Chapter Thirteen
The call came at nine-thirty on a Tuesday night, and the voice on the other end was crying too hard to make sense.
"Teagan—they're here—the horses—"
"Slow down." Teagan pressed the phone harder against her ear, her free hand already reaching for her boots. She was in Striker's room. His bed. His sheets that smelled like them both now. "Who is this?"
"It's Lacey. Lacey from the circuit." A ragged breath, then words tumbling fast. "I'm at the Canyon fairground.
There's men—six, maybe more—they came in trucks and they're in the stabling area.
They cut two horses, Teagan. Wire on the legs.
And now they're torching trailers in the lot and I can hear the horses screaming and I don't know what to—"
"Are you safe?"
"I'm in my truck. I locked the doors. But the horses—"
"Stay in your truck. Lock it and stay down. I'm coming."
She hung up and was on her feet before the phone hit the mattress. Striker was already awake—he'd heard enough, his body shifting from sleep to combat in the space between one breath and the next.
"Canyon fairground," Teagan said, shoving her feet into her boots. "Boggs. Has to be. Six men, wire cuts on horses, trailers burning."
Striker grabbed his phone and was calling before she finished the sentence.
"Ridge. Canyon fairground, now. Boggs and six.
Full crew, armed and rolling. Get Hatchet and Rascal.
" He was pulling on his cut while he talked, moving with the cold efficiency of a man whose body had done this a thousand times. "Ten minutes."
He ended the call and looked at her. "Stay here."
"No."
"Teagan—"
"There are injured horses at that fairground.
" She grabbed her jacket off the chair and shoved her arms through the sleeves.
"Panicked, bleeding, twelve-hundred-pound animals in pain who will kill anyone who comes near them unless they're handled by someone who knows what fear looks like in a horse.
" She met his eyes. "That's me. Not you. Not your brothers. Me."
His jaw clenched. She watched the fight happen behind his eyes—the part of him that wanted to lock her in this room warring with the part that knew she was right.
"You stay with the horses," he said. "You don't engage the crew. You don't go near the fighting."
"I'll be too busy saving animals to bother with your little brawl."
Something flashed across his face—anger and pride and that possessive heat that hit her like a wall every time he looked at her like she was something he couldn't afford to lose.
"You stay where I can see you," he said. "Or I swear to God, Teagan—"
"You'll what?" She stepped into his space, chin up. "Ground me? Send me to my room?"
He grabbed the back of her neck and kissed her. Hard, fast, the kind of kiss that was a brand and a promise and a threat all at once. She grabbed his cut and kissed him back just as hard.
"Stay alive," he said against her mouth.
"Same to you."
They were in the trucks and rolling in four minutes.
Striker drove the lead truck with Teagan beside him, Ridge and Hatchet in the cab behind them, Rascal and six brothers in two more trucks bringing up the rear.
The convoy tore down the highway at ninety, headlights cutting through the darkness, the Panhandle night pressing in on all sides.
Teagan smelled the Canyon fairground before she saw it.
Smoke. Thick, acrid, chemical—the stink of burning rubber and melting plastic. Then the glow appeared over the tree line, orange and flickering, throwing shadows across the access road. Striker killed the headlights and rolled the truck to a stop two hundred yards out.
"There." Teagan pointed. Two trailers fully engulfed in the parking lot, flames climbing thirty feet, throwing enough light to see the figures moving between them. Men. Swinging bats, smashing windows, kicking in tack compartment doors. And beyond the parking lot, in the stabling area—
The screaming.
Teagan's hands fisted in her lap. She knew that sound. Every horseperson knew that sound—the high, ragged shriek of an animal in pain and terror, the kind of sound that reached into your chest and squeezed.
"Go," she said. "Now."
Striker looked at her for one second. Then he hit the gas.
The trucks exploded into the fairground lot in a V formation, headlights blazing, engines roaring. The effect was immediate—Boggs's crew scattered like roaches, men dropping bats and tools and running for the shadows between the burning trailers.
Striker braked hard at the stabling area entrance. "Go. I've got the crew."
Teagan was out of the truck before it stopped rocking.
She ran past the burning trailers, past the smashed tack rooms and slashed tires, past the chaos of the lot where Striker and his brothers were already engaging Boggs's men with fists and gunfire.
The stabling area was ahead—temporary panels, hay bales, the acrid overlay of smoke mixing with the copper smell of blood.
Two horses. Both standing, both trembling, both bleeding from their front legs.
The first was a big sorrel gelding, maybe sixteen hands, pressed into the back corner of his stall with his ears pinned flat and his eyes rolling white.
Blood ran down both front legs in dark rivulets, pooling in the shavings beneath him.
Wire cuts—she could see the pattern, the same vicious horizontal slashes that had nearly ended Amy Reese's horse.
Teagan slowed her approach. Made herself small. Dropped her shoulders, softened her eyes, let the tension drain out of her body language even though every nerve was screaming.
"Easy, big man." She kept her voice low, steady, the same tone she'd used on a thousand spooked horses. "Easy. Nobody's going to hurt you anymore."
The gelding snorted, head high, ready to bolt or strike. Twelve hundred pounds of terror and pain.
Teagan stopped. Waited. Let him see her. Let him smell her—sweat and leather and horse, familiar scents that said I'm one of yours.
One breath. Two. Three.
The gelding's head dropped an inch. His ears flicked forward, then back, then forward again. Teagan took a step. He flinched but didn't bolt. Another step. His nostrils flared, pulling in her scent. Another step, and she was close enough to touch.
She laid her hand on his neck. He trembled—whole-body shakes that she felt through her palm—but he let her touch him. She ran her hand along his shoulder, down to the point where the blood started.
The wire cuts were deep. Two on each leg, sliced through the skin and into the tissue beneath. Not deep enough to hit tendon—thank God—but deep enough to bleed hard and hurt worse. Whoever had done this knew exactly how much damage to do. Enough to maim. Not enough to kill.
"I know," she murmured. "I know it hurts. Hold still for me."
She stripped off her jacket, tore the lining into strips, and started wrapping.
Pressure first—stop the bleeding, stabilize the wounds, keep the horse still enough to prevent further damage.
The gelding flinched when she touched the cuts but held, his head dropping lower as her hands worked, her voice a constant stream of calm that was half words and half tone.
The first leg wrapped, she moved to the second. Behind her, gunfire cracked through the lot—Striker's crew engaging, the sharp reports mixing with the shouts and the crash of bodies against metal. She didn't look up. Couldn't. The horse needed her hands steady and her focus absolute.
Boots on gravel. Close, fast, coming from the wrong direction.
Teagan looked up in time to see a thick-bodied man burst out from behind the hay bales at the end of the stabling row. He was running—not toward her, but toward the parking lot exit, three more men on his heels. His face caught the firelight from the burning trailers, and she saw him clearly.
Flat features. Mean eyes. Hands stained dark with something that wasn't dirt.
Blood. Horse blood.
Boggs. It had to be. The one who specialized in animals. The one who enjoyed it.
He saw her crouched at the gelding's legs and their eyes met across the stabling area. For one second, something ugly and amused crossed his face—a smirk, like he was proud of his work. Like the horse bleeding under her hands was a signature he wanted credit for.
Then Striker came around the corner of the stabling area at a dead run, and the smirk vanished.
Boggs bolted. He and his three men cut through the arena gate and disappeared into the darkened fairground—past the bucking chutes, into the shadows of the main arena where the lights were off and the dirt floor swallowed the sound of their boots.
Striker didn't stop. He went through the arena gate like a bullet and vanished after them into the dark.
Teagan turned back to the horse.
Her hands found the wire cuts. Her fingers worked the torn jacket lining into pressure wraps, tying them off above the wounds, checking the tightness, checking the pulse in the pastern to make sure she wasn't cutting circulation.
The gelding stood still under her hands, his trembling easing as the pressure stopped the worst of the bleeding.
The second horse—a smaller bay mare two stalls down—was in better shape. Cuts on one leg only, shallow, the wire having been interrupted before it bit deep. Teagan moved to her, talked her calm, wrapped the leg with what was left of her jacket lining.
Lacey appeared at the stabling entrance, tear-streaked and shaking but upright. "I called the vet in town. She's twenty minutes out."
"Good. Keep pressure on the sorrel's wraps. Don't let him move." Teagan tied off the last knot on the bay mare's leg and pressed her palm flat against the bandage. Warm. Wet. Holding.
From the direction of the darkened arena, she heard nothing. No gunshots. No shouts. Just the vast silence of a space built for noise, swallowing whatever was happening inside it.
Teagan wrapped the last inch of lining around the bay mare's fetlock, knotted it tight, and pressed her bloody hands flat against the horse's shoulder.
Find him, she thought. Find him and make him pay for every animal he ever touched.
And somewhere in the dark arena, Striker was hunting.