Page 7 of Wild and Unruly (Three Rivers Trevors Ranch #3)

bonnie

Jerking awake, I look out the sliding glass door of my room to see the sun just barely starting to rise. I blink my eyes, trying to shake sleep from them, and look over at the red glow of the little alarm clock on the nightstand and see that it’s barely six in the morning.

Buzzing sounds to my right, and I look to see my mom calling, the phone vibrating around on the table. I take a deep breath and answer the phone on speaker, collapsing back into the pillows and laying it on my chest.

“Hello.” Sleep is clogging my voice, so I clear it and try again. “Hello.”

“Good morning, honey. How are you doing?” My mom sounds way too chipper for this early, but if I know anything, she’s already up and has done a million things by this time.

“I’m fine,” I answer, glancing out the door again. I could faintly hear the birds chirping, and the morning summer breeze was making the leaves shake on the aspens. It was stupidly pretty.

“How is your new assignment going? Is it nice up there?”

“It’s going fine. And yeah, it’s beautiful here. You guys would love it.”

“Oh, I’m sure.” Her tone tells me that while she agrees they would love it, getting my brother to come this far would never happen.

“How are you doing, Mom?” My mother, for all her faults, was a saint.

When everything went down, she was the one who stood by our sides.

My dad took a different route, saying all of us were overreacting and that—despite the fact he was wheelchair-bound—my brother was alive, and there was no one at fault.

I begged to differ.

“I’m doing great, honey. The church is running a bake sale this weekend so I’m about to pop out to the store and get what I need to bake some things for that. I got a small promotion at work, too.”

“Congratulations, Mom. That’s great.” Mom worked as a receptionist at a local law firm, and after years of being a stay-at-home mom, she thrived at her new job.

“Thank you, honey. I’m excited about it too.”

We both go quiet for a moment, thinking over what to say next. It’s the same thing every time. Who was going to bring up Mason.

“How’s Mase?” There, Band-Aid ripped off.

Mom’s sigh could rival a million mothers’ sighs. “You know, he’s hanging in there.”

I purse my lips, rubbing my hand over my eye in frustration. “Is he still liking his job? ”

He works at the post office and was actually really well-liked at the job, but when we talked about it, I could tell he was barely holding on to his sanity.

“Oh sure, I mean, it’s nothing special to him, but his manager likes him enough, and he’s making a living.” Her words do nothing to reassure me.

Part of me wants to tell her what I found out, that Tommy Smith was still running around causing issues. I wonder if his dad is still a part of their scheme or not. He was a major part of the problem when Mason’s accident happened.

But I keep my mouth shut. I don’t know anything yet. I can’t go giving false hope or make her worry for nothing until I have something more concrete.

“Well, that’s good.”

“How are you liking the people you’re working with?”

I let my mom distract me and tell her all about the ranch and the people on it. She listens intently, asking questions here and there, and even I can hear how light I sound talking about them.

I tell her about Dani and her facility, in the back of my mind wondering if that would be something that could ever help Mason get back to what he loves. I don’t say a word of that either because, again, false hope is dangerous.

We finally end the call with her telling me she has to go get her church things done, and I let the smile drop as I say goodbye, wondering what I can do to make this better.

Mason doesn’t deserve this type of life. He deserves far more than what he has. He deserves to ride again, to be around horses the way he loved to before. He deserves to have more than just going to work at the post office and settling because he was eighty percent wheelchair-bound.

A new wave of determination wakes me up, and I start getting dressed for the day. While I was still one hundred percent focused on taking care of this article and making it the best I could for this family, I was also going to do something that helped my family.

I have to.

Discretion was a big part of my job, and right now, I was discreetly trying to decide if I could have a nonchalant conversation with Celina without drawing suspicion.

I went through a variety of questions in my head before working up the courage to walk over to the woman who was getting her horse ready for a lesson.

Pasting on my reporter smile, I step over to the woman, giving her plenty of space so she can continue to work.

“Hi,” I start, and Celina’s head turns in my direction. She was a pretty lady with dark-brown hair sprinkled with streaks of gray that made her look classically beautiful. She was tall, slender, and dressed like a woman who had a bit of money. All the way down to her sparkly spurs.

“Hello,” she replies, and I keep a smile on my face even as she scrutinizes me.

“I don’t know if you remember, but we met the other day.”

“You’re Bonnie Helix,” she says, turning her attention back to her horse. “You work for Horse Universe , and you are doing a piece on Three Rivers.”

“Uh, right.” I nod my head, glancing around to make sure we are still alone. I know from Dani explaining to me when I arrived that Stetson and his brothers, plus a few of the hands that work here, were out moving cattle today, so it was just Dani, CT, and two other hands working in the barn today.

Right now, we had a moment of privacy, and I wasn’t sure I was going to get it again.

“I was just hoping I could ask a few questions about Dani and CT from a client’s perspective, see if you had something you’d like to say about their work or the facility?” I wasn’t lying. I really did want that kind of content for the article.

I just picked her specifically.

“Fine,” she says, moving to the other side of the horse and continuing brushing her horse.

“Your horse is gorgeous, by the way,” I say, not even realizing my gaze was drawn to him. He was fully black with a big, thick mane and powerful legs.

“Thank you.” She smiles fondly at the horse, and I watch as she lovingly runs her hand over him. “He’s a rescue.”

I feel my eyes bulge slightly. “Really? He looks like he comes from a strong lineage.”

Celina looks over at me and nods. “He does. But the owners couldn’t afford him anymore and he was sent to a farm that promised to care for him, but unfortunately, that farm promised that to many people and then sent the horses to a slaughterhouse.

” Her accent, which was faint before, grows stronger with each word.

“That’s horrible.” My hand lays over my heart as I think of the poor babies that have to be put through that because of horrible human beings. “I’m so glad you found him.”

“He found me,” she replies, a small smile on her lips.

“I wasn’t supposed to be there, but I had been driving down the highway and saw a crowd of cars in the barn’s lot.

I thought it was a show, so I pulled over and went in.

What I saw was…” He r eyes get a distant look in them, and I can only imagine what horrible things she saw that day in that place.

“Well, anyway…” Clearing her throat, she continues.

“I had to have him. So, I went in, offered what I could, and took him out to my car before calling a friend to bring a trailer.”

“Wow, that’s an incredible story.” I pull out my phone, making a note for potential future story ideas.

“Well, his, thankfully, has a happy ending. But it was not an easy road to get here.”

Her words spark an opening, and I say, “Well, thankfully, you came to the right trainer for him.”

Her mouth twists. “Not quite. It took a few to find a good fit.”

“Oh?” I ask, pretending I have no idea what she’s talking about. “Did you have a trainer before CT?”

“Oh yes, I had one by where I live.” She bends to pick up her horse’s foot, using a hoof pick to clean it out.

“Interesting, so you drive a bit to come here?”

“I do.”

“You find that worth it? That this facility is just that good you’re willing to drive that far?”

She lets the foot drop and stands, looking at me over the horse. “That trainer I came from, he was no good.” Her accent peeks through again, and I keep my face neutral. “I had to find out the hard way that he was not an ethical trainer.”

My eyes widen of their own accord, and I try to tamp down my excitement. “Oh really? That’s horrible.”

“It is what it is,” she starts, reaching for the back leg. “He was a bad man, and I was grateful I was able to get out when I could.”

“And this trainer.” I bite my lip, hoping that I wasn’t about to push too hard but unable to stop the question from coming out. “Was this Tommy Smith? The man you spoke of the other day?”

She freezes, dropping the horse’s foot and walking around his hind end, standing on the same side as I am now. Celina eyes me like she’s unsure of what I’m asking and why. “Yes, it was.”

My heart hammers in my chest at the confirmation. It told me that he was still up to the same bullshit. Was his dad too? Or was it all him now? I couldn’t ask that question because I didn’t know this woman. And she clearly didn’t know who I was or my connection to the Smith family.

I look her in the eye, a layer of steel in my tone as I reach out and grasp her arm. “I am so sorry you ever had to deal with a man like that.”

For a moment, she looks at me in confused surprise, then she gives a nod as if understanding what I’m saying.

She couldn’t know, not really.

But there was no way I couldn’t investigate further and find enough evidence to get justice, not just for my brother, but for Celina too.