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  Ahead were two cabins Sidney’s husband, Boomer—well, Bryan, but no one dared call him that except his wife—had built for Jenna’s veterans. Boomer steered the old John Deere, scraping away the topsoil, preparing the dirt for the foundations for two new cabins.

  Farther down, there were two much older cabins. Boomer and Sidney lived in one, and the two ranch hands, Santos and Alby, bunked in the other. A ’65 Mustang sat in front of Kurt’s cabin. At least he’d come back from the AA meeting the night before.

  “Kurt? You in there?”

  Jenna climbed the two wooden steps to the cabin’s covered front porch. Dink slunk between her legs until his head stuck out in front of her knees, the rest of him behind her, the way he did when a storm was approaching. But the sun was up, and the clouds continued their northerly march. Dink’s apprehension wasn’t the fault of the weather.

  She knocked on the door. Dink whined. She knocked again. “Open up, or I’m coming in.”

  She waited for a beat, two. The John Deere’s engine grumbled and growled, and the metal bucket screeched as it scraped across rocks, raising the hair on her arms. She wiggled the door handle. Locked.

  She stepped onto the chair beneath the front window and pulled a spare key from a divot beside one of the rafters. One last time, she pounded on the door with the meat of her fist, not wanting to walk in on Kurt naked.

  With no answer, she slipped the key in the lock and pushed the door open. It swung easily on the hinges, hitting the opposite wall with a dull thud. Dink took a tentative step inside and looked back at her, as if he wasn’t willing to go in without her.

  She stomped the dust off her boots on the mat and walked in. As with the other cabins, there was a set of bunk beds on each side of the room with footlockers for personal possessions and bare hooks for clothes. A shared bathroom against the back wall, hidden behind a pseudo-kitchen—refrigerator, counter, sink, microwave, coffeepot. The basics.

  No point checking the bathroom, Kurt wasn’t there. The air was too still. Still, like he hadn’t been there for a long time. Still, like he hadn’t spent the night in his unmade bed. Since his bed was never made, though, that didn’t tell her anything.

  Where was he if he wasn’t with Hank and Mac? Even though Kurt had his problems, in the four weeks he’d been at the ranch, if he was going to be on time for anything, it was for the work sessions with the mustangs or riding out with Alby and Santos. His disappearance baffled her.

  Dink backed out of the cabin, having never gone fully inside. Jenna left as well, pulling the door closed behind her, not bothering to lock the door.

  She retraced her steps. Rechecked the barn and the makeshift firing range. The parking area for tractors and trailers. She checked the junkyard where the grass had grown high around rusty old implements and dilapidated tractors, then back up toward the hay barn.

  The whole time she searched, Dink never left her side, his head Velcroed to her jeans. She tripped over his paws. At the hay barn, there was nothing except row after row, stack after stack, of round and square bales of hay.

  Still no Kurt.

  Sidney had finished up with the mustang, so Jenna headed back to the round pen. She glanced down. Dink was gone. Turning and walking backward, Jenna spotted her dog digging a hole beside the hay barn.

  “Come on, Dink. Give the rats a rest.”

  Dink didn’t stop digging. He didn’t even slow down.

  “Dink!”

  If the hay barn had had a concrete floor, Jenna would have left him there, but her grandfather would take both their hides if Dink tunneled under. She jogged back to the barn, a rooster tail of dirt flying out from between the dog’s legs. Jenna tapped him on the back. The darn dog kept digging. She grabbed his collar and tugged. He struggled free and kicked dirt up into her mouth. She spat it out.

  She jerked him back. “Dink. Sit!”

  Dink sat. Dirt crusted on his nostrils, his whiskers, his toenails. Tiny clumps of mud clung to the hair at the inner corners of his eyes, and dust coated his lolling tongue.

  “Stay.”

  He squeaked out a whine.

  Jenna dropped to her knees in front of the hole. He’d dug fast and furious and had burrowed under the outer wall. She pushed handfuls of dirt into the hole to fill the void.

  Her hand brushed against something.

  Not hay. Rat? She couldn’t leave a dead animal there to rot. Jenna grimaced. Dink crawled on his belly to the edge of the hole and whined again. Jenna scooped out the dirt, her face butted up against the wall, and snaked her arm through. She patted the dirt, trying to locate the object.

  Her hand landed on it. Soft like fabric. Like flannel. What the—?

  She tugged, and it fell into the hole.

  Fingers.

  A scarred hand.

  Kurt’s hand.

  * * * *

  The sheriff showed up with the light bar on top of his pickup flashing, the siren blaring, the ambulance a hundred yards and a dust cloud behind. Jenna glanced over from her seat in the cab of the John Deere and saw Lottie run out to greet him, then refocused on the levers.

  Her heart thrummed, and her fingers shook on the tractor’s bucket controls. Don’t be dead, don’t be dead, don’t be dead. The round bales were stacked high and deep. If by some miracle Kurt was still alive, she couldn’t risk a thousand-pound bale rolling and crushing him.

  Their best option was to remove the metal sheeting on the sides of the barn, and without a ladder tall enough, they’d improvised. Which meant she operated the tractor and Boomer removed the screws, balancing with his blade prosthetic on top of the six-foot ladder, on top of a sheet of plywood spanning the width of the tractor bucket. A tractor bucket currently extended to its maximum height.

  OSHA would shit a brick if they saw that.

  OSHA would have to revamp their manual to cover this level of stupidity if they saw that.

  OSHA would levy such a massive penalty that her grandchildren would still be paying the debt a hundred years from now if they saw that.

  But she didn’t care about OSHA. All she cared about, all anyone on the Lazy S cared about, was getting to Kurt.

  After Boomer had removed the last of the screws, he climbed off the ladder and made a motion with one hand, telling Jenna to bring him down. She backed the Deere, lowering him as she went.

  The sheriff and the paramedics didn’t waste any time moving in. The metal sheeting was grooved, and the men fought the overlap to pull the panel free. Jenna killed the engine and jumped down as the men yanked the metal clear.

  For a split second, Kurt’s body hung in the air, defying gravity. Head down, eyes open—face, blue-gray and livid with blood. Then his rigid body crashed to the ground. He didn’t flip or flop or grunt or groan.

  You didn’t do that when you were dead.

  Her heart stopped beating. One second it raced in her chest, and the next…nothing. This void, this vacuum in the center of her chest where her heart used to be, was sucking the blood from her cheeks, the strength from her muscles, the hope from her soul.

  She sank to the dirt. The hard-packed earth jarred her spine. She stared out at the scene in front of her. The sheriff speaking into the radio on the shoulder of his uniform. Boomer with his arm around Sidney, holding her close to his chest. The paramedics backing away. Lottie, with her arm wrapped around her waist, a hand to her mouth, her cheeks stained with tears.

  A deputy with a camera snap, snap, snapped. Photos of Kurt. Of the side of the barn. Of the gap in the siding. She sat in the dirt, too stunned to move. Sometime later, Sheriff Elmore St. John approached her with a couple of clear bags in his hand. “I need to show you something.”

  He was a tall man. Somewhere between her dad and Boomer, his features hard beneath the brim of his tan cowboy hat. A muscle twitched at the corner of his right eye. He held out his hand and hel
ped her to her feet. Her legs were numb, unsteady, as she took one tentative step, testing.

  They hadn’t covered the body yet. The sleeve of Kurt’s red flannel shirt was buttoned around his right wrist; the one on the left, shoved up above the elbow. The sheriff turned her and helped her over to his truck with a hand on her elbow.

  He sat her in the front passenger seat. Her boot slipped on the step rail, and she grabbed on to the handle to haul herself inside. After she had settled, he gave her two sealed clear bags. Inside the first was a spoon with the handle bent back, the bowl black with soot. In the other, a syringe, the skinny kind, the kind diabetics used—or junkies.

  “No.” The word wheezed out of Jenna’s mouth. “He…he’s clean. He was clean. His test came back a couple days ago. He wasn’t using. I don’t understand.”

  “I need to ask you some questions.”

  “O-okay.” Her chest loosened, and air filled her lungs again. Her heart tripped a weak, shaky beat in her chest, and her fingers tingled as blood flow returned.

  “When was the last time anyone saw Kurt?”

  “Last night. After dinner. He went to catch the late AA meeting in Murdock.”

  “No one saw him return?”

  She shook her head. “As I said, it was a late meeting. I vaguely remember the shine of his headlights in my window as he pulled past the house last night, but I didn’t see him.”

  “What time was that?”

  Jenna thought back to the night before. She’d been reading in bed. “Ten thirty or so…the first time.”

  “What do you mean the ‘first time’?”

  It was coming back to her now. “I saw lights flash about ten thirty. When I got up to use the restroom around midnight, I saw lights then, too. I was half-asleep. I didn’t think anything about it.”

  “Was it Kurt both times?”

  “Honestly, I can’t say for sure it was him either time. I never went to the window. I just assumed it was him.”

  “Could a friend have followed him home?”

  “Kurt’s only been here a month. He didn’t have any friends outside of the ranch. Not that he’d mentioned.”

  “Someone from his meetings, maybe?”

  Jenna shrugged. “I have no idea. You would have to ask them.”

  “And as far as you know, he hasn’t been using since he’d been here.” St. John had his little spiral notepad out, scribbling away as he noted her replies.

  “He’d been lucid, coherent, with clean drug tests. And clean tests for the six months prior to coming here, according to his doctor. This isn’t a drug treatment facility. The veterans have to be alcohol- and drug-free before they’re approved to come.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time an addict has relapsed.”

  “No.” Jenna focused on the clods of dirt on the floor mats. “I don’t suppose it would. He’d seemed to be doing so well. The horses were starting to trust him…he was a little rough around the edges. Everyone liked him, though…” Jenna raised her hands and let them flop back into her lap. Then she glanced back up at the sheriff. “What the hell am I doing? Who am I to think I could do this? That I could help these men and women?”

  “Whoa, now,” Boomer cut in as he stepped up to the truck.

  She hadn’t seen him approach. Or heard the coroner’s car pull up. Through the windshield, she watched as a sheriff’s deputy finished with the photographs and the coroner moved in. A wide man with a short body. Because of his girth, he squatted unsteadily beside Kurt.

  “Jenna.” Boomer drew her attention to him. The compassion in his eyes, that of a man who had lived through worse, who knew what she was going through, made it difficult to keep eye contact. “This isn’t your fault. Not even close.”

  “But—”

  Boomer made a sound in the back of his throat, the kind she often used when Dink was getting into something he shouldn’t. It shut her up. To the sheriff, he said, “Are you done here?”

  “For now.”

  St. John stepped back, and Boomer helped Jenna out of the truck. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and kissed the side of her head. “Come on. We have a lot of things to figure out.”

  * * * *

  Jenna and Sidney sat at the long wooden table in her grandmother’s kitchen, their cups of coffee growing cold in front of them. Kurt’s body had been taken away, the last picture had been taken, the last deputy had left.

  Boomer perched on a bar stool at the counter between the kitchen and the table, and Lottie was doing something with flour and dough that involved a lot of pounding and kneading and rolling and kneading and pounding again.

  “Your grandfather will be in tonight,” her grandmother said. “He cut the cattlemen’s meeting short and will catch the last flight out of Boise.”

  “I called Hank and Mac on the satellite phone, but they’re so far out, it’ll be dark before they’re home,” Boomer said.

  Jenna took the information in. A mental paralysis had her staring blindly at the table. Alby and Santos were out checking fences, out of radio range, oblivious to the tragedy.

  “We need to make those calls,” Boomer said.

  Jenna glanced at the notepad and the list of people she needed to notify. “I need to make those calls. This is my deal, my program, my calls.”

  The stool barked as Boomer stood abruptly and snagged the pad of paper out from beneath her pen tip. He shook it in the air. “You may have started the program, but we’re all a part of this.”

  Sidney took a sip of her cold coffee, her nose wrinkled. Her short red hair lay flat against her head, the mousse having worn out from all the times she’d scrubbed her fingers through it. “Bryan’s right. This isn’t something you should have to do alone. We’ll divvy up the calls.”

  Jenna’s chest got tight again, and her nose stung. “Have I ever told you guys how lucky I am to have you in my life?”

  “Psssh.” Sidney waved her hand dismissively. “You’re family. No blood relation required.”

  “I’ll notify his mother,” her grandmother offered.

  Boomer copied down the number on a new sheet and handed it to Lottie, who pinched the corner between two flour-covered fingers.

  “I’ll call the funeral home,” Sidney volunteered.

  Boomer scribbled on a clean sheet and gave it to his wife. “I’ll notify the Veterans Administration and the state licensing board.” Again, he scribbled down the numbers, tore the page free, and stuck it to the counter next to him. “That leaves…” Boomer glanced up, and his expression softened.

  “Quinn.” The name came out of Jenna’s mouth, quick and raspy. Her hand trembled as she reached for her cup, and a dollop of cold coffee lopped over the side.

  “I’ll call Quinn,” Boomer said. “You call the licensing board.”

  “No,” Jenna said, maybe a little too forcefully. Boomer and Sidney looked at her, and Lottie stopped her kneading. “He’s my…” Ex-boyfriend, ex-almost-fiancé. “I mean, he’s …” Kurt’s best friend—the reason Kurt was at the Lazy S to begin with.

  You know, the man who’d put his pride aside to call and get Kurt into your program.

  The man who’d made you promise to take care of Kurt, because he was one of the “special ones.”

  The man whose heart you’re going to break…again.

  Jenna rubbed her temples with the heels of her hands as the acid ate away at the lining of her stomach. Cell by cell, layer by layer. A slow, insidious attack. She glanced up. Everyone was focused on her. “No,” she said again. Stronger. “That’s my call to make.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The muscles in Quinn’s right forearm burned as he watched the play of his mangled muscles and tendons in the wall-to-wall mirror of his local twenty-four-hour gym.

  The base had a gym, but he liked the anonymity of The Lift. No one knew him. No
one asked him how he was doing.

  Or when he was going to fly again.

  He didn’t work out for the camaraderie. He didn’t work out to outlift anyone, or show off his abs, or delts, or biceps.

  He worked out to save his career.

  Heavy metal music beat against his eardrums. Harsh, horrible, disturbing. As much as he hated the music, the crash of the chords drowned his thoughts and distracted him from the pain.

  A barbell dropped on the floor mat behind him with a thump that reverberated beneath his feet. The gym rat met Quinn’s gaze in the mirror. Held his hand to his ear as if holding a phone and pointed to Quinn.

  Quinn set the weights down, tugged the earbud from his ear, and turned toward the guy.

  “Dude, your phone.” Gym Rat chalked his hands. “Third fucking time it’s gone off in the last five minutes.”

  Wiping the sweat from his neck with a hand towel, Quinn grunted his thanks.

  No one called him anymore.

  He picked up his phone with his left hand, then switched it to his right. It would take him twice as long and triple the concentration to use his right thumb, but the physical therapist was right. If he didn’t work on his dexterity, it would never improve. By the time he’d thumbed to his “missed calls” list, the phone rang in his hand.

  His parents’ area code, but not his parents’ number.

  He managed to answer on the third ring. “Yeah.”

  Silence. The faint buzz of the open line. The whir of the cables in the pulleys beside him. The clank and clatter of weights hitting the stacks. A woman a few feet to his left had one earbud dangling between her breasts. The bass line bumped in Quinn’s chest.

  “Who is this?” Quinn didn’t have the time or the patience.

  Nothing.

  Nothing.

  “I’m hanging up.” He pulled the phone from his ear, his thumb over the End button when he heard the faint, “Wait…”

  He raised the phone again. “I don’t have all day.”

  “It’s me.”

  His scalp tightened. His right hand shook. He switched the phone to his left. Didn’t help the shaking.