Chapter 6
The rodeo grounds smelled like dust and nerves, and Dana couldn't decide which one was hers.
Duchess danced beneath her in the warm-up pen, the mare feeding off the energy that crackled through the venue like a live wire. Riders clustered in tight groups, speaking low, cutting glances toward the parking lot where three Harleys sat gleaming in the morning sun like a declaration of war.
Everyone knew what had happened to Marigold. The circuit was small enough for that kind of news to travel in hours. What they didn't know—what they were trying to figure out by staring at the bikes and the men leaning against them—was what Dana had done about it.
She'd brought backup that wore leather and settled arguments with their fists.
"Easy, girl." Dana stroked Duchess's neck, steadying her own breathing as much as the horse's. "We've done this a hundred times."
But not like this. Never with men watching from the grandstands who'd killed her horse and promised to kill the rest. Never with a prospect and his brothers patrolling the fence line like sentries.
She could see Turnbuckle from here. He'd positioned himself near the contestant gate where riders entered and exited the arena—the choke point, the place where anyone wanting to get to her would have to pass through him first. He wasn't watching the competition.
He was watching the crowd, the parking lot, the perimeter.
Scanning faces and hands with that coiled intensity she was starting to recognize as his version of calm.
Fathom had taken the north side. A third brother she didn't know—older, harder, with the kind of stillness that made people cross the street—covered the stock pens.
Three bikers at a rodeo. The announcer hadn't mentioned it. He didn't need to.
"Dana Scofield." A voice behind her. She turned in the saddle.
Trey Malvern, a tie-down roper who'd been on the circuit as long as she had, pulled his horse alongside hers. Good rider. Decent man. Eyes tight with something that looked a lot like fear.
"You should have scratched."
"Good morning to you too, Trey."
"I'm serious. Fogarty's people are here. I saw two of them in the stands—the ones who handle the payouts." He dropped his voice. "Whatever you think those bikers are going to do for you, it's not enough. Fogarty owns half the riders on this circuit."
"He doesn't own me."
"That's what Marigold proved."
The words landed like a kick to the chest. Dana held his gaze until he looked away.
"I'm competing," she said. "If that scares you, scratch yourself."
Trey shook his head and rode off. She watched him go, her jaw aching from how hard she was clenching it.
Half the riders on this circuit. She'd known Fogarty's reach was deep, but hearing it from someone like Trey—someone who'd always been straight with her—made the scope feel suffocating.
Duchess tossed her head, impatient.
"You're right," Dana murmured. "Doesn't matter how many he owns. He doesn't own us."
The barrel pattern was a cloverleaf—three turns at speed, each one a conversation between rider and horse about trust and timing. Dana had run it ten thousand times, in arenas from county fairs to regional championships, building the muscle memory that turned calculation into instinct.
Today, the pattern felt like defiance.
She entered the arena at a gallop, Duchess's hooves biting into the dirt, and the crowd noise dropped to a hum beneath the thunder of her own heartbeat.
First barrel—tight turn, Duchess leaning so hard her shoulder nearly scraped the metal.
Second barrel—wider approach, compensating for the mare's tendency to drift right. Third barrel—
She saw them.
Two men in the grandstands, sitting still while everyone around them moved. Watching her with the flat attention of men who were cataloging, not cheering.
Fogarty's people.
Dana's hands tightened on the reins. Duchess felt the tension and surged, reading it as a cue, and they blasted home with a time that made the announcer's voice crack.
Seventeen-point-four seconds. Second place.
Not her best. Not her worst. Enough to hold her ranking, enough to prove she was still in the game.
Enough to make Fogarty's men report that his threats hadn't worked.
She pulled Duchess down to a trot outside the arena, her heart hammering, sweat running down her spine despite the morning cool. The adrenaline tasted like copper and victory—not the clean victory of winning, but the dirty kind that came from showing up when someone told you not to.
Turnbuckle was waiting at the contestant gate.
He didn't congratulate her. Didn't comment on the time. He fell into step beside Duchess like he belonged there, one hand resting on the mare's neck as they walked toward the trailer.
"Two in the stands," he said quietly.
"I saw them."
"They left after your run. Headed for the parking lot."
"Following us?"
"Not anymore." Something in his tone suggested Fathom had handled that particular problem. "You rode well."
"I rode scared."
"You rode anyway." His hand was still on Duchess's neck, and Dana noticed the mare leaning into his touch—the animal equivalent of approval. Duchess didn't like strangers. Duchess barely liked Dana most mornings.
"She likes you," Dana said, surprised.
"Animals know who means them harm." He looked up at her, squinting against the sun, and she caught something unguarded in his expression before he shuttered it. "Your horse has good instincts."
"Better than mine?"
"Yours brought you to the compound. I'd say they're about equal."
They loaded Duchess in silence that felt companionable rather than tense. Fathom appeared with a nod—all clear—and the third brother materialized from the stock pens like he'd been part of the fencing.
The ride back wasn't to her facility.
Turnbuckle had told her the plan that morning: after the event, the horses go to the compound. Temporary paddock, secure perimeter, brothers on rotating watch. Her facility was compromised—too isolated, too many approach routes, too easy for Strand to hit again with numbers that actually mattered.
She'd argued. Of course she'd argued. That facility was the only real home she'd ever had, the twenty acres of leased ground where she'd built something from nothing.
But her horses were alive because Turnbuckle had fought five men with a hay hook, and she wasn't stupid enough to think luck held forever.
The compound looked different in daylight.
Last time she'd been here, she'd been running on fury and desperation, seeing nothing but the chapel and the men inside it.
Now she noticed the details—the well-maintained bikes, the organized chaos of a community that functioned on its own rules.
Kids playing near the fire pit. Women moving through the space with the comfortable authority of people who belonged.
Not what she'd expected from a biker compound. Not what movies had taught her to imagine.
Turnbuckle directed her trailer to a paddock area behind the main building—fenced, shaded, with a small barn that looked recently repaired. Someone had laid fresh shavings in the stalls and filled the water troughs.
"This wasn't here two days ago," she said.
"Wrench and I built it yesterday."
Dana stared at him. "You built a paddock. For my horses."
"Built's a strong word. We fixed the fencing, hung some gates, cleaned the stalls.
" He shrugged like it was nothing—like spending a day constructing shelter for animals that weren't his was just another task on a list. "The bones were already here.
Some brother's family was boarding horses a while back. "
She opened her mouth to say thank you and couldn't get the words past the tightness in her throat.
Turnbuckle seemed to understand. He turned away, giving her the privacy to feel whatever she was feeling, and started unloading equipment from the trailer with the easy competence of someone who'd moved heavy things his whole life.
Dana unloaded her horses.
Duchess went into the first stall like she owned it, immediately investigating the shavings with the critical attention of a mare who had standards. Jackpot was less certain—the young gelding paced and snorted, overwhelmed by new smells and unfamiliar territory.
"Hey." Dana caught his halter, steadied him. "I know. Everything's different. But you're safe here."
The gelding huffed against her palm, unconvinced.
"Give him time." Turnbuckle appeared at the stall door. "New territory takes adjustment."
"Speaking from experience?"
His mouth curved—that almost-smile she was beginning to catalog. "Something like that."
A woman appeared at the paddock gate—Morgan Blake, the one Turnbuckle had mentioned was married to the brother called Hoist. She carried a bucket of grooming supplies and wore the practical expression of someone who understood horses.
"Cara called ahead," Morgan said, setting the bucket down. "She's our vet tech—said to tell you she'll check both horses tomorrow, make sure the transport didn't stress them. I brought brushes, hoof picks, and fly spray. The good kind, not the dollar-store garbage."
Dana blinked. "You didn't have to—"
"Honey, you brought horses onto compound property. That makes them family." Morgan's smile was warm but matter-of-fact. "Around here, we take care of family."
The word hit Dana somewhere she didn't have defenses for.
Family. She'd never had one. Not really.
Foster homes that expired, trainers who moved on, a circuit full of people who'd scratch their own mothers for a better time.
She'd built her version of family from horsehair and stubbornness, and now a woman she'd met five minutes ago was offering fly spray and calling it belonging.
"Thank you," Dana managed.
"Don't thank me yet. Wait until you try Rachel's chili at the Saturday cookout." Morgan winked. "That's the real initiation."
The afternoon settled into something Dana hadn't felt in weeks: routine without fear.
She groomed both horses until their coats gleamed, working through the familiar motions—curry comb in circles, hard brush for dirt, soft brush for shine. The rhythm of it calmed her the way it always did, hands and muscle memory taking over while her mind processed everything else.
She'd placed second. She'd competed with killers in the stands and bikers on the perimeter and come out the other side with her ranking intact and her horses alive.
She'd moved onto a motorcycle club's property because a prospect with a scar on his jaw had built a paddock for animals he'd never met.
Through the barn's open door, she could see Turnbuckle moving through the compound.
He stopped to talk with Breach, the two men exchanging words she couldn't hear.
Then he crossed to the fire pit where brothers were gathering, accepted a beer from someone, and stood at the edges of the group with the restless energy of a man who hadn't quite earned his place yet but was getting closer.
She recognized that energy.
She'd carried it herself every time she walked into a new foster home. Every time she showed up at a rodeo where nobody knew her name. The desperate need to prove you belonged, to earn through effort what other people got by birth.
He caught her watching. Held her gaze across the compound, across the noise and the smoke and the distance between a prospect trying to earn his patch and a barrel racer trying to keep her horses alive.
Then he lifted his beer. A small gesture. An acknowledgment.
Dana turned back to Duchess and pressed her forehead against the mare's warm neck.
Someone had stood between her and the people trying to hurt her. Had fought for her horses, built shelter for them, put his body between her life and the men trying to destroy it.
She'd spent twenty-nine years proving she didn't need that.
And now, standing in an unfamiliar stall on borrowed ground, brushing a horse that was alive because a scarred prospect had picked up a hay hook in the dark—
She wasn't sure she wanted to go back to doing it alone.