The Lonesome Young (34 page)

Moments later, staff from the racing barn ran in and flipped on the lights. That’s when I saw that Gus was down, possibly dead.

“Help him,” I shouted. “And get me pressure bandaging for Angel until Dr. Arnold gets here.”

One of the grooms flipped open his phone; I knew they all had our vet on speed dial.

The petite woman trainer—Rachel? I should know all their names, but so many were new—knelt down next to Gus and felt for a pulse and then looked up at me and smiled with no little relief. “Looks like he just got knocked out. Hopefully there’s no concussion.”

The sirens, Gran, and more of our staff from the racing barn all arrived at about the same time, and they headed for Gus. Seconds later, the alarm stopped sounding, and Gran and the grooms spread out to calm the frantic horses.

Suddenly Dr. Arnold was there, wearing scrubs and a very tired face. She ran up to us carrying her vet bag and eased me back and away from Angel. The faintly spicy aroma of the vet’s shampoo—her hair was wet, and there was still a trace of soap behind her ear; she must have been in the shower when we called—contrasted with the sharp, rusty smell of Angel’s blood.

Dr. Arnold examined my beloved horse, but it only took a few seconds before she shook her head. When she looked up at me, her eyes were kind, but brimming with sadness.

“There’s nothing I can do, Victoria, I’m so sorry. She only has a few moments left.”

I wanted to shriek and fight and howl out my rage, but the truth beat against my brain like a summer downpour hitting the barn roof: screaming and fighting wouldn’t help Angel. It would only scare her more and make her last few moments on earth terrifying and horrible.

Instead, I reached down deep and pulled up every ounce of strength I had left and tried to channel Gran.

“It’s going to be all right, my beautiful girl. They have rich, green fields of sweet clover in heaven, and angels will brush you and pet you and spoil you every day,” I crooned as Angel tracked me with her eyes, her breathing harsh and rasping, but slowing with every beat. “Cherubs will bring you apples, and you will learn to love harp music, and one day I will join you and we will go on long rides through clouds so soft that your hooves will never be sore.”

She shuddered once, her fallen body trembling with the force of it, and then my beautiful Heather’s Angel died with her head in my lap.

Chapter 58

Mickey

I
woke up in a familiar place, and placed it immediately as Anna Mae’s barn, although a strange smell that I didn’t recognize was chokingly strong and somehow metallic. The back of my head throbbed so hard that the pain, combined with the smell, made me feel like I was going to throw up, but when I moved, I didn’t get far.

I was tied to a post that somebody had driven into the dirt floor.

“Not so high and mighty now, are you?” Jeb spat in the dirt next to my foot.

I slitted my eyes against the early morning sun slanting in through the windows and made a croaking noise, which was all my dried-out throat could manage. “Where’s Victoria? If you hurt her—”

“Oh, I hurt her, all right.” He snickered, and my blood ran icy. “You should have seen her crying and carrying on over that stupid horse.
Heather’s Angel, Heather’s Angel
. It was pathetic.”

“I’m going to kill you. You’re going to be so sorry you ever stepped foot on Whitfield property,” I vowed, yanking at the ropes binding my wrists.

“Good luck with that.”

He laughed and wandered off, leaving me alone with an uncontainable rage to match my uncontrollable headache. I thought I might have a concussion; it wouldn’t be the first time I’d had one of those after tangling with my brothers. I planned to repay the favor in full. I went to work on the ropes, sending up fervent prayers to any angels who might be generous enough to listen to prayers from a Rhodale. Angels.
Angel.

Please, let Victoria and her horse be all right.

After about twenty minutes, Ethan walked in, carrying a bottle of water, and he put it down next to me and then untied the rope, swearing under his breath the entire time.

“Sorry about that. Jeb’s an idiot, and he gets carried away trying to be a hard-ass sometimes. What in the hell happened?”

“You don’t know? You didn’t plan this?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t know anything about it. You saw what I’m dealing with out there with the Red Barons. Do you really think I’d lie to you about the Whitfields when I need you so much right now?”

I could tell he wasn’t lying to me. Jeb had claimed he was acting on his own, or maybe this had been at Anna Mae’s direction. Either way, somebody was going to pay for this. When he got the ropes off, I took a step and promptly fell down because my stiff muscles didn’t want to work right.

“What time?” I managed, and he helped me up and handed me the water bottle.

“Morning. I had to meet . . . someone, or I would have been here to realize what was going on. I’ll kick Jeb’s ass for tying you up and leaving you all night. He was probably passed out in a corner, again.”

“He was just here and left me like this,” I said grimly. “He is going to be so very sorry.”

“From you and me both,” Ethan replied.

“Victoria?” I waited for his answer before drinking.

“She’s fine. They didn’t touch her,” he said, his face darkening. “You were supposed to be leaving her alone, too, remember? She’s not your girlfriend, you said. So why were you driving her home at midnight? If she’d been safely home in her virginal little bed, the two of you at least wouldn’t have been here and maybe this wouldn’t have escalated.”

I drained the water bottle and then threw it on the floor. “You’re blaming
her
? Are you freaking kidding me? For Jeb’s crazy bullshit?”

“No, little brother,” Ethan said flatly. “I’m blaming you.”

Chapter 59

Victoria

W
hen I woke up on the couch, the first thing I realized was that the night before had been neither a dream—the part with Mickey—nor a nightmare—the part with Angel.

My heart clenched with pain, but my eyes stayed dry. I was done with tears, maybe forever.

It was time for me to grow up and take charge of this situation before everything got worse . . . worse made me think about Mickey and the guy I’d seen hitting him, knocking him out.

Mickey.

“We have to call the sheriff,” I shouted, and Gran, walking into the room with two coffee cups in her hands, froze.

“What now?”

“Mickey! They took him. Knocked him out and kidnapped him. I saw them carry him—”

“Victoria. You told us that last night. Don’t you remember?”

I thought back, but the night had been a confusion of voices and questions and pain, all punctuated by the sound of the gunshot, Heather’s Angel’s scream, and the harsh blare of the sirens.

“No,” I finally admitted. “I don’t remember much after Angel . . .”

Gran’s eyes brightened with tears she’d never shed in front of me. “I loved that horse too, honey. Doc took her. She’ll take good care of her, you know that.”

She would. We weren’t able to bury our horses out in the fields anymore, the way they had in the old days. Now the vets had to take charge, but Dr. Arnold was one of the best Gran had ever known, and I’d seen for myself how careful she was with the mares and foals.

Now there’d be another urn to line the shelves in the racing barn.

I fought back the pain. For now, I needed to find out what had happened to Mickey.

Gran handed me a cup of coffee, full of cream and sugar the way I liked it, and she carefully lowered herself into her chair. I noticed that she was moving really slowly this morning, and I realized that all this drama and tragedy must be hardest on her.

“Are you okay? Gran, do you need to see the doctor?”

“I’m fine, young lady, other than understandably upset. Don’t be putting me in the old folks’ home just yet,” she retorted, and, underneath her exhaustion and distress, I saw a glimmer of the tough woman who’d run this place on her own since my grandfather had died.

I wished I had a little of that toughness right about then. My hands were shaking so badly that I had to put the mug down on the coffee table.

“Gran, what if they hurt Mickey? Anybody who could shoot a horse like that . . .”

“I understand how you feel about Angel, sweetheart, but these are not horse people. They probably didn’t care about shooting an animal, but that in no way leads to the conclusion that they’ll harm Mickey, who is, more than likely, their brother.”

I inhaled sharply as she put into words what I’d been thinking—during the short spurts of time when I’d been capable of rational thought—since I woke up.

“You think it was Ethan?”

“Who else? Him or that idiot brother Jeb of his. Didn’t you see any of them well enough to identify them?”

“I wish I had, but it was too dark, and I was focused on Angel, and then they hit Mickey and took him. I didn’t recognize the voice of the guy who threatened me—”

“He threatened you?” Her voice rose, and I hastened to reassure her.

“No, just to stay put, but he said . . .”

“He said what?”

“He said he’d shoot Mickey if I didn’t listen.”

I wondered how I’d be able to cope with this impossible situation. Mickey was gone, maybe hurt—or worse—and my skin still held the scent of him. I could still feel his touch. I hadn’t even had a chance to live with and process what we’d shared when those criminals had shattered the night.

Now he might be lying dead? Shot? All because Anna Mae hated my father for picking another woman over her, or because sixty years ago two people had committed adultery, or because of who knew what else?

Like everything else related to the modern translation of the feud’s bitter history, it was too big—too much—overwhelming me with the hopelessness of trying to fight it or end it, as if crushing reality had painted a stark modern caption on a very old, sepia-toned portrait:

Hopeless.

I clenched my hands into fists and forced them to stop shaking as I took long, slow breaths to calm down. Hyperventilating never solved anything, and I was damn sure not going to admit that fighting back was hopeless.

“Your parents will be back in less than an hour with Buddy and Pete,” Gran said.

Then again, hyperventilating might be underrated.

“So we need to find Mickey now,” I told her.

I found my phone and called him, not expecting him to answer and getting exactly what I expected. Then I called the sheriff ’s office.

“I need to talk to Sheriff Rhodale,” I told the nasal-voiced person who answered.

“He’s gone to pick up his son Mickey and take him out to breakfast,” she said.

I had a second to think, good old small towns, telling the sheriff ’s business to any random person who calls, before the impact from her words really hit me.

“He’s taking
Mickey
out to breakfast? You’re sure it was Mickey, and not one of his other sons?”

“Well, I’ve worked here for eighteen years,” she said, sounding annoyed. “I guess I know which Rhodale boy is which.”

“Thank you. Thank you
so much
,” I said.

I hung up and looked at Gran, a smile stretching my face. “He must be okay. His dad went to get him for breakfast.”

“Thank God for answered prayers,” she said, relaxing back into her chair. Her eyes drooped a little, and I realized she must be as tired as I was, or even more, since it didn’t look like she’d slept at all.

We sat there in an exhausted silence and sipped coffee for a little while, and then Gran smiled at me. “I do have a little bit of good news to balance out all this bad. I talked to Melinda’s doctor at that rehab this morning. He said she’s doing really well, and she’ll be allowed to call home Monday.”

I groaned. “I’m glad she’s doing well, but how are we going to talk to her? We have more to hide than we have to talk about.”

“We’ll find a way. She deserves that from us. We won’t mention any of this, either. I don’t want to cause her any setbacks.”

“Of course we won’t mention any of this but, speaking of Melinda, did you ever tell Mom and Dad that she’d gone to rehab?”

Gran looked nervous. “Not yet. I thought we’d tell them when they got back.”

“Well. We’re going to have a lot to talk about.”

Chapter 60

Mickey

P
a arrived at the compound hollering for me. He put his arm around me as he helped me up, and I was grateful because I was a little worried I’d fall down again. My legs were still stiff from spending the night tied up.

“Don’t you ever hurt Mickey again,” he told Ethan, who watched us both with hard eyes.

“It was Jeb this time, but go ahead and keep on jumping to conclusions. One of these days you’re gonna fall and break your neck,” Ethan said grimly. Ethan then walked over to one of the wooden crates, picked up a crowbar, and opened it. “While you’re here, let’s have a little show and tell.”

Pa made a weird sound of disbelief, and I somewhat stiffly walked over so I could see. Rows of guns lay packed in straw, gleaming with the metallic sheen of the gun oil I’d been smelling all morning.

“Are you insane?” Pa snatched up one of the shotguns. “This is big time, Ethan. I can’t protect you from this kind of heat.”

“I don’t need your protection,” Ethan said, and his voice was flat and dead. “Thanks to dear old Mom, I’ve got a gang of the highest-quality skinheads backing me now. They’ve got access to massive labs, so I won’t have to waste time and resources on the one- or two-person drug operations anymore, and we keep the toxic side effects mostly out of Kentucky altogether.”

I stared at my half brother in disbelief. “Then what do they need you for?”

“Distribution. You should be happy, little brother. I don’t need you to find me a ring of epi buyers now.”

“You won’t need much for very long, because you’re going to be dead,” Pa shouted. “Have you ever read a newspaper or watched the news? Don’t you know how this kind of thing ends up? You get crushed under the boot of your so-called business partner, and then they betray you and kill you. There’s no honor among meth-dealing gangbangers.”