Lana and Avery, stopped, and put her hands on her hips. “What are you doing here?” she asked Avery.
“I thought I’d like to look around,” Avery said. “And look, I brought some cookies for the boys.”
“We have plenty of cookies already,” Marnie said. “And if you want to look around, you need to take it up with Beatrice Brewster. She’s the ranch director.” Marnie turned and stomped back into the house.
What was that about? In the months Lana had known Marnie, the woman had never been anything but kind to others.
Avery looked annoyed. “What’s her problem? Can’t a girl do a good deed?” She thrust the cookies into Lana’s hands. “Here, send these along to the boys. I’m going to take a look around the ranch. Without anyone’s approval.”
Avery headed off in the direction of the barn, leaving Lana thoroughly confused about who Avery was and what she was looking for.
* * *
In front of the barn, Flint, Robby Gonzalez and Ben Turner had just gotten the harvester back together. They fired it up and listened to the newly smooth sound of the engine. While the boys high-fived each other, Flint felt an uneasy prickle in the back of his neck.
He turned around. He hadn’t seen Logan in a while, but he was probably still content in the barn with the new kittens and a video game.
Somewhere behind the barn, Cowboy was barking as if he’d cornered a cat.
Avery Culpepper came from the same direction as Cowboy’s commotion, heading toward one of the older boys who’d been helping with the harvester before, Stephen Barnes. What did she want with him? Stephen was supposed to go home for good at Christmastime, and all the staff was hoping he could keep it together and get along with his stepfather well enough to make it happen.
A moment later, a shout from the other direction spun him around.
And then a familiar, high-pitched scream.
Logan. The voice sounded like Logan.
Flint was running before the sound died out, running toward the other side of the barn. As he came around the corner, horror struck him.
One of the open-air tractors was rolling down a slope with Logan at the wheel.
Dimly aware of Cowboy loping beside him, barking, Flint ran faster, his eyes on the drama still half a football field’s distance away from him. Panic hammered at his chest.
Logan’s mouth was open, and he was screaming. He held on to the wheel, but clearly more to keep from being thrown out of the tractor than because he could control its direction. And now Flint realized that Robby Gonzalez ran beside him, yelling something about the brake.
Could Logan even reach the brake? Flint forced his arms and legs to pump faster, at the same time trying to calculate what had happened. Logan must have knocked the tractor out of gear. And the vehicle was headed toward a metal gate. If the tractor hit it, Logan would go flying. Might be badly hurt, even—
Robby took a flying leap, trying to grab on and climb into the driver’s seat with Logan, but his foot slipped, and he fell backward with a yell. Cowboy raced ahead and reached Robby’s side.
“Get help!” Flint roared at Ben Turner as he passed the boy, his heart and lungs burning, running faster than he’d ever run in his life.
The tractor was picking up speed, and if Logan tried to jump...
“Stay there, Logan!” he yelled, jumping over sagebrush and dodging clumps of grass. “Just stay! I’m coming!”
Behind him he heard shouting, a commotion, but his focus remained on one thing: Logan. Flint was gaining on the tractor now. He couldn’t let it hit that gate.
All thought left him, and he was just a body, running as he’d run in wartime, even faster, because it wasn’t just any life at stake, it was his son’s.
A prayer sprang from deep inside him: Help us, Lord!
Somehow, he found his timing and took a flying leap into the tractor. He grabbed Logan in one arm and the steering wheel in the other, slid his feet into place and hit the brake.
The tractor jolted to a halt, jerking both of them hard.
And then everything was still.
Gasping for air, his heart pounding like a posthole digger, Flint pulled Logan onto his lap. Reached down and put the tractor back in gear. Set the brake. And then brushed Logan’s hair back and studied him, checking for damage.
Logan seemed to catch his breath again then, and he started to cry. A normal, scared-kid cry. Not an “I might get killed” cry.
Praise the Lord.
Blessed. Just for this one moment, he and Logan had been blessed.
“I was scared, Daddy!”
Flint held his son in his arms and sent up a prayer of thanks. His son was safe. He had a second chance.
His heart still pounded so hard it felt like his chest would explode. Delayed reaction nerves had his hands shaking.
He pulled Logan close against his chest. “Never scare me like that again, buddy.”
Logan rubbed his face on Flint’s shirt. “I’m sorry.”
Ben and several of the other boys from the ranch arrived at the tractor, with Marnie and Lana Alvarez close behind them.
“What happened?” Lana asked. “Is Logan okay?”
“He’s fine.” Flint didn’t even have it in him to feel ashamed that the teacher had seen his son in danger. He was still too shaken, too thankful that Logan was alive.
But not too shaken to check for other casualties. “Is Robby all right?” he thought to ask. “He did his best to try to help. Took quite a fall.”
“I’m fine,” the boy said, stepping out from the little crowd. “Sorry I couldn’t stop the tractor.”
“Mr. Rawlings flew!” said one of the other boys.
“Come on,” Marnie said, taking charge. “Let’s get Logan inside. I’ve got a plate of cookies with his name on it. Homemade by me,” she added, with a dark look in Avery Culpepper’s direction.
Flint realized then that Avery hadn’t joined the crowd around them. She was disappearing over the hill, in the direction of the parking lot. Weird.
So they all walked back toward the ranch house together. For the teenage boys, the situation had evolved into something cool, and they traded stories about what they’d seen, how Robby had tried to jump on the tractor, how Ben had run race-pace to get help.
Marnie was still muttering about Avery. “I wouldn’t doubt if that woman had something to do with this,” she said.
Flint was holding Logan, focusing on him, but he had to correct that unfair accusation. “She wasn’t anywhere near,
