“How much is she paying?”
“Aw, I’m headed back to Minnesota, Billie. Jazz didn’t win his class so I’m practically giving him away. Hell, I am giving him away.”
“Twenty-five hundred,” Billie offered. “I’ll trailer out and pick him up in a few days. Just have to arrange for help here then I’ll come. Less than a week, okay? Deal?”
So the money was gone. She might get the reward for the information Charley left her. She had turned the thumb drive over to the Humane Society, copying it first. She didn’t know if the reward would materialize, or if it did, when.
She’d spent her last dollars on another horse.
“I could use the work,” she told Frank.
“Write up some ideas for me,” he said.
Maybe when she got home she’d be able to think clearly. She’d ride out on Starship, across the mesa and up into the mountains, Gulliver at their heels. Maybe one day she’d be able to ride Jazz. She’d take him up into the foothills at dusk and turn him to face south so he could see the lights moving along the interstate. All her horses liked that. While Gulliver flopped down to pant, Jazz would stand watching traffic, his heart beating under her bare calves.
Ever since Dale and Eudora tried to kill her in the fire, she’d expected her sleep to erupt into nightmares about Dale’s death, but so far it hadn’t. She still felt the hook sink into him, felt her arm rip it through his flesh, saw his eyes when she shoved him into the fire. But she didn’t feel regret or guilt or shame. Not anything except rage. Not yet anyway.
After she hung up with Frank, she used her phone to Google nearby yarn shops. She found one along her route that she might go to later in the morning. The brief stop would give Jazz a rest, and she could add to the yarn she’d collected on this trip—just a few hanks she picked up at local stores. At first they were more for souvenirs than for projects, but recently an idea for a saddle blanket for Jazz had formed in her head. So far she had one skein from Tennessee, and two from east Texas bought in a shop where she heard the new country music sensation Bo Collier on the radio.
The peaks of the Florida Mountains captured the final rays of the setting sun. A three-quarter moon rose in the darkening sky. Billie gathered Jazz’s hay in her arms, stuffed it into his hay net, and carried it into the arena to give to him. He turned away from her. She left the hay on the ground and walked to the rail. Looking for Gulliver, she didn’t notice Jazz come to stand beside her until his shoulder touched hers. She raised her hand and scratched his withers. Together they watched the dog and the tumbleweeds in the wind.
The End
