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Fire! Smoke! Noise!...
Troy lurched up in bed, his heart pounding. Shit!
Braced on his elbow, he forced himself to full consciousness, rubbing one eye with the heel of his hand. The dream, the goddamn dream. It had haunted him since his sister’s barn burned three years ago. Was it ever going to stop?
Awake now, he drew his hand down his face, pushing himself to remember where he was. He fumbled on the shelf next to his bed for his watch and pressed on its night light. 5:30 a.m. He had been asleep fewer than three hours. He needed thirty more minutes. Just thirty more minutes. He fell back against the pillow, dragging a thick comforter up to his chin.
But sleep eluded him. He could never go back to sleep after the dream. An image of Dandy Little Lady, his three-year-old mare, trapped in an inferno fighting for her life seemed too real.
Two days ago, the be-all, end-all National Cutting Horse World Finals in Fort Worth, Texas, had taken place. After months of unrelenting stress, countless hours of hard training, weeks of adrenaline-pumping expectation, Dandy Little Lady had won it. She had more talent and heart than any animal he had ever owned. One of his great fears was that she might meet the same fate as his sister’s horses.
He reached for his cell phone on which he rarely talked. He blocked or didn’t answer most calls. His associates and acquaintances knew the best way to communicate with him was by text message. Texting saved him hours of time. He pressed the phone on. As soon as it booted up, he scrolled through a long list of messages. He had already responded to the important ones. Otherwise, he saw none he wanted to read.
The one person he did want to talk to, who was not on the list of messengers, was Silas Morgan. Silas was the horse wrangler at the Double-Barrel Ranch. The aged widower had finally given in to owning a cell phone, but he refused to text.
The old guy had managed the ranch’s sizeable remuda for most of his life and had taught Troy and his siblings more about horses than most people would ever know. He lived in a small cottage the ranch provided, but even at this early hour, he would be in his office in the barn. As a boy, Troy thought Silas lived in the barn.
After the hullabaloo and celebration that followed Little Lady’s win, Troy had not returned her to her own paddock at his place where she could unwind. Instead, he had delivered her into Silas Morgan’s care at the Double-Barrel Ranch’s horse barns where several champion cutting horses lived under armed guard. Everybody at the Double-Barrel was concerned for her safety.
Armed guard. Jesus.
True, with Dandy Little Lady’s win, her value had skyrocketed, but Troy still couldn’t wrap his mind around his horse needing to be guarded, even after all that had happened to the Lockharts in the last three years.
He speed-dialed Silas’ number. On the first burr, a raspy “hello” came on the line.
“Hey, Silas, it’s me. Sounds like you haven’t had your coffee yet.”
“Just now poured m’self a cup, Mr. Troy.” Silas spoke in a slow Texas drawl. “You’re soundin’ a little hoarse y’self this morning. Everything okay with you?”
“I just woke up.”
“You at home? I thought you was going to West Texas.”
“I’m in West Texas now. In Roundup, at the Beckman’s cattle ranch. I came over here last night.”
“Heard you might be doing that. Seems like kind of a bad time for a horse clinic, Christmas and all.”
Maybe, but Troy paid little attention to holidays. Horse care took place daily. Much of the time, holidays were an inconvenience. “I promised Lou. You know how I felt about Carl. This is the only time I had ’til late in the spring.”
In the clamor after the end of the cutting contest, accepting the NCHA trophy, Troy had lauded his mentor, Carl Beckman. Carl had passed on, but his wife Lou was present for Dandy Little Lady’s crowning. Lou stood in the front row grinning as if she had a stake in Little Lady’s win. Few knew she hated cutting horses and everything related.
“Just don’t forget there’s a Norther headed our way,” Silas was saying. “Thursday night. Might get a little snow. You oughtta try to get on home early.”
After assurances from Silas of Little Lady’s well-being, Troy disconnected and forced himself upright. He dropped down from his bed, shivered through a shower and shave in a closet-size bathroom, dressed for the day and moved to the kitchen area. He traveled in a tricked-out living quarters/horse trailer combo, custom designed to house himself, three horses and a week’s worth of supplies and equipment.
He liked this arrangement. When he first started traveling around the country conducting his clinics, he stayed in hotels and motels. His clinics usually took place in rural locations off the beaten path. He frequently found himself bunking in dingy, cramped rooms with even dingier outdated bathrooms. After one workshop in Nevada, he had tried to sleep in a room with cockroaches the size of mice. As soon as he returned home, he drove up to a Cimarron dealer in Decatur and ordered the trailer. It turned out to be the best purchase he ever made.
He turned on TV to a financial channel. Amazing he found reception this far out in the middle of nowhere. While he assembled the coffeepot and waited for the coffee to make, he watched two gurus discuss the stock market climb. A fearless investor, he was doing well in the stock market. He made a couple of mental notes to follow up on next week when he got back home.
The coffeepot gurgled to a finish and Troy poured himself a mug of ink-black coffee. Sipping, he stood staring out through a small window over the sink. Across the top of the window, a gal he had met at the World Finals had hung a string of gold garland and a couple of red and green plastic balls.
She had offered more than Christmas decorations, but he had accepted only the ornaments. Nowadays, he was more careful about the company he kept. Countless lectures from his big brothers and two Texas Rangers had made him goosey about strangers.
Beyond that, he wasn’t as wild and wooly as he had been a few years ago. He had cut back his alcohol consumption and the thought of an all-night party gave him a headache. Empty hookups with women whose names he sometimes didn’t remember had started to make him ask himself what he was doing. In an odd way, the closer he grew to his horses, the further he moved away from human beings.
He watched the pink glow of sunrise for a few minutes, reflecting on the outstanding performance of his Dandy Little Lady. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. A student of hand imprinting, he was there when her mama delivered her. He had helped the dam clean her. His had been the first human hands his Little Lady had known. He and his sister raised her from a foal and trained her for three solid years. She was gentle and good-natured but had high energy and enjoyed competition. They communicated. He loved her. He believed she loved him. Outside of his family, his relationship with his Little Lady was the most consistent and reliable in his life.
He pulled himself back from musing. Time to get on with his day. He put his phone on SPEAKER, pressed in the number of his bodyguard and tapped a message: I’m up.
A few minutes later, a thumb’s up image came back, followed by: Where the hell are we?
Troy grinned. Sal had traveled the world, but still, he wasn’t used to the wide-open spaces in Texas. “Roundup, Texas. Dixon asleep?”
“Like a baby.”
“I’m fixin’ to cook breakfast. Come on over.”
Troy set his mug on the counter and pulled a cast-iron skillet out of the bottom of the cookstove. Next, he pulled a box of sausage patties from the freezer and put them on to fry, adding the aroma of sage and spices to that of fresh coffee. Into another skillet of sizzling butter, he cracked half a dozen eggs and scrambled them into a steaming fluffy pile that he lifted onto two paper plates.
He turned from the stove and began setting the table for two with paper plates and plastic utensils. The narrow table and leather booth-style seating, while comfortable, allowed room for no more than two diners.
He set a paper plate of sausage on the table alongside the eggs. Then he opened the trailer’s narrow metal door and scanned the outside. Sal and Dixon’s Gulfstream trailer huddled a hundred feet away. Their door opened, Sal stepped down and strolled toward him, a Styrofoam cup in his left hand.
“Get on in here,” Troy hollered at him. “Breakfast is getting cold.”
Over by a fence line, a flock of birds took flight and Sal’s attention shot toward them, his right hand reflexively going for the Glock on his right hip.
Troy laughed. “It’s just a few little birds, buddy.”
Sal was a man of few words and even fewer laughs. As much time as they spent together, Troy still didn’t know much about him except that he had been in the Navy. He had seen duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan and was from somewhere on the East Coast. If in a rare instance he talked about his military life, he offered no more than a few generalities that would apply to anybody who had served in the Navy.
None of Redstone Security ’s people talked about their backgrounds, but Troy was sure each of them could be deadly. Leave it to Drake to hire the baddest of badasses.
Sal relaxed and continued to Troy’s trailer. “You don’t have to feed me, you know.”
Troy wasn’t cut out to be unfriendly with people he saw so much of and who had come to know details about his personal life that no one else knew. “I sure do. I know that half the time you don’t eat breakfast. I don’t want you collapsing from hunger in the middle of saving my life.”
The swarthy Sal ducked through the trailer’s narrow door. “Smells good, Pee-Wee.”
Pee-Wee. Troy’s code name. Though he stood six feet tall barefooted, his dad and his older half-brothers were taller. So the security people had dubbed him Pee-Wee.
Troy turned off the TV. “Go ahead and sit.”
Sal slid into the booth, his bulk filling the seat. He reached up and turned off the light overhead. “Spotlights us.”
Troy made a mental sigh. He would never get over being annoyed by this security shit but saying so for the hundredth time was pointless. He pushed the plates of scrambled eggs and sausage in front of the bodyguard.
“I’m surprised you’re up,” Sal said. “It was after one o’clock when we parked.”
“Yeah. And a lot later than that when I got to bed.”
After parking behind Beckman’s main barn, Troy had unloaded his horse, Batman, blanketed him, then penned him in the corral as his hostess Lou Beckman had instructed. He fell into bed himself only after he had seen to Batman’s needs. Batman was one of his favorites. Smart and athletic, he would be helping with the clinic this week.
Troy pulled the biscuits browned to golden from the oven. “But, as you know, I’m always up before sunrise. No matter what time I get to bed, I get up at daylight. When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to get to the barn and see what Silas was doing with the horses.
He busied himself with piling the hot biscuits onto one more paper plate and set it on the table, too. He added a stick of real butter and a jar of strawberry jam. “Eat up, buddy.”
Sal speared a couple of sausage patties with a plastic fork. “Have you talked to Silas this morning?”
“Yeah. He put Lady with Kate’s mare and foal. He said Marcus took over guarding the main horse barn, but he didn’t say why.”
Sal reached for a hot biscuit. “A couple of our guys are taking off for the holidays. New temporary people coming in. Marcus didn’t think it was a good idea to have someone new doing that job.”
Trouble? A squiggle of apprehension passed through Troy’s stomach. “Why? Is he worried?” He slid into the booth, his knees bumping Sal’s. “Tight quarters, eh?”
“Worse than shipboard.” Sal slathered his biscuit with butter and jam. “Marcus is always worried. He was upset about those three horses getting shot, especially because it happened on our watch.”
“If you recall, the vandalism at the old Lockhart homestead happened on your watch, too.”
“Believe me, we know. But there aren’t enough of us to be everywhere all the time. That ranch is a big place.
“Nobody’s blaming you.”
Not yet anyway. But did Redstone Partners management realize who they were dealing with? Troy’s big brother, William Drake Lockhart, III, the keeper of the family treasure, was a results-oriented individual. Even to someone as wealthy as the Lockharts, Redstone Partners’ bill added up to a hell of a lot of money and Drake expected to get his money’s worth at all times. It did no harm to remind them of that.
Troy dug into his own breakfast. “Those three ranch horses plus my sister’s four makes seven good horses gone in three years and nobody’s got a clue who did it or why.”
For a few seconds, Troy’s memory zoomed back to the barn fire and the horses that had succumbed. In a breathtaking irony, Kate had once been offered quarter-million dollars for Proud Mary. She had turned it down because she couldn’t bear to part with her.
“My sister was a mess after that fire. It was more than her injuries. She grieved for months. The whole family worried about her. She still tears up sometimes if the horses come up in conversation. Too bad your outfit wasn’t around back then.”
Sal nodded, swallowed and wiped his mouth. “We know the details from the arson investigation. We know the ranch’s horses are high-value. That’s why we’ve got somebody watching them twenty-four-seven.”
These security people were efficient, Troy had to admit. After Drake hired them, no doubt somebody briefed them about every incident, including Drake and Shannon’s hit-and-run car accident.
“I wonder how long we’re gonna have to live with this,” Toy said.
Sal shrugged. “Don’t know. I’m not in law enforcement.”
Troy stared at him a few beats. “So, tell me something, Sal. They know Kate’s fire was set from inside the barn. If your bunch had been guarding her and her horses that night, how would you have prevented that?”
“First of all, we would’ve been routinely checking locks. We would’ve made sure that sprinkler system that didn’t work did. With an asset like those horses, we would’ve had a perimeter set up around the barn so we could see who came and went. Even if the bad actor had been able to sneak past us and get inside the barn, we might’ve caught him in the act and put out the fire.”
All of that made perfect sense to Troy. No question Kate had been careless and so had he. “Is that what you’re doing now at the Double-Barrel’s barns?”
Sal nodded, continuing to eat.
“I’m still pissed off they’ve got Kate and me both on a persons-of-interest list,” Troy said.
“They took Miss Lockhart off,” Sal replied.
“It blows my mind that they think I set my sister’s barn on fire. Do they think a million-dollar payout means that much to me? We could buy that fuckin’ insurance company. The Double-Barrel self-insures most of its assets except for liability. But since Kate paid the premiums on an insurance policy for years, she thinks they should pay up.”
Sal glanced up. “Someone surely has told you their reasoning. You were a familiar figure. Free to move around your sister’s place without arousing suspicion. They’re squeezing you, Pee-Wee. They believe you know the answer to some of their questions. Why don’t you tell them and be done with it?”
“Now you’re starting to sound like my brothers. What the hell are the questions that I haven’t answered? How the hell do I know if I know the answers? They know everything about me, down to the color of my shorts.”
“It’s the company you’ve been keeping, dude. That’s who they’re after.”
“You mean Dorinda Fisk? Hell, you’ve been around Dorinda. She’s clueless. I’ve never discussed anything related to my family with her. I know her husband hates my dad. But he’s a United States Senator forgodsakes. I don’t believe he’s a criminal.”
Sal stuffed his mouth with heaps of scrambled eggs balanced on his plastic fork. “Mph. Don’t bet on it. As for your girlfriend, she’s got friends.”
Troy heaved a sigh. “Dammit, Sal, she’s not my girlfriend.”
Finished with his meal, Sal got to his feet and started for the door. “I’m going to take a look around. I couldn’t get the feel of where we are last night in the dark.” He left the trailer.
Well, that conversation hadn’t gotten Troy far. Though he knew the answers to most of what they had talked about, he still pumped Sal and Dixon for information every chance he got, hoping to hear some new piece of information.
He straightened the tiny kitchen then shrugged into his down coat. Coffee mug in hand, he clapped on his gimme cap and stepped outside. The elevation here was higher than North Central Texas, so the temperature was cooler and a man felt a little closer to the sky. The crisp air struck him and a small vapor trail spiraled up from his mug. The temperature was forecast to rise later. Typical Texas December. He would not need a coat. Once the sun came up, a vest would be warm enough.
He gazed at his surroundings. The Beckman ranch was the epitome of the mythical wide-open spaces. Not even an oak tree in sight. Roughly fifteen miles outside the town of Roundup, it was an endless expanse of pasture broken up by barbed-wire fences and brush growing along fence lines and coulees.
The Double-Barrel’s pastures were greener and lusher, but, according to his brother and Dad, both of whom were experts in range management, the grass in the arid West Texas pastures was hardier and healthier for cattle.
Drawing the quiet of early morning into his soul, the clean, fresh air into his lungs, the earthy smells into his psyche, Troy zipped up his coat, unfolded an aluminum chair and took a seat to watch daylight’s opening show. He spent most of his daytime hours outdoors. He liked witnessing nature’s wonders.
Soon Sal ambled back. “Looks like everything’s okay.”
Troy looked up at him. “Can’t imagine that it wouldn’t be. This is a calm part of the world. Not too many bad guys hiding in the weeds. Help yourself to a chair.”
One-handed, Sal unfolded another aluminum chair and placed it with the back to the trailer just as a mourning dove called across the distance. “There’s that bird again.”
They sat in silence for minutes, listening to the plaintive birdcalls as the rising sun brightened the landscape. Finally, Troy spoke. “Clear this morning. Look at that sunrise.”
“Nice.”
“How many countries have you watched the sun rise in?”
“A few.”
Most likely, the correct answer was more than a few. “What was your favorite?”
“Besides the good ol’ USA? The South Pacific. From a ship’s deck. Makes you remember what pissants we are.”
Troy didn’t need to be told that he was a grain of sand in an infinite universe. “Do we need to be reminded of that?”
“Too many people think the planet revolves around their own little universe. That fucked-up thinking is the cause of most of the conflict in the world. What’s on the ticket for today?”
No dearth of unspoken information was present in those two sentences, but Sal never shared details. “Same as the other clinics where you’ve been with me. Have one-on-ones with some horse owners, try to fix their problems and teach them a few things. If we have an audience, maybe teach them something, too. Basically, whether they’re in Texas or Arizona and California, they all have the same issues.”
“Lemme see. That would be that most of them are afraid of their horses. A lot of them have spent big bucks for high spirited animals they don’t understand or know how to handle.”
Sal hadn’t known one end of a horse from the other when he first came to the Double-Barrel. Troy couldn’t keep from grinning. “That’s about the size of it, Grasshopper. No matter how much instruction they take from people like me, they don’t listen. They say they want to know why a horse does this or that, but they don’t take the time or have the patience to learn.”
He shrugged. “But you can only do so much. I’ve quit worrying about every horse. Now, I just try to help each one as much as I can and hope for the best for it. Friday, we’ll pack up and go home. Nothing but bird hunting and hog hunting with my dad and brothers until after Christmas. You gonna be around for the holidays?”
“Don’t know. Still waiting to see if I’m going back East. You don’t have to worry though. If I go, someone competent will take my place.”
“Sal, your company’s competency is not something I stay awake over. Until lately, my safety wasn’t either. I’m in good shape. I’m usually carrying and I usually hit where I aim. I’ve been a hunter my whole life.”
A rarely seen smirk played across Sal’s mouth and Troy realized he had made a stupid statement. True, he worked out in the ranch’s workout room, keeping himself lean and mean. He had even learned a few self-defense moves from the Redstone guys. True, he had been hunting since the day he came to live at the Double-Barrel Ranch twenty-two years ago.
He might have years of experience with hunting rifles and pistols, but his amateur skills paled in comparison to these security people. According to Drake, they all had the most sophisticated training with frightening weapons and real combat experience in treacherous parts of the world. What he felt for every one of them was nothing short of awe. What they felt about the Lockhart family members, or any of the wealthy patrons they protected, Troy couldn’t guess. They never criticized and never showed anything but the utmost courtesy and respect.
“C’mon, dude. You’ve never had a human being in your sights,” Sal said.
“’Course not. Although I’ve met a few that needed shooting.”
“It’s not the same as facing down Bambi or Porky. If it should come to that, you’d best leave it to us.”
“You’re not the only one to give me that lecture,” Troy said. “I’m okay with it. I doubt I’m hero material.”
Sal chuckled. “You’d be surprised. Everyone’s got a little hero in him if he’s called on.”
“When you joined the military, did you sign up to be a hero?”
“I love this country. I signed up to do whatever it took to defend it.”
