by Lois Greiman
“And what is that?” Wellesley asked. “A person who would—”
“Strong,” Hunter interrupted and didn’t glance at her when he said the word, but his tone was earnest. Almost reverent. “Kind. Brave.”
“This has nothing to do with you,” Wellesley snorted. “You don’t know the first thing about the—”
“You are her father,” Hunter said and nodded solemnly. “And therefore deserving of respect. So I tell you … respectfully… that if you hurt her again … if you wound her in any way … I will end you.”
There was a moment of silence, then sputtered indignation. “How dare you threaten me, you—”
“Where is she?” Vura rasped.
Sydney pulled her attention from the men with an effort. The other woman’s face was flushed, her hands shaky. “Vura, what’s wrong? What are you—”
“Lily’s gone!”
Dread stabbed Sydney’s heart, clean and sharp. “What do you mean, gone?”
“Gone! I can’t find her anywhere.”
“Who is this person?” Wellesley asked, but Sydney barely heard him.
“Did you check the barn? You know how she—”
“Yes! Yes. Of course I checked the barn!”
“Then maybe—”
“I think she went to find Courage.” Vura’s words were little more than a breath of terror, but Sydney heard. Heard and felt the blood drain from her face.
“No,” she whispered and let her gaze meet her sister’s for the first time in weeks.
Vura’s voice broke. “I can’t find her, Syd.”
“We will, though. We will.” Without thinking, Sydney reached for her sister’s hands. They shook in hers. She squeezed her fingers tight and turned frantic eyes toward Hunter.
“When did you last see her, Vura?” he asked.
“She was climbing the big cottonwood beside the …” Her voice broke. “Beside the creek.”
He nodded once, short and crisp. “I’ll get Tonk, call Colt, head west from the bridge,” he said, and turning his back to her father, raced toward the house.
“The police?” Sydney asked.
“They’re on their way.” Vura’s voice was strained, her eyes pleading.
Sydney glanced toward the endless acres into which the mustang had fled. It would be dark soon. What happened when the light was gone and the temperature dropped? Panic stabbed, cold and bitter in her gut, but she fought it back. “We’ll spread out and search every inch, Vura. We’ll find her. We’ll find her any minute. Don’t—”
“Aren’t you forgetting something, Sydney?” Her father’s voice was chill, sending guilt flaring through her.
“Yes. I’m sorry. Father, you can help. Go—”
“I meant your students. They’ll be arriving soon.”
“Of course.” Her voice broke with relief. “You can organize them. Break them into groups. Make sure they call to her. Her name is Lily. She’s four years old. She’s wearing …” She thought about the child’s perpetual brightness and felt her eyes sting with tears. “Purple. Sometimes she falls asleep in unusual places, so call her name loudly and often. If you meet anyone, ask if they’ve seen her. She’s small for her age, but she’s as bright as a—”
“Sydney!” His tone was sharp. “I don’t think I have to remind you what you’ve got riding on this afternoon.”
She stared at him and wondered when she had become such an optimist. Three months ago she never would have assumed he would be thinking of a child he had never met. A child he did not care about.
“Yes.” She nodded slowly. “I know,” she said and turned back to Vura. “We’ll find her,” she promised. “No matter what it takes. We’ll find her.”
Hunter scanned the canyon below him. She had to be somewhere. She had to be safe. It couldn’t happen again. It couldn’t, he told himself, but his gut said something else entirely. He had failed again. Had become distracted. Had let the child slip through his fingers. “Lily!” He roared her name. But no butterfly voice answered back, no blossom-bright eyes shone up at him, and the sun was slipping away as if it didn’t care, casting ghostly shadows over the valley, over his world. “Lily!” he yelled and ran along the ridge to the north.
Hours dragged by like millennium. The darkness was complete, pierced only by Sydney’s flashlight.
“Lily! Lily, where are you?” she screamed, but the words emerged as little more than a squeak of noise. She had long ago gone hoarse. The phone in her pocket had died hours before. Still, she stumbled through the blackness, searching blindly. She was lost, had no idea if she was still on her own land. She might have passed her boundaries long ago, but it hardly mattered. Lily wouldn’t know the difference. Wouldn’t know if she was safe or headed toward increasing danger. Sydney closed out the panic and stumbled on. Beneath the dark-needled limbs of evergreens, the world was black. Like her heart. Like her soul. How could she have been so idiotic? So cruel? So thoughtless. She knew how Lily loved Courage. Knew. And yet she had released the mare, and in doing so had turned the child away. Like her own mother had turned from her. Like …
She closed her eyes to her own gnawing self-absorption; this wasn’t about her. For once in her life …
She jolted as the earth disappeared beneath her and fell, striking water as cold as death. It splashed into her face, soaked her legs, her chest. She stumbled to her feet and glanced around. She must have circled back. Must have returned to the creek. Or was it another stream? One she didn’t know. Turning, she staggered toward what she thought might be north. Calling, calling again.
A light shone up ahead. She gasped with hope. “Did you find her?”
No one answered.
“Do you have Lily?” she yelled and realized suddenly that she was looking at her own barn. She stumbled toward it. Every light was on in the stable, but only the two geldings resided there. They nickered as she glanced inside the stalls, hoping against hope to see a little purple-clad figure asleep in a corner. But luck had abandoned her. She rushed toward the house. Her fingers, stiff with cold, were almost incapable of turning the knob, but she managed to stumble inside.
“Lily—” she began, but Vura was already bursting out of the kitchen, eyes red, fingers curled like talons.
“You must have found her.” Her eyes darted from side to side, searching hopelessly. “You must have.”
Sydney shook her head and raised her gaze to Hunter, who stepped in from outside. Behind him, the night looked as black as silt.
“Any trace?” His voice was nothing but a growl. “A scrap of cloth? A footprint?”
“No.”
His face looked as if it had been craved from stone, but his eyes shone with pain.
“It’ll be okay,” Sydney said and stumbled toward him, but he backed away and disappeared into the darkness.
Vura looked too drained to cry.
“We all need some rest.”
Sydney glanced at the speaker, vaguely aware of the badge pinned to his jacket.
“I’m Officer Lalange.”
Quinton Murrell wrapped Vura in his arms, cradling his daughter against his chest. An older version of Colt Dickenson appeared alongside a plump woman with a kindly face.
Sydney skimmed the crowd. “What about the others? They must have found something.”
Colt shook his head. “Emily went to pick up Bliss a little bit ago. She’ll be back soon. Sophie and Ty are still driving through the pastures, hoping to pick up some sign of her in the headlights. Casie—”
“Where’s Father?” she asked. “And the students.” She remembered them suddenly, as if they were part of another world. A less important world.
Colt’s expression was atypically sober. “I guess your dad had a meeting he had to get to. He, ahhh … he talked to your guests before he left. Told them they would get a chance to see the facilities some other time.”
“So they left?” Sydney didn’t know what she had expected. Still, she felt dazed, strangely wounded.
/> “I think he said he’d reimburse them for their flights.”
She shook her head, disbelieving. Who would leave while a little girl was in jeopardy? she wondered, but the truth rushed in on her: She might have. Once upon a time, she might have done the same thing, justifying her actions with a thousand weak-kneed excuses.
“We’re all exhausted,” Lalange said. “We’re not going to do any good if we don’t get some sleep. I suggest that you folks go home.” He nodded toward the Lazy Windmill entourage. “It’ll be dawn in a couple of hours. We can meet back here then.”
“Vura …” Sydney’s voice sounded sandpaper rough to her own ears. “Why don’t you lie down in my room? Try to rest until—”
“Lily …” Vura’s voice trembled. She cleared her throat. “My baby’s going to show up any minute. Any second.” Fear shone like madness in her eyes. “I need to be here for her.”
Colt’s mother made a mewling sound. His dad wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders.
“Maybe you folks have some extra blankets?” Lalange suggested.
Sydney shook her head, barely aware of her actions. “Just what’s on the beds.”
“We’ll get some.” Monty Dickenson, Colt’s father, made the offer. “From the farm.”
His wife nodded, face contorted with worry. “We’ll put together a few sandwiches. Make coffee.”
“All right,” Lalange said and rattled off orders, though there was little more to be done. Still, Sydney couldn’t bear to remain in the house where the air was heavy with fear.
The lights remained on in the barn. Hunter was dropping hay into Fandango’s stall.
“We’ll find her,” Sydney said.
He turned toward her, anguish edged with guilt in his eyes.
She took a staggering step toward him. “You don’t blame yourself for this.”
Their gazes met, sorrow on sorrow. Terror on terror.
“Of course not. It’s just bad luck. Just like Sara’s death was …” He paused, gritted his teeth, looked away. His face was tight with pain.
“Don’t do this to yourself,” she said. “It’s not your fault.”
“Whose then?”
“No one’s. It’s no one’s fault,” she said, but she knew it for a lie. If she hadn’t turned Courage loose, Lily would still be safe in her mother’s arms. If she hadn’t treated her friends like slaves, Vura would have had time for her daughter, time to lavish her with the kind of attention that children needed. But maybe Sydney hadn’t honestly wanted that. Maybe she was so damaged, she couldn’t bear to witness the kind of love she had been denied. Maybe … she thought, but Hunter was already turning away and in a moment he was gone, leaving her alone with her misery.
From the end stall, Windwalker nickered for attention. Retrieving hay like an automaton, Sydney fed him his ration. But a noise from the loft made her freeze in her tracks.
“Lily,” she breathed and spurted for the ladder. Up above, it was dark and quiet. “Lily,” she called again, but silence echoed around her. Then a marmalade cat streaked from a hidey-hole.
Tears burned Sydney’s eyes. Alone and anguished, she curled against the straw bales and cried.
A noise awakened her. Sydney sat up with a start, fumbling groggily for reality. Dreams and worries had melded in her mind, but in a moment she recognized her surroundings. The hayloft at Gray Horse Hill.
“Oh.” Hunter’s face cracked as he climbed fully into the haymow. “For a minute I thought …”
“Did you find her?” she asked, though the answer was clearly stamped on his tortured features.
He turned away, shoulders bowed.
Sydney staggered to her feet. The sun was just rising, shifting filtered light through the east window. Fatigue weighed her body as heavily as despondency weighed her soul, but the sight of Hunter made her draw a breath and reach desperately for optimism.
“She’ll be okay,” she said.
He lifted his tormented gaze to the newly framed windows and made no response.
“She’s probably just asleep somewhere. Everyone should be back by now. We’ll regroup, split up, and try again as soon as—”
“No,” he said.
“No?” Anger flared through her. He had no right to give up. “We’ve got to—”
“It can’t be,” he breathed and strode closer to the window. It wasn’t until that moment that she realized he wasn’t speaking to her. He was holding his breath, gaze welded on a distant hill.
“What is it?” She could barely force out the words as she crowded up beside him. He lifted a shaky hand, pointed. And there, silhouetted against the rising sun, was a dark form. A horse. And on its back …
“Lily!” He croaked the name and then he was running, scrambling down the ladder, racing outside.
Sydney jolted after him, but by the time she’d reached the barn door, he had stopped. She gripped his arm in fingers numb with tension.
Moving through the autumn grass, head low, steps steady, came Courage.
And upon her broad, clay-colored back, sat a small hunched child. Her hair was tangled, her purple pants torn.
Across the graveled yard, anxious faces gazed from the porch.
“Lily …” Vura cried out and flew down the steps, but Colt caught her as she rushed past.
“Wait! Just wait.”
Fifty yards away, the mare jolted to a halt. She tossed her dark forelock. Atop her back, the tiny form shifted. Then Lily glanced up. Her gamine face was haloed by a mess of spun-caramel hair. “Mama?”
“Lily Belle.” Vura’s voice broke. She raised her hands to her face, smothering her sobs, but dared move no more.
“I found her,” Lily called and raised the mare’s tangled mane in one grubby hand.
Vura cried a stuttering laugh as her daughter wrapped her fingers in the horse’s dreadlocks and dropped to the ground.
They stumbled toward each other. In a moment they collided. Mother and daughter. Vura snatched Lily to her chest, breathed in her scent, cried against her tiny shoulder.
The others swarmed from the porch.
Courage threw up her head and bolted, but she stopped beside the silo to watch the reunion.
Everyone spoke at once. They reached out, touching the child’s arm, stroking her hair. All except Hunter Redhawk, who stood aside from the others. Tears slipped silently down his chiseled cheeks.
Lily turned toward him, eyes bright, fingers already twisting in her mother’s tumbled hair. “It’s all right, Hunk,” she lisped. “She’ll be okay now that she’s home.”
Chapter 31
“What are you going to do with her?”
Sydney turned as Hunter approached. His footfalls were all but silent against the gravel. He nodded, motioning past her to the high plains beyond the barn where they stood.
From a rock-strewn hillside, Courage raised her head. The frolicsome wind teased her mane and swept her midnight tail across scarred hocks. Behind her, the red buttes reached like ancient cathedrals for the sky.
“With Courage?” Sydney smiled, pulled her gaze from the soaring scene, and ignored the emotions that tightened like a noose around her heart. “Nothing.” She cleared her throat. “I’m putting Gray Horse Hill up for sale. Going back home.” But where was that? Where had it ever been if not here where the hills cradled her like a beloved child? Where the rivers whispered of forever and the wind sang of healing? She forced a laugh. “I think I scared my potential students all the way back to the East Coast without ever meeting them.”
“There are other students.”
“Actually, I’m afraid there might be a shortage of wealthy, bored kids with hundred-thousand-dollar horses.”
“So you’re giving up,” he said.
“I’m …” she began and remembered she didn’t have to explain herself to him. He had packed up his truck the night before. He was leaving. “Things didn’t work out exactly as I planned.”
He exhaled quietly, watched Courage return
to her grazing. “Then make a new plan.”
A spark of anger burned through her. “And what are your grandiose schemes, Redhawk?”
He looked away from the lone mare. “I’ve been wanting to see New Mexico. Maybe spend some time in—”
“Don’t,” she said and laughed out loud. “Don’t try to pretend you’re not running away.”
His eyes caught hers. She felt herself being pulled under and glanced away. “Vura needs you.”
“Vura,” he repeated, and though she didn’t dare look at him, she knew his attention remained riveted on her face.
“And Lily …” She said the name softly. She had not yet recovered from the terror of losing her. Nor had she entirely come to grips with the truth about their kinship.
Sydney’s mother had left Leonard Wellesley. Left him and his money and his mansion and found another. Someone who would cherish her without smothering her. Who would love her as she was. That much was clear, understandable. But how could Sydney’s father … the man who was supposed to put her welfare above all others … how could he have lied to her for the entirety of her life? How could he have spent twenty years trying to force his only daughter into his skewed image of perfect femininity?
“And what of those who need you?” Hunter asked.
Sydney pulled herself out of the past with an effort. “That’s the beauty of it. No one needs me,” she said, and forcing a smile, turned away, but he caught her arm.
Their gazes clashed. “You’re wrong.”
She raised her brows at him and felt her breath hitch in her throat. Their gazes fused and held. Silence stretched between them. She tried to tug away, but he tightened his grip and nodded toward the distant hills.
“What will she do when you are gone?”
Sydney swallowed, trying to ease the tension in her throat. “She’s a wild thing. Like you said.”
“We all need a place, duchess. Even wild things.”
“There’s nothing I can do,” she insisted, but his eyes darkened, calling her a liar.
“There isn’t!” She spat the words. “I’m out of money. Out of time. Out of … hope.” She cleared her throat. “And I don’t see the situation changing if I stay here.”