He lowers his lips to my ear. “Sunshine, I retired my jockeys the second you moved in.”
56
LUKE
Emma needs to go to the Circle H, and I volunteer Harper and myself for the job. Jake doesn’t want Emma going places alone, and I know he’s chomping at the bit to dig into the intel Hendricks sent him. Besides, getting out will be good for Harper, especially when she gets to spend time with a friend like Emma.
When we get there, I drop the ladies off by the foreman’s house before I do a security sweep of the property—checking fence lines, looking for signs of tampering, and generally making sure Turner's men haven't left any surprises. I joke around with a couple of the hands working the horses, what Jake calls my backwards ways of getting information. In this case, I want a sense of whether they’ve noticed anything strange.
Nothing. Everything seems calm. I help one of the hands herd a trio of horses to the corral, keeping an eye on Emma and Harper.
Emma's in the barn with one of the hands, checking on a mare that's due to foal any day now. I can see her through the open doors, her hand on the horse's neck, talking softly. I shake my head. Two months pregnant and still working like she has something to prove.
Harper’s sitting on a hay bale to their right, her feet dangling. The sun hits her just right, illuminating the gold at the edges of her curls. I stop a second.
Somewhere between sneaking into her bedroom and helping her move into mine, she stopped feeling like a possibility and started feeling like home. Watching her laugh with Emma, I know with absolute certainty that I’d blow up anything that tried to take her away from me.
I'm halfway to the corral when the first shot cracks through the air.
The sound is sharp, distant—a rifle report echoing off the hills.
A bay gelding in the near pasture drops like someone cut his strings, one second grazing, the next down, blood pooling dark in the dirt.
"Harper!" I'm moving, my hand going to the weapon at my hip.
My woman’s already in motion, grabbing Emma and ducking behind the hay, covering Emma’s body with her own.
Another shot.
I drop to the ground, rolling until I’m pressed against the bottom of a fence post, searching to sight where the shots are coming from.
A steer in the far pasture jerks and collapses, its legs folding beneath it.
Another shot echoes. The crack of the rifle is methodical and precise. Professional.
I curse as one of the horses we were moving to the corral drops, unmoving.
“Get down!” I yell at the ranch hand.
The kid is frozen, standing like a big red target in the middle of the yard, watching blood seep from the carcass.
“Fucking hell,” I mutter, and I run to drag him to cover.
"Luke!” Harper screams.
"Stay down!" I bark, wrenching the lead from the kid's hand and dropping it before hauling him behind the barn wall.
Harper's already on her feet, moving with tactical precision. She grabs Emma by the arm and pulls her up. "Foreman's house. Now."
The ranch hand looks between us, terrified.
"Move!" Harper snaps at him, and he scrambles to follow.
I cover them as they run—Harper in front, Emma in the middle, the kid bringing up the rear. They cross the open yard in seconds, Harper's body angled to shield Emma the entire way.
Another shot cracks.
The bullet hits the dirt three feet from where Harper was standing.