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“Oh.” Harold shifted the clipboard again. “No. I think she was by herself. But it was getting dark and I only had her for a minute before she dropped below the ridge. I could’ve easily missed a foal.”

A mare with a colt at her side does not go two months on the far side of a ridge while somebody else’s mare raises him down to his ribs. Not Luna, who’d never lost one, who was in every photograph anybody had taken since April, with that baby tucked under her flank like she’d invented him.

“How did she look? Was she lame? In distress?”

“Well, come to think of it, she did look thin. But she was moving all right.”

Luna’s alive. Even if she’s ill, she’s alive and we can help her if we can round her up.

Jodie exhaled slowly as a tight knot around her heart finally loosened. Thank God.

But…Sagebrush and Lucky were still missing.

Jodie looked down at her list again. “Okay. Thank you.”

Harold nodded and started to move on.

“Harold?”

He glanced back.

“If you see her again, can you make sure it gets into the database? The others, too?”

“Absolutely.” He gave her an apologetic grimace. “My fault.” Then someone called for him from the holding pens and he headed that way.

Brooks, Melissa, and Sandra had drifted over while Jodie and Harold were talking. Brooks pulled up another chair. Sandra stood behind him, camera hanging against her chest now that the active gather was over.

“Where were those two last seen?” Brooks asked.

Jodie opened the map on her tablet. Her stomach tightened as she brought up the sighting markers.

“There.” She pointed to Lucky’s last confirmed report. “And Sagebrush was here.” Both markers sat in the same broad area west of the main observation roads near Virgil’s north fence, close to where Harold reported Luna.

Willow leaned over the screen. Brooks swore under his breath. Melissa said, “Of course.”

Jodie looked up. “What?”

“We knew something was wrong,” Melissa continued, glancing at Brooks and Willow. “Virgil’s been bitching about those horses for months.”

“And now they’ve disappeared right next to his property,” Brooks added. He looked toward the temporary holding pens. “Maybe he decided he couldn’t wait for the helicopters to do their work.”

“No.” Jodie’s voice came out sharper than she intended.

Everyone looked at her.

She took a breath. “All we know is where they were last seen, nothing else.”

Willow stared at the map. “Jodie, he wasn’t honest about signing with BLM to use his land. What else is he keeping from us?”

“Harold just said he saw Luna, which means she was alive and here yesterday near Virgil’s fence.” Jodie pointed at the screen. “That does not mean Virgil had anything to do with Sagebrush or Lucky, or even that anything has happened to them at all.”

Melissa crossed her arms. “But you have to admit Virgil’s wanted the horses gone for years.”

“I admit it worries me they haven’t been seen. But I’m not jumping to conclusions about Virgil. He said he wanted the herd managed, not wiped out.”

Melissa looked away, her mouth a straight, flat line.

Jodie looked back at the map, specifically at the spot marking Virgil’s fence. Because it did worry her.