“That’s what we have to focus on,” he insisted, standing with his two sons outside the corral where the horses milled. They were quieter now that the strobe light had been turned off and the bullhorn had fallen silent.
Quieter after the fire went dark, and the remains of the stables had fallen.
“We can rebuild,” David said in the same strong, stoic voice Tyler remembered from his childhood, when Tyler had found his father kneeling in the soft hazy light of sunrise, next to a mare and a foal who’d both been lost in childbirth.
It was the same voice David had used six years before, when Tyler had gotten caught with his pants down, literally, and almost lost Lochlain.
Tyler looked at him now, at his father, strong and robust even in his late fifties, at the lines carved into his weathered, rancher’s face, the tight lines of his mouth and the devastation he couldn’t quite hide, and quietly vowed to make sure David Preston never had to see Lochlain in ruin again.
“You’re alive,” father said to son, and Tyler felt his chest tighten. He should say something. He knew that. But that would mean letting go of the tight rope he’d been holding since staggering from the barn with Lightning Chaser. And once he let go…
“No one was seriously hurt,” David went on. Cuts and bruises, a groom with a broken wrist, another—the new handyman Reynard, who’d fought to control the panicked horse after a beam had fallen—diagnosed with fractured ribs. “That’s what we have to focus on.”
But the same could not be said of the horses. Three had yet to be found. Two had been put down shortly before sunrise, one due to a shattered right front femur, the second to intense smoke inhalation. The others…
“Lightning will recover,” David Preston said, tapping into his son’s thoughts just as he always did.
“You saved his life,” Shane added, but the trace of hero worship in his younger brother’s voice, something Tyler had not heard since they were kids, scraped.
He glanced from the smoldering remains, where the fire brigade still battled hot spots, toward the horses on the other side of the soot-smeared white fence: the big bays and chestnuts; the shiny black two-year-old who’d run his first race only the week before; the Appaloosa who started each race like a streak; and the little filly who’d never even gotten a chance to show her stuff. Her maiden race was still two weeks away.
“They’re goddamn bloody innocent,” he finally said, and even now, hours after he’d emerged for the last time from the burning barn and sucked in fresh oxygen, each word seared against his throat. “They didn’t deserve this.”
But his father misunderstood. “Son,” David said, and with the quiet word, put a hand to Tyler’s shoulder. “Don’t.”
Tyler’s throat tightened. He turned to meet his father’s gaze, felt something hot and salty sting his.
“This is not your fault,” David insisted. “You did everything right here. You don’t store hay in the horse barns. Smoking isn’t allowed. The wiring is new…hell, Peggy says it passed inspection just two months ago. There’s no bloody way—”
Tyler’s eyes must have flashed. He felt the streak of fury, saw the confused look that passed between his father and his brother.
“Someone did this,” Tyler said, pulling the crumpled note from his pocket and pressing it into his father’s hands. “Someone wanted to hurt him.” Hurt Lightning Chaser. To punish him. Punish them all. “Because of the Queensland,” he gritted out. Because More Than All That had been disqualified, and Lightning had taken home the purse.
Shane moved beside his father, and together they stared down at the thick words scrawled against the picture of Lightning Chaser in full, magnificent stride.
It was a long moment before they looked up. “You think it was arson,” David said.
The words were hard, incredulous, and Tyler felt his jaw tighten in response. He glanced back toward the horses, automatically searching for young Heidi’s horse, Anthem. He’d yet to account for the filly. “I know it was.”
“I’m on my way now. My plane leaves Louisville first thing in the morning.”
Phone in hand, Tyler strode across the muddied paddock toward the small brick building that housed Lochlain’s medical facilities. They were equipped for routine maintenance and injuries—not triage. But each horse needed to be evaluated before individual arrangements could be made. Neighbors from throughout the shire had been arriving in a steady stream since long before the blaze had been put out. They had their trailers. At their stud farms, they had barns. They wanted to help. Fairchild Acres was the only stud that hadn’t sent assistance, and yet even Louisa’s head trainer had phoned to express his horror.
Tyler was quite sure Louisa had not authorized the call. She made no secret of her disdain for the Prestons, whom she still considered nothing more than newcomers.
“There’s really no need, mate,” Tyler told his former trainer, Marcus Vasquez. “Your hands, they’re full with Lucas Racing.” Marcus had relocated to America the year before and was working to establish his own stable.
Half a world away, Tyler wasn’t sure how Marcus had already found out about the fire.
“I was there when Lightning was born,” he reminded. “We were both there that first morning he—” His voice thickened, bringing with it the faintest trace of his Spanish heritage. “I was there,” he finished abruptly, and in truth that said it all. He’d been a hell of a lot more than just Lightning Chaser’s trainer. “And I need to be there now.”
Tyler understood.
He ended the call and kept walking, turned off his phone. There’d been enough calls. Enough questions.
Too bloody few answers.
“The insurance investigator rang,” Peggy said, as he passed. “She’ll be here within the hour.”
He nodded, kept walking. He’d met Beverly Morgan a time or two in the past. She was fair, but she took no prisoners. She would have her own set of questions.
And she would not appreciate his lack of answers.
Over four hours had passed since the fire had been put out, but the heat kept boiling. Tyler’s watch said it wasn’t yet ten, but the morning sun scorched like midafternoon. With every breath, the stench of smoke burned, and everywhere he looked he saw the lingering smear of smoke.
Even when he closed his eyes.
God, especially when he closed his eyes.
He’d yet to go inside. His mother had tried to get him to shower and clean up, to eat something. To have some tea. She meant well, he knew that. She wanted to help. But she hadn’t understood that he couldn’t. If he put so much as one bite of food in his mouth—
His stomach roiled at the thought.
Tyler rounded the corner and slipped in the back door. From the front of the brightly lit facility he heard Russ’s voice in a serious conversation with one of the three additional veterinarians who’d arrived with the sunrise.
But it was the soft voice from the stall to the right that stopped him. Low, sad…oddly reassuring.
He moved closer and looked, saw the boy. Scrawny, covered in soot with a bloodstain on his torn shirtsleeve, he stood next to Lightning Chaser with a hand on the colt’s neck. Stroking. Slowly. Gently.And his words, they were too quiet to hear, but the cadence almost sounded like…a lullaby.
And in that moment the juxtaposition hit Tyler, hit him in a way that nothing else had. The kid had been there all night. He’d been arm to arm with the men. He’d been the one to shove a glass of cold water into Tyler’s hands, and now he was bloody singing to his horse. Lightning Chaser stood there quietly with his head bowed, but his ears perked, almost relaxed despite the equipment monitoring his