With new determination, she climbed over the fence into the corral and ran toward the double doors of the horse barn. They were open, she saw, which seemed odd to her because she knew Joe always checked them at night. It seemed unusual until she saw the crumpled form just inside the first door, head pointed inside the building, out of her view.
Her heart skipped a beat and for a moment she was afraid it might be Joe, that he was hurt somehow.
It wasn't Joe, she saw when she stepped closer. That was Luke Mitchell's black slicker, the one he wore so proudly. She knelt down and shook him. "Luke? Luke, can you hear me?"
He moaned but didn't say anything and she saw his face was black with soot. She realized with shock that he must have gone inside to rescue the horses and been overcome by smoke.
She never would have thought he had it in him to risk his life like this, especially not after that day at the lake.
It didn't matter. He had proved her wrong and now she had to get him out into fresh air. Grabbing his legs, she pitted all her strength against his deadweight and finally managed to drag him through the doorway and out into the muddy corral.
Away from the smoke, he began to gasp and cough. She didn't know the first thing about treating someone with smoke inhalation. Acting only on instinct, she loosened his shirt and untied his bandanna.
The smell of gasoline was strong on his clothing. He must have found the gasoline can Charlie left behind, too, she thought.
A few seconds later he opened his eyes and saw her. He blinked in confusion for a moment and then his eyes widened in panic. "I'm sorry, Miz Annie. Real sorry," he mumbled.
"Shh. Take it easy. Don't try to talk. Just concentrate on breathing."
"Shoulda gone in sooner. I waited too long."
"You shouldn't have gone in at all."
He coughed again, great hacking paroxysms, and she was torn between staying with him and helping the horses she could now hear screaming above the crackle of the flames.
She didn't know what to do for him but since help was coming soon she decided to do what she could for the horses. "Just lie down and rest. The fire department's on its way and they'll have some oxygen that will set you right before you know it."
"It's all my fault. Your dog. That cow in the lake. All my fault. Didn't mean to hurt anyone."
She stared at him in confusion. What on earth was he talking about? The smoke must have made him delirious. Before she could puzzle it out, she heard a loud cracking inside the burning structure and the horses' screams became even more frantic.
Drawing on the last reserves of courage, she grabbed Luke's bandanna and rushed to the water trough to douse it. "Get on the other side of the fence," she ordered. "I'm going to try to drive the horses out into the corral and I don't want you to get trampled."
His eyes widened even more. "No! You can't go inside there. You can't!"
"I've got to. Those are my horses and I can't sit out here and listen to them die."
Ignoring the rest of his protests, she tied the wet bandanna over her nose and mouth and rushed into the building. The heat seared her lungs, even through the wet bandanna, and she knew she had to work fast.
Most of the flames were still on the front and west walls of the barn and the interior hadn't gone up yet. Still, the smoke was thick and the flames made the place surreal, disorienting.
For a moment she panicked when she couldn't tell where she was, then calm reasserted itself. She knew every inch of the place, could probably muck out all the stalls blindfolded. She could do this.
Forcing herself to stay coolheaded despite the heat, she worked as quickly as she could to unlatch all the stalls.
It probably only took her a few minutes, three tops, but she felt as if she'd been inside the burning structure for hours. She was shaking with exertion and adrenaline as she opened the last stall and shooed the horse toward the corral doors.
Her lungs ached and she felt lightheaded as she followed the horse. Just before she reached the door and safety, she heard another high-pitched scream from inside the barn.
She must have missed one in all the confusion.
Leah's horse, Stardust, she realized in horror. The little paint's stall was the first one from the front of the barn, where the fire was burning more intensely.
Leah loved that horse. Her daughter would be devastated if the little mare burned to death. She had been through so much in the last few months and now she was losing the father she had just found.
She couldn't lose Stardust, too.
Although her lungs now felt as if they were on fire as well, Annie fought her way back through the barn, maneuvering around burning debris to the last stall.
The terrified horse was too frightened to brave the flames even after Annie unlatched her stall and went inside to drive her out. She reared up, hooves flailing, until Annie grabbed her bridle and tugged her back to earth.
"Come on, sweetheart. You can do it," she tried to yell, although her voice came out more like a croak.
The journey back through the barn was a nightmare. The structure was burning in earnest now and she couldn't see, couldn't tell where they were. Finally she found her bearings and pitted all her strength against the horse to lead her toward the door.
Her vision dimming from the lack of oxygen, she knew she wouldn't be able to go much further but she kept up a steady prayer. She had to get out. She had people who loved her, people she loved. Leah, C.J., Joe. Their faces swam behind her vision and she pushed on for them.
They almost made it.
Fifteen feet from safety, a hay bale suddenly erupted right next to them with a loud crackle. Stardust reared again, only this time Annie couldn't move out of the way of her flailing hooves fast enough.
She knew an instant of crushing pain and then the world went black.
* * *
Joe sat on the edge of his bed, surveying the boxes containing the fragments of his life.
Not much to show for thirty-four years on the earth. Just a stereo, some clothes and a few pieces of ratty old furniture.
The really sad thing was that even if he had a house full of top-of-the-line electronics equipment and designer furniture, it wouldn't mean a thing to him any more than the pitiful display in front of him did. Not when he felt as if his heart was being shredded into tiny pieces.
He didn't want to leave.
He couldn't shake the powerful feeling that he was making the biggest mistake in a life that had been filled with some real doozies.
Annie was the only woman he had ever loved—the only woman he would ever love. He had loved her nearly all his life, even when he told himself he hated her for marrying his brother. She and her kids had become the only real family he had ever known, and he would miss them fiercely.
But every time he thought about what she had been through—the bruises she had tried to hide with sunglasses or makeup and, worse, the bruises he knew would never show—he ached with the knowledge that every blow she took had been because of him.
He couldn't forget it. It haunted his sleep and obsessed every minute of his days. He had worked as Colt's foreman at the Broken Spur through the last several years of her marriage and he knew it was an unhappy one. Most of the time the two of them barely exchanged two words to each other.
Hell, Charlie acted like he wasn't married, with all his carousing. Now Joe understood. A lot of things made a terrible sense. No matter how many times he used to try to convince her to leave, she would always smile sadly and say it wasn't that easy, that there were things he didn't understand.
He didn't then—he couldn't understand then. But now he did, with grim clarity.
She had married Charlie in a crazy, misguided effort to protect him and she had stayed for the same reason. For him.
The idea filled him with a strange mixture of awe and guilt and anger. He thought no one else had been hurt by the decisions he made the night of his father's death. He thought it was the right thing to do at the time. The
decent thing. The only thing. But now he could see how hideously mistaken he had been. Annie had paid the price for his choices.
Every time he thought about driving away in the morning he would remember how sweetly she responded to him and he would be overwhelmed by all the things he would miss about her—her soft laugh, her compassion, her gentle strength.
Everything.
He rose from the bed abruptly. He'd wasted enough time brooding. The decision had been made and now he had to live with it. He was leaving and it was far too late to change his mind.
And if he was going to take off first thing in the morning, he needed to start loading up his pickup now.
With one last resigned sigh, he stacked a couple of boxes one on top of the other and shouldered open the outside door.
As soon as he walked outside, he knew something was drastically wrong. The smell of smoke was too thick to be coming from his chimney and over the tops of the trees, he could see a strange orange glow.
One of the ranch buildings must be on fire!
He'd been so self-absorbed packing up the paltry pieces of his life that he had been completely oblivious to what was going on outside his own turmoil.
The boxes tumbled to the wooden slats of the porch as he took off running. He reached the horse barn moments later and found a dozen animals careening around the corral in panic and Luke Mitchell sitting propped against the split rail fence, his head in his hands.
"Are all the horses safe?" Joe yelled above the crackle of fire.
Luke looked up, the whites of his eyes looking stark against his soot-blackened face.
"Are the horses safe?" Joe repeated, when the young ranch hand didn't immediately answer him, just continued gaping at him, his eyes looking shell-shocked.
The kid climbed to his feet slowly and raked his hands through his hair. "She didn't come back out," he said as if he was talking to himself. "This wasn't supposed to happen. She didn't come out."
Dread hit him so hard his knees went weak. "What the hell are you talking about? Who didn't come back out?"
"Annie. Miz Redhawk. She went in after the horses. They all came out but she didn't."
He gave the kid a hard shake. "How long? How long has she been in there?"
"I don't know. Five minutes, maybe more." He grabbed Joe's shirt suddenly. "I didn't mean for anyone to get hurt. You've gotta believe me. I just wanted to show I had what it takes to be a good foreman. It was all Mr. Redhawk's idea."
"Charlie?" He should have known. Dammit, he should have known.
"He…he said if I went in to get the horses myself, I could be the big hero and Miz Redhawk would have to hire me. Just like roping that cow on the ice and nursing her dog back to health after I poisoned her. It was all to show her I could handle the job. But everything went wrong."
"You did this? Set this fire?"
"I didn't know she would get hurt. You've got to believe me. I never wanted to hurt her."
He didn't have time to listen to this. Later he would have time for vengeance but right now he had Annie to worry about.
Joe forced his frozen muscles to move and rushed toward the burning structure, stopping only long enough to whip off his flannel shirt and drench it in water then wrap it around his face.
The heat nearly knocked him over and he couldn't see a thing through the smoke and the flames. He yelled her name but the only answer was the roar of the fire.
His head told him she couldn't possibly still be alive in this inferno. But his heart knew that if she died, he would die right along with her and he knew he had to do everything he could to find her.
Charging through the flames wouldn't get him very far, he knew. While he was trying to figure out what to do, he suddenly remembered a lecture C.J. had given him last fall during his school's Fire Safety Week about what to do if his house ever caught fire.
"Just fall and crawl," C.J. had said proudly, then repeated the chant like a mantra. Fall and crawl. Fall and crawl. Scientific law. Hot air rises. The heat and smoke would drift upward, theoretically leaving a safe pocket of air down low.
He dropped to his stomach and dragged himself across the floor, not knowing where to even begin looking for her.
For once in his godforsaken life, fate smiled on him. He had slithered only a dozen feet or so when his hand touched something soft and out of place.
He scrambled up to get a better look through the smoke and flames and his heart nearly stopped when he saw her lying on the ground, crumpled and terribly, terribly still.
He thought for one heart-stopping moment that he was too late, and a howl of denial and grief built up in his throat. Before it could spill out he heard a soft, strangled moan.
She was alive! At least for now.
If he didn't get them both out of there soon, she wouldn't be for long. He scooped her up and, half running, half crouching, hurried for the door. They made it out into the healing air just as the first pumper truck pulled up, lights flashing and sirens screaming.
Chapter 18
Annie watched the scenery between the clinic in Ennis and the Double C pass by in a blur. She was blind to the signs of spring they passed—the new leaves budding on the trees, the random, colorful patches of crocuses emerging from the cold ground, the songbirds flitting around.
None of it mattered. Not when she was so busy trying to hold back her tears.
"Are you all right?" Colt asked suddenly.
She glanced across the width of the truck. "Sure," she said, although it was a lie. She wasn't all right, she was miserable. Joe was gone and she hadn't even had a chance to say goodbye. "Why do you ask?"
"Maybe because you nearly died last night, in case it slipped your memory," Colt said dryly.
"How could it slip my memory when I just spent the night being reminded of it every five minutes?"
Despite all her protests that she was absolutely fine, Colt's wife Maggie had insisted she stay overnight at the clinic for observation.
"You have a serious case of smoke inhalation and a possible concussion where that horse hit you," Maggie had cautioned. "I'm sorry, Annie, but I can't let you leave."
Since she couldn't quite picture herself trying to wrestle a set of car keys away from a pregnant woman—especially when said pregnant woman was not only her doctor but her good friend—Annie had been stuck all night, being poked and prodded and fussed over.
She wasn't about to endure more from Colt, even if he was doing her the favor of driving her home. "I'm fine," she said. "You can all stop worrying about me now."
"I doubt that," Colt muttered. "You seem to have a knack for getting into more trouble than anyone else I know."
She sniffed. "It wasn't my fault someone decided to burn down my barn."
"No, but it was your fault you decided not to stick around and wait for the firefighters like a normal person would do."
Here we go again. "My horses were going to die. I don't think it was so very foolish to try to save them."
He pursed his mouth but didn't push the matter. "Have you decided whether to press charges against the Mitchell kid?"
She shook her head. She still couldn't believe Luke Mitchell had confessed to anybody who would listen that he not only started the barn fire but poisoned Dolly, drove that cow onto icy Butterfly Lake, and did his best to sabotage the Double C any way he could.
She sighed. "I haven't decided what to do. What's your opinion?"
"It's a no-brainer. You were only a couple heartbeats away from dying in that fire. When I think of what could have happened, my blood runs cold. He needs to be punished."
She didn't answer and Colt sent her a long, searching look across the width of the truck. "You're not seriously thinking about letting him walk, are you?"
"I don't know," she mumbled. The decision to prosecute would have been an easy one—like Colt said, a no-brainer—if not for Charlie's involvement.
But she couldn't shake the feeling that Luke's biggest mistake had been the same one s
he had made at his age. Listening to the wrong person.
If he hadn't met up with Charlie at Lulu's the night after she told him she wouldn't hire him to replace Joe, he never would have been suckered into the plan in the first place. But Charlie, in typical malicious and manipulative fashion, had managed to convince Luke that the only way to show he could handle the foreman's job was to create situations where he could come out the hero.
Charlie must have been chortling with glee at finding somebody to do his dirty work for him, somebody who would do everything he could to make Annie's life more difficult without Charlie having to lift a finger.
Only trouble was, Luke had bungled every effort. He hadn't been able to rope that heifer after driving her out onto the ice while Annie wasn't looking, he had passed out from smoke inhalation before he could rescue the horses and he'd given Dolly too much of the slug bait Charlie had told him would only make the dog a little sick.
She was angry at him for his naiveté and for the harm he had caused. But how could she blame him? She had been caught up in Charlie's web herself.
Luke had come to his senses in time, though, and now was consumed with remorse. He had even told Sheriff Douglas where Charlie was holed up, in one of the vacation cabins along the Madison.
Charlie was now in custody and it was looking like he would be for a long, long time. For the first time, she truly felt safe. Maybe that's why Annie was more lenient toward Luke.
Or maybe it was because she had a hard time working up enough energy for anger or for retribution or for anything else but this deep, aching sense of loss.
Joe was gone and nothing else seemed to matter.
"Looks like you've got a welcoming committee," Colt said and she realized he had pulled up in front of the ranch house.
Hanging across the posts on the porch was a wide banner with Welcome Home Mom written in fourteen different colors of crayon. Dolly was the welcoming committee Colt referred to. She was waiting on the front porch and when Annie opened the truck door she jumped up and raced over to them, barking and whirling in excitement.
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