Dog on the Sand - A Story of Love and Redemption

[Light Ice]

The man sat at the very breast of a dune with his legs stretched out before him. Below him, in a sharp gradient, the dune’s slope stretched low and his legs followed it until the heels of his boots were planted and he was left with nothing but to look out across the endless rolling sea of sand that stretched on. It was forever. It was eternity. It was a sea of sand that was as cold and tireless and ageless as any mountain and ocean but less than those and more of the grim reality of life in that it had already been beaten and pulverized by its weather to this state. It was like a graveyard. It felt as though he was sitting at the end of the world itself.

No heat radiated on the horizon and no cold struck him. He was unsettled only by the queer details of the moment that threatened always to blend together but were trapped in the pitiless trap of his mind. He rubbed the backs of his hands against his cheeks and tried to breath deep. Nothing.

He was afraid.

“I was meant to be here.” He said.

And then he amended it immediately because it felt wrong and too hopeful.

“I couldn’t be anywhere else.”

The world felt like it should have gone dark but it did not. His hands shifted on the dune’s crest but the sand was not disturbed. It went on, forever, rolling and moving to the tireless beat of the eons and cared nothing for him. Nothing, at all, cared anything for him here. It was the great absence of comfort. It was a great and grim loneliness. It was an endless realization that was born like a knot in his belly he could not vomit free. A constant and nagging and terrifying reality that he was nothing and never would be anything here but a thing seated momentarily on a dune that would live on long after he’d gone and would not be any different for his visit. This world did not see him because it had blinked and missed the entirety of who or what he was with such a calloused indifference that it escaped him how it could be so malicious and so final that he was here.

The dog was simply there. He’d not seen it come or felt it arrive. It simply was. It was a dog and not a dog. Big, and black, like a shadow with shape and no clear lines and it was impossible that it existed but it did and it scared him. He looked at it and nearly pissed himself because it stood there, unmoving, and could have looked something like a Pittbull if it’d really looked anything like any dog he had ever seen but it did not. It was a horror. It had no eyes. No face. No expression. Its mouth was closed and it never opened. It was not breathing. It was not a dog. It was something awful, something horrible, and he wanted to piss himself and close his eyes but he couldn’t. He wanted to run but he couldn’t. He wanted anything but to sit looking at this dog that was not near but not far and he knew could be closer whenever it wanted.

No, he knew it would be closer and he could not escape it.

“Don’t kill me.” He thought.

“No,” said the dog without moving or opening its mouth. It’s voice was a haunt in his mind, a terror, that felt like it was coming out of him. Birthing, inaudible but undeniable. It felt like his brain would pour out of his eyes and out of his nose and his skull would flay open and split to reveal the cracked skull where it’d escaped him.

“Are you death?”

“No. That comes later.”

He was afraid, so afraid. The horror of the dog’s arrival brought with it an unrelenting certainty that he would not survive. That he would not live. That it had brought with it a kind of damnation that was of historic and horrible proportions. It would devour him and rip out his guts and make him watch and feel and never flee or truly die. It would pluck him from the world and leave the heart of him torn out and trodden. Oh god, oh god it was so awful. Oh god, he wanted to never talk to it or see it and to forget it but he wouldn’t he wouldn’t he wouldn’t.

The dog said nothing and he felt no voice but he knew, he knew that it would get closer and each time a part of him would break until there was nothing left and then it’d be teeth and awful things that nightmares conspire within your heart. It would foster this great emptiness and great helplessness into a terror sharp and real and that he felt even now as the thoughts rambled and he sat immobile on the sand looking at this thing that he couldn’t run from.

Oh god!

But there was no god and the dog seemed to take pleasure in his plea and sat there waiting and watching with every sense of certainty that he would soon devour him or do whatever it was that must be done and that he would never leave this place alive crossed his mind for the very first time at this instance.

Oh god, his life was forfeit and his fate so terrible this great black spectre this faceless horror was some cruel usher to which he would not evade or shirk. He felt fear rising and tears and screams choked in his throat and would not come though he wanted them to and could not help them and was paralyzed by how they meant nothing because he wanted to scream and scream and scream and be saved and there would be no saving no anything no nothing.

He tried to scream.

He tried to scream.

He tried to scream.

Kill me, oh god make it stop, oh god kill me, oh make it stop, make it stop, kill me, kill me, kill me, kill me, kill me kill me kill me kill me kill me kill me kill me kill me kill me kill me kill me kill me kill me kill me kill me kill me kill me kill m-













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He left the motel at around 8:30 and he’d cleaned it before he’d left. There was something about leaving a mess for people that didn’t sit with him and couldn’t sit with him and so he’d rubbed down the sink after he’d shaven and folded the dirty towel and washcloth on top of one another. He’d folded the linens of the bed and stacked them neatly at the foot with the coverlet on the bottom and the longest and each sheet stacked smaller than the one before until there were only the tiny rectangles of the pillow cases.

Before he checked out he drove the truck around from the back of the motel to the lobby and went in, past the counter, to the pool area. It was cold in the early morning and a Tuesday so nobody was in. The water looked pale blue because of the faded paint of the pool itself and the tile was a green that should have been updated but hadn’t been. That was the way of this part of the country. It was not New York or California. There was no great hurry to move on from the decades before. Pool chairs, the kinds with the vinyl strips, lined the area and he walked past them.

In the back was the gym and while it was small it was enough. His routine didn’t require anything elaborate and when he was finished he got in his truck, drove back around to his room, and showered. He dressed in a faded red flannel shirt with blue and yellow stripes that divided the red squares. It was a long sleeve shirt and he cuffed the sleeves just above his elbow. He wasn’t tired but he was nervous. It was on his face when he looked up into the steam-painted mirror. There were furrows under his eyes and a worry line in both corners of his mouth. He looked at himself until they faded and he felt calm, all the while thinking about what’d brought him to this room and what was taking him onward.

He checked out at about 8:27am and pulled out of the parking lot at 8:30 almost on the button.

There’d been no need to own a car for the longest time and now that he had one he felt disappointed that there was no greater pleasure in it for him. The Ford was a good truck and ran quiet and was awful on gas but he didn’t care about that. He rolled quietly through town and looked at the street lights and faded brick buildings. The glass windows were clouded in places and the people here were already up and moving. He’d several things to do before he left town and he did them. He mailed a letter at the Post Office and it cost him forty cents. He didn’t keep the change but left it in the little tray by the register. The woman there was in her forties and had smiled at him. He’d given her a polite smile and left.

He ate at a diner filled with cowboys. They wore wide-brimmed hats and some wore denim shirts and brown range pants. There was talk of beer and cattle and women and Mitt Romney and college football. He didn’t find any of it interesting and hardly looked up from his eggs and bacon. There was a gaping hole in his chest pocket where he’d once kept cigarettes and he still felt the emptiness even after four years without them. A few of the men went outside to smoke and he looked at them briefly to envy their Marlboro’s and their American Standards before leaving a twenty on his table and walking outside.

The last place he went before he left town was a sporting goods store. He bought a couple pairs of socks, two new shirts, a wide-brimmed hat to replace the one he’d lost in Wyoming. His boots were still nearly brand new and they were Carhartt’s so he was even tempted to look. He also bought a new Gerber and two boxes of Premier Nosler Bonded bullets for his rifle. They were expensive but it didn’t matter because this far north there’d be more than just White Tail and Mulies, there’d be Elk.

Montana in fall was beautiful. It’d the great hills and plains of Wyoming and it was framed in a backdrop of the mountains and the woods at their foot. He drove out of town and listened to the wind pass by the cracks of his windows and felt the soft leather on his steering wheel beneath the cracked and calloused palms of his hands. The rifle was between his seat and the passenger seat in a roof rack. He’d bought a trigger lock to help his permit get pushed but it was in his center console and he only used it at night when he slept in the motel.

It took him almost forty minutes to reach the Ranch. It was a ways out and the roads turned from smooth asphalt to broken gravel furrows with a matter of two left turns. The land was well-chosen and while he’d read the spread wasn’t as big as the cattle ranches to the south it was perfect for horses and they’d been a healthy brand for years. He knew horses, anyway, and had since he’d been a boy. The ranch house had been built with its back to the mountain and looked out down the slope of a long, dragging hill filled with grass and wildflowers. It was God’s country and he felt it in the way the air smelled and the way his truck bounced gently along as he eased it up the drive towards the house.

Fenced pastures flanked him to the right and the left. There was a Help Wanted sign carved neatly in pinewood by the gate to one and it struck him that there couldn’t be too many strangers rolling through. It was charming. All of it. But he wasn’t surprised it’d needed a hand because he’d read the advert in the paper when he’d first come into town three days ago. He’d meant to come up here sooner but his nerves had come on and a car on the street had backfired and wound him up and that was all it took for him to put it off a bit.

Dust followed the truck when he stopped it off to the left of the porch, unsure otherwise, where to park. It came off the gravel and dusted the green of his truck’s side. He let it sit while he gathered himself and squeezed the truck’s wheel in his big hands. The picture was on his dash where he’d always put it when he drove. He looked at it, the cracks in it where it’d been folded and beat up, and sucked in a big breath of air. All at once he remembered the men smoking outside the diner and wished he’d bought some.

It was stupid but he didn’t think he’d ever go forever without wanting one. He’d kicked the habit but not the desire to have it and that was the devil in it all.

“Well,” he said to himself at length.

And then, “Shit.”

It was 10:34am when he got out of the truck and pushed his brown wool hat onto his head. It took the sun in the brim and shaded his face and felt right. He reached back in through the window and took the picture off the dashboard. Carried it, in his hand, up the porch steps that thunked under his boots. There was a hanging bell of brass and he rolled the striker in his fingers before ringing it.

He’d seconds to consider the words that’d leave him and it brought on anxiety. Words, for his great appreciation and grasp of them, had never been something he’d spoken well or with easiness. They’d come to him better when he’d listened to them and best when they’d read him but never easily when he meant to speak them. They often rolled about in his head, turned dark, and faded into thoughts that he’d never find the inclination to speak. His thumb ran over the glossy surface of the picture and felt over one of the cracks he knew best because it cut from the left corner of the picture towards the center and then sharply upwards to the top. There was steps coming, lighter boots.

He banished the picture into his pocket and was angry with himself. It wasn’t even eleven. He still wanted a smoke.


(This story is closed.)

 

[DarkWarrioress]

No wonder it woke up people. It was an annoying sound. Beep. Beep. Beep. Her hand slipped out from under the covers and slammed down on top of the alarm clock on her nightstand, suddenly silencing it for another day. Sam rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. It sure beat the one her brother Josh had bought for her. The alarm was a rooster crowing. The first morning she used it, she had broken it. Sam had picked it up and thrown it across the room where it met the wall and fell into pieces. Her brown eyes flickered toward her bedroom window. Beyond it was darkness. Mornings came early to Montana, especially to those that owned and worked a horse ranch. Throwing back the covers, Sam sat on the edge of the bed. Temptation was an evil thing. She wanted to just snuggle back into the warmth her bed had to offer and instead, she getting out of it. Josh wasn’t going to be far behind her and she had better hustle if she wanted to beat him to the coffee pot.

~~ ~~​

Their parents had died several years ago in a car accident. Hit head on by a driver who was too busy paying more attention to his cell phone than to his driving. He hadn’t been paying attention to the lights. Ran the red, drifted over into the oncoming lane of traffic and ended forever the way Sam and Josh conducted their lives.


The Triple Creek Ranch had been in her family for as far back as she could remember, five generations at least. The homestead had burnt down twice and been rebuilt in that amount of time. That was the Taylor way. They got knocked down but they always got up again and forged ahead. Now the Triple Creek belonged to her and Josh. It was up to them to carry on the family legacy. Samantha Taylor, twenty-six, often felt that weigh down her shoulders at times. Joshua, her brother who was three years younger, never seemed to feel it quite as much as she did. She knew Josh hadn’t wanted to come off the circuit. Rodeo was his life. He loved it but he had come home, for her, because she needed him. Especially right now. CJ was pressuring her. Everyone in town knew that Clive Johnson was head over heels in love with Samantha Taylor and she wouldn’t give him the time of day. Sam knew he was a petty man and though she couldn’t prove it, CJ was behind the loss of Triple Creek’s latest contract. Triple Creek was known for their horses. They always sold stock to the rodeos. The contract was one day away from being a reality when the Taylors got a phone call. The buyers had changed their minds. They were right sorry to do this, but in today economy, they had to go with the best price they could get. Sam knew who they went to, there was only one other rancher around those parts that had what these people were looking for and normally, CJ charged an arm and a leg for his stock, but apparently not this time. Joshua was fit to be tied and it was all Sam could do to keep her brother from going over that ranch of CJ’s and doing something stupid.

~~ ~~​

The sun had just broken over the mountains when Sam went out to the pasture. She had two hot mugs of coffee in her hands. Putting a booted foot up on the lowest corral fence, she balanced the mugs on second rail as she watched Joshua lead one of the horses out from the barn and into the corral. He was leading out one of their newest paints. The horse was green broke, thanks to Josh’s patience and work but not nearly even close to being ridden yet. Josh stopped often to focus the horse’s attention on him. He led the horse to one of the corral posts, tying the cotton lead rope to it, letting his hand pass over the animal’s side as he walked away toward Sam and took the extended cup of coffee gratefully.

“How’s he coming along?” Josh nodded, sipping his coffee.

“Pretty well. He learns quick. I’m going to try to get a saddle on him by the end of the week. Hopefully.”

Josh set the coffee mug on the dirt ground, picked up the burlap sack that was lying nearby. Josh approached the animal with the sack in hand and talked softly to him, starting to rub the animal down with the burlap. Sam stayed around to watch awhile longer before she headed off to take care of her own chores for the morning. There were horses to feed and groom, chickens to feed, eggs to collect, the dogs to take care of and all before breakfast. Sadie, their bi-colored Australian Shepard trotted at Sam’s heels. Travis, their golden retriever, had opted to stay on the porch, which was his favorite place to be when he wasn’t chasing the cats or a tennis ball. Every morning it was pretty much the same thing. Josh worked with the horses. She took care of the animals. He rode fence, checked on their herd, and did all the maintenance around the homestead. They tossed to see who had to muck stalls. Sam lost the coin toss this time.

Travis wandered in with a green tennis ball in his mouth just as Sam was coming out of the last stall, wiping her brow with the back of her hand. She leaned on the pitchfork as she watched the dog in amusement.

“Travis, your timing is impeccable.”

The dog walked up to her and dropped the ball at her feet. Bending over, she picked it up and threw it out the open barn door. The golden was hot on its trail. Sam shook her head and laughed softly, putting the pitchfork away before she lifted the handles of the wheel barrel that was filled with the horses’ offerings. Once that was dumped, she glanced up at the sky and headed for the house. Sam paused to stomp her feet and dust of her denim jeans and matching shirt before she entered the back door which opened into the small mud room. She twisted her hair into a top knot on her head before washing her hands.

Breakfast was almost ready by the time she heard Josh in the mudroom.

“Wash up! The biscuits are almost ready.”

As if on cue, the timer went off. Sam was just setting the basket of hot biscuits on the table when Josh made his appearance. His hair was glistening wet and combed. She had to grin. Some things never changed. Some things were just bred into their core from the way they were raised. Josh was waiting for her to sit down before he sat himself. She lifted a hand and ruffled her hair, letting the brown mass cascade down around her shoulders. Even for his sibling, Josh was a gentleman. No matter how much they fought or wrestled around, he never forgot his manners. He pulled her chair out for her and then sat down himself.

Mid-morning was her baking time. Sadie was curled up in one corner of the kitchen, sleeping. Josh was off making repairs to the fence line and Sam was elbow deep in making a couple of pies for dinner when there came the ringing of the bell. Who on earth? Most people knocked. She snagged up a dishtowel and was wiping her hands on it. Her boots made a soft sound on the wooden floor, occasionally muted when she crossed an area rug. The front door was open and the screen door was the only thing that stood between her and the stranger. Her soft brown eyes roamed contemplatively over him. He was clean cut and as she neared the screen door she could make out hazel eyes. She found herself looking up to see those eyes and figured him to be about six feet. It made her feel small as she was only five foot five, barefooted. Her boot heels gave her maybe a half inch and that was fudging it. If she had to guess, she figured him to be about twenty-eight or twenty-nine, broad shouldered with a torso that tapered into a narrow waist. Her lips parted slightly on a small soft indrawn breath. It was the scar that surprised her. It was on his throat, his right side, she couldn’t miss it. It was a jagged line that ran from front to somewhere in back she supposed. Sam found herself blushing. She was being rude and staring, but she couldn’t help it.

“Hello. Is there something I can do for you?”

Her tone was soft, modulated. She was still in the denim shirt she had worn this morning, the front was unbuttoned a couple of buttons from the top, the dish towel was casually resting on one shoulder. Her shirt was tucked into her blue jeans which flared out at the bottom to cover her lace up black ropers. Her eyes were friendly as well as curious, so was her voice.

 

[Light Ice]

That it was a girl didn’t outright surprise him but he hadn’t been expecting it. He’d been born and raised in a cattle town, grew up with farm girls both prim and practical, and never seen that kind of pretty until he’d gone over seas. He smoothed a hand over the lean muscle of his flank and briefly sank his fingers into the tight stretch of his back pocket to feel the picture inside. It was tired and beat up but there, always there. He didn’t pull it out.

Manners weren’t much an issue and came naturally. His other hand claimed his hat from his head and laid it against his thigh. She looked more at ease than he’d suspected. Something in him had often given girls a fright when they didn’t have friends and a few shots of Jose in them. He wasn’t much the ladies sort. His mom had always said he wasn’t the traditional sorts of handsome and he was too quiet to be any kind of charming. The truth was that he unnerved folks and that’d only been more so the case since he’d gone back.

“Paper says you’ve got work.” He said.

Because he saw her eyes linger on his face and suddenly he was a year ago in the sand, fingers clutching a battered picture. A heat rolled through him. He cocked a foot sidelong and leant his weight on one lean hip, lifting both hands to hold his hat’s brim before him and push it between his fingers in a slow, lazy circle while his eyes tried to turn from her legs in worn denim to the boards at her feet.

Damn, but he hadn’t expected her to be pretty. It seemed harder to keep his face granite now than ever but he managed. The skill had been bred in him for the better part of fourteen years.






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Danny was smart and young. A fast mover. A faster talker. Watching him move around the kitchen with Katie was enough to provoke a headache. Still, he looked on as his little brother chattered incessantly while helping with dinner. The sounds of the plates and pots and utensils moving sounded more foreign than he ever could have imagined. His nerves were wearing thin and growing thinner. None of it was comforting. The newness, the feel of it all, made him feel undoubtedly on edge.

“It’s so good to have you home, it really is. You haven’t written in so long. I mean, I know you were busy, it’s just that we didn’t have any news and I just had so many questions to ask you. Is it bad over there? I mean, are we making headway? The TV says that it’s back and forth and now with the Afghanistan Police turning on us after we trained them…”

“Ellie got married.” Said Katie.

Just like that.

“Oh.” He nodded.

That wasn’t much of a surprise and he felt mostly indifferent to it. They hadn’t carried any malice when they’d broken things off. It was hard for emotions to feel close when you were half a world away for eighteen months at a time. The last significant time he’d spent with Ellie had been when she’d asked him to come get his things. Most of it was packed in boxes and taped in a way that told him she’d done it a long time ago. It’d just been somewhere, a closet maybe, waiting for him to get home.

“I’m just glad you’re here, man. Any idea on when you’ll get your own place?”

Danny’s voice ran a stream of words. A never-ending rush of dialogue that carried with it an enthusiasm that he used to find endearing. Now, though, it was too much. He felt like the words poured down on him and buried him in sentiments that he could only feel some vague connection with. They hung in the air like memories. They didn’t feel real.

Why was he here?

The dinner must have been ready because all at once they sat down with him at the table. Katie was on his left and Danny was across from him. He took stuffing and macaroni. He took meatloaf. The plate was white with little blue swirls along the edge. The cow that was inexplicably in the center was drawn in blue in profile. He’d covered that with food. He found the plates stupid. The sound of his family serving itself grating. Everything was slow and easy. Nothing carried with it any sense of consequence. He sat alone at the table and still with two people.

“How’s work?” He asked his brother.

Danny started talking. His voice rising with excitement. He wasn’t surprised things were going well. He just, in that moment, didn’t care or hear the only family that he’d had to turn to. The boy that had been his younger brother had grown up and become a handsome, enthusiastic young man. He had the looks of their mother. Gorgeous. His eyes shone sharp green under his dark features. He wasn’t in that great a shape but looked it, anyway.

The sound of a plate exploding on the tile under their feet was sudden.

But all at once he didn’t hear it. He felt it. An impact. A tremor. The sudden fear that came out of nowhere and blossomed up quick and sharp. Danny was apologizing but he didn’t hear the words. Katie was scooping up glass with a papertowel and chastising. He knew where he was and who he was with but he just didn’t feel it. Didn’t feel right. Couldn’t feel right.

He was half way out the door before he’d heard their protests. Didn’t realize he still had his fork in his hand until he got in his truck.

 

[DarkWarrioress]

“Paper says you’ve got work.”

Simple. No embellishments. Straight to the point. She liked that. He was quiet. Too quiet. For most folk. It reminded her of----

The soft sound of nails clicking on the floor behind her and then the soft brush of fur against her outer jean clad leg, made Sam look down briefly, thankful for the interruption of her thoughts. It was Sadie, come to see who was at the door. Samantha’s fingers found a silken ear and rubbed it. The dog leaned her head against Sam’s knee. Sadie’s eyes were glued on the man on the other side of the screen door. Her tail was wagging slightly, ears perked. Sam wasn’t sure if it was because of the idle attention Sadie was getting from her or it was the man on the outside. The ear rubbing stopped.

“Sit, Sadie.”

The command was gentle, tender even. Sam lifted her hand and pushed open the screen door slightly. Her eyes returned to the man with his hat in hand. Her lips turned up in a slight smile.

“We do. Come in, please. I hope you don’t mind talking in the kitchen. I’m in the middle of baking a couple of pies and I need to get them in the oven.”

She pushed open the screen door slightly and when he grasped it, she released it, turned, tapped her outer thigh and began walking back the way she had come, with Sadie at her side. It wasn’t hard to follow her nor was it hard to find the kitchen. It opened off of the living room. Their home, while not large, was spacious and open, the way both Josh and she liked it. Neither of them liked small confined spaces.

Her parents had chosen to build a log home after the last wild fire had blazed through. It had been difficult to start all over again. To have to shift through soot and ash for any small mementoes that might have been spared. Unfortunately, there hadn’t been much worth saving. All they had left was this house and their memories. The only things that weren’t new, since it had been packed away in storage, sat in one corner of the living room. A small table. On it rested only three things. A triangular case bearing an American flag, a picture of a young man dressed in uniform, obviously a Marine and a small vase of freshly cut roses.

Sadie remained at Sam’s side until they hit the kitchen then she veered off to her usual spot in the corner of the cozy, warm kitchen. The house was quiet all except for the soft sounds of Sam returning to rolling out pie dough for the last pie. Her hands worked efficiently, moving from task to task with minimal fuss. Her eyes were on her work when she heard his boots on the floor coming closer then entering the kitchen or maybe he paused in the doorway, she wasn’t sure at this point, wouldn’t be until she looked up again. Her fingers trembled a little as she lifted the pie dough, fitting it to the tin. The stranger reminded her a lot of …… Bobby. Sam bit her lip as her mind softly spoke the name of their deceased older brother. Tears welled in her eyes and she blinked rapidly to hold them back.

They were strangers in uniform. Two of them. No one wanted to see them. Everyone knew what message they brought.

It had started out like any other day. The alarm went off. Josh and she got up and went about their day. Bobby had gone back to Afghanistan. His promise of coming home to stay after this tour, ringing in their ears as his broad back disappeared from their sight.

~~ ~~​

He had come home for their parents’ funeral. Helped get all the legal paperwork rolling. It had been a somber time, but they had found things to laugh about, whether it was remembering something silly and stupid Dad had talked them into doing or something Mom had done. Bobby had made it easier to bear. The loss. The heartache. The sudden emptiness. He was solid and comforting but there was something different about him too. There was a lot different even though he tried to hide it.

There had been one time, they were all gathered out by the corral, helping load the horse trailers. They had just made one of their largest sales. Everything had gone smoothly. The horses got loaded, the tailgates were closed and locked. The trucks had just started driving off when one backfired. What happened next took a few moments to register. They all heard the truck backfire. Bobby hit the dirt, face down, covering his head with his hands. Seconds ticked out. Josh rushed to his side, leaning over his brother, one hand going to Bobby’s shoulder.

“Bobby! You okay, man? Hey, Bobby.”

Sam was rooted to the spot. Her eyes were glued to Bobby’s prone form. Three breaths, maybe four and Bobby was back up on his feet, looking visibly shaken but reassuring Josh everything was okay. Bobby’s eyes flew in her direction for a fraction of a second before they slid away and he concerned himself with brushing the dust from his jeans. There was a quietness about Bobby. Something different. Something disquieting. Had been since he came back from the Sandbox, as he referred to it as.

Another time, she had found Bobby out at the corral, staring off across the pasture, foot on a rail, arms resting across a top one. She joined him, offering a penny for his thoughts. He didn’t look at her right away, just continued to stare out at the horses. When he turned his head and looked at her, she could see he was troubled.

“I have to go back, Sam. I can’t stay here, not while they’re over there.”

He turned his face away again. Bobby hadn’t needed to explain. She knew who he meant. The men he served with. Sam had scooted closer to him and slipped an arm around his back, hugging him fiercely. She didn’t want to let him go back. There was just the three of them now. Well, there had been. Until that fatal, ill-fated day when the Marine Corp came to the homestead…..

~~ ~~​

Her fingers worked to crimp the pie’s crust as she glanced up.

“Please, sit down. Would you care for something to drink? I can offer you a glass of lemonade, a cup of coffee or a glass of ice water.”

 

[Light Ice]

She moved. He followed. The cut of her strides were sharp, unexaggerated, but wholly feminine. She’d a rhythm to her day and he’d cost a few beats at the door. The rest was making up time, sliding into the cadence of her day, moving through a home that looked too new. New bride? New couple? The questions touched through him as he attempted to find a hold for his thoughts in the home. There wasn’t much by the way of clues. It pleased him, in a way, because he lived much the same. Mementos of the past, like bricks, could burden a man. He’d seen fit to carry few with him. It’d never suited the job or the person that saw to it. Still, as familiar as that made the home seem, it struck him odd. Once more he thought of the picture tucked inside his pocket, cracked and worn. It didn’t fit right but he couldn’t make himself move it from his back pocket.

“It’s fine.” He answered.

But he wasn’t sure she’d heard him. She was damned fast. She cut through the house like a knife and he was several feet behind and slow goes. A stranger’s house, favorable décor or not, was always like a new world. His Carhartt’s were silent on the hardwood. They grew especially so when he cut past the living room in such a way that he saw the picture. Details. It was always the details. He caught them so well it was like a curse. He’d wished not to have seen it. Knew what it was. The cover. The dress. Hell, even the frame. A military portrait wasn’t the kind of thing that was easy to overlook. There was a handsome young man in it. At the distance, sharp as his eyes were, he couldn’t make out the entire walk of his features. The light caught the glass just enough to keep him. Still, he saw enough. Knew enough.

And then he was in the kitchen behind her, hurrying the last couple steps just enough to close the distance before she could question his lingering.

The hat felt heavy in his hands. He turned it briefly, wrung at the brim with the gnarled length of his large hands. This close, without the door between them, he could feel her warmth the way a man could when near a woman. Good heart. Open spirit. Troubles. Trust. Words, sensations, that arched through him like the wind through a sail. It gave him enough of a taste. She was young. Younger than he was. Beautiful. The pie crust folded under her urgings. He felt the dog at his side and knelt, folded himself into a feral crouch, and felt the dogs ears and neck and scratched at it with a familiar vigor. Fur like silk slid between his rough fingers and he wondered, briefly, if the man in the picture had often done just what he was doing and felt better for it the way he did. He wondered if she’d stood right there baking pies when it’d happened and if for a moment he’d stepped into that missing man’s place. It made him feel wrong and he remembered himself and stood, quiet and troubled, watching her without another word.



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ellie walked through their house in his shirt, unsmiling, with her blonde hair caught in a loose ponytail she’d hastily made when the door had rung. He laid in bed for a moment, tired and angry, imagining her little ass bouncing in those cheeky panties that she wore to bed and the little flick of her heels with each stride and for a moment both wanted and hated her for it all. This, he was too young and too frustrated and too oblivious for the intricacies of women. They little things they said without saying them stacked up like boulders and eventually when he jarred them enough they fell on his head. He’d a tendency to stand there, never clear out, just looking up and marveling at all the things that she’d been carrying against him. Never had a clue. Not one.

It’s Zach. She’d said. Or he’d heard.

But the voice was something along the lines of, here’s one more thing that will keep us from having an honest conversation after we’ve fucked.

She came in and the tone was gone and so was the feelings she had but kept from him. He never understood it. She was a mystery. He loved her once but now there was only shadows of a girl he never got to see and a front that he ran into and couldn’t get behind. Still, she bounced over to the bed all twenty and fun and flashed him a thousand watts of smile that made him forget everything except that he’d been serious when he’d said he wanted to marry her and make her happy. She popped up onto the bed and laid across him, little fingers over the hard ridges of his abdomen and big blue eyes blinking up into his face. They kissed. Her fingers cupped his face.

Go on, she said. I know you need to.

You’ve got a hole in you that I can’t fix.

It’s not a big deal. I’m making it into a big deal.

Maybe, he thought out loud. Or maybe I’m just too thick.

It’s both. She smiled at him. Forgiving.

Alright.

She shook her head. Smiling, meaning it, but then frowning only with her eyes right after. She’d wanted to love him. He’d wanted to be enough. But a man like him wasn’t and she couldn’t. For the first time he felt he’d been let in, finally, on one of Ellie’s secrets. She laid her head on his chest and sighed, kissed his skin and ran her fingers down his sides. He stirred. Hardened. And she ran her fingers over that beneath the sheets and breathed raggedly against him.

Go. She said.

I can stay.

No, you can’t. And I’ll be here.

He’d left then. Only, when he came back it was with orders. Her smile told him she’d expected it to be the case. She cried and went into his arms and he took her to bed and gently, rocking his body into her owns until she trembled and wrapped herself around him and whispered I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you until he slid deep inside her, she shook again, and he shook with her. They laid like that until their little kisses and soft touches made him hard again and he took her more roughly onto the floor. A half-dozen times they had one another until sleep came for her and he sat up, uneasy, thinking about being down range and worried about what he’d have home for him.

And then, just like that, he stopped loving her. It was like a candle going out. Easy. Unavoidable. It hadn’t even bothered him when she sent the letter that she’d moved out and mailed his stuff to his brother. His first thought was to be appreciative she’d moved him out, too, so that he could stop paying for the place and save himself money.

Three days later he’d shot a man in the face while he relieved himself.

That was just as easy.

 

[DarkWarrioress]

He was watching her. Even lost in her memories as her hands worked, she was conscious of him. Why that was, she couldn’t say. Maybe because he had reminded her of Bobby. That made her wonder if he was a Marine too. Once a Marine, always a Marine. That was something Bobby had taught her. You could take the man out of the Corps but you couldn’t take the Corps out of the man. The Marine Corps changed a person. For better or worse, the one thing that was constant was that they were changed forever.

Sam moved to the oven, opening the door and then careful moved one uncooked pie then the other, to the heated rack. Using the dish towel she pushed the rack back into the interior of the heat and closed the door again. She used the towel on her hands before slinging it back on her shoulder and finally glancing his way. She nodded toward the kitchen table by the window.

“Go on now, take a seat. You’re starting to make me nervous standing there, looming over me like you do.”

Turning toward the sink, she reached up, opened a cupboard door and took out two glasses, filling them with simple, cold well water. Sam didn’t even glance in his direction as she took the glasses to the kitchen table and sat down. She was just about to ask him some questions when Josh came through the back door. Hat in hand, he stopped just inside the kitchen, his eyes shifting from questioning as he glanced at her to curiosity as he looked upon the stranger.

“Joshua. This gentleman is here about the ad we placed for help. I was just going to ask him some questions and answer any of his.”

Josh took a step toward the stranger, extending his hand, which was calloused from good old fashioned hard work.

“Josh Taylor and this here is my sister Samantha. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you around before. Staying for a spell or just looking to make a few bucks before passing through?”

Seemed like a fair enough question. One she was going to ask the stranger anyway. Josh, she knew, didn’t care for the whole interview process. Hated it. He rather be outdoors riding the range or fixing something.

~~ ~~​

“Miss Taylor? Miss Samantha Taylor?”

Her weight shifted from one leg to the other as she stared at both men through the screen door. Go away. Go away and don’t come back. Then I can make myself believe that Bobby is coming home.

“May we come in, Miss Taylor? It’s about your brother Robert.”

She swallowed. Her hand extended to open the screen door from her side. She noticed her fingers were trembling. Sam pulled them back, curling them into her palm a moment before she tried again. This time succeeding.

“Come in, please. Both of you. Make yourself at home in the livingroom. I’ll go get my brother Joshua. Excuse me a moment, please.”

She kept it together for as long as it took her to make it out of the livingroom, through the kitchen and out the backdoor. Josh was saddling his favorite mare. Sam hurried out to the barn where he was.

“Josh,” she spoke almost too softly for him to hear, “Josh. You best come. They’re here.”

He looked up from tightening the cinch.

“Who’s here?” He tipped the brim of his hat back from his forehead.

“The Marines. You know. The ones that---“

Josh stared. His hands came away from the cinch. He walked toward her. His eyes held disbelief.

“Oh fuck. Sam. Not Bobby.”

All she could do was nod. He came up to her and wrapped her in his arms, hugging her fiercely. She buried her face in his shoulder and her arms wound around him just as fierce. His hat hit the dirt but neither of them noticed. Their grief was immediate. It was palpable though neither of them had shed a single tear. They stood there, like that for a time before Josh backed up, cupped her face in his hands and kissed her forehead before he pressed his nose to hers and whispered, staring into her eyes.

“Let’s go get this done. You ready, hon?”

“Yeah,” she whispered back, “let’s do this.”

Her eyes told him she didn't want to be ready though. That she didn’t want to hear what they had to say. Josh slipped his hand into hers, his fingers curled around them. Leaning down he picked up his hat, slapped it against his thigh a couple of times before they headed back into the house to hear the words they had never wanted to hear.

~~ ~~​

As she sat there, at the kitchen table, watching both men silently size up the other, she wondered, again, how Bobby had died. Had his ultimate sacrifice been worth any damn thing? Or had his death been senseless? The military certainly had no answers for her. Sam had been trying for months now to find out how their brother had died. All she ever got back was, “We’re investigating. We’ll get back to you as soon as we know something, Miss Taylor.” She was beginning to doubt she’d ever get any answers. She was beginning to doubt that the military wanted her to have any.

 

[Light Ice]

She’d meant for him to sit but he couldn’t summon it up. Outside, out there, was the sweet escape of a country morning twisting lazily towards lunch time and all that came with it. He could see the sunshine out the kitchen window. A part of him wanted to make a break for it and stop doing whatever it was he thought he was doing.

Any pretense of righteousness had gone when he’d pushed that old picture back into his pocket. Even now, tucked there where no man should have felt it, he felt the weight pulling at him and carrying with it the tireless certainty of guilt. There’d been many lies in his life but none felt more damning than this one. It was one of the few times in his life he couldn’t even make a claim at being honest in his heart. So, standing in this kitchen with a beautiful woman moving about him, he felt as phony and out of place as he’d ever felt. He wanted to run.

He didn’t.

And it wasn’t just because the boy brother came in all a sudden. He’d been surprised but not badly so. It was just the moment. It surprised him the way a bee sting might when you were out mowing the lawn. Made sense you might take a hit. Doesn’t mean you saw it on its way in. The brother and the sister had a resemblance that was broken by gender and little else. He was a traditionally handsome man, younger than her by what looked like only a year or so. She wore the Ranch life better than he did and looked bright and vibrant and beautiful. Aside from that, though, he looked at the younger man and saw a dark-haired and handsome kid who had kindness in his eyes and enough steel in his spine to melt most town girls to pieces.

They shook hands. It was there and gone, passing in an instant, but poignant as it was in all moments when men met. He looked like a kid for a second, barely, before regaining himself. The casual means between them spoke of familiarity and inexperience both. He’d come into the Ranch before he’d meant to. He’d adjusted well. Reading people should have been harder. Shouldn’t have been a skill. But observation was a power that came with side effects he hadn’t first foreseen.

“Deaglan Lynch. I’ll be moving on come Spring.” He said.

It hadn’t occurred to him until now he should make more an effort to get hired. They might find it strange he’d no encouragements of his ethic or ability. But, with the weight of the picture heavy in his back pocket, he couldn’t summon the words. It was typical for them to abandon him. He’d never been much for the complicated or uncertain. Amongst them, with the brother a fine excuse, he stood an alien within their kitchen. An interloper.

Outside the day had promise to be gorgeous. He imagined the truck rolling down the highway and the wind cutting through his open windows to swirl loudly within the inside of his truck. In a thought he’d a hand out the door, playing against the fierce wind as it tried to take his palm. Then he wasn’t riding in the truck at all but atop a horse. Guiding her through long movements with his legs while another ran beside. Not roped, not bound, but of its own volition in the tireless herd manner that horses had. It was a trick to break them kindly. Use their nature and not force to see it done.

Then there was that weight and so he shifted, watching the pair. Unsure, still, why he was lying.

 

[DarkWarrioress]

Deaglan Lynch.

Her mind softly repeated the name. Her head canted slightly to one side as she watched both men. In Deaglan, she sensed a sudden restlessness and Sam wondered about it. What had brought it about. She leaned back in her chair, studying him. He was a quiet man, much too quiet. She had been around quiet men before, they didn’t disturb her normally, but the air of quiet Deaglan had about him was something altogether different. Sam shifted in her chair. It wasn’t what he said that made her uneasy. It was what he didn’t say. She got to her feet suddenly.

“Is there something you needed or wanted, Josh?”

Her soft voice broke into the men’s conversation. Josh turned his head and smiled at Sam.

“I just came in to steal a few of those cookies you made yesterday before I rode out to the eastern pasture,” he turned his attention back to Deaglan, “I’ll leave you in Sam’s capable hands. She does all the interviews around here. I’m just the hired help,” he leaned over to kiss Sam’s cheek, “if she decides to hire you, I’ll be seeing you around a lot, I reckon. For now, I best get busy. Daylight’s burning and the fence isn’t going to check itself.”

Josh went to one of the counters, opened the cookie jar and fisted what seemed like a lot of cookies before he gave his sister a rueful little boy grin, gave a nod in Deaglan’s direction and strode out of the kitchen again with the screen door banging closed behind him. Silence enveloped the kitchen again before she softly spoke, this time to Deaglan.

“Why don’t we take a walk around the ranch so you can see what you’ll be letting yourself in for? We can talk as we walk.”

Sam moved toward the back door, forgetting about her heartache. Nothing in this world or any other was going to bring Bobby back to them. She just hoped that one day the pain of losing him, the deep gut wrenching emptiness in the pit of her stomach of missing him would cease and she could smile whenever she thought of him. They kept telling her that time heals. She had smiled and nodded and hugged, back then, thinking that nothing would ever make this awfulness any better. Every day she woke up putting one foot in front of the other until her day was over and sleep would claim her only to wake up and do it all over again. Today, nothing was different. Nothing had changed.

 

[Light Ice]

He felt a ghost. An alien. The little affections and easy confidence of people at home were something he'd not seen, not known, for too long. It was hard to ever feel like you belonged when all you could see was that you did not. People, he knew, did not speak as he thought. The rambling feelings that rolled their way through him were the kinds of things that people left unsaid. Or, more disturbingly, lay the prospect that they did not feel them at all.

It was the latter that drove him to that dark place.

In the end it hardly mattered what place he found in the world. A part of him had given up on that at all. He'd jobs and duties. Little things, like training a horse, that distracted him from the many things in people he did not and could not understand. There was no need to fit in amongst them. He was a square peg in a room of round holes. There was only the strides that took him after her and the quiet appreciation for what little beauty he saw when he saw it. Her hips, the strength in her stride, seductive and feminine as she carried on with an effortless sway that was subtle and practical but not absent.

The screen squeaked as they past through it and the man in him provoked the thought of his hand reaching to splay across the small of her back. It never was more than a thought. No desire surfaced. Instead, he went after her without a word and into the yard. Around him, stretching out, lay the gentle rolling hills and mountain frame of the world in which she lived. Horses made noises that he'd missed somewhere behind the house. Her brother, in his youth, was quick and sure.

As for interviews, he was a poor one. He found his thoughts straying more and more to the picture in his pocket. It'd been misleading. Or, rather, not as clear as he'd wished it been. It'd been heavier than he'd hoped and wanted. The duty that it represented one he couldn't shirk but wasn't ready to face. Sometimes, in the end, it wasn't a man's intentions that failed him. Those were the hardest. He kept pace with the dark-haired girl he'd never had a real intention to meet. Watched her.

The weather was gorgeous. She outshone it.

 

[DarkWarrioress]

His quiet nature didn’t unnerve her. She simply moved through the door, Sadie at her heels and then down the few steps of the back porch and started walking toward the corral. Sam could feel him walking with her. He held his hat in his hand until they cleared the house. When they got to corral fence she stopped, bracing her arms on it as she watched the horses on the other side and started speaking quietly.

“We’re a horse ranch by way of a living. Sell most of our stock to the rodeos. Some go to ranchers. Some to breeders. Mostly rodeos though. We need an extra hand around here. Josh is bringing in another batch of wild horses soon. "

She turned. Set her back to the fencing and found him studying her. For a moment, she was disconcerted. Her dark brown eyes zeroed in on his hazel ones. Hard to tell what the quiet ones were thinking.

“Bunkhouse is over by the barn." She gestured over her right shoulder, toward the barn with her thumb. There was a small building between the barn and the main house.

"You’ll bunk there if you take the job.”

He would only be around until spring. That was good to know. A woman could get lost in a man like that if she didn’t know better. She shoved away from the fence and started walking toward the barn.

“Come on, I’ll show you the barn. Part of your duties will be to muck the horse stalls. We have some personal stock and some that Josh is breaking in for people. You’ll feed, water, groom. Generally look after them.”

Sam headed for the open barn door. The place was huge. Immaculate. On either side of them were stalls. Each held a horse. As she passed them, they came to their doors to be petted and she stopped to do so.

“Josh could use a hand training these guys, if you have the inclination for it. We have six going out next week and Josh is behind.”

She had been stroking the muzzle of a chestnut before she turned toward him, just making sure he was there. He was that quiet. The horse draped his head over her shoulder, nibbling on it and it made her laugh just before she stroked his velvet nose.

“Those three stall over there?”

She nodded at the first three across the way. The only ones with nameplates. One stall was empty.

“Those are our personal horses. Josh has his horse out at the moment. He’s gone to the back forty, riding fence. One of those is mine and the other one……” there was a significant pause…..”the other one belonged to my older brother, Bobbie.”

She made a careful show of turning to pat the horse and then moved on down through the stalls. Her voice was a little rougher, a little ragged, as she continued.

“The loft above is where we store some of the alfalfa. The leftovers that won’t fit into the hay barn out back. The truck out here we use for feeding the horses in the pasture, especially in the winter. You and Josh will handling that if you decide to stay on. I rather stay in the warm kitchen on cold winter mornings.”

She laughed softly, turning at the other end of the barn to regard him.

“I guess the million dollar question is, do you know anything at all about horses, Mr. Lynch?”

 

[Light Ice]

The lands were great and vast and endless and in them he saw the soft shapes of horses with lean legs and powerful haunches and all the ability and strength that so many men did not possess. It was inherent in them. It was natural. It was given to them with beautiful form and great freedom and all the little things that God had at one time given man in his wisdom and kindness and that man, like no other creature of the Earth, had turned aside and squandered. It made him feel helpless and sad and grateful and alive to see their movements in the distance and see the way the wind swept the grass as it stood tall and wild and green along the rolling hills. She spoke of bunking and work and little things that neither mattered or concerned him. He felt only the picture and the weight of the unspoken and found himself once again looking from her beautiful face to the horses that he envied.

"I do." He answered.

It was tempting to let their conversation lap into silence. She was beautiful and the land was great and the air had the smell of life and vibrance and peace. But, for all of it, he knew that she was being mislead and that it was wrong and marred everything into a shade of a color that he did not care for. The need for the truth swelled in him and struck chords laid long before this moment and for a second he thought to reach for her little wrist and circle it with his strong fingers and twist her around and tell her. Tell her. Confess to her things that were nothing to her but noise and the past of a strange man she’d only met moments ago and what’d brought him to her door.

“I’ll start in the morning.” He said.

Though, he knew she’d never offered him the job. The exclamation hung between them as certain and as sure as anything he’d known. There was no moment left for her to pause, no course for her to take other than the one he’d asserted, and though it was wrong and forward and dishonest it was there and he’d taken it. They moved and she seemed to pause but said nothing more and once again they slipped into a walk that rode them on and in his mind he couldn’t help but wonder just how the pair managed with so much and just the two of them to see to it.

People are awful and mysterious creatures to even those that claim to know them best. They move like shadows and spirits and exist in lines that only cross with other lines in brief moments of intersection. A man’s mastery of himself was more often a battle of acceptance and faith than it was of direction and purpose. The capacity for feeling and emotion in people was bottomless and within every ripple lay a million or infinite number of idiosyncrasies and particularities that ensured that no perspective or empathetic experience could truly ring true as the same. People, for all their defiance and faith, were as lost and a mystery to one another as they had ever been. They still fought to find meaning and partnership. They still fought to find peace of mind and stillness of sorrow. God had been replaced with Facebook but that reality didn’t change.

And so they walked in silence for a few minutes and he was not sure it was his assertion or the fact that in her he felt the familiar and oppressive weight of loneliness. There was a comfort in simply walking the land that stretched on beneath them in hills that rolled so gently they were barely perceived. Her company brought with it some solace. It existed like a tether. And, thinking on it, he realized all at once that for what he took he’d offered very little and had, indeed, taken very much. Shame came on and he touched his back pocket.

“I’m sorry.” He said at length and surprised himself. “I’m much better at working than talking.”

 

[DarkWarrioress]

He hadn’t actually answered her direct question. Instead what came from him was short. Direct. Seemingly, from her perspective, like the man himself.

“I’ll start in the morning.”

Sam didn’t say anything to that. She simply did an easy half turn and started walking back out of the barn. There was a sense of peace for her, as well as easiness, when she looked out over the pasture and watched the horses. Some grazed. Some were walking. Some were nuzzling. It would have been hard to tell someone why she loved it so much. This place, with its soft rolling hills and its silences. Even this ranch. There was something very comforting about a place that had been in your family for generations. Something that had roots, a history. Homesteads had come and gone through those generations but the land had remained. It was a living, breathing, thing. It fed and nurtured the animals that lived on it. Both two-legged and four.

Sam stood at the coral fence and simply watched the beauty of the horses. Such elegant creatures with their fine lines and taut flanks. Their grace and elegance when they ran freely and openly, unhindered by saddle or bridle, always took her breath away. This was how they were meant to look, free of man’s contraptions to control them. Finally, she turned to face him again. There was something about this man. Something that made her uneasy. She shoved her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and shifted on her feet before she tipped her head back and looked up into his face.

“I don’t remember actually offering you the job yet, Mr. Lynch.”

Why did she say that? She knew damn good and well she was going to offer him the job. They needed the help and he was the only one that CJ hadn’t run off. Sam half suspected that anyone in town who had thought to apply for the job, were convinced not to. She knew for a fact there were a few cowboys in town who could have used the job. Deaglan Lynch wasn’t from around here and thankfully, he hadn’t run into CJ’s brand of influence.

“If you’ll pardon me, I need to go check on my pies. Come back in the morning, I’ll let you know then.”

His voice came. Quiet and calmly.

“I’m sorry. I’m much better at working than talking.”

It made her pause in her stride. Her back was to him. She didn’t turn around. She didn’t say anything and maybe it was rude of her, but she simply removed her hands from her pockets and strode up the back porch steps, disappearing into the house. Before Deaglan could take action of any kind if that had been his wont, Josh came riding up on his horse, bringing it to a stop and leaned his forearm on the saddle’s horn, tipping his hat back from his eyes as he looked at Deaglan.

“She get you all settled in? Showed you where you’d bunk down and went over what needed to be done, I hope.”

Josh slipped from the horse, taking up the reins in his left hand before he held out his right one.

“Welcome to the Triple Creek Ranch, man. Good to have you aboard. Sam’s been working like a fiend of late, trying to maintain the house, handle chores out here and help me out when I need it. I reckon she’ll feel a little less stressed now that you’re here to lighten her load.

Listen, breakfast is at four am. Your meals come as part of the deal. You can move into the bunkhouse tonight or in the morning, whichever you prefer. I came in to pick up a couple of tools I forgot. If you want to saddle up, you can come with me. I’ll show you what we’re going to be doing tomorrow.”

~~ ~~​

“You what?”

She set the plate in front of Josh along with utensils before going back to fetch glasses and the cotton napkins.

“Joshua! I hadn’t hired him. We know nothing about this man.”

“We know his name. We know he wants this job. Sam, you’re working yourself into exhaustion keeping up the house and trying to help me. We need the help and you know that CJ hasn’t been making that easy. I just assumed you had hired him. It was the logical thing to do. I’m sorry.” Josh looked up at his sister as she set glasses on the table, “Well, he has the job now, whether you like it or not and frankly, I like the cut of the man. There’s something solid about him.”

Deaglan Lynch.

He made her nervous. She wasn't sure why.