What the—"
Muddy was already moving. He caught the second man with an elbow to the jaw that sent him spinning, then kicked the third man's knee out from under him with the kind of brutal efficiency that spoke of practice.
Three men down in as many seconds.
Hebert went for his belt—gun, knife, something—but Muddy was faster. He closed the distance with that slow-looking stride that somehow covered ground faster than running, and his fist connected with Hebert's face with a crack that echoed off the cotton fields.
Hebert staggered back against the truck, blood streaming from his nose.
"The river road belongs to the Destroyers," Muddy said. His voice was flat, calm, almost conversational. "The woman belongs to the Destroyers. You come near either one again, I'll put you in the water and let the catfish sort it out."
Hebert spat blood. "Tatum will—"
Muddy hit him again. This time Hebert went down and stayed down.
The silence that followed was broken only by the horse's nervous breathing and the groan of one of the men trying to crawl toward the trucks. Muddy watched him go without moving to stop him.
"Tessa." His voice was soft now, the violence tucked away as quickly as it had appeared. "You okay?"
She realized she was shaking. Not from fear—from adrenaline, from the speed of what had just happened, from the sight of a man who moved like water suddenly moving like a flood.
"I'm fine." Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "They were going to hurt my horse."
"I know."
"How did you—"
"I've been on the riverbank every morning since Thursday." Muddy stepped over one of the fallen men without looking down. "Fishing below, watching above. Figured they'd try again eventually."
"You've been watching me for four days?"
"Watching the road." His eyes met hers, dark and steady. "You just happen to be on it."
The distinction should have annoyed her. Instead, something warm bloomed in her chest—the particular warmth of knowing someone had been there the whole time, silent and patient, waiting to catch her if she fell.
"We need to move," Muddy said. "Hebert will call for backup when he wakes up. Tatum will send more men."
"My trailer—"
"Leave it. I'll have brothers pick it up later." He gestured toward the riverbank. "My truck's below. We take the river access roads, they can't follow."
"What about my horse?"
"He's coming with us." Muddy's voice carried certainty. "I know a place. Old fish camp my family used for fifty years. Safe, secure, off any map Tatum's people would have."
Tessa looked at the men on the ground. At Hebert, unconscious and bleeding. At the trucks blocking the road. At the straightaway she'd been training on for two years, now a battlefield.
The smart thing would be to run. Pack up, leave Greenville, find another route in another town and pretend none of this had ever happened.
But running meant giving up the qualifying window. Running meant letting Tatum win. Running meant being the kind of person who stopped fighting when the fight got hard.
She'd never been that person.
"Lead the way," she said.
Muddy nodded once and started down the riverbank. Tessa followed on horseback, picking her way through the brush, trusting the animal to find its footing on the steep slope.
The truck was parked in a clearing near the water—hidden from the road, invisible unless you knew exactly where to look. Muddy loaded the horse into a stock trailer that must have been waiting there since before dawn, and Tessa climbed into the passenger seat without being asked.
They pulled out onto a dirt track that wound along the river's edge, screened from the main road by a wall of cottonwoods and brush. The Mississippi gleamed brown and slow to their left, the current moving at its own pace, keeping its own schedule.
"How long have you been planning this?" Tessa asked.
"Since Thursday." Muddy didn't take his eyes off the track. "Figured Hebert would hit you again. Figured you wouldn't change your route. So I set up an exit nobody but a river man would know."
"You've been fishing with a stock trailer hidden in the brush?"
"I've been fishing with contingencies." The corner of his mouth twitched. "The river teaches you to plan for high water."
They drove for maybe twenty minutes, following routes Tessa had never known existed—dirt tracks and service roads and gaps in the tree line that looked like nothing but opened onto clear paths. Finally, Muddy turned down a narrow lane and they emerged into a clearing.
The fish camp was old, weathered, built from cypress planks that had been standing since before Tessa was born. A small house, a paddock with a lean-to shelter, a dock stretching out into the river. Simple and solid and completely invisible from any main road.
"Walsh fish camp," Muddy said. "My grandfather built it in the forties. My father ran trotlines from here for thirty years." He killed the engine. "Nobody knows about it who shouldn't."
Tessa climbed out and looked around. The river moved past, slow and constant, the same water that had been flowing since before there were roads or construction crews or men like Hugh Tatum.
"It's perfect," she said.
"It's safe." Muddy opened the stock trailer and led the horse out, handling the animal with the easy competence of someone who'd been around livestock his whole life. "Paddock's got good footing. Water trough's fed from the river. You can work him here if you need to."
"The barrel pattern—"
"Won't be as good as the straightaway. But it'll be something." He led the horse toward the paddock, and Tessa followed. "We hold here until I know what Tatum's next move is. Then we figure out how to take the fight to him."
She watched him secure the horse in the paddock, checking the water, running his hands down the animal's legs with quiet expertise. He did everything the same way—slow, deliberate, thorough. No wasted motion. No unnecessary words.
The river, she realized. He moved like the river. Constant, patient, impossible to rush. Everything happening at exactly the pace it needed to happen, no faster and no slower.
It was the opposite of how she moved—wound tight, compressed, always running toward the next turn at maximum speed.
And somehow, watching him check the perimeter of the fish camp with that unhurried certainty, she thought he might be the first person who'd ever matched the silence she needed before a run.
Not filling the space with chatter or questions or demands.
Just existing. Waiting. Being present without requiring anything from her.
"Muddy."
He turned, one hand on the paddock fence.
"Thank you," she said. "For being there this morning."
"I'll always be there."
Four words. Simple, direct, carrying more weight than most people's speeches.
She believed him.
And that terrified her more than anything Tatum's men could do.