But the two-story log-built lodge would be busy with ranch operations; there might also be a chef’s masterclass based on the number of vehicles parked in front of the lodge. Their master chef often ran those over the winter—for income off the tourist season. The big horse barn rarely had a quiet corner. Mark had gone to the multi-bay garage; he and Doug, the ranch manager, maintained most of the tractors and such themselves. Zackie’s attention was riveted in the opposite direction where Stan and Jodi would be running a new class of war dogs through training. The soft, chilly breeze from that direction must be suggesting a whole pack of potential playmates.
She looked up at the achingly blue sky that stretched on forever. After growing up in DC and spending the bulk of her adult life in helicopters and military bases, she’d fallen in love with the ranch’s Big Sky. The snow shone beneath the midday sun, but it wasn’t much more than a filling around the winter grasses. The air was crisper than a fresh-picked apple and alive like nowhere else she’d ever been.
“Do you ride?”
Dilya’s eye roll said she was being dense.
“Give me a break, kid. I’ve been awake for three days.” And she wasn’t as young as she used to be. Twenty years back when she’d been a freshly minted SOAR pilot, her current state of sleep deprivation was nothing out of the norm. Now in her mid-forties? Not so much.
“I spent how many years working for First Lady Melanie Anne Darlington Thomas?” Dilya didn’t make it a passive-aggressive sneer. It was more of a jog-your-elbow reminder. Dilya had never developed any nasty streak past the eye roll she’d had down cold long before she spoke English.
The First Lady, Zackie’s putative owner, was a masterful horsewoman from a grand Tennessee farm. Emily had seen the wall of awards to prove it. She’d even managed to convert her husband to the sport, though President Zachary Thomas never excelled any better than Mark, or herself. “Oh, right.”
What had Dilya been up to that had made Emily drop everything when Dilya insisted they talk? She was only… “How old are you now, anyway?”
“Twenty-five.” Again, no duh! Just a fact.
At that age she’d become Captain Emily Beale and been commanding combat flights for the 101st Screaming Eagles. Dilya’s specialty wasn’t flying helos. But it was?—
Emily felt her first true chill since arriving in Montana’s winter. Dilya had been trained by having parents who were the top military sniper and a military strategy consultant to multiple Presidents, and had lived a dozen years within the White House. There she’d been gathered under the wing of one of the nation’s top spies. Who knew what the hell the girl delved into now, with that as a background. But it explained why she’d dropped everything and come on the run when Dilya called.
She hadn’t even thought of telling Dilya to come to her in Kentucky until she was halfway home. It was a good decision on two counts. First, Emily didn’t want to risk mixing whatever worried Dilya with her own day job as commander of the 160th SOAR. Second, hadn’t she been wishing to get home just minutes before Dilya’s call?
“Let’s go steal a couple horses.”
Dilya brightened. “Yes, let’s.”
11
The instant Dilya found out that Wind Runner was Mark’s mount of choice, she insisted on riding him. He was the feistiest mount on the ranch, teaching Mark many hard lessons. Of course, as a retired 160th company commander, Mark was used to learning that way.
Dilya proved her horse handling abilities by showing Wind Runner exactly who was in charge before the saddle was even cinched. He and Zackie had a brief sniffing negotiation, which appeared to reach a satisfactory conclusion as there were no complaints about the Sheltie’s presence in the horse’s stall. At ten years old, no Sheltie slowed down measurably at play. But long runs over rough ground—with the snow dog-knee deep—were best done tucked deep inside a comfortable leather perch. Dilya loaded Zackie into a large saddle bag and, after an additional eye-to-eye negotiation, that too was settled.
Dilya insisted they ride out through the barn door facing the compound rather than the one that led toward the trails. She led them in a wide circle of the ranch’s compound, that—Emily fought to hold in the laugh—just happened to pass the open equipment garage bay where Mark and Doug were rebuilding the hay mower for next season.
When they trotted past the garage, Mark just shook his head and shot a smile at Emily that said everything was okay between them. He too had plenty of experience over the years of Dilya as a force of nature.
Love you, she mouthed to him.
I know, he offered his standard reply before turning back to his repairs.
She and Dilya rode up past the cabins where Julie’s truck showed she was inside doing winter maintenance after the heavy tourist season. Over the ridge, the swimming hole had ice around the edges though the middle remained open.
They rode into the first roll of the foothills. To the east of the ranch lay the vast flats of the Great Plains. The ranch itself nestled in a narrow band of the Front Range breaks. The Montana Front Range was so dramatic that she could never tire of it. Bounding the far side of ten thousand acres of ranch, the Sawtooth and Lewis Mountain Ranges punched aloft like snow-covered claws scraping at the blue sky.
Mark often called them a frozen tidal wave. When iced up as they were now, they appeared on the verge of crashing down upon the ranch. Emily, on the other hand, had always thought of them as a great bastion, holding the world at bay whenever it tried to overwhelm her. Though in her current state, they appeared to waver and shift. If only she could tell whether they were following Mark’s expectations of imminent tsunami inundation or fighting a titanic battle as they rose to her defense.
Dilya still hadn’t spoken and Emily was too exhausted to go first. The only sounds were the creaking of the saddle leather and the call of a rock pigeon. Zackie watched everything with a Sheltie’s excitement but no horse-annoying squirms. She followed the dog’s gaze upward to spot a pair of bald eagles soaring high aloft, their white heads and tails shining in the sun.
“You two have something real.”
Emily laughed. “You can’t give up yet, Dilya. I was thirty before Mark and I got together. Your second mom might have been twenty-five, but Archie was thirty-one when they got together and adopted you.”
“I know. I know all that. I just…thought I’d already found it.”
Again Emily had no real reference. Her heart had gone from the mad crush on her childhood neighbor, the six-years-too-old man destined to become President, to Mark with very few noteworthy wanderings in between.
Dilya had never been one to speak quickly. In the beginning, she didn’t have the English and probably suffered from shock after witnessing her parents’ murders and then wandering lost and starving in the Hindu Kush Mountains. Living as a nanny in the White House, she’d certainly overheard a lot—had made a hobby of it—but her natural discretion meant that she rarely and discreetly revealed what she had learned. And then she’d come to the attention of the ex-CIA master spy, Miss Watson.
