Hot on the Trail. Vicki Tharp

be done with it.”

      Boomer picked up more speed. Quinn gave up conversation in exchange for air.

      Together they ran to the main road and back twice before the sun had fully risen. Three miles, he estimated, at a blistering pace that left his lungs raw and his muscles shredded.

      They quit their run at the round pen. Quinn caught one of the rungs with his hand, bending at the waist trying to catch his breath. Sidney stood in the center of the pen; a black horse raced around the inside perimeter, kicking up dust and dirt clods. They pelted his chest, and he coughed on the sandy clouds, but he didn’t have the stamina to move away.

      “How’d the leg do?” Sidney asked her husband.

      “Slowed my pace a bit. Not as much as Quinn, but I think the leg’ll be good once I’m used to it.”

      “Asshole,” Quinn huffed out.

      Boomer grinned.

      “Language.”

      “’S okay.” Quinn straightened, his lungs catching up with his oxygen deprivation. “I’ll add my dollar to the two Boom owes the jar.”

      “Hey!” Boom socked him in the shoulder. It mostly didn’t hurt. “Grab a shower and change. I’ve got a truckload of hay that needs delivered before that rain hits.”

      Quinn glanced toward the mountains and the gray clouds building up behind the ridgeline. As fast as those clouds were moving, chances were, they and the hay were getting wet.

      Not twenty minutes later, Quinn directed Boomer as he backed the flatbed trailer beside the stack of square bales in the hay barn.

      Boomer tossed Quinn a pair of leather work gloves and hopped on top of the stack. “Try to keep up.” The good-natured challenge hung in the air.

      Bale after bale rained down, in solid, sixty-five-pound rectangles. And bale after bale, Quinn grabbed the string binding the hay together with one hand and used a hay hook with his weaker hand. When the grip on his right hand gave out, he tossed the hook and wedged his tingling fingers behind the tight string to help his grip, and kept stacking.

      He kept up with Boomer. Barely. By the time they had the trailer loaded and the hay tied down, all those long runs in full gear during his boot camp days almost seemed luxurious.

      “Tired, kid?” Boomer said, as he doffed his cowboy hat and swiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve.

      “Hardly.” But Quinn’s chest rose and fell as quickly as when they’d finished their run. By the smirk on Boomer’s face, he hadn’t swallowed the lie.

      “All that lazing around has made you soft.” Mostly Boomer was joking, but the truth in his words rang as crisp and clear as a church bell on a cold, winter day.

      It proved how ill prepared Quinn was to pass his physical. He massaged the sore muscles in his damaged forearm, worked his wrist this way and that, and straightened then bent his fingers, hoping that in a month he’d be strong enough to keep his career from slipping through his weakened grasp.

      Pepita rounded the corner of the hay barn with a backpack over her shoulders and a plastic grocery bag in one hand. “Breakfast tacos!”

      Boomer took the bag from her and planted a quick kiss on her temple. “An angel of mercy.”

      He grabbed a fat roll of tinfoil-wrapped taco, handed the bag to Quinn. Boomer peeled the foil back. Steam rose, and Pepita grabbed his wrist and bit down on the corner.

      “Whoa, there, hotshot, you had your breakfast.”

      “Si, trienta—I mean, thirty minutes ago.” The way she said it, made it sound like thirty minutes was a lifetime. She had a funny accent, somewhere between Spanish and too many 90210 reruns.

      “Did you finish your homework?”

      “Weekend,” she said, the duh implied. “I didn’t have any.”

      “That book report is due next week. Read ahead.”

      Pepita tucked her thumbs into the straps of her backpack and rolled her eyes as she backed out of the hay barn. A horn honked. “Gotta go. Bus.”

      Quinn waited until Pepita was out of earshot. “A kid? What gives?”

      The breeze picked up, and a dust devil of dirt and hay swirled at the barn entrance, beating the side of the truck and choking the air with dust. With it, the temperature dropped by ten degrees.

      “Let’s go, or we’ll be delivering in the rain,” Quinn said.

      “Don’t expect to be paid.”

      “Yeah, you’re welcome.”

      Boomer settled in the driver’s seat, dumped his hat in the space between them, and started the engine.

      As they pulled out, Quinn said, “Seriously, what’s with the kid? No offense, but she looks nothing like you. Don’t tell me Sid convinced you that you were the father.”

      “We’re fostering her until the authorities can either find her parents or confirm that she no longer has them, or any other family members, who can take her in.”

      “How long have you had her?”

      “About four years now.”

      Quinn whistled, surprised at the length of time.

      “Remember when Angel and Sidney’s horse, Eli, were stolen a while back?”

      “Yeah, something about you and Sidney being caught naked—.”

      “We weren’t nak—”

      “In the stock pond, if I remember right. No clothes, no prosthetic, no weapon… Not sure I’ve ever seen Mac that pissed before.”

      Boomer tapped his thumb on the steering wheel, a dark, relentless beat. “Finished?”

      “Yeah, yeah.” Quinn waved a hand, telling him to continue, and swallowed the smile.

      They turned left onto the main road, behind the bright yellow school bus with Pepita onboard.

      “Turns out the bastards who took the horses were part of this drug cartel run by El Verdugo—”

      “No shit? The Hangman? I remember hearing something about that on the news. No idea it was you.”

      Boomer rubbed a finger under his jaw where his whiskers met his neck. “Got the noose scar to prove it. I figured Jenna would have told you.”

      “We haven’t been on speaking terms for a while now.”

      “That’s what happens when you royally screw something up.”

      Quinn cut him a scathing look.

      Boomer didn’t react. Quinn guessed that when dealing with a man who’d lost a leg in Iraq and had a noose around his neck, a harsh look hardly registered on his serious-shit meter.

      “Anyway,” Boomer said, “Pepita lived in the cartel’s camp. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t think we would have survived. She risked her life for us. No one at the camp claimed her, and Sidney put in an emergency petition to foster. We’ve been fighting for adoption ever since.”

      “She doesn’t know who her family is?”

      “She has no memory of a family. Only of the camps. Either she was sold to the cartel, or her parents were a part of it. Either way, the chances someone will come forward to claim her are remote.”

      The bus turned, and Boomer continued down the road, the black clouds marching across the valley floor, and thick sheets of opaque rain obscuring the mountains.

      “Did they ever convict him?”

      “Fucker got away.” Boomer gripped the wheel, as if he were squeeze, squeeze, squeezing the life out of the Hangman. “Some