Gray started to say something, looked at me, and then began eating his oatmeal.
I knew my brothers had already talked the day before about our financial situation, so it wasn’t that. “I thought I’d work with Rika in the barn for an hour today. Any objections?”
“You can try, but if she gives you any grief, you put her back in her stall,” my brother said. “Grayson, you keep an eye on them.”
“What?” Blonde hair flew as Gray jerked up his head. “I have to stand there for an hour while she leads that nag in a circle? No way.”
“I’ve got business in town, and no one works alone with that mare,” Trick said flatly.
“No problem, I don’t have to—” Before I could finish my sentence Gray got up, dumped his half-eaten oatmeal in the trash and dropped his bowl in the sink before he stomped out the back door. “Hmmmm. Maybe he got all the lumps this morning.”
“It’s all right.” Now Trick got up and dumped his oatmeal. “I’ll talk to him later.” He went to the window and looked out at the barn. “Cat, I’d like you to do something for me.”
“I’m not making breakfast for Grim,” I told him. “If he doesn’t want oatmeal, let him eat cold cereal.”
He swung around to face me. “Don’t get too attached to Rika.”
“Sali is my best girl,” I reminded him. “But I’ve got a big heart, and maybe in a year or two Rika will take second place. It’s not like she’s going anywhere, right? You’re not going to sell her, so … oh, no.” I realized what he meant. “You can’t put her down. She just needs some time and TLC.”
“I hope you’re right, and she turns around,” he said slowly. “But I can’t sell a dangerous, aggressive horse, and I can’t afford to keep one, either. The way she is now, she’s worthless.”
“What about her foal?” I demanded. “After it’s born, it’s going to need a mother.”
“There are breeders in the area who keep nurse horses,” he said, referring to mares who were bred every year so they would keep lactating, and provide milk for orphaned foals. “If we have to, we’ll board the foal with one of them until it’s weaned.”
I knew what it was like to grow up without a mother. To deliberately kill a helpless baby’s mother … “That’s horrible.”
“What if Rika loses it while she’s with her foal, and ends up trampling it?” he countered. “It wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened. How would you feel if you knew we could have prevented it, and didn’t?”
I knew he was right, even if I didn’t want to admit it. “Let me work with her in the mornings. Please. I won’t get too attached. She deserves a chance, at least.”
“Dr. Marks has to evaluate her after she foals,” Trick said. “If her behavior is still the same, I’ll have no choice. As long as you understand and accept that, until then you can keep working with her.” He picked up his keys. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
Once Trick left I flew through my chores so I could get out to the barn and Rika. Naturally she wasn’t happy to see me, and I knew my agitation would only make her more nervous, so I left her in her stall and began breaking down a bale of bedding.
Gray came out from the tack room and watched me for a minute. “He told you about Rika.”
“Yes, he did.” I shoved the pitchfork into the center of the bale. “I think he forgot we’re supposed to be breeding horses, not killing them.” When Gray took the pitchfork from me, I swiped at it. “You’re messing with my therapy.”
“You’ll only give yourself blisters.” He set the pitchfork to one side. “You knew that girl Melissa, right? She was in your art class.”
He wanted to talk. I wanted to scream. “Yes, she was, and no, I didn’t.”
He kicked some loose straw back at the bale. “I know something about her disappearing.”
My eyes widened. “You what ?”
He looked up at the roof. “There was this old guy, and he fell on the sidewalk in front of the church, right after her parents left. She tried to help him. Then she just walked away with him.”
“Gray, you saw it?”
“She dropped her purse. That’s what the police found.” He swallowed hard. “So I should call that tip line, right? I can give them a description of the old guy.”
I couldn’t believe Gray had been an eyewitness to Melissa Wayne’s kidnapping. “If you were there, why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you call 911 immediately?”
“I wasn’t there.” His voice dropped low. “I dreamed about it, the night she went missing.”
I was about to yell at him for making the most sick, tasteless joke I’d ever heard, but then I remembered something he’d said to me, something I wasn’t supposed to remember. My dreams come true.
I had to force myself to play skeptic. “Why would you believe something you dreamed really happened?”
“Because my dreams come true,” he said, in an eerie echo of my memory. “Not all the time, and sometimes they’re all mixed up, but this one … it felt like the real thing.”
“If you tell them that you dreamed it, they’ll never believe you.” I thought for a minute. “You can make an anonymous call from a phone booth. Say you were driving by and didn’t realize it was Melissa you saw until you read the paper this morning.”
“I’ll call from the pay phone at the gas station,” he said. “But you can’t tell Trick about this.”
“Go.” I pointed toward his truck. “If you don’t go and call them, right now, I’ll do it myself from the house phone. Then you can explain this to Trick and the sheriff.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you,” he said, and tromped off.
I watched him from the barn door until his pickup disappeared down the road. “Idiot.” I was so angry I could have kicked Rika in the head. My brothers and their obsession with secrecy had gotten completely out of control. What if this “old man” my brother had seen in his dream had already hurt Melissa, or taken her out of the state? If not for Gray being a coward, she might be back home with her parents.
I walked back to Rika’s stall. “Sorry, girl, I’m cancelling manners class for today.”
The mare put her head over the stall and looked at me with sad eyes.
“It sucks, I know.” Without thinking I went over to give her a pat. “We’ll try again tomorrow morning, and show those boys that they’re wrong about you, and why are you doing that?” I stared as she nuzzled my palm, just as gently as Sali would. Her ears weren’t laid back, she didn’t nip me and she seemed as gentle as a lamb. “Did my other idiot brother give you a tranquilizer?”
Rika lowered her head and gave my shoulder an unmistakable, let-me-out nudge.
“I know I’m going to get grounded for this,” I told her as I took her halter down and unlatched the stall door. “So when you kick me in the head, make sure you finished me off as soon as I drop.”
Rika stood patiently as I put on her halter and attached the lead rope, and then politely shuffled out of the stall. She glanced at Sali before she lowered her head again.
I pushed up her head and looked into her eyes, which appeared bright and normal. “Okay, you’re not drugged.” She could also see that the doors were open on either end of the barn, but didn’t take a single step toward freedom. Slowly I released the rope, turning her loose, but she still didn’t move. “Um, this is usually when you run to the other side of the farm.”
As if she understood—and disagreed with—me, she snorted and waggled her head.
“Or not.” I caught the rope and gave it a tug. “My mistake. So, how do you feel about walking outside with me? If you’re good, I’ll give you an apple cookie.”
Rika perked up as soon as we emerged from the barn, but she didn’t try to yank the rope out of my hand or buck or any of the other nonsense I’d come to expect from her. She stopped and waited as I unlatched the back pasture gate. I quickly stepped to one side, expecting her to knock me over to get to freedom, but she turned out as nice and polite as Sali would.
I closed the gate and stood watching as she trotted down on fence, had a good look around and then checked out the feed bucket before dipping her head to nibble on some grass.
“Why couldn’t you do this when … ” I stopped as a thought occurred to me. I couldn’t remember a single time I’d ever been alone with Rika, except when Sali and I had ridden out to catch her. Which aside from a couple of visits from Dr. Marks and his daughter, had been the only times I’d ever seen her behave.
You know why she keeps running away.
“No. It can’t be that simple.” I grabbed the gate and went into the pasture, securing the latch before I faced the Arabian. I let her see the rope in my hands so that she knew I wasn’t holding a treat to lure her before I whistled.
She came over to me, as if I’d called her to me a million times.
I still wasn’t convinced. I wasn’t going to climb on her back; although the books said pregnant mares could be ridden until they foaled, I couldn’t assume she’d been saddle-trained.
But I can find out. I climbed over the fence and headed for the tack room. Rika came over as I perched my saddle on the fence and gave it a sniff.
“We’ll try the blanket first,” I told her as I stepped through the gate and approached her on her right side. Most horse owners believed the old myth that a rider should always keep to the left side, but Trick had taught me and Gray to regularly switch around so the horses would be comfortable being handled from all sides.
From the puzzled look Rika gave me she was also accustomed to being handled from the left, but she didn’t fuss or move as I placed the blanket over her back.