Page 154 of The Fire Line

“Better than we can?”

“Right now? Probably.”

Jay placed one hand against Red’s neck. The gelding’s coat was damp with sweat, ash collecting along his mane.

“Go on.”

He slapped Red’s neck and sent him forward. The gelding hesitated before moving toward the exposed ground beyond the timber. At the edge of the trees, he stopped and looked back.

Rain had not moved.

She stood with her shoulder pressed into Harris’s chest, her whole body trembling while every part of her remained oriented toward him. Harris held one hand against the side of her face, the loose bridle hanging from the other.

“Come on, girl.”

Rain pushed her nose into his chest.

Harris closed his eyes for half a second.

The fire roared below them.

Jay understood before either of them said anything.

Rain would not leave him.

Harris had spent years teaching her that he was the safest place she knew, and now, at the worst possible moment, he needed her to believe safety existed somewhere else.

His fingers tightened in her mane. “Told Nell I’d keep her safe.”

There it was.

Rain was not only a horse. She was one of the promises Harris had been left holding when Nell died, another piece of his sister he had turned into work because work was something he knew how to carry.

“This is how,” Jay said. “You can’t keep her safe under that rock. Let her use what she knows.”

A tree came down somewhere below, its impact disappearing inside the approaching roar. Rain shied and pressed closer.

“She won’t go.”

“Then make her.”

For one suspended moment, Harris stood with his forehead against hers.

Jay did not need access to Harris’s thoughts to recognize what was trapping him there. The same instinct that made him useful in every crisis had become the thing he had to fight: the certainty that protection meant staying close enough to control the outcome.

Jay touched his arm. “Harris. We have to go.”

Harris stepped back and struck Rain hard on the rump. “Go on!”

She bolted.

Red turned with her, and both horses disappeared through the opening toward exposed ground.

Harris took one step after them.

Jay caught the back of his jacket. “Harris.”

He stopped, though his body remained angled toward the place where Rain had vanished. For one horrible second Jay thought he might pull free and follow her.