The Lonesome Young (33 page)

He shuddered, his body shaking, hard, and I was glad it wasn’t just me reacting like that. No matter what experience he’d had before, this was now, and we were here together, and it was more than everything I’d ever wanted.

So much more.

I wanted to give myself to him—I wanted him to give himself to me. For us to explore this emotion between us and to be part of each other, to forget the world, even for just a little while.

“Mickey,” I whispered, and he pulled me even closer.

“Yes,” he said. “Oh, please, yes.”

Chapter 54

Mickey

S
uddenly, with Victoria, something that had been fast and furious and all about hormones transformed completely. I wanted to linger, savor, enjoy. I wanted to make sure that she felt every moment and never forgot any of it. I found a couple of emergency blankets in the trunk, neatly folded in the small plastic bin that held roadside flares from Pa and bottled water and power bars from Mom. The tangible proof of how much they cared about me brought me up short, and I pulled Victoria closer and held her so tightly she probably couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to grow up with parents who used her birthday as a
yardstick
.
I’d been so wrong with my stupid stereotypes and preconceived notions about the happy, rich Whitfields.

“Stop,” she said, her voice husky. “Whatever you’re thinking about, it’s making you sad, so you have to stop. Kiss me again.”

“Yes.”

I kissed her and somehow managed to unroll the blankets without ever letting her go. I kissed her and tried to pour every ounce of my feelings for her into my lips and hands, because I knew I’d never find the words. She touched me with shaking fingers, and I touched her. I caressed her silken skin with kisses and suddenly, wildly, wondered if I’d hit my head harder than I thought when I flew off that three-wheeler and this was all a concussion-induced fever dream.

Victoria shivered, and that was too real to be a dream. I covered her body with mine, and looked down into eyes that were so like liquid starlight.

“Please,” she whispered.

I found the condom that had been riding around in my wallet for a while and fumbled it on with hands that weren’t very steady, and then I kissed her again.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then don’t,” she said, and I knew she wasn’t talking about now, or physically, because my heart was afraid of the same thing. I did my best to convince her with kisses instead of words that I’d die before I’d hurt her, until one of us or both of us were gasping to take a breath that wasn’t intermingled with the other’s.

She pulled me to her, and I tried my best to be slow and gentle, and for a little while the world started spinning backward, and then the stars collided above us as she said my name, over and over, and I said hers. When we were done, she curled closer to me, and I wrapped my arms and legs around her, protecting her from the wind and the future.

“I thought I’d feel different,” she whispered.

“Do you?” I knew I did. Something indefinable in my life had changed, maybe for all time.

“I do, but not how I expected. I feel . . . so close to you, like you’ve climbed inside my heart.”

“You climbed inside mine a long time ago, Victoria. I love you.”

She hid her face against my chest. “I can’t say it right now—the emotion is too huge. I can’t—”

“It’s okay. I understand.” I wasn’t sure if I did, but I instinctively knew that I didn’t have to understand everything about this moment. It was enough to be part of it.

We got dressed and went to sit in the car and out of the wind, still holding hands, content to look out at the view.

Eventually, she looked at her phone. “It’s nearly midnight, Mickey. I need to get home. I can’t cause Gran to worry.”

I nodded and then kissed her again, giving her the goodbye kiss I’d never feel comfortable giving her in her driveway.

We headed back down the hill forever changed, forever marked by what we’d shared.

“Maybe we should rename it,” she said.

“Rename what?”

“The ridge. It doesn’t feel lonesome anymore.”

We spent the drive to her place trying out sillier and sillier names while we held hands against the cold reality waiting for us, but when I drove up her driveway, Victoria turned serious.

“Everyone will be back tomorrow. My parents, Buddy—everyone but Pete and Melinda. Her rehab will be at least ninety days, total.”

I understood what she was saying. “Things will be different.”

“Everything will be different.”

I rounded the gentle curve in her driveway and had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting the truck some idiot had parked in the middle of the road.

“What the hell?”

“Mickey, look!” She pointed, and I saw shadows darting around the corner of the barn.

My stomach dropped into my boots. If this was Ethan causing problems for the Whitfields, I was going to hurt him for real this time. He’d promised me he’d take care of this, and like a fool I’d believed him.

I slammed the car in park and opened the door.

“Mickey, no! We need to call 911!”

“Stay here. I mean it this time, okay? We don’t know who that is or how dangerous they are.”

“Which is why you shouldn’t go over there, either,” she said, clutching at my arm.

But I didn’t have a choice. If this was about Anna Mae “sending a message,” the authorities would never get here in time. I couldn’t sit by and let my family cause Victoria more heartache, especially not if they were going to hurt her beloved horses. Not ever, but especially not tonight of all nights.

“Stay here,” I repeated. “Lock the door after me.”

I headed toward the barn running.

• • •

I ran into the dark barn and almost tripped over the unconscious man in the aisle between the horse stalls. That was my first clue that something was really wrong. He didn’t seem to be bleeding, and when I checked, he was still breathing, so they must have just knocked him out. Up close, he looked familiar. He’d been in on the search. His name was Gus, maybe?

I reached for my phone, but decided against it. Victoria was calling 911; I was better off focusing on the situation at hand.

“What the hell are
you
doing here?” It was Jeb’s voice, but all I could see was his shadow.

He moved into the aisle from one of the stalls, and he was holding a gun, but at least it was pointed down and not up at me. I realized I’d left Jeb’s other gun in the car, because I’d never even thought about the fact that I had it. Some criminal mastermind. And I’d thought I’d beat
Ethan
at his own game? I wasn’t even smarter than Jeb.

“I could ask you the same question.” My eyes were adjusting to the dark. I watched as probably a half-dozen thugs moved around, tying lead ropes on horses. Oh, no. They were stealing Victoria’s horses. She was going to lose her mind. “Ethan gave me his word.”

“Ethan isn’t here, and he doesn’t know about this. Anyway, he doesn’t get to make choices like that, and his word isn’t worth much when it goes up against what Anna Mae wants,” he said, and though I could barely see his face, I could hear the sullenness in his voice. “She wanted to set fire to the barn. I convinced her we’d take a couple of horses instead.”

“So his word is worthless, and you’re just the flunky.”

Jeb laughed bitterly. “You’re just figuring that out?”

I wanted to shake some sense into his thick skull. “You can’t keep dancing to their fiddles, Jeb. They’re going to get you killed.”

“Yeah, maybe. But I’m all out of options. Now get the hell out of my way.”

Chapter 55

Victoria

I
called 911 and stammered out the details they asked for, but I couldn’t stay on the line. I had to go after Mickey. He’d been gone too long. If the intruders weren’t his brothers and their thugs, then he was in big trouble. Of course, if it
was
Ethan and Jeb, he might be in bigger trouble.

This damn feud. Would Ethan mess with our horses out of Rhodale-Whitfield spite? Even after Mickey had agreed to work with him? Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe this was a random coincidence.

Except I’d never believed in random coincidences.

I looked around for something to use to defend myself, but there were no handy baseball bats in the backseat. I reached under the seat, almost on a whim, and my hand felt cold, hard metal. Jeb’s pistol. Mickey still had it.

I yanked my hand away. I didn’t want to escalate whatever was going on in there, but what if Mickey was in danger? What if Angel might be harmed?

I took the gun.

Pete had taught me the basics the summer I was fourteen, so I checked that it was loaded and clicked the safety off. Then I put my phone on the seat and took off toward the barn.

Our security system should have been going off by now. Sure, this was the older of the barns and none of the current crop of yearlings or pregnant mares were in it, but several of the older horses were stabled there along with tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment and tack. Not a lot of it was easily portable, so I was surprised thieves would be interested. . . .

Unless they weren’t intent on stealing but vandalism.

Heather’s Angel
. Pete had moved her into this, the quieter of the barns, for a while so she could recuperate in peace from her ordeal with Buddy.

I started to run across the slick, wet bluegrass toward the barn, praying I wasn’t too late.

Chapter 56

Mickey

I
didn’t move. “How do you think you’re going to get horses out of here? In the backseat of your truck?”

“Smart-ass. We have a horse trailer that should be here by now,” Jeb said.

“This is way over the line, Jeb. I’m going to stop you.”

“You and who else? I’ve got five good men with me. Oh, and Cooter,” he said, snickering.

“Hey! I heard that,” a moose of a man called out. The horse he was trying to lead balked at the sound of his loud, drunken voice.

“Stupid damn horse,” he snarled, and he pulled out his gun—and shot it in the side. The world itself seemed to freeze, and everyone held their breath for a few seconds that lasted an eternity. Then I heard a sound I never, ever want to hear again in my life, when the horse started to scream. She staggered drunkenly to the side for a step, and then another, and then she fell over, thrashing her legs.

Her unrelenting screams shattered the silence in the barn and everyone jumped into frantic motion at once. Men ran out of horse stalls and toward the door, and my brother swore a blue streak beside me.

“No,” I shouted. “No, no,
no!
Are you insane?”

I started for the horse but then stopped. She was thrashing around in pain, and I realized helplessly that I didn’t have the first clue of how to help her. She twisted her long neck, almost as if she wanted to see me, and there was something so familiar about her—oh, please, God, no.

It was Victoria’s horse. Angel.

Jeb turned on Cooter. “What the hell did you do that for?” he shouted.

“It wouldn’t listen to me,” the man said sullenly.

“We’ve got to get help,” I said, turning to run for a phone, but behind me, the barn door crashed open, and it was too late. Victoria ran in, waving Jeb’s gun around. I put out a hand to try to stop her before she could see, but it was useless.

She flinched away from me when she saw the fallen horse and then she screamed too—loud, long, and nearly as high-pitched as the horse’s scream had been—and shoved me out of her way, dropping something that I realized was Jeb’s gun as she ran by me. She clenched her hand into a fist and slammed it against the wall. It wasn’t until the alarm started to shriek, piercing the night with its strident warning, that I realized she’d activated a security panel.

“No! Not Angel! No, no, no, no!” Victoria ran to her horse, either oblivious to the guns or not giving a damn. She hurled herself down to the floor next to Angel and started stroking her neck over and over, and then she threw an anguished look over her shoulder at me.

“How could you let them do this?”

“Victoria, I didn’t—I tried—I’m so sorry.” I took a step toward her, but Jeb grabbed my arm and yanked me back.

Victoria, tears streaming down her face, turned back to Angel. “My baby. My poor baby. It’s going to be okay.”

But I stared down at her golden head in despair. I knew there was no way it could be.

“I’ll get help. I promise. She’s going to be okay,” I told her anyway, yanking my arm out of Jeb’s grip and fumbling in my pocket for my phone.

“I don’t think so,” Jeb said, and he picked up the gun Victoria had dropped.

Chapter 57

Victoria

T
hey shot my horse.

They
shot
my
horse
.

The world started to slide sideways. I threw myself on Angel’s neck to keep her from struggling to stand up. The alarms were distressing the other horses, but it couldn’t be helped. Right now we needed the entire cavalry or the Coast Guard or something big and powerful and deadly. Somebody who could get these monsters out of my barn, help Angel, and stop this nightmare.

“It’s going to be okay, baby,” I said, using my calmest, most soothing voice. “You’re going to be okay. Mickey and I will get help, and we’ll get you fixed up. Dr. Arnold will make you as good as new, and I’ll bring you sugar cubes and apples, and all the things you like.”

A hitch in my breath stopped me for a second, but then I kept at it, still soothing. “All the things. Everything’s going to be okay.”

But when I turned around, I saw one of the shadowy figures hit Mickey in the back of the head with something, probably a gun, and then a couple of the thugs picked him up and ran out of the barn. Another of them pointed his gun at me.

“I’ll be watching you. Stay right here for ten minutes, or I’ll shoot your pretty boy for you,” he snarled. I had no choice but to stay where I was, putting pressure on Angel’s wound and screaming for help while the thug disappeared out the barn door.