Montana Red. Genell Dellin

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      The pumping adrenaline was making Clea’s arms shake but her icy fingers managed to get the halter on and the strap pulled through the buckle. Once she’d led her out—Ari quiet and cooperating as if they’d planned this escape together—Clea took the time to close and fasten the stall door so that, at first glance in the morning, everything would look normal. Every minute she could buy herself was another mile down the road.

      Although, now that she had her mare on a lead in her hand, she could kill anybody who tried to take her away. She had another flash of a fleeting fantasy that that somebody might be Brock and…

       Enough foolishness. Get out of here.

      The other horses were mostly quiet as she and Ari paraded past them, the mare’s shoes clinking on the concrete. The smell of fly spray from the automated system burned her lungs and made her want to cough, but she resisted.

      Ari switched her tail and knocked a halter against the wire of the last stall they passed, hard enough to make the buckle clink but that was all. No alarms sounded and no voices yelled and no lights went on anywhere.

      Once outside, the sultry Texas night slapped Clea in the face. The noises of buzzing locusts, croaking frogs and, farther away, Interstate 20 announced that the wider world was waiting. It wouldn’t be long now.

      Clea kept to the shadows until they were through the gate to the pasture, then she tied the lead rope into a makeshift rein, led the mare over to the fancy new polyurethane fence, stepped up on it and mounted. Laughter—bitter, terrible, sad, hard laughter—bubbled up in her at the vision of Brock’s face, if he could see her now.

      But she no longer wanted him to see her. It’d just be a big mess, and if he called in law enforcement, she would lose Ari for good.

       Wait. Wait till you cross Red River. In Oklahoma you can celebrate.

      One smooch and they were going, heading diagonally across the big pasture, taking approximately the same path through the tall grass Clea had come in on. Her legs and seat melted against the warm horseflesh and she felt the first glimmer of peace flow through her. She wanted so much to squeeze Ariel into a lope and fly away with her, but she took a deep breath and made herself fall into the rhythm of the mare’s long, reaching walk instead.

      It was hot. So hot that even Ariel didn’t have it in her to be frisky. Good thing, because Clea didn’t dare use the flashlight now, out in the open. Even if she did, the grass made it impossible to see the ground beneath, so she wouldn’t—would not—jog or lope, no matter how much her nerves screamed that they wanted to. This was enough. Just to be together again.

      Tears sprang to her eyes and she leaned forward on the sleek black neck so she could lay her cheek against it.

      “You’re my gorgeous girl,” she said. “Don’t get in a hurry and step in a hole now. Nobody’ll see us.”

      She hoped. She tugged at the black do-rag to make sure it covered all of her pale hair.

      A mosquito rose from the grass and dived at her, hanging in the air at her cheek, singing in her ear. Clea hunched her shoulder to rub it off so she could keep her hand on the horse. The feel of Ari’s warm flesh against her palm comforted her. She wasn’t alone anymore.

      And Ariel was safe.

       I’ll sell your precious damned mare down the road, Clea, and I won’t be too particular about who buys her. You can bet your selfish little life on that. If you’re gone, then so is she. Maybe to the killers.

      Brock’s voice was in her head, so real she thought she felt his breath on her neck. She shivered.

      Her only comfort while she plotted and planned and waited to get Ariel back into her possession had been knowing that he was too greedy to sell a high-dollar horse for a killer price.

      Maybe. His need to control consumed him. She’d been living in fear that it might trump greed in the face of all the inconvenience and money Clea was costing him.

      The sudden glow of headlights coming around the curve on the county road she was heading for, jerked her back into the present moment and froze her in place on the horse. She could tell by the moonlit silhouette that it was a big pickup truck with lights across the top and along the running boards.

      Would the driver see her rig? And then think thieves and stop to investigate? Or call the sheriff? Take her tag number?

      She’d done the best she could, but her brand-new truck and trailer pulled up into a ragged bunch of mesquite by the side of the road at three in the morning were not hard to spot. This whole area was slipping fast into urban-sprawl development land and the people who lived in the new McMansions and worked in Dallas usually didn’t drive pickup trucks. It must be one of the few farmers or ranchers or horse trainers still holding on in that area. And they were the ones who might get suspicious.

      For a minute she wished she hadn’t been too worried about scratching the paint on her new vehicles to drive deeper into the brush. But then the truck rolled right on by her hiding place without slowing down; she was safe again.

      As safe as she could be while in illegal possession of one of the best hunter-jumpers in the country.

      But it wouldn’t be long until she was out there on I-20, blended in among the eighteen-wheelers and the RVs, flying north with her darling tucked safely away out of sight—calmly, she hoped—munching hay. Just a few more minutes. They were more than halfway to the road.

      Clea turned around to look behind her at the looming white house in the distance and the gabled barn behind it. The sight urged her to lope the rest of the way. She fought it down. She’d come too far to mess up now.

      After what seemed a whole night’s worth of time, they reached the fence that ran along the road.

      Clea slid off, untied the lead and reclipped it under Ari’s chin, murmuring nonsense to the mare, keeping the trees between them and the road as long as she could. She gave thanks again that along this side of the property was still an old barbed-wire fence with a section held up by a loop of baling wire to make a gate. No lock.

      She opened it and the black mare walked right through the gap, waited for the trailer door to swing back and loaded without a bit of trouble.

      “If you’ll just haul the same way you loaded, we’ll do great,” Clea said.

      She let herself take a second to hug Ariel’s neck before she tied her in the slot prepared with the full hay feeder.

      “You be good,” she said as she fastened the divider securely around Ariel. “Don’t give me any trouble and we’ll get to our new home a whole lot faster. You’ll love it there. It’s nice and cool.”

      Ari grabbed a mouthful of hay and started chomping. Clea closed up the trailer and then went to put the gate back in place.

      Excitement was starting to build deep inside her, pushing away fear and anger, coming up hot through the pool of cold sadness. She ran to the driver’s door, unlocked it, climbed in, fastened her seat belt and turned the key. She backed out into the blissfully empty road to head for the interstate. Straight south from here, all the way to the access road, then a right turn and it wasn’t half a mile to the on-ramp. The northbound on-ramp.

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