Rough Stock (11 page)

Kit laughed. “Ah, that is serious.”

Clay finally looked at her, brow raised in question.

“A man doesn’t name his favorite horse after a woman unless it’s true love,” she explained.

He had to smile at the truth of her statement, and then the old familiar pain in his heart returned and the smile was gone.

***

“Hey, Clay. Did you see who you drew for your next ride?”

He nodded to his fellow rider on the circuit. “Hey, Mike. Yeah, I saw.”

Clay had drawn a beast of a surly bronc by the looks of him. El Diablo
.
“You ever ride him?”

Mike laughed. “Yeah.”

Noting the laughter, Clay asked, “You stay on him?”

Mike shook his head. “No.” He watched the rider currently getting dumped in the dirt in the arena, then turned to Clay. “El Diablo’s on the small side for a saddle bronc. He tends to be a bit more squirrelly than a bigger horse. He likes to twist and turn rather than buck out straight like the big ones do. It makes him harder to control.”

“Yeah, but it also gives you a great ride.” Clay watched the stock contractors having trouble loading the high-strung El Diablo into the chute.

Mike raised a brow as he followed Clay toward the horse. “Or it gives you a face full of dirt.”

Clay grinned. He was up for the challenge.

Kissing the worn photo of April, he shoved it into the back pocket of his jeans. After all these years, it was out of habit and superstition more than anything else that he continued the ritual.

Amid the screams of the spectators in the packed arena, he swung up onto the wall of the bucking chute to look eye to eye with the horse he’d be riding in the competition that night.

The damn thing stared at him now, the whites of his eyes showing, making him look insane. El Diablo. The Devil
.
That figured. The horse snorted at him one more time and flung his head. Clay wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see flames come out of the beast’s nose.

Clay felt Mike’s arm steadying him as he swung onto the devil’s back and got situated in the stirrups and saddle. He grabbed the rein tightly and with one hand held up high, nodded.

When the gate opened, El Diablo gave a giant leap in the air, lifting his front legs up and back so violently he threw off his own balance. The last things Clay were aware of was the sensation of the horse falling, his head hitting the dirt and then a feeling of shock as more than half a ton of flailing horseflesh landed on top of him, right before everything finally went black.

Chapter Ten

An explosion rocked the camp right before Mason heard, “Incoming!”

As rounds continued to shake the building, Mason scrambled from his rack where he’d been trying to catch a few hours rest after an all-night firefight and grabbed his weapon. He flung open the door, about to run outside into the action when he saw his roommate heading for him. Mason kicked the door wider and held it with one foot so Jenkins could clear the doorway without slowing down.

Adrenaline pumping as hard as it ever had while he was on the back of a bucking bronc, Mason didn’t wait for his teammate, but instead headed for his position. He knew the dusty path to Second Squad’s place at the rocks well. They’d sustained enough attacks recently he could run this route in his sleep. In fact, he may have done just that a few times.

First Squad ran for the Humvees while Third Squad protected them all with suppressive fire from their position on the rooftops.

Incoming fire peppered the sandbags as Mason reached his position along the rocks. To his right, the squad gunner slammed his machine gun down and immediately began engaging the enemy on the ridgeline. The Afghan National Army was also there, in position right alongside Second Squad. To the left of Mason, one of the ANA soldiers turned and fired a rocket-propelled grenade at another enemy location. Out of his peripheral vision, Mason watched the RPG’s trail as it flew in the air toward the bastards.

With a loud blast, the high explosive round the mortar team put into the creek bed with deadly precision to prevent any enemy from sneaking closer, found its mark.

Lobbing grenades at the enemy, Mason heard the whiz of their answering bullets fired from their cover in the surrounding orchards.

With close air support just minutes away, and First Squad outside the gate assaulting one of the enemy positions, it didn’t take long before the attackers gave up the fight, falling back and disappearing again into the mountains. The British fixed-wing jets made sure of it by blazing a wide path where their attackers had been just moments before.

Mason leaned back against the rocks, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Even after years in the Army, and deployments in both Iraq and Afghanistan, he’d never gotten used to the shear physical exhaustion a body felt after the surge of adrenaline wore off.

“Cowboy, you okay?”

Jenkins’ voice cut through the fog and Mason opened his eyes, squinting into the glare of the sun.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” Besides hating that damn nickname he’d had since boot camp
.
Mason had closed the door on his old life. He was content being a soldier, but it seemed the guys were not going to let him forget his roots so easily.

Mason’s roommate hooked a thumb in the direction of the camp. “I’m heading for the room.”

“I’ll be there in a minute.” As soon as he could convince his legs to function again.

Jenkins nodded and was off.

Weary from the longest day in history, Mason finally rose and dragged combat boots that felt at least ten pounds heavier than they had yesterday through the Afghan dust as he headed for his sleeping quarters after a quick trip to the latrine first.

“Mail call, Cowboy,” a smiling Jenkins informed him as Mason opened the door when he finally made it back to his room.

Great.

With a deep sigh, Mason stifled the hope that rose within him. It never failed to rear its ugly head, the hope. Whenever he saw envelopes lying on his bed his hands trembled with the vain expectation one would be from April. Why it still happened, he had no clue, because contact from April had dwindled over the years to nothing but a card at Christmas and on his birthday. Both signed, “Love, April”.

Mason gave the small stack a shove with one finger and immediately recognized his mother’s handwriting on two of the envelopes, and one colored postcard that had to be from Clay. He still got mail from Clay, sent from wherever in the country he was competing.

With a sigh, he gathered up the three pieces and flung them on the floor, as if it was the letters’ fault they weren’t from April.

Jenkins raised a brow and watched them fall without comment. He knew better than to ask. Mason knew Jenkins would be there if he needed him, but roommates didn’t butt into each other’s personal business unless asked, and thank God for that, because how the hell could Mason ever explain what had happened between the three of them that one summer?

Sure, tales of a drunken threesome would earn him congratulatory high-fives from the rest of the squad, but that wasn’t how it had been. Loving a woman and sharing her in every possible way with your best friend nearly every night for months, that tale was more likely to get him ostracized than admired.

The only people he could ever talk to about that summer would be April, who obviously didn’t want to hear from him, and Clay, who was too busy traveling and getting famous on the rodeo circuit.

Lying down on his rack with one arm thrown over his face to block out the daylight, Mason succumbed to a restless sleep.

He figured he got about an hour’s rest before the dream shook him awake, so vivid he could still see her, feel her, smell her, even with his eyes now wide open. Some soldiers dreamt of the war, but Mason’s sleep was haunted instead by visions of the very person who’d forgotten him, but he couldn’t forget. In between mail calls, Mason lived to fight, loving the close camaraderie among his squad, but on the days letters arrived and none were from her, the old longing came back, along with the old dreams.

With unbearable twin aches in his heart and his groin, Mason rubbed both hands hard over his face. He heard Jenkins’ steady breathing and rose quietly so as not to wake him.

Stepping guiltily over the unread letters from his mother, he did a quick calculation of the time difference between there and home. If one of the phones was both available and working, he would call his mother. He hadn’t called home in a while, anyhow. They’d been too pinned down by enemy contact. Of course, he’d simply tell her he’d been busy and she’d be fine with that, happy just to hear his voice, never able to understand that he liked the thrill of battle, not only for the rush, but also because it blocked out all thoughts of April.

He knew his calling-card number by heart and dialed it in quickly, followed by his parents’ number. After a few rings, his mother’s voice was on the line.

“Hey, Mama. It’s me.”

“Mason, honey. Thank God you called.”

The panic in her voice was unmistakable. “What’s wrong? Is Daddy all right?”

Whatever she had to say was not good. He could actually hear her swallow over the phone line as she hesitated before answering. “It’s Clay. Honey, Clay’s been hurt real bad. He’s in a coma in a hospital in Pennsylvania.”

***

Arranging for emergency leave took a little bit of jumping through hoops and a whole lot of lying. Mason had to convince the people in charge that Clay was not his best friend, but instead his stepbrother from his mother’s second marriage. He didn’t think God would mind that little fib. It was for a good cause.

The fact Mason rarely, if ever, took leave worked in his favor, as did the fact that his unit was scheduled to be replaced at the forward operating base soon. Mason would have been returning to the garrison in Germany in less than a month anyway. They eventually agreed he could get an immediate flight out.

The entire time he was arranging the trip until he was finally in the air to the States, Mason felt like the he was racing against the clock. If anything happened before he reached Clay… He couldn’t even let his mind go there.

He stepped off the flight at the Philadelphia airport and quickly grabbed a plain button-down cotton dress shirt in one of the airport shops. His wardrobe was limited to his uniform and a few old T-shirts nowadays, neither of which was appropriate for the visit to the hospital.

Mason changed in the public restroom. Dressed in his one pair of jeans, cowboy boots he kept more for sentiment than use and his new crisp white shirt, he hailed a cab, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as he did so. Now that he was here, he’d have to face seeing Clay in that hospital bed, unconscious, unmoving, looking nothing like the man so full of life he’d left in Oklahoma years ago.

Clay’s parents met him in the waiting room of the hospital after the nurse went to get them. With a tearful greeting from Mrs. Harris, they ushered him directly into Clay’s room. That was not a good sign. It wasn’t during the specified visiting hours he’d seen posted and Mason was not family, but the nurses never blinked an eye at their breaking the rules.

The machines, tubes and wires, combined with Clay’s pale, bruised face nearly brought him to his knees. Even after all he’d seen and done during his time in the infantry, seeing his once-vibrant best friend like this knocked the wind right out of him.

Clay’s mother, who’d had some time to get used to her son looking so helpless in the hospital bed, wrapped an arm around Mason’s back to comfort him. “It’s really not as bad as it looks. The doctors explained it to us. It’s a medically induced coma. They’re keeping him sedated and unconscious on purpose so his body can heal. The doctors are going to bring him out of it today, but then the question is…”

Her voice broke and Clay’s father continued for her. “They’re not sure if there is damage to his spine. There was a lot of swelling.”

Mason swallowed hard. If Clay couldn’t ride, he wouldn’t want to live. Mason was sure Clay’s parents knew that as well as he did.

“There’s something I wanted to ask you.” Clay’s mother pulled herself together and went to the bedside table. She picked up a photo and handed it to Mason.

As if he didn’t have enough to deal with already, he now was faced with April’s smiling image in the torn and tattered picture Mrs. Harris had handed him.

“That was in the pocket of his jeans when they…uh, cut them off him in the emergency room.” Her voice trembled and broke again as her eyes teared up. “I knew they were friends in high school, you all were, but was there more to it? Do you know? If he’s carried April Carson’s photo on him all this time… Should we call to tell her?”

“April doesn’t know yet?” He tore his eyes from the photo to look up at the older woman.

Clay’s mother shook her head. “Her parents know, of course. The whole town does. Clay was…
is
a bit of a celebrity back home. But April’s living in New York now. I can’t be sure the Carsons have told her. Should I call and ask them to?”

“Yes, ma’am. April should know.” Her name caught in his throat and Mason tried to ignore the pounding of his heart.