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Spike, who’d been a few steps ahead, stopped, too. Then he snorted, pawed … and reared.
She gave Teo credit; he held his seat. At least until the horse’s hooves returned to the ground and Spike began to buck. Teo flew sideways. Gina had an instant to register that he hadn’t caught a foot in the stirrup—if he had, he’d have been dragged across the plain, head bouncing against the rock-strewn ground as Spike bolted—before Lady Belle began to buck, too.
Gina held on longer than Teo, but in the end she landed on the ground a few feet away. If a horse wanted you off, off you would eventually be.
Gina lay there, listening to the thunder of Spike’s and Lady Belle’s hooves as they raced back in the direction they’d come. She took stock of her body. Everything moved. Nothing was broken.
“You alive?” she asked.
“No,” Teo groaned. But he sat up. “What the hell was that?”
Gina didn’t want to move. Because once she did, she knew what she’d see. In her experience, horses at Nahua Springs Ranch reacted in that way to just one thing.
She turned her head as the clouds parted and the moon shone down. “Remember when I said we wouldn’t get where we were going until tomorrow?”
“Yeah?” Teo rubbed the back of his head, then squinted at his hand, letting out a sigh of relief to find no blood.
Gina rose, then lifted her chin, indicating the horizon behind him, out of which an old, craggy, half-dead tree appeared to grow.
“I was wrong.”
CHAPTER 12
Matt glanced over his shoulder. He could just make out the spiky branches of a tree reaching for the ebony night. Beneath the moon they shone silver instead of red, but—
“That’s it,” he said.
Gina got to her feet, emitting a surprised grunt, even as she tightened her lips against sudden pain.
“You okay?” Matt stood as well, reaching for her.
She pulled back. “Fine.”
Matt let his hand drop to his side. Would she ever let him touch her again?
Doubtful.
“I think they stopped.”
Matt followed her gaze, catching just a hint of equine shadows several hundred yards in the opposite direction. “I’ll get them.”
“They aren’t going to come,” she said. “Horses have never liked it here.”
Matt, who’d already started toward them, turned back. “Why?”
She shrugged. “Any horse that’s ever come within a hundred yards of this place bolts.”
Though he felt like a two-year-old who’d just discovered his favorite question, nevertheless, Matt was forced to ask again: “Why?”
“None of them have ever said.”
“Har-har.” Matt considered the distant silhouettes of Spike and Lady Belle. “What are we going to do?”
“Sleep over there.” Gina brushed her palms against her pants and began to walk.
* * *
Gina couldn’t believe they’d been this close to the site and she hadn’t been aware. Sure, it was dark, but shouldn’t she have been able to feel a change? The horses had.
