Chapter 2
Kayden
The brumby caught me square in the ribs with her back hoof, and I hit the dirt hard enough to see white.
I lay there a moment. Face down. Dust in my teeth. Each breath ached in a way that told me nothing was broken, but I sure as shit was gonna bruise.
I rolled onto my back.
Sunrise was just bleeding into the eastern horizon, but the sky was still dark enough that the stars hadn’t given up yet. This was my favorite moment of the day, that thin crack between night and day when nature hadn’t decided what it wanted to be.
I turned my head toward the brumby. The wild horse had backed herself to the far side of the yard, head high, nostrils flared, every muscle wound as tight as fencing wire and watching me the way she always watched me—like she still hadn’t made up her mind about me.
Fair enough. I was still trying to figure myself out, too.
I spat the dirt off my lips and got up.
“Yeah, all right,” I said. “You got me. Again.”
She was rust-colored, stood fifteen hands high, and was built like she’d been carved straight out of the mountain range I’d found her in.
Solid chest, short back, legs that could cover country most station horses would balk at.
Her coat was rough and dull from years of running wild, but underneath it, she was pure muscle and untamed nerve.
The kind of horse that made people shake their heads and say, Can’t be broken.
I hated that term. Why would you want to break a horse?
I didn’t want to break her. I wanted to ride her and feel that energy beneath me.
For three weeks, I’d been working her every morning in that dead-quiet hour before the sky cracked open and the heat started stacking up like a furnace.
I’d haul myself out of the loft, pull on whatever clothing was closest, and ride Meteor for twenty minutes or so.
Then I’d cycle back to the yard in the western paddock, where I’d cobbled together a corral from old rails and star pickets.
Far enough from the house to avoid an audience.
The last thing I needed was Mitch judging me or Cassidy laughing at me.
It was just me, this wild mare, and Meteor, standing at the rail like he remembered exactly what Cassidy had put him through when she’d trained him.
Meteor still had a wild streak. Every now and then, he liked to remind me who was really boss. Maybe this brumby was doing the same thing. Testing me. Working out my tipping point.
I still hadn’t named her. All our animals had cosmic names. Meteor, Apollo, Pluto. Hell, even the milking cows had them: Moonlight, Luna, Milky Way.
Whatever I chose for this brumby would need to match her fire. I just hadn’t figured it out yet.
Cassidy would’ve had this mare eating out of her hand by now.
My sister had always had a way with animals that defied logic.
She could walk into a paddock full of untamed colts, and they’d settle around her like she was their leader.
It was a gift. I’d never told her that, but I’d thought it a thousand times.
I didn’t have the gift. What I had was stubbornness and a tolerance for getting hit.
I stepped back toward the center of the yard, keeping my hands low and my movements slow. The mare’s ears flicked forward. Her right front hoof stamped once.
I stopped. Waited. Let her study me.
“We’ve done this before,” I said, keeping my voice low and even. “You belt me. I get up. We go again. You’re gonna get bored with it before I do.”
She blew out through her nose, a long, slow exhale that dropped some of the tension from her neck. I took one step. Then another. She didn’t move. I raised my hand, palm flat, and held it about a foot from her muzzle. She stretched her neck forward, just a fraction. Her whiskers brushed my fingers.
I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Just let her decide.
Her muzzle pressed into my palm. Warm and soft, still trembling, but there. She held it for maybe three seconds before pulling back and turning her hindquarters to me.
Three seconds. Three more than yesterday.
Stepping back, I smiled. This was the version of me nobody saw. Not Mitch, not Declan, not even Cass. Out here, before the sun came up and the day turned into whatever shitstorm was waiting, I was someone I almost liked.
I leaned against the rail and watched the mare settle into the corner of the yard again, her tail swishing at nothing.
Over the eastern ridge, the first smear of gold bled into the night sky.
Another forty minutes, and the heat would start.
Another hour after that, and Koolaroo would be awake and loud and full of the kind of problems that made me want to saddle up and ride until I hit the coast.
Not that it was all bad lately.
Cassidy had been spending her mornings in the round yard trying to teach Xavier how to ride, which was easily the best entertainment on the property. The guy from New York was over six feet and rolling in money, but all that money didn’t provide him with any ranching skills.
He sat on a horse like he’d learned balance from YouTube videos. Arms too stiff. Legs all wrong. He kept trying to negotiate with the horse as if it were a boardroom deal he could talk his way out of. He’d fallen off enough times to make most newcomers quit.
Not him, though. He kept getting back on. Every morning. Covered in sweat, swearing under his breath, grinning at Cassidy like she was the only thing in the world worth looking at.
I’d watched them from the machinery shed one morning and caught myself smiling, which had pissed me off, because smiling before I had a beer in my hand wasn’t something I did.
Cassidy deserved someone like that. Someone who made her feel special. Someone who didn’t quit.
Since everything had come out about Cass not being our biological sister, I’d been turning it over in my head.
She wasn’t Frank’s by blood or Mom’s. It had been a bloody shock when she’d told us all.
The damn air had been knocked out of us, and the three of us brothers had been scrambling to make sense of the secret she’d concealed for over twenty years.
The shock had landed differently for each of us.
Mitch had gone practical. Declan went quiet.
I’d gone to the back paddock and kicked the shit out of a feed drum, which had solved nothing but had felt good at the time.
But it wasn’t Cass I was pissed off at. I didn’t give a damn that she wasn’t my blood. Cassidy was my sister. She’d been my sister the day I was born, and she’d be my sister the day I died, and anyone who tried to use that against her would have to come through me first.
Bring it on.
I was pissed off at my fucking father. He’d screwed around on Mom, and I couldn’t help thinking that was the reason she’d pissed off and left us. And that made me pissed off at her. Since the day she’d left, I’d been worried about her. I’d even wondered if she was alive.
Now, I felt nothing but anger. Mom didn’t deserve my pity. And Dad didn’t deserve shit from me either. In fact, if he turned up alive, I’d wrap my hands around his neck and squeeze until the light bled out of his eyes.
Though I’d have to get in line, because all my siblings wanted to kill Frank.
I was filling the mare’s water trough from the tank when footsteps padded along the track, too quiet to be any of my brothers.
Rose appeared around the side of the shed in her housedress and sandals, gray hair pinned back like always, and a tea towel twisted in her hands.
Rose had been running the Koolaroo homestead since before any of us could walk.
She cooked sometimes, cleaned, did the laundry, and held the place together in ways that made her more essential to the ranch than half the equipment sitting in the machinery shed.
“There you are,” she said, like she’d known exactly where I’d be.
“Morning, Rose.”
“There’s a police officer at the house. I can’t find Mitch or Declan, and Cassidy’s taken Xavier out for a morning ride.” She looked at me the way she always did when delivering news she knew I wouldn’t like—calm, firm, and completely unmoved by whatever my face was about to do.
My jaw tightened. “What do they want?”
“Didn’t say. Just asked to speak with someone from the family.”
A cop. At Koolaroo. At this hour.
Couldn’t be good.
Frank had drilled into us since we were kids that you couldn’t trust the cops.
Don’t talk to ‘em, and don’t give ‘em a damn thing.
It had always struck me as strange advice coming from a man whose only real friend was Senior Sergeant Bob Ackerman. The two of them went back decades, thick as thieves, which, given the amount of bullshit we’d uncovered about Frank since he’d vanished, probably wasn’t far off the truth.
“Tell them to wait,” I said. “I’ll be up when I’m done.”
Rose gave me a look that said, Don’t be difficult. “I’ll make coffee. You want one?”
“Yeah. Thanks, Rose.”
She turned and walked back up the track, unhurried, as though police officers turning up before breakfast was a daily event at Koolaroo.
I turned back to the mare, and she stomped her foot again.
“How about Comet? Huh? Cause you’re a ball of fire and your color matches.”
She snorted.
“Yep. I agree. Comet it is.”
With one eye still on me, she trotted to the trough, and as she drank in long, slow pulls, her ears relaxed for the first time all morning. I leaned on the rail, watching her, and tried not to let the tension coiling in my gut ruin the best part of my day.
The last thing I needed was a cop sniffing around the property, not with Frank gone and me and my siblings still trying to untangle all the bullshit he’d left behind.