“I can gather up Foghorn and the hens. Remi would love to go for a ride in your truck. We can evacuate every living thing off this farm in an hour.”
The resigned sadness in Sarah’s eyes frustrated him. “I can’t, Blaze. I can’t leave.”
Even though she didn’t have a vestigial Russian accent like Logan, the cadence and stolid refusal to walk away from where her loyalties lay was exactly like him.
“Then I’m not going anywhere, either.” Because Blaze was evidently as pig-headed as Sarah was. “But this house needs to be fortified, and we’ll need reinforcements.”
A call jiggled his phone, and the nameKyle Mortimerdisplayed on the screen.
Blaze wasn’t surprised Kyle had a fast trigger finger. “Hello?”
“Robinson! What’s going on?” his gravelly voice asked. The Iraqi burn pits had not been kind to Kyle’s throat.
“I’ve got a situation.”
“I love a good situation.”
“This is a bad one,” Blaze admitted.
“Even better.”
For anyone else, staying was an absolute suicide mission, but Blaze Robinson was a Navy SEAL with highly trained friends.
And he had only begun to fight.
12
RENTING OUT MARTIN
SARAH
The farm was Sarah’s home, her heart, and her whole life.
Her community surrounded it. The animals she was responsible for inhabited it. The corn she was contracted to deliver to Bow-Daniels-Midwest grew in its soil.
Her parents were buried a few towns away in the Russian Orthodox Church’s graveyard. Her pets over the years had been laid to rest in the earth out behind the barn.
The ties were too strong. She wouldn’t leave again.
But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t be prepared.
She took her cell phone with her while picking over the garden, gleaning the strawberry bushes at the back for every ripe berry. “Katie! How’s married life treating you? Are you pregnant yet?”
After laughing assurances from Katie that she was not yet in the family way and didn’t plan to be for a couple of months at least, Sarah asked her, “Can I borrow your husband?”
Katie laughed at her again. “Just because I haven’t put Martin out to stud yet doesn’t mean I’m going to rent him out to the neighbors.”
“I promise I’m not looking for a sire for breeding,” Sarah said, bending to pluck strawberries off the low bushes. “I seem to have gotten myself in a bit of a pickle, and it looks like some people from out of town are after me. I think a show of force should run them off.”
“You mean gang members from Cedar Rapids? I heard the high school was having a problem with a gang called the Iowa Home Boys. A group brought baseball bats to the football game against Pella and said they were having a gang war.”
Sarah paused, the ridiculousness of that stunning her, but then she pressed on. “Not them. So, I was in the hospital for a couple of days.”
“Oh, yes. I heard. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. The doctors thought it was some sort of muscle thing, but it turned out to be dehydration. Abigail took care of my stock while I was indisposed.”
The lies rolled off her lips, and Sarah didn’t like it at all. She was not raised to be a liar.
