A Love Beyond

by Leslie P. García

  In the distance, the sound of a helicopter starting up made them both swear and yell Rebel’s name. Another shot sounded and AJ risked a glance behind. She’d expected Jaime or the other guards, but a maniacal Mike Towers raced after them on a big pinto, raising his rifle to take another shot.

  “Go, Rebel!” she shrieked.

  “The helicopter’s registered in the States,” Chance shouted over the din. “Whoever’s in it won’t stop at the river.”

  Rebel plunged on through the tall cane and undergrowth, panicked and unmanageable. The foliage ended on a clear strip of riverbank, and he lunged into the water without hesitation, flinging his head but not veering sharply enough.

  Another shot rang out and terror gripped AJ. He’d hit Chance or Rebel if he kept shooting.

  Incredibly, over the rotors growing closer and the echo of the gunshot, she heard it—the distinctive, high-pitched wail. She glanced back again as Mike’s horse hit the water. The pinto threw its head up and plunged sideways. Mike had thrown on a saddle. He slipped and his rifle fell away, but he stayed upright. Cursing and slashing the horse with the reins, he drew a pistol from his waistband. The helicopter came over the trees.

  “Damn! Bone’s in the chopper and he can shoot,” Chance muttered. “Come on, Rebel,” he pleaded, although AJ knew Rebel couldn’t move any faster. She felt it when he started swimming, slowing to almost a stop, then found his footing as they neared the other side and broke into a gallop again, his breathing unnaturally loud.

  The wail behind them rose, and as Rebel clambered out on the far bank, Bone fired at them, missing. The bullet kicked up mud near Rebel’s hoof.

  AJ cast a worried glance back. The pinto stumbled and balked, again nearly throwing Mike.

  Suddenly Mike seemed to convulse, twisting in the saddle and flailing at the air.

  New rotors sounded, moving toward the river from the south, and a Border Patrol helicopter appeared.

  “Thank God,” Chance whispered in her ear, as Towers’s chopper turned and headed back.

  AJ noticed it, turning, but couldn’t tear her eyes from where the pinto took a huge leap forward. As if bound by an invisible rope, Towers toppled backward into the river. He struggled briefly, then disappeared. The wail rose, becoming almost a piercing sound, then faded, and the vegetation along the riverbank went still.

  Shivers shook AJ. Gina? La Llorona? She didn’t know. But she wept for them both.

  Off in the distance, sirens sounded, but closer to home, three men on horseback rode out of the bushes.

  For a moment, terror clawed at AJ. Rebel was spent. The horses were sturdy, clearly not able to take on a Thoroughbred on any other day. But now, they’d stay with him easily if he tried to run again. The men had guns. Then the green uniforms registered.

  One of the men nodded at them.

  “U.S. Border Patrol,” he said needlessly. “FBI Agent Jaime Bustos told us you needed assistance.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “This is just the strangest thing,” Ed marveled, looking from Rebel, in his brother’s stall, to Goof, wandering loose around the shed under AJ’s watchful eye. “They look like twins.” He squinted at the two horses. “Now which one was on the news again?”

  She smiled and pointed to Rebel, and laughed when Goof wandered up and butted Ed so hard he almost knocked him down.

  “You took care of the jealous one,” she told him. She re-fastened Goof’s lead.

  “Thanks again, Ed. If you don’t mind, I’ll stay in the trailer. My friend’s coming for the horses tomorrow.”

  “It’s been a real nice job. Thanks,” Ed said, and they shook hands.

  She walked back to the trailer. A clean cloth covered the table and she’d put clean linens on the bed. Hard to believe that the chaos from their escape hadn’t died down.

  Proving ownership of Rebel hadn’t been difficult and he’d been cleared to go home to Florida.

  AJ and her mother had temporary custody of Robbie, with adoption procedures to follow.

  But she and Rosa had almost come to blows over Mike Towers’s money. Neither of them wanted it.

  “His money is filthy!” Rosa protested, when Chance and she insisted that Rosa lay claim to the Towers’s fortune. “My mother is gone, and—and what would I do with money?”

  While she eventually agreed that she might be able to use it to undo some of the damage Towers had done, she and Chance turned the tables on AJ, insisting that she should consider Robbie’s future and find out if he was Mike’s son or not.

  AJ sighed. She hadn’t agreed yet. But Rosa had thrown in the most persuasive argument yet.

  “AJ, you got it all back, except Gina,” Rosa pointed out. “Chance lost everything. His job, and his chance to help his uncle and aunt. We might be able to help him with legal fees—or something—down the road.”

  “Or something?” AJ prodded and Rosa laughed.

  “Hire him,” she suggested. “He loves horses and he loves Robbie. Why not make an offer?”

  Maybe because she hadn’t seen him in a week.

  While lawyers worked on her problems, he’d been called in by one agency after another to make statements about Towers, his death, his holdings—one complication after another.

  A shiver shook her, not from anything unnatural now, but because she worried. Those who had been loyal to Mike, or who thought Chance might know something that could hurt them, might come after him, even here.

  She swallowed hard. Rosa and Robbie had flown to Ocala, leaving Emily distraught, but no worse than before. Rebel and Goof would head home in the morning. Now, the only loose thread was Chance.

  • • •

  Chance finally knocked on the door, then came in, looking thin and pale, still too big for the small confines of the trailer.

  She thought seeing him again would be easy, but she couldn’t speak past the lump in her throat.

  He stared at her silently, too, then caught her in his arms, hugging her so close that she could feel his heart thudding against her chest.

  She trembled against him and waited for him to kiss her, but he moved away slightly and brushed at her sweat-dampened hair with a gentle hand.

  “The tablecloth’s a nice touch,” he said, weariness in his voice. “But you probably need a good air conditioner more.”

  Really? After all we went through? Panic needled her.

  “You look tired,” she told him, not wanting to make small talk, but not sure how to move forward.

  “Yeah, I am.” He managed a smile. “When do you leave, AJ?”

  She stared at him. “Briana picks up the horses tomorrow. Robbie and Rosa should be home in an hour or two. I—” She stopped. “It’s hard to find words, Chance. Everything that happened—what didn’t happen. Remember the night before it all crashed down?”

  She didn’t want him to stand there and watch her with those defeated brown eyes. She closed the distance between them and clasped his face. “I thought … I thought there’d be something for us after all the dust cleared.”

  He removed her hands gently, pressing a kiss into each palm.

  “AJ, the dust hasn’t cleared yet. Not for me. I’m not dragging you through this. An FBI agent spoke to me yesterday. They were looking at Mike Towers for murder and for theft—not for insurance fraud.” He traced a finger from her chin down her neck and she shivered.

  “None of that matters,” she insisted. “Chance, why would you do all you did—just to walk away?”

  “I keep thinking about something you said, AJ.” His voice was hoarse and full of pain. “You were right. I didn’t do enough for Gina.” He shook his head when she started to argue. “I never even thought that he lied about Gina cheating. All I could think of was how I felt when I found Linda with someone else. I knew there were rumors that he’d killed his first wife and his stepson, yet I never thought Gina didn’t just flip the car because she was speeding.”

  “Gina would say you’d done everything for her that you cou
ld,” AJ protested. “She wasn’t demanding. And you protected the one thing that mattered the most to her—Robbie.”

  She pressed close again, this time wrapping her arms around his waist and clinging. She took a shuddering breath and leaned her head into his chest. “I want a chance—we owe each other that.”

  He tilted her face up and looked down at her. “We don’t owe each other anything. But I guess if you think you want a ‘chance’—” Something of the old sparkle touched his eyes. His lips touched hers and he gathered her close.

  “You don’t owe me anything,” she agreed, loosening her grip to look up at him. “But if nothing else, I owe you big time.”

  She knew the minute she said it he’d take it wrong. He froze, looking down at her almost in disbelief. Then he stepped away. “Do you know what Linda told me the last time we had sex?” he asked tonelessly. “She told me she’d owed me.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “No. But I need to see if I can salvage anything, AJ. Right now I can’t afford to owe anything. And I don’t want anyone staying in my life to pay some debt they don’t owe.” He fished in his pocket and withdrew a small, beaded bundle, then folded it gently in her palm and closed her fist. Gina’s rosary. Then he leaned forward and brushed her lips with a kiss so slight she sensed it more than felt it. He turned at the door. “Maybe. If the dust ever does settle,” he said in a voice just slightly louder than a whisper. And left her alone in the trailer.

  • • •

  Ocala, Florida

  Going through the small package of Gina’s belongings was torture, but she was glad that it had been forwarded from Philadelphia. AJ sat on the floor, propped against the bed she’d slept in before she left home, and pulled out items one by one. A journal with a few entries, all bright optimism that ended abruptly with a scribbled note.

  “AJ, I miss you. Don’t forget your baby sister.”

  Robbie’s ultrasounds. Tears streamed down AJ’s cheeks. She wished Gina had been there, showing her, making her look time after time.

  She put them away carefully. There were only two or three items left in the manila envelope, so she turned it upside down and shook. A couple of scraps fell out, along with a snapshot, which landed upside down.

  AJ turned it over and clapped her hand over her mouth as she gagged. Bile rose in her throat and she battled it. When she could, she lifted the print again, breathing deeply. A blood bay horse lay in a twisted, bloodied heap on a stall floor. With fingers that shook, AJ opened one of the scraps of paper, but it was blank. She reached for the other.

  “Bone. He told me Bone could do the same thing to Rebel that he did to Bold Attempt. I’m so sorry, AJ.”

  The tears started again. First for Gina, haunted by her mistakes and fears, willing to suffer eternally to protect others—first her horse, then her own son. But as the significance of the picture pierced her, she wept for Chance, for the family he thought he’d failed, and the future he didn’t know he deserved.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Rosa threw a pillow at AJ, who batted it away impatiently. “Now what?” she demanded.

  “You don’t remember, do you? Remember when I warned you I’d hate you forever if you killed Chance? How do you know you’re not killing him? You act like he never existed.”

  AJ frowned. “Leave it alone. He’s the one who opted out, Rosa. You know I wanted him to stay.”

  “I guess I do,” she said, after a minute. “I’m taking my baby brother to the petting zoo at the mall and feeding him ice cream until he pukes.” She shot an angelic smile at AJ. “Then I’m bringing him home, because I’m not the parent.”

  “Have fun,” AJ said absently, looking back at the pedigree she’d been studying. Her mom couldn’t decide what bookings to accept for Rebel, or even if she wanted to try to bring him back for one more season on the track. Rebel and Robbie—good medicine for her mother. And for her, she acknowledged, smiling, and tossing the pedigree aside.

  She’d headed for the stairs to shower and change when the doorbell rang. “Surprised they didn’t wait five minutes and expect me to come out naked,” she muttered, and pulled the door open.

  Chance stood there, a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a newspaper in the other. He handed the paper to her first. An Arizona newspaper, showing a picture of a beaming middle-aged man hugging him. “Trainer Cleared of Insurance Fraud.”

  “Chance! That’s wonderful!”

  “These are for you, from Robert and Emily,” he said, holding out the bouquet. She took it and moved aside.

  “Come in, Chance.”

  He did, looking around. “Robbie?”

  “Eating ice cream and puking, if Rosa has her way.”

  He smiled briefly, but grew serious again, watching her as she pulled a glass from a cabinet and set the bouquet in it.

  “AJ … remember when you said you owed me?”

  “Yes.” She stiffened. “Why?”

  “Well, if you owed me for Robbie and Rebel, I guess I owe you for Robert and Emily—so we’re even.”

  “Chance—”

  “The dust has finally settled,” he added. “If it still matters.”

  She took a deep breath and reached out to trace his lips with a finger. He shivered.

  “It still matters,” she whispered. “It always will.”

  More from This Author

  (From His Temporary Wife by Leslie P. García)

  Esmeralda Salinas leaned forward over the wheel of the rented pickup and peered at the road ahead. It disappeared between two sheer cuts, dotted on both sides with scrub cedar and large rocks that looked likely to fall onto the road at any minute.

  In spite of the cold air blasting out of the air conditioning vents, blowing loose tendrils of hair around her forehead, beads of sweat trickled down her cheeks.

  “And I thought I could drive anywhere!” she muttered and glanced momentarily into the rearview mirror, checking the horse trailer behind her, carrying all she had of her past. She couldn’t see her Appaloosa mare, Domatrix, of course, but the late-model trailer seemed to be riding well and taking the curves.

  She glanced at her dash and gulped air. Three, maybe four minutes more of the treacherous Hill Country back road and she’d come out on the state blacktop taking her into tiny Truth, Texas. Taking her home—if you could call a town you’d never been in, home.

  Her tension eased when she turned gently onto the asphalt. She could have gone a longer way around and spared herself a lot of stress and worry for the mare’s safety, but she had been in the Hill Country years ago and hadn’t thought the “hills” were particularly frightening. A boyfriend had been driving then, and she couldn’t say she remembered the narrow roads, the twists, or much of anything.

  With relief she reached out and turned on the radio, immediately picking up a country station out of San Antonio. The station reached most of central Texas and had been her favorite back in Rose Creek.

  She knew the song immediately and joined in, reveling in the music. A car on the other side of the two-lane road passed and the driver waved. She waved back, something she’d done routinely since she got off the interstate. Seemed all the drivers were friendly, even more than they’d been in Rose Creek. Maybe she could truly find a home here.

  The next song blasted out, a song that had been huge for the singer Cody Benton. “Afraid for You” had rocketed up the charts to number one, and Cody was tagged as country music’s next goddess. But she’d died in a drug-induced stupor, right here in Truth. Esme slowed as she coasted over a hill and passed the sign welcoming her to town. Goose bumps peppered her arms as she noticed the large billboard “In Memory of Cody Benton,” and her anger pricked. She didn’t remember Cody being born here or living here for much of her short life. Couldn’t the town find a more tasteful salute to the woman than claiming her memory?

  Still, Cody had brought Esme here in a way, so maybe she shouldn’t be so judgmental. She bit her lip. She’d planned on leaving Rose
Creek for some time, planned on going somewhere bigger, with women who didn’t know and fear her, and men who didn’t look at her with way too much interest. She’d made some poor personal choices over the years and just knew it was time to go. She’d been surprised and touched that her formal rival, Luz Wilkinson—Luz Estes now, she reminded herself, glad that it didn’t hurt at all—held a small party the night before she left. Even the town veterinarian came, a clear sign of forgiveness for her trying to snag the doctor’s husband for her own.

  She’d chosen to come here to Truth because she’d heard her aunt was here now, and because of a late-night interview she’d seen with Cody Benton shortly before the singer’s death. Cody had been vamping with the host, who’d asked her why she was spending so much time in a “one-horse town.”

  Cody had laughed and answered that she owned two horses herself, so that problem was solved. And then she’d winked, “If your life’s been a lie, maybe you should try a little truth.”

  Whether or not the line had been rehearsed, Esmeralda couldn’t forget it. And when she decided for sure to leave Rose Creek, she headed northwest without a moment of indecision.

  Esmeralda saw her destination ahead on the right and slowed almost subconsciously. So here she was, about to drop in on the aunt she hardly knew. Tina Cervantes, her mother’s sister, had visited three or four times over twenty-odd years. Once she’d gone to college, Esmeralda hadn’t seen her aunt again. She could count on both hands the times they’d spoken on the phone, too. Tina had called to wish her a happy birthday about four months ago, not really near her birthday. Esmeralda didn’t tell her she was two months late; she just relished the brief contact with the woman she always thought would have been a better mother than her own had been.

  And now here she was, jobless and homeless, hoping to find the roots she’d struggled to cut when she’d left home back in Laredo, fleeing from cold parents and an abusive brother, heading up the I-35 corridor until she settled in Rose Creek. Gregarious and independent, Tina always insisted that Esmeralda should visit. Once, long ago, she’d offered her house, “any time, just come on over.” Tina was living in Chicago then, with a man she’d never mentioned before, and Esmeralda would never have considered going. Besides, she’d been perfectly happy in Rose Creek with its proximity to San Antonio, and its easy driving distance to Laredo for those infrequent visits to her parents.