LITMIR.BIZ

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He would make a splash.

      And so would she.

      Then next year she would go national. She could practically taste the mint juleps now.

      “Best I’ve ever seen,” said the trainer as he mopped rain from his face with a faded bandanna. “He’s got heart, soul and guts. Come inside. I’ll show you the training schedule for next week. I wish you’d reconsider and let me work him in the morning with the others.”

      “No, I don’t want him seen until I’m ready.” She wanted to take all those highbrow blue bloods by surprise. Teresa Vega was born in the gutter, but Tessa Bancroft belonged among the cream. When they saw him, when he won…

      Sharp trumpets of terror blared from the television set on the corner of the desk in the cramped barn office. The trainer reached for the knob. With a hand clawed around his wrist Tessa stopped him.

      Spreading pools of blood, drumming spikes of rain and the fitful windmill of trapped equine legs filled the screen. Then the camera zoomed in on a pair of firemen opening the side of a trailer like a sardine can. A woman’s hand soothed one of the horses jammed inside. The animal’s eyes were wide with panic. Rain slicked its red mane against its neck. Blood ran in rivulets tracing pink worms on the white blaze on its face.

      Horror crawled down her spine as she recognized the beast.

      “On the outskirts of the small town of Gabenburg, northeast of Beaumont,” a reporter said, “a horse-transport van overturned on the slick roads caused by today’s torrential downpour and the near hurricane-strength winds blowing through the Gulf Coast region.” The reporter’s yellow slicker flapped in the wind, sending her careful hairdo into frenzied flight. Her eyes narrowed against the onslaught of rain and her grip tightened around the microphone. “The six horses trapped inside are still alive. Sheriff Conover, can you tell us how the rescue operation is going?”

      Tessa swore and flicked down the volume. She didn’t need this. Not so close to reaching her goal. No one could know about the project.

      Without asking, she snagged the phone off its cradle and dialed. “Have you seen the news?”

      “No,” the voice hedged.

      “Turn on your set. Now.” She waited until she heard the report buzzing in the background. “Get out there and take care of that mess.”

      “I can’t leave—”

      “How is your dear Lillian?” She let the threat hang.

      The time to call on ethics was long past. The good doctor had made his choice years ago. He could blame his choice on youth. He could blame it on mistaken idealism. But that did not alter the fact he was responsible for making the decision in the first place. No one had held a gun to his head. At least not then.

      Now, well, sometimes people needed a reminder of their goals. She would use every weapon at her disposal to ensure he saw the project he’d started to its perfect completion—even his dying wife’s welfare. “I want them back at the clinic tonight.”

      Chapter One

      “What is this?” Nina Rainwater asked in disgust, flipping through channels and landing on the only one showing news. “A million channels and this is what I get? I’m in Colorado, how come I’ve got to listen to weather from Beaumont, Texas?”

      “Satellite dish, Grandmother,” Kevin Ransom said as he entered the hospice room. Nina looked out of place in the pink frill of the room. He’d always associated her with blue skies and green pastures, with the scent of sweet hay and the smoke of a wood fire—with undying energy.

      She didn’t look well this evening. Strands of hair, dull as a rainy November sky, poked out of her usually neat braid. Her brown eyes were listless and her breathing seemed more labored in spite of the tubes feeding her oxygen through her nose.

      The mock disgust was for his benefit. She didn’t want him to worry about her. But he couldn’t help himself. She’d given him his life back after he’d thrown it away. He owed her more than gratitude, and now, when she needed him most, he was helpless again. “Sometimes you can’t get local news with a satellite dish.”

      “Pah!” She pitched the remote and looked longingly at the sun starting to set outside her window. The bearberry flowers, pussytoes and columbines in the rock garden bordering the property swayed in the breeze.

      “Want me to turn off the TV?” Kevin asked.

      She shrugged.

      Kevin reached for the remote—a mere five inches from where she’d launched it—and aimed the gadget at the television set on the roll cart at the foot of Nina’s bed. He was about to press the power button when the image on the screen jumped straight out of his nightmare. It rose like a ghost from his past and laughed at him with satanic glee.

      You can run as fast and as far as you want from trouble, but it will never let you forget.

      He dreaded evenings when his mind had time to catch up with his body, prompting the assault of all he longed to forget. For sixteen years he’d lived a lie, trying to erase the mental picture of his brother’s lifeless body ripped from his grasp on the Red Thunder’s flood-swollen waters.

      Like some punishment cursed upon him by a Greek god, Kent, Ellen and the accident on that awful evening visited him nightly, torturing him with all he’d lost.

      The television screen showed a transport van filled with racehorses toppled on a rain-slicked highway outside a small East Texas town. As much as his life revolved around horses, it wasn’t his equine brothers that held him entranced but the man swaddled in a black slicker trying to save them. Watching the sheriff on the screen was as if he were viewing his own face, had the rocks in the Red Thunder River not altered it all those years ago.

      He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move. Blood roared in his ears. Thoughts tumbled through his mind like debris on a storm-tossed sea. It’s the rain, he tried to convince himself. It made him think of the river, of that night.

      It’s not him. It can’t be. Look, the name’s different. Conover, not Makepeace. And Beaumont is at least a hundred miles from Ashbrook.

      Downriver, he reminded himself. The sharp cheekbones. The hard eyes. The mantle of responsibility square on his shoulders. Familiar. Could Kent have survived such a long trek down the raging Red Thunder?

      The face on the screen joined the haunted memories preying on his mind, overlapping, morphing one into the other, mocking him. Kent, Ellen, anger, so much anger.

      “Pajackok? What’s wrong?”

      When Nina had found him his broken jaw had made him unable to talk. She’d renamed him Pajackok, the Algonquian word for thunder. She’d told him he was all thunder and no lightning. Told him she’d help him find his spark. He’d done his best to discourage her care but she’d ignored him.

      She still didn’t know about Ellen, about his brother, about the damage he’d done with one raw burst of anger.

      Pajackok…Kevin Ransom. Both lies.

      If he’d changed his name, maybe Kent had, too, and given himself a second chance. Kent hadn’t been happy in Ashbrook but he’d been the responsible one, and those self-imposed responsibilities had weighed him down and cemented him into place. Would he have welcomed the chance at freedom?

      Could it be? Could Kevin have avoided all of this torture if he’d just had the courage to face the consequences of his actions? Was Kent alive?

      “Pajackok?”

      To reassure Nina, Kevin strained to find a smile. The gesture was shallow and didn’t linger long on his lips. The spot of warmth on his heart for his adoptive grandmother grew cold in the shade of guilt and shame from his memories. For Nina’s sake he swallowed them back and forced another smile. “Nothing, Grandmother.”

      Despite her shortness of breath she laughed, shaking a finger

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