a bomb blast, because Kathy couldn’t feel her limbs and it was quiet. Deathly quiet. Not even the bird alarm clock made a sound.
“I made peace with my dad.” Flynn’s voice cut through the aftershock. “Maybe it’s time we made peace with Mom. I could get her into rehab. Truman needs you to have a strong support system and...”
“Don’t you dare bring her around me or Truman.” Kathy’s lips felt numb. The words she had to say formed too slowly until she felt robbed of what little power she had left. “I mean it.”
Flynn spoke in his brother-knows-best voice. “It’s been nearly two years since I’ve heard from her. I just thought...”
“She doesn’t deserve your compassion.” She deserves to rot in hell.
* * *
THE TROUBLE WITH selling your soul to the devil was that there was a debt to be repaid. Or, in Dylan’s case, several.
He had thirty days. Thirty days to deliver the semen orders he’d sold for Phantom. Thirty days until his next mortgage and child-support payments were due. Thirty days to make progress with Kathy and the injured colt.
Dylan leaned on the porch railing at Redemption Ranch. Wisps of mist clung to the brown grass in his pastures as the first rays of daylight crested the Sonoma Mountains. Steam rose from the cup of coffee cradled in his hands. In the distance, tall, sturdy eucalyptus trees created a natural border to his property. Whoever had planted those trees had wanted a visual marker, a boundary, that said, This is mine. If Dylan couldn’t keep up with the payments, he’d have to sell off a parcel of the land to a developer. The trees would go. Cookie-cutter houses would fill the pasture. Noise would invade his borders.
As a kid, he’d longed for peace. He’d longed for silence. He’d longed for a place where his father’s belligerence and words and fists couldn’t touch him. Couldn’t hurt him. At his mother’s church, they’d talked about forgiveness and redemption. Those concepts were as unreachable back then as the stars. But today?
Does Phantom deserve redemption? He’d thought so once. But one shot was all he’d have.
Put him down. His father’s command, chilling and frozen in his memory.
“What’s wrong, Dylan? Knee bothering you?” Barry came down the outdoor steps from his garage apartment. With his shoulder-length, snowy hair and diminutive height, the former jockey could pass himself off as one of Santa’s elves.
Dylan let his gaze drift back to the tree-lined horizon. “My knee’s fine.” Aching in the brisk morning, but that was his new normal.
“Then let’s work Phantom.”
Dylan’s grip on the coffee mug tightened. He gazed out over the pasture, but he saw a different scene now, one from long ago. A boy wearing pajamas shut in a stall with a crippled horse and a gun.
“We need to make a withdrawal.” Barry gestured toward Phantom’s stall, the only one that had an outdoor paddock attached. “We can’t keep taking orders if there’s no product to sell. Lots of breeders are anxious for Phantom’s genes.”
Because they expected Dylan to destroy the champion. “Maybe tomorrow. Or next week.” Dylan forced himself to set the coffee cup down. “Maggie Mae should be in heat soon. We can’t collect the goods from Phantom without a mare in her cycle.”
“Excuses.” Barry’s hands swung Dylan’s reasoning aside. He probably waved off flies with less vigor. “It’s been six months, son. It’s time to get back in the saddle.”
“Maybe I’m the wrong person for the job. Maybe I’ve lost my touch.”
“The only thing you’ve lost is your nerve.” Barry propped a foot on the front porch step. “If I had quit riding races after one fall, I would have never won the Kentucky Derby. I had a gift for the ride. I’m too old now to compete, but if my body was able, I’d still be out there every week.”
“You’d have to give up beer and chili-cheese fries.”
“After twenty years of racing, I earned every extra pound.” Barry patted his still-svelte gut. He was only fifteen pounds over his racing weight. “But don’t go changing the subject. You’ve let that horse get into your head.”
Dylan didn’t argue that point. Everyone thought he’d lost his nerve after the accident, that he was afraid of Phantom and others like him.
Damn right he was afraid. But not of the stallion. He was afraid of what would happen if he couldn’t complete the collection procedure this time.
Barry took his silence for cowardly fear. “If you think he’s so dangerous, why did you buy him?”
“Because they were going to put him down.” Because Dylan felt partly to blame for Phantom’s attack, seeing as how he’d held the lead rope. “Because they were practically giving him away and his stud fees can save us.” On its own, his idea to run a ranch where unwanted horses could be rehabilitated and recovering alcoholics could build confidence wasn’t a profit-making proposition. “We barely make ends meet.”
“There you go again. Money,” Barry grumbled, pausing to face Dylan. “Money doesn’t make you a good man. Or a good father.”
“The bank and the family-court judge don’t agree.” Nor did Eileen. Dylan had to be a good provider, a better one than his own drunken, volatile father had been.
Barry made a noise that Dylan took for disapproval. He glanced back at Phantom’s stall. “When I fought in the Vietnam War, they sent me down into the tunnels because of my size. I acted like a man and said I was brave, but the truth was, I was scared. And probably just as scared as the Vietcong I was sent down there to kill.”
“All right. All right.” Message received. Dylan and the horse were both probably scared. “I’ll pay Phantom a visit.” And yet Dylan didn’t move.
Barry headed for the stables. “I’m going to open up his paddock door and muck out his stall. The Dylan O’Brien who used to live here would take advantage of that time. And if that Dylan O’Brien still lives here, he needs to make an appearance.”
A white cat wended its way between Dylan’s legs, then moved slowly down the porch steps, pausing at the bottom to look back at him and flick her crooked tail.
Even Ghost knows it’s time to do this.
One by one, horses extended their heads to Dylan as he passed their stalls. He paused to greet Peaches, leaning in to look at the little palomino. She extended her nose to reach his hand, as if to say she had complete faith in Dylan. She’d been Phantom’s stable mate through his racing career and his retirement to stud. Dylan grabbed her halter and brought her along just as Barry tripped the lever that opened Phantom’s stall to the paddock.
Phantom charged into the gray light of morning as if he was the last vestige of darkness racing toward the horizon. Or perhaps he just missed the starting gates of his youth. He skidded to a stop at the far end of the paddock, nearly sitting on his haunches, then began his patrol of the perimeter. He made a circuit, rearing in front of Dylan, ready to strike him as he’d done months ago. His eyes rolled, until the whites showed, and Dylan’s gut twisted, but he stood his ground.
Phantom’s
