Killing Casanova (8 page)

Jake coiled the bridles around his fist as he cleared the heavy dirt from his nostrils and glared after the hand. They would have been all right to finish this job if Carter had not started in about Lilly. Jake couldn’t afford to let his temper get the best of him, and he was fairly certain that had been exactly what Carter had wanted. Jake spit into the dirt at his feet and fought the urge to call Lilly as fast as he could. Starlight and her foal would not wait for that, and he needed to keep his head.

Glancing at the mares Jake turned back for the horse stable, catching the sound of Ruiando’s irritated snorts and clomping feet. Jake picked his pace up to a jog as the horse’s discontent grew more desperate, and Jake feared Starlight was in labor.

Jake?
Cassie thought forlornly, as she twisted her hair into a clump at the back of her head. She was sure to run into him today, and the idea prickled the skin at the back of her neck. He was never close enough for them to have more misunderstandings, but she could feel his eyes on her and his unmistakable presence, almost lurking.

Troy climbed into the truck beside her. “Trailers ready. You?”

“Explain this to me again,” she said, latching her seat belt as Troy pulled away from The Rocking J. “Miriam just told me that Heidi won’t come to work with Applesauce without Jake, and he’s working with the horses today and can’t bring her.”

As the truck pulled onto the paved highway three miles from Caswell Farms, Cassie rolled down her window and let the warm wind blow across her hot skin.

“So we’re taking Applesauce to the farm?” she shouted above the noise.

Troy grunted in affirmation, and Cassie frowned out the windshield. Jake’s reckless comments at their last meeting had been more detrimental to Heidi’s state of mind than Cassie had realized. Miriam said Debra Caswell was having difficulty getting her anywhere near any of the horses; instead, she shadowed Jake everywhere he went. When Miriam talked to Heidi on the phone, she said she would work with Cassie and Applesauce, but only if she could be where Jake was. Cassie sighed and fought back the trepidation she could feel rolling in her stomach. It was hard enough to work in unfamiliar circumstances, but with Jake hovering nearby … she didn’t see this going well.

Cassie heard Troy slow down and flip on his blinker. Her body jiggled with the bumps of the truck as the pavement beneath the tires gave way to gravel.

Cassie rolled down her window as they pulled up the gravel driveway, sniffing the air and sorting the smells of cattle, dirt, water, and alfalfa. Turning in her seat, she unfastened her seatbelt, and leaned her head out the window to feel the morning sun from across the cab of the truck. Troy slowed their progress even further as a bawling calf startled Cassie back into the cab.

“Tell me about this place, will you?” she asked, gesturing with her hand out the window, as they started moving again.

“This road goes for about five miles into the heart of the farm. There are a few side roads leading to different pastures and feed buildings. All of the fields between where we turned in and the farm house are alfalfa and corn to the west. And the same except for soy beans on the east.”

Cassie frowned as she picked up the slight scent of summer corn but couldn’t decipher the soy. “Why do they grow corn and soy?”

A smoky smell drifted on the breeze and she wrinkled her nose.

“They use the corn for feed, and they sell the soy for grain. They grow both because the ground gets depleted of its nutrients when you don’t alternate your crop base. Robert and Jake spent a good deal of money and time setting up a fancy irrigation system and reservoir from the San Madera to keep the farm self-sufficient. This part of the country is too hot and dry for the crops that Caswell Farms grows. Thanks to the reservoir and the irrigation, they are the only ones who can do it.”

Troy’s voice paused, and Cassie rolled her window up to block out the flying dust and acrid smell of smoke now growing stronger. “How did Robert Caswell get permission to take water from the San Madera?”

The uneven travel of the truck paused as Cassie heard the rumble of another vehicle passing by. The pungent odor of the complaining cows overwhelmed all other scents and she listened to Troy once more. “Jake has a government land grant in the San Madera Valley. He found a herd of wild mustangs living near the river and got the grant to protect their native land. Because Caswell Farms uses the irrigation to enrich the land and provide for the natural habitat of the mustangs, there is no mortgage on the farm, and they receive federal funding for its upkeep. That’s why Jake spends so much time here, not for the cattle, but for the mustangs. He wants to be involved in their protection.”

Cassie nodded, but kept her expression blank as the truck continued to make its way through the alfalfa fields. Jake loved horses? Wild horses? And he was willing to give up screaming fans and fainting women to be near them and care for them? His deep protective instincts of Heidi and Kirstie now seemed to ring a bit more genuinely in her ears, and she frowned as she actually found this part of him somewhat … attractive? She shook her head now.

“Sorry,” Troy mumbled quietly. “None of that is going to help you find your way around, is it?” Cassie gave a weak smile, and Troy cleared his throat. “When we pull up to the house there will be a six-foot-wide wooden porch with a set of steps that lead to the front door. There is a stone path that leads to them, and I’ll drop you off there while I go unload Applesauce in the horse barn. It’s about a hundred yards south and west of the house, and the stables are about fifteen feet west of the barn. The stables are a stone structure on the north and wooden on the south. The only access is from the south, and I believe that is where Jake will be birthing a foal. If Heidi is not at the house, you will probably find her down in the stables with him.”

Cassie nodded again and unrolled her window as she felt the truck slow.

A gasp escaped Troy’s lips, and then the bark of a sharp command as Cassie’s nose suddenly filled with caustic smoke and her ears rang with the sound of screaming horses.

“Stay in the truck,” Troy snapped as her hand reached for the door handle. She grasped the arm rest tightly as the truck lurched forward and began speeding west away from where they had slowed to stop.

“What’s burning?” Cassie yelled as the truck and trailer moved toward the smell and a flare of heat washed back into the truck.

“The stables!” he shouted and then leapt from the driver’s side door.

Cassie could hear panicked horses and men rushing about. The heat whipped back across the windshield and smoke grew thick all around her. Despite Troy’s instructions, Cassie jumped from the truck and used her cane to make her way to the rear of the truck until she found the trailer. Applesauce’s own frightened whinnies met her ears, and she moved around to the side and rear of the trailer until she located the bolt to release the gate.

Letting Applesauce hear her voice, Cassie moved into the trailer and worked her way to the horses twitching head. Taking a lead rope from the rear of the trailer, she hooked it to the horse’s bridle and backed her out of the trailer. Cassie could hear the agitation of other animals grouped further down the fence line. The level of anxiety she could feel from them was significantly less, so she told Applesauce to move toward them.

The old gray mare moved faster than Cassie had known she could, stopping at a fence rail and neighing to a few other mares. Cassie tied the lead rope to the fence, patting Applesauce reassuringly and whispering in her ear. Cassie remained with the pastured horses listening and praying that the running men had gotten all of the animals out of the structure.

Troy had said the stable was stone in front, a condition that would reduce the fire’s effect, but the wooden portions along with the hay and feed would make it a tinder box, and if there were any horses inside or … Jake … and maybe Heidi … the bitter taste of bile rose into her throat and she fought back smoky tears.

Panic and fear burned up her throat more intensely than that she felt from the fire. Helplessness boiled all around her now, leaving her trapped in its hold. Her hand wrapped around the top rail of the fence where she stood and the world balanced.
Stables to the left,
she thought.
Fence heads north beside the corral.

Using her cane to feel her way along the fence, Cassie drew closer to the heat and fumes and heard Troy’s voice drifting in the wind.

“He’s in the northwest corner with Starlight and the foal, but they can’t get past the flames. He said if we douse the ceiling on the western side it would help but …”

Troy’s words were lost as he moved beyond her range and Cassie’s heart jumped again. He … Jake? Cassie moved further up the fence line, trying to picture in her mind the description of the building Troy had given her. He said it was stone in the front and wood in the rear. It was possible the stone was just a façade, and if she could find a crack or break in it, it would at least give Jake more air.

Cassie stepped away from the fence rail stretching out her arms until her fingertips touched the rail lightly and her other hand was straight out from her side. With the morning sun against her cheek, she stepped away from the rail and toward the scent and heat of the fire. She had taken less than ten steps when her outstretched hand found the outer corrals Troy had told her ran the length of the western wall of the stable. Cassie dropped her cane and climbed under the rails of the corral and worked her way north until she felt the stones of the corner pieces beneath her fingertips.

Collapsing to her knees and trying to ignore the heat and smoke she could feel choking her eyes and throat, Cassie began digging along the cracks of mortar between the smooth stones. Her sensitive fingertips felt for a hint of air seeping from between the edges of the sturdy stone, and her frustration nearly overtook her as there was nothing. Laying her palms against the warm stones, Cassie reached higher until her palm found a stone, scalding beneath her touch, and she pulled back in surprise and elation. The rest had been warm, but the fire’s heat had penetrated to engulf this one.

Cassie reached for it again, ignoring all other sensation, to focus on the heat. Running her fingers carefully along its outer edge, she found the mortar dry like clay fired in a kiln.

Cassie dropped back to her knees, pulling a splinter of wood from the corral rail beside her. The wood was dry and brittle in the fire’s heat, and the sharp chunk broke away easily.

Cassie found the heated stone again, and then slipped the broken protrusion into the fragile mortar until she felt the hardened grout come away from the rock. Prying beneath it with her fingers and the stick, Cassie managed to dislodge the stone from its placement. She let it fall to the ground at her feet, dropped the awkward pieces of wood, and retrieved the stone. With the heftier weight in her hands, Cassie began battering against the inner wall of the stable.

The space where the rock began breaking through, gushed smoke, pungent with an acidic burnt hide smell mingled with obnoxious chemical fumes.

Cassie instinctually held her breath against the toxins and felt around for the size of the hole in the wall where the stone had been. Smoke poured through the gap, seeking escape, and Cassie became overwhelmed by the choking smell. Coughing uncontrollably for a minute, and gasping on the ground for clearer air, Cassie’s eyes watered and stung with the thick air all around her. Tearing a strip from the bottom of her T-shirt, she fell to her knees and reclaimed the fallen rock. She tied the strip of cloth around her mouth and nose, then gripped the rock in both hands.

The shouting of men, crying horses, and even the intermittent shrieks of women’s voices drifted only briefly to her ears as Cassie blocked out the swirling sounds and focused only on the sound of rock battering against stone and wood. The roar of the flames reverberated in tempo with the pounding of her arms against the edge of the two-foot gap she had opened up low on the western wall of the stable. As she drew her aching arms back for one more thrust against the building, Cassie caught a low, gasping voice as it drifted through the opening.

“Move back. Get back!”

Cassie scrambled backward until her back collided with a wooden rail in the corral, and she collapsed in a gasp of clear air, sinking back against its support. As she pulled the soot-laden cloth from over her face, she heard once again the sounds of pounding hooves and shouting men, but also the pounding from the inside of the building just feet from her collapse.

The hard crunch of boots on gravel met her ears, as someone rounded the edge of the building to gasp at the scene before him. Cassie guessed from the sharp sound of his exclamation that it was Troy. She grimaced at the sound, figuring Troy had assumed she had stayed where he’d left her in the truck. She could only imagine the scene he was finding now, her face smudged and blackened, in a heap against the corral, staring blankly at what sounded like an explosion of wood and rock burning in a violent thrust from a hole in the stable wall.

Cassie heard the smattering of falling debris. The sounds of rocks and wood raining down all around her. She only felt their proximity as the shards grazed the surface of her skin, close enough to strike her face. Cassie forced herself to remain unmoving. She knew it was the fact that she was oblivious to the onslaught that saved her; had she seen the barrage flying toward her, it was likely she would have tried to dodge the storm and been hit.

“Cassie,” Troy shouted. “There is a lot of smoke pouring from the wall. Can you get out of there?”

Cassie began to push herself up from the ground when she heard what sounded like a set of spindly legs and hooves, being shoved through the gap.

“Jake! And the colt,” Troy gasped, letting go of his grip on Cassie’s wavering attempt at retreat. Cassie felt Troy move away, and she sank back to the rail of the corral. She heard the colt scream and jump to its unsure legs, falling onto the dusty ground before stumbling into another heap at her feet. Cassie laid her head back against the rough wooden rail as she felt and heard Jake crawl through the broken wall and collapse, coughing and choking, on the ground as well.