“Of course,” I said softly, voice dry.
I set the notebook on the nearest intact post, flipped it open to the page with the list, and weighed it down with a rock.
“Fine,” I said to the invisible ghost of Ray hovering over my shoulder. “I’m fixing it.”
I grabbed the top wire and pulled. It shifted under my hands, the barbs catching my palms as it slid, but with enough coaxing, it might untangle and flip back into place. I bracedmy feet, bent my knees, and pulled. The muscles in my shoulders protested. I let it drop before I lost my grip and cut up my palms.
Sweat slid down my spine again, this time from effort rather than heat. Coyotes called farther up the valley, their voices rising and falling in a strange, layered chorus. The sound crawled up the back of my neck.
“You’re fine,” I told myself. “You’re not five years old anymore, you can do this.”
I scanned the line until I spotted an old wire stretcher hung off a post like he’d always left it. Rust flecked the metal, but it still looked solid.
Boots slipping occasionally in the dirt, I wedged the stretcher in place and hooked the wire. My hands were already sore from the earlier battles, but I ratcheted it, and the wire tightened.
Reaching into the bucket, I grabbed a gleaming silver fencing staple, reached for the fencing pliers from my back pocket, and hammered it in.
I followed the line and fixed what I could. When I headed back to the other end, I spliced the barbed wire and wrapped it around itself so it would hold tightly.
One down, three more strands to go. The sound echoed across the quiet pasture as I hammered in staples, bouncing back from the hill like someone else was working with me.
Darkness thickened around the edges of my vision as the light drained out of the sky. The corners of the pasture fell into shadow. The notebook on the post became a pale square in the dim.
Coyotes cried again, closer now. Their calls layered over one another like a steady, hungry chorus. My chest tightened.
“Almost done. You’re not bait. You’re fine.”
My hand slipped on the next swing. The pliers glanced off the staple and slammed into my knuckles. Pain explodedup my fingers and into my wrist. I cursed loudly, dropping the tool into the dirt as I clutched my hand.
Tears sprang to my eyes faster than I wanted to admit. This kind of pain was small compared to everything else, but it was fresh. Immediate. Sharp enough to crack something I’d been holding together all day.
“Mother fucker, son of a whore bitch, ass hole,” I hissed, cradling my throbbing knuckles against my chest.
Blood already smeared across my skin, mixing with dirt as the coyotes called again. The sound seemed to come from behind and to the side now. They were moving. Or my imagination was easily spooked. Both were entirely possible.
I bent to pick up the pliers, stubbornness rising to meet the pain. I wasn’t leaving this fence half-finished. I wasn’t letting Ray’s list beat me on the first task. That would’ve been too on the nose, even for my life.
I set my jaw and reached for the staple again, ready to hurt my hands worse if that was what it took.
The ground lit up.
A bright, focused beam swept across the sagging fence, the broken posts, my scraped knuckles, and the notebook perched on the post.
My heart jumped into my throat.
I spun around, pulse hammering so hard I could feel it in my bruised fingers.
A person on a horse was about ten feet away and getting closer. Based on the build, it was a man, and based on the broad shoulders of the man, it was Wyatt Hargrove.
He hopped off the horse with ease, shoulders squared, and a flashlight held in one hand. His hat brim cast half his face into shadow, but the light caught the angles of his jaw, the blue of his eyes, and the dust on his jeans. His shirt clung to his shoulders like he’d been working too. He looked out of placeand entirely at home at the same time, like the land itself decided to grow a man and send him down here.
My whole body went rigid.
“What do you want?” I snapped. My voice came out higher and thinner than I wanted.
He didn’t answer right away. His gaze moved from my face to my hand, to the broken fence, to the notebook on the post, then back again. He started walking toward me, slow and steady, the beam dipping with each step.
“Don’t,” I warned, backing up half a pace. “I don’t need help.”
