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“Thought he went to LA after he left Kötzting.” Eddie frowned.

“He did.” I shrugged. “He said he didn’t mind taking a drive up to these parts.”

Eddie chuckled. “We’ll have the whole crew back together in no time.”

It sounded tempting, but we’d been trained and honed as a group for one thing, and the world didn’t require those skills any longer. Sometimes I wondered if it needed us at all or had forgotten us completely.

“In the meantime, we sit on our hands?” Eddie tapped his foot on the ground.

“We do what we promised Eva we’d do.” I raised my voice, just slightly, out of habit. Eddie needed to rein it in or risk this whole arrangement going up in smoke. “Can I help with anything?” I started rolling up my sleeves.

He mumbled under his breath and pointed toward a stall at the end of the aisle. “Yeah, I was rebuilding that one down there.”

We set about the task, and it felt like the days we’d spent after liberating Hostau, converting military trucks into trailers to evacuate the horses to Germany.

Peter walked to and from the barn apartment, listless and brooding. “Want to swing a hammer?” I asked him on one pass. He gave me a bored, patronizing look. Whatever progress we’d made on the drive from Pendleton, his teenage mood swings had returned in full force.

I’d never swung a hammer back then either. I hadn’t learned any of this until Hostau, when Eddie taught me a thing or two. Now I found a certain joy in it.

“You got a cigarette?” Peter asked me back, and I shook my head.

He shuffled off, back toward Phantom’s pen.

Eddie, who was finishing the last few nails at the end of the stall, hadn’t seemed to hear the exchange. I guessed he didn’t want his son bumming smokes off people. Perhaps when Phantom was better acclimated to the ranch and people, Peter might find purpose and solace there. Until then, I just hoped he’d keep out of trouble.

If it were me at that age, we’d be in trouble.

From the driveway, the sound of a truck pulling in drew our attention away from the repairs. I set down the tools and looked outside to see a truck and trailer circling the driveway and coming to a stop.

Eva was still in Phantom’s pen, so I walked out to the new arrival, Eddie on my heels. Keith emerged from the truck wearing a short-brimmed hat and hesitated when he saw us drawing near.

“Where’s Eva?” he asked.

“She’s busy.” I crossed my arms and looked at the trailer. “What are you doing here?”

Keith put his hands on his hips. “She didn’t tell you about our arrangement?”

I felt the insinuation in my gut.

“We’ve been busy,” Eva’s voice cut in.

Eddie and I turned to her as she approached. Her strides were long, determined, her face smudged with dirt and her hair windswept in that heart-stopping way. Despite her small stature, her presence was a force that quieted us all.

She gave me a pointed look. “There wasn’t time.”

She was working with Keith now? There was a horse in the trailer. When had they even agreed to this?

It wasn’t my business. Phantom was my business. That was all.

“I can take things from here,” she said, turning to Keith. “This is the filly?”

Keith glanced at me and then nodded to her. “Her name is Naseem.” He opened the trailer, and Eva walked in and led out a chestnut horse with tall white stockings and a thick white blaze on her face.

Eddie and I started to turn back when something caught my eye on Eva’s arm—a hastily wrapped cloth around her bicep that was crusted with blood and dirt.

Peter walked up, casually looking at the trailer and the commotion.

“Are you all right, Eva?” Keith asked, as if seeing the wound at the same time.