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“Did you get the fuckers?”
“Not yet. Like you said, Roger wasn’t at home.”
“I’ll tell Ronnie to dish up two of the specials for you and Billy.” Jack took a few steps to the kitchen door and hollered in to the cook. When he came back he said, “You got bulletins out there and all that cop stuff?” He was so white, he looked like he was going to pass out.
“Yeah. We did it all. Border crossings too. They can’t get into Canada.”
Jack nodded. “How did Savanna look when you saw her at the store this morning?”
“Bleeding and unconscious,” I said. “White as that fuckin snow outside. How was she supposed to look?”
“I’m going a bit nuts,” said Jack.
“Just remember, Tim is dead and Savanna isn’t.”
“Yeah, there’s that.” Jack braced himself against the bar and poured himself a shot of bourbon.
Billy and I ate our dinner and pushed on home to the ranch. It had snowed the whole fuckin day and the roads were treacherous. We had chores ahead of us, along with a lot of shoveling.
Wild Stallion Ranch.
The lane was plugged with snow and we had to park on the road and walk to the house. A foot of new snow on the porch steps that I plowed through before I could unlock the fuckin door. I was hating fucking Montana and cursing the weather as I flicked on the lights and shivered.
“The wood stove is out.” Nobody heard me complain except the dogs and they were standing right next to their empty bowls. I fed them before I did anything else.
Out the back, I heard the tractor start. Billy was plowing the driveway so we could get the fuckin squad in off the road.
I went out the back door towards the barn. Outlaw hadn’t been fed and when I saw the amount of snow in front of the barn doors, I called to my stallion and told him to hang on a little longer. A three-foot drift was blocking Outlaw in.
A trip to the woodshed for a shovel and I spent the next twenty minutes trying to get the fuckin doors open. Outlaw could hear me, and he was kicking the side of his stall and nickering and getting really upset.
It would be damned cold in the barn for him too, and it was only fuckin October. I was glad I’d made up my mind that I was moving back to Texas and taking my horse and my dogs with me.
Once I managed to get one of the doors open and get inside the barn, I turned on the lights and fed Outlaw right away. While he munched on his food, I put his blanket on him and fastened the straps.
“That will help a bit, boy, but it don’t make up for living up here in Montana. I guess you were born here, but I wasn’t. Telling you right now, we ain’t sticking around here more than another month.”
Chapter Two
Tuesday, October 9th.
Wild Stallion Ranch.
My bare foot touched the icy cold wooden floor beside my bed and I felt like grabbing the lamp on the nightstand and firing it against the wall. More than a little pent up anger against a lot of things, and number one was living up here in butt-crack when I wanted to be near Annie.
I walked across the hall to the bathroom and I could hear Billy chopping kindling in the living room. He was starting the woodstove to take the chill off the house. Even with the furnace running full tilt, the house wasn’t warm. Far from it.
When I let the dogs out, I could see more snow had fallen during the night and Billy might have to plow again. I needed to make an emergency list. Things to have on hand if we got fuckin stranded—like gas for the tractor—enough beer for a couple of days—and food—bottled water if the pipes fuckin froze.
I could hardly wait to drop into the ReMax office and list the ranch. My nerves couldn’t take another day of it. Small things seemed to bother me a lot.
While I waited for the coffee maker to do its job, I called the hospital and was given the pat answer by the nurse in the ICU. Savanna was doing as well as could be expected. No visitors until after twelve o’clock.
“How’s she doing?” asked Billy. He stood in the kitchen doorway with a bundle of wood in his arms, a worried look on his face.
I shrugged my shoulders, barely able to form a coherent response. “They won’t say.”
He carried the wood into the living room, dumped the load into the box next to the stove and came back to the kitchen.
