Page 46 of Song Bird Hearts

“We’re six minutes out from White Stag,” Knox barks. “Hang on.”

He cuts across the ditch, bypassing a turn entirely, and the whole car catches air for a breathless second before slamming back down on the road. Kevin squeals. I scream.

Wolf is laughing under his breath. Laughing!

We tear through the last stretch of open land, and just when I catch the first glimpse of the White Stag ranch fence, I realize that once we get there, we don’t have any reinforcements. We’ll be sitting ducks, and we’ll also be putting anyone who might be there at this time in danger.

“Give me your phone!” I tell Gilden.

“What?”

“Give me your fucking phone!” We don’t have long and I need him to move faster.

He tugs it from his pocket and tosses it to me and I immediately start typing in numbers that haven’t changed since we were kids.

He picks up on the second ring. “John,” I breath, the panic hard to hide in my voice. “We’re comin’ in hot and we’re being followed by a black SUV that’s tryin’ to run us off the road. White Stag.”

“You at the gate?” he asks, all business.

“Less than a minute out,” I reply. “We need help.”

“I’m close. I’ll be there,” he answers and then ends the call. The sound of his sirens being flicked on echo in my ear for a split second before it cuts off.

We hit the gravel stretch hard, the car losing traction for a few seconds before Knox confidently guides it back straight. The black SUV is just a blink behind us, trying their hardest to stop us from reaching our destination. White Stag rises out of the dust like a fortress in front of us. Dressed in weather-worn wood with peeling white paint, fencing reinforced with iron, and the great bronze statue of a stag still standing tall near the main barn, White Stag looks every inch one of the thirteen great ranches of the basin. The gates are already open for us, waiting, and we come flying inside.

Knox tears through the entry, does a wild e-brake spin in the main driveway that has both Kevin and I squealing, and comes to a stop with screeching tires and gravel dust. The SUV slams to a stop just before the gate.

But John doesn’t let me down. He comes from the other direction, cutting through White Stag from the back roads, skidding on the gravel as he slams on his breaks. He climbs from the car, his cowboy hat on, his badge flashing, with his gun in his hand as he steps toward our car.

“Stay inside,” Knox commands before climbing out himself. Gilden follows, but Wolf stays firmly in the car with me and Kevin.

The SUV idles just past the second gate, matte black and menacing. Its windows are tinted too dark to see inside, but the energy is unmistakable. They’re coiled, watching, waiting. Whoever is inside means to do us harm, and they’re not afraid of us knowing that.

Knox doesn’t take his eyes off it, one hand on his gun. “They get out,” he warns the others low, “we put them down.”

Gilden nods from beside him, his own gun in his hand.

But they don’t have to fire their weapons.

Because behind us, the ranch comes alive.

First comes the barking, dozens of dogs rushing the fence line, their hackles raised and their teeth bared. Shepherds, mutts, and a few cattle dogs that had been saved from bad homes come barking like hell itself had loosened them.

Then the doors open. From the main house, from the far barn, from the bunkhouse and the woods beyond, they appear.

Ranch hands, kin, family. Familiar faces I’ve missed since I’ve been gone fill the yard, people I’ve grown up with, who took care of me when mama passed. These people are family. These people are home. Not a single one of them comes out unarmed in the face of the unknown people in the black SUV. Some hold tools that can double as weapons: hammers, axes, heavy fenceposts. Plenty hold guns. One of the older women pushing seventy, Cathy Jenkins, carries a double-barrel shotgun with floral etching on the side and an apron with flour still on it tied around her waist. She’s the manager of the ranch while I’m gone on tour and the best damn baker this side of the Grand Teton Mountains. Another young man, one of the Victor twins, has a bow slung across his back and a cigarette in his mouth. He flicks the ash with casual menace.

White Stag doesn’t flinch.

It doesn’t need to.

They just stand there—twenty, maybe more—shoulder to shoulder behind our car. Silent. Unyielding. The bronze statue before them of the great stag fits. These people all hold the same spirit.

“Hoo boy,” Gilden whispers from where he has the protected door open, his eyes wild. “This what home looks like?”

“Damn right it does,” I murmur, my heart kicking hard in my chest.

The SUV sits there for a few long, tense seconds more.

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