Joe

“How the fuck did you get this warrant?”

The CID officer somehow managed to look bored and smug at the same time. “We got it the same place we get every other warrant in the land, now step aside so we can search this property.”

“You’re not searching the stables.”

“Yes, we are.” The officer jabbed a pudgy finger at the warrant he’d stuck to the side of the house. “The warrant covers the house, the stables, and all outbuildings and land. I’m asking you nicely right now to let us work, but if you obstruct, I’ll arrest you.”

Cunt.

Harry came out of the house, dressed in a hotchpotch of clothes he must’ve found on the floor. Two policemen jumped on him, demanding to see ID. He shot me a quizzical glance, but I had nothing. I’m so fucking sorry.

A team of police officers started towards the stable block. I moved fast to block them again. “Wait. You can’t just barge into the stalls. I need to get the horses out first.”

“One by one,” the CID officer said. “And we’ll be watching every move you make.”

They started with Tauna and Carric. I led the placid old mares out and stood in the lane with them, fury seeping from every pore as my mind worked to figure out how this was happening to us again.

It didn’t have to work very hard. Raids like this had happened dozens of times before Grandpa had kicked Jonah off the farm for good, and we hadn’t had one since . . . until now. Bastard. I could’ve killed him. Would’ve, if he’d been in my line of sight, and everything he’d done for Emma and the horses while I’d been in hospital evaporated. He’d taken advantage of us at our weakest, and now all that remained to be seen was how deep a hole he’d left us in.

My mother and Emma were escorted from the bungalow and made to stand by the police van while the houses were searched. Harry stood with them, his back to me as he comforted Emma. I longed to see his face, to ground myself in his eyes, to go back to where we’d been a split second before this latest nightmare.

I had to settle for whispering soothing words to Tauna that the stoic old mare didn’t need.

One by one, the stalls were searched. When Sal and Emma were allowed into the house to wait in the kitchen, Harry came out to help me with the horses. I thought he’d never led horses out by himself, but apparently, I was wrong. Mani went with him easily, and then Ava, until finally we were left with Shadow.

Police surrounded his stall. I rounded on them again, but Harry pulled me back, his lips at my ear. “It was your father’s idea to move the horses around.”

The words were muttered. Barely intelligible. But the implication was deafening. If there was anything to be found, it was in Shadow’s lair, and if we didn’t bring him out, the police would call someone to do it for us.

Someone who couldn’t handle him.

The idea of Shadow being tranquillised—or worse—poured water on the fire in my veins. I didn’t give a fuck what my father had buried in that damn-fucking stable, Shadow was my priority—and as much my family as Sal and Emma.

“I’ll come with you,” Harry said. “He doesn’t seem to mind me when Emma leads him.”

I nodded. “Okay, but step back if he kicks off. I can’t handle you getting hurt.”

We advanced on Shadow together. I’d always approached him with absolute quiet, but Harry spoke to him in much the same way he had to me when I’d been losing my mind with pain. His voice was low, entrancing, and Shadow tuned into him almost as fast as I had. I slipped a head collar on him and then reins, and we walked him out of the stall.

“Stand back,” I gritted at the waiting police. “He’ll brain you if you startle him.”

Shadow was a big enough horse for them to take me seriously. They moved aside, but even with them well out of the way, Shadow couldn’t be trusted to wait patiently in the lane like the others had. “We’ll have to take him to the top field,” I said. “Turn him out and hope he doesn’t get into mischief before morning.”

Harry opened the yard gate. “Have you left him out overnight before?”

“Only when I haven’t been able to catch him. Didn’t sleep, though. Spent the night sitting on the fence like a raving lunatic.”

“Oh well.” Harry snorted softly. “You probably weren’t going to get much kip tonight anyway.”

I couldn’t figure out if he meant because of the clusterfuck with the police or the fact that he’d been on the brink of banging my brains out when they’d arrived.

Either way, he was right.

We turned Shadow loose in the field. He took off like a bullet and we made our way back to the yard, but despite the pressing need to return to the other horses, I pulled Harry behind the large tree at the donkey paddock. “I’m so sorry.”

He rubbed his hands up and down my arms. “What the hell for?”

“For dragging you into more mess. This isn’t what you signed up for.”

“I signed up to a break from my suffocating city life. Whatever’s happened, I’ve definitely had that.”

“Is your life really suffocating?”

Harry shrugged. “Ask me again in a few weeks. The longer I’m here, the more I seem to think so.”

A policeman appeared on the path and shone a flashlight in our faces. “Come out from there.”

My hackles rose, but Harry’s touch kept me in check. We stepped out from behind the tree and returned to the yard. He darted inside to check on the girls, and I slouched against the tack room door and surveyed the scene. Shadow’s box was still being searched, though I couldn’t imagine what was taking so long. There were only so many places to look in a pile of straw and shit.

Someone came out and muttered to the bloke in charge. A gaggle of police converged on Shadow’s stable, and I closed my eyes. I’d seen energy like that before in coppers when they caught a scent. What would it be this time? Dodgy number plates? Knocked off jewellery? Over the years, they’d found it all.

Or so I thought until the lead officer walked out of the stable carrying a sawn-off shotgun.

* * *

As a child, I used to wonder if my life was nothing but a dream. If I’d wake up one day and be someone else entirely. On good days that would scare me—who would take care of Mani? Ride him, and feed him his favourite horse nuts? On bad days, I didn’t much care. Take my shitty life and fuck it up worse than Jonah had. Go on. I dare you.

Without Harry beside me, today was one of those days. I stared at the gun with as much surprise as if they’d brought out a severed head, and a prickle of real fear shuddered through me. Guns? Seriously?

The head honcho approached, his hands already reaching to restrain me. A couple of goonies joined him and I was face down on the ground before I knew what was happening.

A knee drove into my back, pressing my still tender abdomen against the cold ground. “Who does the gun belong to?”

I laughed. Couldn’t help it. I didn’t know the lead officer, but I recognised some of the other coppers as men and women who’d cried over dead horses with me over the years. Funny how they never seemed to remember that when Carter family bullshit brought trouble to my door. “If you knew to come here to look for it, then you know who it belongs to.”

“Not good enough.” The knee pressed harder. “If you can’t explain how a sawn-off shotgun came to be on your property, I’ll have to assume that it belongs to you.”

Bastard. He knew it wasn’t mine. Just like his predecessor had known the fenced TVs last time hadn’t been mine either. But did they care? Of course they fucking didn’t. They wanted a scalp, and mine would do.

Give him up. But even as the thought crossed my mind, I knew I’d never do it. My father didn’t deserve my loyalty, but he had it anyway. I could no more give him up than I could one of the horses. I hate him. Finally, something that made sense.

The officer on my back ran through his methods of persuasion. My arguments lapsed into silence and handcuffs were slapped around my wrists. It began to rain as I was hauled to my feet, and I could almost smell the grubby cell I’d be spending the night in when the front door opened.

Harry appeared in the doorway, the light from inside framing him so he looked like a broad-shouldered apparition. “What are you doing? Let him go.”

The officer ignored him and began to tow me away. Harry’s footsteps had always been light, but I heard them now as they followed us. I wanted to tell him to back off—to go inside so he didn’t have to witness the latest round of Carter humiliation.

But I was too fucking tired.

Harry caught up with us and grabbed the lead officer’s arm. “I said let him go. Whatever you’ve found . . . it’s mine.”