Work Text
Tripp, a black gelding with a blaze down his nose and a single white sock, perked up a bit once Daisy turned him toward the barn and his stall and (probably) a few cups of oats and an apple. He’d been faking it a bit near the end of the back-forty trail. Spoiled, city boy, Tripp was; all prancing steps inside a ring, or at shows, but get him out in the wilderness and he’d spook at every leaf and try a dozen times to turn around.Daisy knew it, but took him out on the trail anyway. Tripp was her favorite. If her adopted mother, Melinda, caught her on horseback again so soon after the last injury, Daisy was going to have to listen to another lecture. She was still going to get the lecture, but at least this way she got her whole ride in before she had to hear it. If she was riding in the ring where Tripp was more comfortable, Melinda would see faster, know sooner, and the ride would be over almost before it began.Daisy’s wrists ached a little, and she expected that her left ankle wasn’t going to want to hold her up quite so well for a few hours. Being in pain all the time was exhausting. She needed to ride sometimes; while she could never get away from it, she could feel the wind on her face, listen to hoofbeats, smell the air, and it was like being pain free. At least for a little while.And then she saw the trailer in the front drive and forgot all about it. Her aches and pains weren’t any less, but the jolt of pure, vindicated joy thrummed through her. She ducked around the side of the stables and dismounted.As expected, her ankle buckled under her and she clutched at the saddle for balance. Tripp bore with her flailings for a few moments, then turned his head and nuzzled at her hair; hot, wet, grassy scented breath wafting over her.“Yeah, yeah,” she said. Daisy peeled out of her riding gloves, threw them into her hard-hat, and headed for the barn. Tripp didn’t even need to be led at that point, he just clomped after her.She managed to get Tripp’s tack off and hung back up. Tripp had to be shoved off; he liked to squash his rider between his broad side and the stall wall. The equine equivalent of a hug, but Daisy didn’t need a cracked rib, so she patted him, then pushed him back toward his feeder trough. Tripp flicked an ear at her and Daisy was grooming the horse vigorously by the time Fitz showed up in the stables.“Wha’ are you doing?” Fitz huffed, practically throwing her bag at her. “You’re gonna be in such trouble.”“Probably,” Daisy admitted. “Help me with my boots?” She fished in her bag and pulled out a black wrist brace and a half dozen marked boxes that contained special, silver jewelry that made her look at once like she’d been attacked by a spider and kept her joints from separating and her bones from breaking during normal activities.As long as she didn’t fall, which is why she never wore the stupid stuff when she was out riding.She tested her fingers gingerly, slid a double ring over her pinky and ring finger that kept the two fingers locked together -- the lowest joint in her pinky had a tendency to let go and she couldn’t count the number of times she’d broken those bones because she’d clipped the outstretched digit.Daisy had been born with osteogenesis imperfecta, type I. Brittle bones. When her unknown mother had given birth to her, she’d emerged from the womb with a cracked femur, dislocated shoulder, and multiple fractions in her back.Her mother had left the hospital the next day and never looked back. Daisy didn’t blame her; the medical bills for her condition were impressive, and everything she’d been able to discover about her mom was that she was probably a teenage, unwed mother. Possibly in the country illegally. And besides, she’d been adopted as an infant by Phil Coulson, and his wife, Melinda Mays. The Coulson-Mays ranch had been a good place for her, and even with her genetic condition, Daisy considered that she had a pretty good life.Fitz worked her boot off carefully, prodded at her ankle. “Daisy,” he said, that scolding tone.“Did I break it again?”“I appear to have left my xray goggles in my other pants,” Fitz said. “Bu’ it’s swollen.” He pulled out a stretchy, velcro brace and wrapped the ankle with quick, efficient motion. “Placate your parents and come back to the clinic when they’re done.”Fitz didn’t necessarily approve of her obsession with living a normal life, combined with her loose joints and faulty bones, but he knew Daisy was going to ride anyway, so he helped her.“Did we get her back?” Daisy asked, jerking her chin toward the front and the horse trailer parked there.“Jemma did well with the contracts,” Fitz said, eyes glowing with pride. “The judge ruled in our favor. Lucifer’s home.”“Lucy,” Daisy said, rolling her eyes. “It’s ridiculous name for a mare.”Fitz spread his hands. “She’s your hellraiser, you figure it out. And she’s hurt, so we gotta get her back into condition before any re-training can be done. You stay away from her, for now. Promise me, Daisy.”“Lucy knows me.” Daisy shook off Fitz’s hands.“She doesn’t know anyone right now,” Fitz said. “She’s gonna need to be gentled back under a saddle, and I don’t want you to risk it. Promise. Or I’ll tell May you were out.”Daisy blew a mouthful of air out, messing up her hair. Fitz wasn’t usually so stubborn. “What’s wrong with her?”“She’s been treated with a harsh hand. She’s head shy and jittery. I go’ a look at her hooves, too. She’s quarter-cracked at the least.”A bad shoeing job, or ridden hard over bad surfaces, hoof-crack wasn’t too much of a big deal. Not ideal, admittedly, but a little gum in the cracks, proper hoof-care and an ease in workload, and Lucy could be ready for riding again in as little as a few weeks. Except Fitz was giving her those puppy eyes again and she never could quite resist him.“Go give the lovesick expression to Jemma,” Daisy teased him. “You’re wasting it on me. I’ll be fine.”“I mean it, Daisy,” Fitz said.“Tell ya what,” Daisy offered, “I’ll do any training with Lucy under your supervision?”Fitz sighed and then agreed. He knew as well as she did that was all he was going to get.Daisy struggled to her feet, ankle aching. Fuck, if she’d broken it, Melinda would confine her to the house again until she’d recovered. Fitz already had a cane out for her. Daisy hated every single one of her mobility devices with a passion that was as desperate as it was unreasonable, but what the hell else was she going to do?She couldn’t stop living. She refused to do that.She slipped her arm through the brace and gripped the cane’s handle. It was enough to keep her stable and steady.Took a bracing breath, and then headed for the house. Hopefully, Melinda wouldn’t ask too many questions. It was probably a vain hope, Melinda had never let her adopted daughter get away with anything.She rounded the side of the house, a sprawling monstrosity that was still only a third of the size of the stables. Jemma was there; as the Coulson-Mays’ stable’s lead veterinarian, Jemma always took delivery of any new (or, in this case, returning) horses.The handler, Rodriguez, backed Lucy slowly out of the trailer, while Jemma, Melinda, and Phil watched carefully. There were cuts along the mare’s hindquarters. Daisy couldn’t clench her fists, the jewelry that kept her from accidentally breaking or dislocating her fingers kept her hands out of such dangerous shapes, but she wanted to. Every muscle in her body ached at the sight; Lola’s prize filly, and someone had treated the horse badly.Lucy was favoring her left hind leg, pulling it higher and not resting her weight evenly as she skittered around at the end of the lead. She neighed, shrill and scared, tugging at the lead line, eyes huge and round.“Dear god, what did they do to her?”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Robbie glanced down at the papers in his hand. His fucking walking papers.Well, not exactly. More of a thanks, no thanks letter. He’d been riding winners for four years now. Not top place, yet, but third, and sometimes fourth. Good enough for those rich owners and their fucking stables, anyway. Or it should have been. Load of piss, is what that was. Someone had put the word out that the Reyes family was on the slide.His uncle, Eli, was barely holding onto the lot as it was, and with the increase in Gabe’s medical bills, there wasn’t much to spare. They could raise the rents, but that would drive a lot of good people out of their homes and there weren’t a lot of people who would move into the trailer park, even if there were lots -- more expensive lots -- available. If Eli could have kept his ass away from the track, away from the bookies and their tempting offers, 3-to-1 or better, it might not have been so bad.It wasn’t even the race-fee that kept them in cash. Robbie got a whopping two hundred dollars per race to weigh in, to sit in a saddle, and push the beast across a line. It was the winning that kept them flush. Five percent of the take, whenever he crossed in fifth through third. He’d taken a second place race once. Nine percent.Technically, Robbie thought, he was twenty-two now. He could take Gabe and go, even if Gabe and his madre had named Eli Morrow their guardian, Robbie was old enough now to take over guardianship of his brother. Gabe was just now sixteen, old enough to mostly take care of himself, when Robbie had to be gone.But the no-ride papers, that made a difference. Without money coming in, Robbie didn’t know how he’d be able to afford a place. Not to mention, finding something accessible would be harder. More expensive.Maybe a few more years, two at the most, and Gabe’s SSI would come to him instead of going into Eli’s bank.Two more years.Robbie sighed.A car pulled up to the trailer lot and Janet got out of the driver’s seat. She popped the trunk of her car and yanked Gabe’s wheelchair out, struggling with it. Robbie leapt to his feet and went to help her, scooting the chair around and holding it steady while Gabe climbed out of the passenger seat and settled himself in it.“Hey, Jan,” Robbie said. “Thanks for giving Gabe a lift.”“Yeah, it’s no trouble,” Janet said. “He and Tracy are both on the team, so it’s not far out of the way.”Gabe was leaning out of his chair to take his things from Tracy, Janet’s sister. They talked a bit, something about a class assignment for their physics class. Tracy held her hand up flat by her ear. “Call me,” she said.“Willdo. Thanks again!” Gabe waved cheerfully at the sisters as they drove off.“What happened, bus break down?” There was an afterschool activity bus, which was usually how Gabe made his way home. “You never take rides. Or you just want a reason to hollar after Janet’s sister?”Gabe ducked his head. “Tracy asked me,” he confessed. “And… I didn’t want to insult her. I can do it on my own, you know that.”Gabe had resented the hell out of that wheelchair for the first six months or so that he was in it. Wanting to prove himself, wanting to be left alone. Spurning offers of friendship and anything he saw as pity. But recently, he’d started to come around. He made the robotics team, and that had given him some of his confidence back.Before the accident, Gabe was brash and bold. Baseball player and while he had to keep his grades up to play sports, he’d never been all that academic.Somewhere in there, bored and watching YouTube compulsively rather than even try to hang out with any of his old friends, Gabe had gotten around to watching some TED talks. And finding out about Stephen Hawking. And Col. James Rhodes, who walked with a pair of high tech leg braces after an accident had snapped his spine. Both men were heros now, in the Reyes household.And it seemed like all Gabe had been waiting for was to find his place in this brave new world. He went for academics instead of sports, learning and soaking up information like a sponge. He applied for -- and then had to fight to get in, since the school administration had him firmly categorized as jock and just coasting -- the upper level, pre-college courses. He got onto the robotics team from pure talent.“So?” Robbie left the word open ended.“I think she might say yes,” Gabe confessed. At first, Gabe had been virulently against the idea of going to prom. Who the hell wanted to dance with a goddamn cripple? In the end, it might have been Robbie himself that had convinced Gabe; not through words, or arguments, but just how devastated Robbie had been when Gabe called himself that. Like his whole life was over just because he was confined to a chair. It wasn’t enough for Robbie that Gabe had survived a horrific accident, Gabe needed to live. He needed to be happy. Gabe’s happiness was somehow essential to Robbie’s.Robbie would have done anything for his little brother, his hermano , except the one thing he couldn’t do. Fix the boy’s broken back. So he was determined to do everything else. Anything else.He’d promised Gabe a trip to Disney; the park was very accessible, most of the rides were available even for people with disabilities. Magic and joy and food that was bad for you. Robbie had started a small savings account for that purpose. And he wasn’t about to lose it because he was dismissed from riding this season.Robbie tucked his walking papers -- or, more exactly, his not riding papers -- into his back pocket. It wasn’t fair to burden Gabe with that knowledge. Not yet. Not until he’d fixed the problem. Gotten a new job. Something. He’d find something else. There was always something else.He just needed to find it.***There weren’t that many ranches in the district that weren’t owned by Zarbo or his cronies; two, to be precise. Shield ranch, owned by Melinda Mays and the Arcade, owned by Holden Radcliffe. Neither of them had run winners in several races, and in fact, Radcliffe was pretty close to losing his lands entirely and getting gobbled up.Robbie wasn’t sure what the whole deal was; how could it be a race if all the horses were owned by the same conglomerate. There was no challenge in that, the money would go straight to Zarbo. Might as well just have people buy tickets for a spectacle or parade. There was no glory in running for roses when the whole flower bed already belonged to you.Shield had been quietly gathering up some of the older racers in the district. Trying to breed a winner, Robbie figured. He wasn’t sure there’d be work there.But Radcliffe had turned him away without a hearing, already in Zarbo’s pocket, Robbie sneered. He hopped into his car and drove to the far side of town. Not like there weren’t ranches farther away, sometimes they brought horses in from out of the area for the race, but Robbie wouldn’t be able to compete with their local jockeys, unless someone happened to fall ill day of the race. He didn’t think he could bet on that.The Shield ranch was nice and tidy, a good stretch of fair ground, several in fences pens, and a nice layout for someone who wanted to run hunters, more show horses than race-track runners. He pulled in to the gravel drive, headed to the barn. The owner might have final say on hiring, but the stablemaster would be the person who made the recommendation.In the barn, Robbie found a curly-haired man and a woman with honey-brown hair pinned up at the nape of her neck. They were examining a skittish and ill-used piece of horseflesh in the middle of the stable floor. Robbie raised a hand to get their attention when someone grabbed his wrist.“What are you doing here?”Robbie twisted out of the grip with ease, not even thinking. He went to snap at the person, and stopped dead.A stunningly beautiful woman, with warm golden skin and dark eyes, her black hair gathered in a loose tail. She wore an assortment of rings and bracelets made from silver that glittered as she moved.“I… uh…--” Robbie’d never quite been struck dumb by a beautiful girl before, but something about the way her eyes snapped with fury, the set of her jaw, and the lush red of her lips stole all the words from his mouth, crushed all the air out of his lungs.She cast a longing look back over her shoulder. “Whatever you want, let’s move out of the way. Lucy’s upset.”“The horse, or the girl?”“Jemma would skin you alive for that comment,” the woman said. “Doctor Simmons doesn’t like being called a girl . It’s belittling.” She was rubbing absently at her wrist, twisting it this way and that.“Gotcha,” Robbie said. “Look, I’m Roberto Reyes. I’m looking for local work.”She looked him up and down; she was only a tiny bit shorter than he was, but he had the compact, lithe build of a jockey. It wouldn’t be hard to figure, and sure enough, she said, “Rider?”“Yes, ma’am,” he responded. “But I can do other stabling work in the meanwhile. I--”“Lost your seat.”Robbie nodded, feeling the crush of rejection again. Did everyone know? Had he done something that had spread among the owners; he didn’t think so. He was a fair hand with a racer, and while he hadn’t taken a first prize cup, he had a respectable track record.“Well, Reyes,” the woman said, “if you’re willing to take a risk or two, I might have a job for you.”“And you are?”“Daisy Johnson,” she said. “Lucy’s my racer, if we can heal her injuries and gentle her back to running a track.”“I can take a risk.”“Then you can have a job.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Cal,” Daisy greeted her boss with a quick nod. “Messages are on your desk, and Dr. Radcliffe’s been here three times in the last week for appointments that you--” She trailed off helplessly. She didn’t want to say have been deliberately skipping, because that’s exactly what Calvin Zabo had been doing. Cal had a temper and pointing out his flaws was sure to bring it to a boil.He’d never directed that temper at Daisy, not so far, but she’d certainly heard him yelling on his office phone, or throwing things. Each crash of book or keyboard or, once, a bottle of expensive whiskey, against the wall made Daisy wince and flinch.Cal scoffed. “That blowhard,” he said. “Don’t want to talk to him. Just want him to sell. Let him know, next time he comes back that unless he’s ready to talk price, I don’t care.”“I’ll let him know,” Daisy promised. She was pretty sure Radcliffe knew that already; Cal had not exactly been subtle about what he was doing. What Radcliffe was doing, that was anyone’s guess. He was generally under the impression that he was smarter than everyone around. Smarts, however, didn’t have anything to do with wisdom, and even less to do with money.“How was your weekend?” Cal leaned his hip against her desk, not quite looking at her.“Good,” she said. “I went for a ride.”Unlike everyone else in Daisy’s life, Cal didn’t scold her. He didn’t even pointedly look at her cane, or the way her hands were all decorated in her joint-locking jewelry. “That’s fantastic,” he said. “I know you like to ride. Tell me about it, where’d you go? You’re riding Tripp these days, you said. He’s got a good gait.”Daisy smiled. She didn’t know what it was about Cal, everyone had warned her about him. He’d gone through several secretaries from the -- admittedly limited -- pool of women in town who were willing to do that sort of work, and in the end had offered her a lot more for the job than she would have expected. She couldn’t type very fast, her handwriting was for shit, and it was taking her forever to learn Cal’s organization and filing system.When he’d offered her the job, it came with enough of a salary that Daisy had worried that it was that kind of job, the kind where she was supposed to be a decoration.So far, though, nothing like that had happened. Cal wasn’t easy to work for, he was demanding and exacting, but he wasn’t unreasonable. And he hadn’t flirted with her, or touched her or anything.Daisy had had enough things go wrong in her life that she was still braced for the other shoe to drop, but she didn’t even know what it was supposed to be. She rambled on about her ride, about Fitz and his fussing, and then finally added, “we brought on a new stable hand this weekend, too, so that’s good.”“Yeah?”“Robbie Reyes,” Daisy said. “You know him?”Cal’s eyes went cold and narrow. “Yes.” He got up from his semi-seat on her desk. “You should be careful. The Reyes family’s bad news.” He swept into his office and closed the door.What the hell was that about? ***Shield’s stables were extensive, two huge barns in an L format. Wide aisles, a good sized grain room, another room for tack and harnesses and brushes. A wide, open ended stall for shoeing and vet care.What the barns were missing, Robbie thought, were horses. He walked past empty, open stall, the hay golden and glittering and pristine. Like they were awaiting occupants.“Oh, we keep that fresh for temporary lodgings,” a woman said. She was shorter than Daisy, her long hair pulled back in gentle waves down her back. “But it only needs to be changed out if we have a guest. We rent out the stalls, for local events.”“Yeah, okay,” Robbie said. “Robbie Reyes, new stablehand.”“Yes, Daisy told me,” the woman said, offering her hand. “Jemma Simmons, Shield’s veterinary services.”“They have a full time vet for, what--”“We have a dozen horses here, but no, Fitz and I also have a mobile service. Simply, we make our residence here, and offer substantial discounts and services to Shield as part of our rental agreement.”A dozen horses, the owners, with two full time vets, no matter what mobile services they had, and Daisy… was his new job just charity? There wasn’t enough work to be had at Shield for that many people.“Daisy asked me to get you settled in today,” Jemma said. “We can take the tour if you want, do small talk, and pretend, or I can let you get right to it.”“Let’s just skip to the good parts,” Robbie suggested.“Very well,” Jemma said. “For today, I should like to introduce you to your main charge.” She led the way through the stables. A few velvety noses poked out of their stalls to sniff and stare. An orange barn cat trotted from one stall to another, seeking the mice and other vermin that were part of the cat’s rental agreement. “This is Lucy,” Jemma said, drawing close to one of the larger stalls. The horse inside squealed, and soon after, two sharp bangs issued from inside the stall.“She’s a kicker, that one,” Robbie commented. He pushed up onto his toes to get a look through the stall’s bars.Lucy was deep, coal black, with a touch of red that caught the sunlight and threw it back in patches like fire. Her tail was a matted mess of knots, and the mane as well, hung limp down the mare’s neck, thick with briars and twigs.“She’s been ill-used,” Jemma said, as if it wasn’t obvious. “The last few years, Shield has been buying back our lost stock, acquiring some breeding rights when that wasn’t feasible. Lucy has just come home to us. She needs care, and to be gentled to the saddle again. She’s…”“Feisty,” Robbie said as the animal threw herself at the stall’s boards, trying to bite Robbie through the bars. He didn’t recoil, which seemed to confuse her. “There’s a girl. I see you.”“She’ll need to be calmed, and then walked, if you can manage it. Grooming, preferably without having to restrain her. We understand this may be a time consuming project.”That was putting it mildly. Even if Lucy would stand still for it, that mane alone was going to take hours to comb through and then pull. His fingers were going to be raw, and that was not even considering the fact that she’d probably bite and try to escape.Jemma put her hand on Robbie’s shoulder. “This is an undertaking of love, you understand. Daisy, she loves this mare.”“I’ll do everything I can, ma’am,” Robbie told her. He stared at the horse, her skin twitching like she was flicking off invisible flies, ears flat against her head, teeth bared. Move away, or I’ll bite you.It’s a job, and you need a job, Robbie reminded himself.***Robbie was still reminding himself that he needed a job when he threw himself down onto a bar stool at the Rusty Nail.Luis poured him a drink and was about to settle into one of his rambling, Luis-like stories, but an early drunk was getting rowdy, leaving Robbie alone at the bar to contemplate medicinal whiskey.“Rough day?”“Hmmm?” The guy speaking was handsome in a very J. Crew catalog way, perfectly coiffed hair and tailored clothes. He was half-draped across the bar, surveying the room with predatory indifference. “Yeah, work was a bit tough. Got kicked twice, bitten once, and rolled over on. Gonna stiffen up like a board, trying to sleep tonight.”“You work in retail, José?” J. Crew laughed at his own joke.Robbie restrained himself from rolling his eyes. White guys. “Stablehand,” he corrected. Not because J. Crew cared, but because Robbie wasn’t ashamed of what he did. He worked, he put money on the table. If his skin was darker than J. Crew, if his r’s trilled when he talked, that didn’t make him lesser. J. Crew was just a dick, nothing to worry about.Although there was the frisson of heat that built in his spine at the causal assumption of-- Robbie didn’t even know what. Robbie was short -- like all riders had to be -- but he was twenty pounds of aggression in a ten pound bag. So his madre had said and so Robbie knew was the truth.J. Crew scoffed. “Yeah, everyone’s horse-mad around here. Reminds me why I left.”Robbie didn’t bother to answer that; as far as he was concerned, J. Crew could bugger back to where he’d left in the first place. No one around here was going to miss him.“There’s no action here, hey, amigo,” J. Crew said, slapping Robbie’s bicep as if they were friends. “Know someplace I could score a piece of ass?”Robbie’s fist bunched up against his will, the short nails digging into his palm. “Take your hand off me, or you’re going to lose it. Gringo.”“Easy does it,” J. Crew said, although there as a glint in his eye that made Robbie think J. Crew was stewing for a fight anyway. “You don’t want anyone coming around, asking about your papers.”Papers. Jesus wept. Robbie’d been raised in LA until his madre had passed on, he was just as much of an American as this asshole. We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us. “Take your weak-ass wheat juice and get out of my face,” Robbie said and knocked back his whiskey.“And if I don’t feel like it, culero?”Bar fight. Uncle Eli was going to be pissed.Robbie punched the guy anyway.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Umhph?” Daisy scrambled at her alarm, which didn’t seem right because it was still dark outside, and she never got up when it was dark, even just after Daylight Savings ended, which is certainly wasn’t, since it was June and not November.All of which got her brain online enough to realize that her alarm wasn’t going off, her phone was ringing.“This better be important,” she said, tucking the device into the space between her ear and the pillow.Everything hurt. Waking up was an exercise in delicate torture, each bone and joint checking in and it was all bad goddamn news.“Hey, sweetheart,” a voice said in her ear. “Sorry to wake you--”“No.”“No? What no?”“You want the full list? No, you’re not sorry to wake me, no, I’m not your sweetheart, and no, whatever it is you want, you can’t have it.” Especially if it was a damn booty call. She didn’t bother to say that out loud, because once she brought the subject around to sex, then Grant was going to be all up in her business wondering why she was thinking about that, he certainly hadn’t brought that up, and did she miss him?She did, and she didn’t. Grant fucking Ward. She missed him, and she was better off without him, no matter what her damn libido sometimes said.“No, no, come on, Daisy, I’m in trouble here, and I need some help, you know I’ll totally make it up to you.” Grant was all the way to wheedling, and he sounded--“Are you drunk?”“Not so much as I’d meant to be,” Grant said. “I’m in jail, actually.”“What?” Daisy actually sat up in bed, and then winced as her fingers and spine protested the movement. “What for?”Not that Grant probably didn’t deserve a little jail time. The man was a bully, apt to solve problems with his fists, and when he couldn’t get away with that, he was pugnacious and in people’s faces. Also, he was a thief, even if Daisy couldn’t prove it. Oh, and let’s not forget serial cheater, although she would admit that probably wasn’t against the law, even if it was a dick move.“Some wetback asshole got into it with me,” Grant said. “I dunno, he was drunk.”“Yeah, what you do to him?” Daisy sighed and pushed herself up from the bed, fumbling in the dim light from her phone for the light switch. Because nothing was ever Grant’s fault, she could count the number of occasions that he’d admitted to a share of the blame in anything on one hand and have fingers left over.She wasn’t really listening, pulling her clothes on and finding her shoes while Grant blustered and complained. Apparently, on top of everything else, the cops hadn’t let him have an ice pack for his eye. “--it’s not that bad, you should see his fucking face, but still. That’s like cruel and unusual.”“Pretty sure there’s nothing unusual about thinking maybe a drunk idiot who gets in a bar fight should sleep it off, Grant,” Daisy said. She stepped into a pair of flats and checked her jeans pocket for the keys to her truck. “I’m coming to get you, and you owe me, so much.”“Anything you want, sweetheart,” Grant said.Daisy was halfway to the police station before she wondered why she was doing this at all, why she was bailing Grant fucking Ward, her damn ex boyfriend, out of jail. Why she was putting five hundred dollars of her own money out for him. And for that matter, what the hell she was going to do with him once she got him out of jail. His car was probably impounded, and so she’d have to drive him home, and then back out to the station later.And why was it that she always ended up way in over her head whenever she talked to him? This was going to be one of those favors that stretched out until she never saw the end of it.“Fuck.”She took a few moments in the parking lot of the police station to consider her life and what she wanted out of it and how none of that was Grant, and yet, she kept ending up back in this position of doing something for Grant.“I don’t even like you,” she said, when the cop had finished filling out the paperwork, taken her money, and remanded Grant to her custody. That was five hundred dollars she was never going to see again; she knew how this worked. Even if he went to his damn trial, the fines and fees would come out before any money would come back, and if there was any to spare, he would “forget” to give it back to her.“Aw, baby, you love me,” Grant said, and went to kiss her. Daisy twisted her neck at the last moment, giving him cheek. And even then, she could smell beer on his breath.“Go home, and make him sleep it off,” the cop said, and Daisy rolled her eyes. None of this was on her, honestly, and she didn’t like the implication that Grant’s actions reflected on her.They were making their way out of the precinct when she felt eyes on her. She glanced up, saw Robbie Reyes, the new hire, at another cop’s desk, filling out the same paperwork. There was a boy in a wheelchair and an older man with him, family, probably.Robbie had a black eye and a scuff of purple along his jaw, his lip swelling. His eyes narrowed as he looked at Grant and he raised one hand to dab meaningfully at his split lip. His expression went cold and ugly. He nodded once, to acknowledge Daisy’s wave.The boy, probably in his mid-teens, said something in Spanish, but Daisy’s high school lessons and her pigeon getting by in the language when she was talking to native speakers, wasn’t good enough for her to make it out from across the room.“You got in a fight with him?” Daisy jerked her chin at Reyes, as soon as they were out of the room. “Goddammit, Grant, can’t you do a single thing without making my life harder?”“What’s your problem?”“That’s Mr. Reyes, out new stable hand. I have to work with him, Grant.”“That’s easily fixed,” Grant said. “Just fire him. He’s probably illegal, anyway.”“People can’t be illegal.” Daisy sighed. “Just… get in the truck. I am so done with this evening.”She slammed the door on him as soon as he climbed into her truck, ignoring whatever he was going to say next. Daisy turned the radio way up as soon as she started the engine, not wanting to talk. “Leave it--” she said when he tried to turn it down. “I’m under caffeinated and I don’t want to fall asleep at the wheel.”“You’re cranky,” Grant said, like she was an overtired toddler.“Yeah. I wonder why.” She mouthed the words to the song, not singing, but not wanting to talk. If she stuck to her guns, she could drop Grant off and not wake up in his bed again. She concentrated on the road, on the headache building behind her eyes, and the memory of the lack of smile on Robbie’s bruised face.She didn’t need Grant Ward in her life.***“That’s the guy you got into a fight with, yeah?” Gabe said, his Spanish a soothing balm on Robbie’s ears. He answered back in that same language without thinking about it.“Yes.”“You know her? She looks like she knows you.”“She’s the boss, at the stables,” Robbie said, short.Uncle Eli was glaring at both of them. Robbie, because Eli was bailing him out and talking with the cops. Gabe, because Gabe was speaking Spanish. Uncle Eli was in the old school, thinking that it was best to blend in with American culture, pretend to be all-American. It was stupid; they were Americans, they’d been on the same land for generations. It wasn’t much land anymore, but Uncle Eli owned the lot. Subdivided and rented out, they made their money renting the land for mobile homes and for RV hookups.Their neighbors and friends were maids and gardeners, mechanics and nannies. They worked for all the rich whites, and at night, they came back to the lot, and they were home.There was no reason not to speak Spanish, not to enjoy their culture. It wasn’t like they’d ever fit in, anyway. No amount of unaccented English was going to hide the color of Robbie’s skin. And no one was ever going to let him forget it.“Man,” Gabe said, watching as Daisy left the precinct. “You think she’s gonna fire you for getting in a hassle with her boyfriend?”“I don’t know,” Robbie said. He hoped not; he needed that job. But at the same time, if that asshat from the bar was going to be hanging out at the stables, maybe he didn’t need the job quite so badly.“We’re leaving,” Uncle Eli said, putting one hand down on Robbie’s shoulder. Eli was huge; Robbie had gotten his lithe build and lack of height from his father’s side of the family. He leaned heavy on Robbie, fingers biting into his shoulder. Robbie knew better than to complain about it, but he ducked out from under Eli’s hold.“Uncle Eli--”“You shut it,” Eli snapped, poking Robbie in the chest. “I don’t want to hear your excuses, and I don’t want to hear anything else unless it’s sorry, Uncle Eli, I’ll never do it again. We’ll talk later.”Eli’s eyes shifted to glance at Gabe, and Robbie knew what that meant; he’d get to hear about all his faults and failings, all of what Robbie and Gabe owed their Uncle for taking them in, everything. Just not when Gabe was around. Both of them went out of their way to keep Gabe as happy as he could be. Poor kid suffered enough.“I’m sorry, Uncle Eli,” Robbie said, dutifully. “I’ll… never do it again.” That was probably a lie, but Eli wasn’t going to call him out on it. Not this time. Not in front of Gabe.“All right,” Eli said. “Let’s get home, I hate these places.”Robbie sighed. Eli, their madre had told them, was a bit of a wild one in his youth. Robbie had gotten his temper directly from his uncle. But that didn’t make Eli proud, or even rueful, just angry.“Thanks,” Robbie said. “For coming to get me.”“You may be stupid and hot-headed sometimes,” Eli said, stiff and uncomfortable. “But you’re still family. Still blood. I--” he glanced at Gabe again, guilty as hell the way he looked sometimes, like Eli had anything to do with Gabe’s broken back. It was a stupid, horrible accident, that was all. “You’re family.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Daisy!”Daisy groaned and rolled over. There was too much light in her room and she raised a hand to shade her eyes before she even wanted to try to open them. Sometimes, she really thought she should be able to drink if she was going to have a damn hangover anyway. Not that she drank; that would have been the height of stupid. Drinking, when a fall could mean broken bones? No thanks.She was exhausted and every bone in her body ached. She managed crack open one eye and look at the clock. Three minutes past eight.She’d overslept, because of course she had.“Daisy!” Melinda appeared in the doorway, resting bitch face in full effect. “I thought you’d left already. And then--”“You found my truck parked over by the south shed, I know,” Daisy said. She tried to stifle her audible whimpering as her knees and ankles reported in. She’d jumped down from the truck by the time she finally made it home, rather than climbing. She probably had shin splints, at least, and Fitz was going to kill her. Assuming she lived long enough for Fitz to kill her.“Where were you last night?”“Grant called,” she said. It took a little bit of effort, but she got herself upright in bed. “He needed a ride. I parked over there so I wouldn’t wake you up when I got in.” She always felt that tinge of anger whenever Melinda asked her where she was going, or scolded her for being late, or any of the other fifteen million parental types of things that Melinda did. She was Daisy’s mom, and Daisy knew that she worried, but really. Daisy was, technically and legally, an adult. It just didn’t always seem like it.“Are we dating Grant again?” That actually got a raised eyebrow and the not-quite-scowl on Melinda’s face went a little more toward the scowly part.“We are not dating Grant,” Daisy said. “He called, it was really late. I gave him a ride. That’s all.”“That’s good,” Melinda said. “I don’t think Phil wants that boy around here anymore. I thought he moved.”Daisy only shrugged. She wasn’t Grant’s babysitter. She wasn’t sure how long he was in town for. She didn’t ask, because she hadn’t wanted Grant to think she cared. “Can you hand me my pill bottle?”“What happened?” Melinda’s eyes narrowed, but she handed over the easy-open bottle and watched as Daisy swallowed two pills, using the bottle of water at her bedside table to wash them down. It wasn’t quite did he hurt you, which Daisy felt Melinda always wanted to ask.“I tripped, getting out of the truck,” she said. “I was just tired, and--”Not quite a lie, not really. Grant hadn’t pushed her. Not physically. He’d just asked her to dinner; to pay her back, to thank her, and it wasn’t a date, really, come on. She’d turned him down, repeatedly, and she had driven away in the middle of his third attempt to talk her into it. Which made her angry. Why couldn’t Grant just listen to her the first time? He’d probably texted her again before she’d even gotten home, but she couldn’t be bothered to read them, and she’d shut her phone off.Which was why she had overslept. She could just lay a whole bed of trouble at Grant’s door, except he’d probably expect her to lay in it.Ug.“Can you call Cal for me, tell him I’ll be a little late, but I’ll make up the time.”“Don’t you skip your lunch break,” Melinda said, but she headed off to the other room, and that was probably as much as Daisy could expect.No lecture this time, so that was good.“Fuuuuuck,” she breathed, getting to her feet and limping toward the shower. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to wash her hair; her arms hurt like hell, too, but maybe she could just stand under the hot water for a while and it would help.A little.As it turned out, more than a little. Her muscles loosened up between the heat and the pills and she was even able to work a little shampoo through her hair. Shaving was right out, she was dizzy enough that she didn’t want to bend over and risk a fall in the bathroom. But that was okay, it wasn’t like she was taking her clothes off for anyone.It was going to be a good day, she decided.“Cal says don’t worry about it, whenever you can get in,” Melinda told her. “So sit down and have some breakfast.”Daisy rolled her eyes, shoveled a fried egg and some bacon onto her toast and ate it like a sandwich, headed down to her truck. “Fitz, I need a favor, can you--”Instead of Fitz’s curly head and eager smile, she got Robbie Reyes, instead. “He’s helping the Doc,” he said.“Oh,” Daisy said, taking a step back. “I, uh-- yikes, that looks painful.”“What do you need?”“Look, let’s just skip the awkward, I don’t need it,” Daisy said. “I’m not even going to say sorry, because I spent the last two years being sorry about Grant Ward and I don’t intend to do it any longer. He’s my ex. And I’m pretty sure he texted me last night after I bailed his ass out, and I don’t want to read it. So… I was gonna ask Fitz to do it, but you’re here, and… could you just see if it was Grant, and delete the texts if it is?”“You can’t do it?” Robbie made no movement toward her phone, even though she was all but waving it in his face. He was almost the same height as she was, whipcord thin, and wearing dark gray jeans that clung to muscular thighs, and a black leather jacket with a white bar on it. Nice, she thought, not to have to crane her neck to look up at a man. Her neck hurt too much for that, today, at least.Daisy heaved a sigh. “I’m a soft touch, okay? It’s pathetic, I know. But I pick up every stray barn cat and I feed ducks in the park. Only good, nutritious food, too. No stale bread, just peas and grapes. I have a hard time saying no, okay? And I don’t want to do whatever it is Grant wants to do, so if you just delete the text for me, I don’t have to know what it is, so I don’t have to feel guilty about it. Okay? Help me out here.”“I’m gonna help you out, girl,” Robbie said. “I’m gonna help you out by walking you through it. You want to ignore him, let’s ignore him.” There was the faintest trace of a smile on Robbie’s face, the way his mouth tipped up on one side, the glint in his eyes. It was a good look on him, sly and satisfied and just a little smug.“How are you going to do that?”“I’m gonna talk you through the steps, and you’re gonna follow them,” Robbie said. “But you gotta do it on your own, nobody can do it for you. You want to be a liberated, strong woman? Act like it.”“Yeah, that never works out very well for me,” Daisy said.“Try it,” Robbie said. “Open up that text, click his name, and then, there’s three dots, you see ‘em up on the upper right hand side. I want you to open that, and click Block Contact. Bingo. You never have to do that asshole a favor again.”Daisy laughed, even though she knew it didn’t work that way. It never worked that way. Grant would borrow someone’s phone, or he’d come out to the ranch, or---- well, she was pretty sure if she told Melinda she didn’t want to see him again, Melinda wouldn’t let him on the property.It could happen. She could… maybe. Ignore Grant long enough and maybe he’d go away.“New rules?” Daisy asked.“Don’t pick up the phone, girl,” Robbie said. “That’s all there is to it. You don’t want him in your life, you don’t let him in.”She hesitated a long moment, then clicked it. Block Contact.She hitched in a deep breath and let it out on a laugh. Strange how a weight seemed to slide right off her shoulders. “Wow.”“Feel good, does it?”“Yeah, yeah, it kinda does,” she said.“You let me know if I can do anything else for you,” Robbie said, and she didn’t hear anything in that, no suggestions of favors he might be tempted to do, or ask for.“I’ll, you know, keep it in mind,” she told him. “Thank you.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The trailer smelled like popcorn and Portico; Gabe’s favorite snack. Popcorn with sugar-chili-salt on it. Robbie kicked his boots off and into the bin by the door. The trailer’s carpet was wearing thin as it was. And it wasn’t like Gabe could take off his wheels.Robbie and some of his crew had spent a whole weekend building a wrap ramp so that Gabe could get up and into the unit. Before that, there’d been three rickety planks balanced on cinder. Gabe’s friend Billy had gotten the wood -- good, hardware store, water treated, pressure planks -- and brought it over in the back of his pickup.Robbie hadn’t asked questions about it, he’d just gotten to work.“You best have eaten something besides popcorn and chili,” Robbie said. The lights were dim in the double-wide, but twinkling in a way that reminded Robbie of Christmas.Which was, apparently, what Gabe had been doing; he had the couch yanked out and turned around to serve as the back for a prop-up blanket fort. A string of lights was draped across the blanket and probably a fire hazard.His chair was abandoned against one wall, and Gabe was laying on his belly inside the fort, eating popcorn by the handful and watching a movie. Tracey, the girl he’d invited to prom, was laying next to him. She had a bowl of the spicy popcorn in front of her, but she wasn’t eating from it.Robbie didn’t blame her, really. Portico was an acquired taste.“Hey kid,” Robbie said, ducking his head under the pillowfort. “Oh, Tracey, good to see you. How was school? You two got homework?”“Bah, homework,” Gabe said, flicking the remote, pausing the two characters mid-sequence.“Is that bah, because you’re not doing it, or bah, because it’s already done?”“We did it, already, Mr. Reyes,” Tracey said.“Oh, hey, is that Gabe’s special popcorn?” Robbie asked. “Can I have some, I’ll trade you a couple candy bars for it?”Tracey handed over the popcorn with alacrity, letting Robbie dig around in the kitchen cabinets for a few chocolate marshmallow bars, sticky-sweet and chewy, but more palatable to the typical American.Because Robbie was a bit of an asshole, and also, it’s what big brothers did, he sat cross-legged between Gabe and Tracey, using his knees to push both of them away from each other and toward the edges of the blanket fort.“Good construction here,” he noted. Gabe had used the beach umbrella, propped up at an angle, to secure the top of the fort, and to give them something to wrap the lights around. A wide assortment of pillows and cozy blankets and stuffed animals -- Gabe must have dug some of those out of storage, Robbie hadn’t seen them since Gabe was in fifth grade or so -- provided the soft flooring. “What are we watching?”“Don’t recall inviting you,” Gabe said, sullen, but a smile was twitching at the corner of his mouth.Tracey chewed frantically, trying to get through the thick, sticky candy. “It’s okay, he can stay, right, Gabe? We’re watching Fast and the Furious--” she rooted around on the floor to find the familiar redbox case. “-- Tokyo Drift. What’s that, three?”Gabe still liked fast cars, even though it was unlikely he’d ever be able to drive. Robbie wondered if he was enjoying the film, or punishing himself with I’ll nevers.“Yeah, the new one just hit the stores,” Gabe said, “so a bunch of the older ones are for rent, now.”“You roll up to the Tiny Giant to get that?” By himself. Robbie swallowed hard, he didn’t like Gabe out in the evening.“I gotta go to--” Tracey waved a hand down the hall. “Hold the movie til I get back.” She scrambled out of the blanket fort, probably trying to avoid an embarrassing conversation.“Tracey walked with me,” Gabe muttered, resentful. “I didn’t see anyone, no way. What are you doing, man? Getting in the way?”“Chaperoning,” Robbie said, smirking. “Someone’s got to be the responsible one around here. Where’s Uncle Eli?”“Where else?”Robbie sighed. “Yeah.”When Tracey came back, Robbie ceded his spot to her. He didn’t leave, staying on one side of the fort and watching Vin Diesel kick ass and drive fast, zoning out.If Gabe stole a kiss there before the movie ended, Robbie wasn’t going to stop him. At least the kid had gotten back to living, wanting, and doing. Robbie wasn’t sure if he could have managed it. If he couldn’t sit in a saddle and feel the wind in his hair, he wasn’t sure there’d be anything left for him.***The office phone rang and Daisy picked up the line.“Zabo’s Ranch, Cal’s office. Daisy Johnson speaking, how can I help you today?”No one said anything, and Daisy went through the routine of checking to make sure the call was connected -- it was -- and said hello a few more times, before hanging up. She rattled the disconnect button a few times. Whoever was calling had done so four times already that morning, and while she might have suspected that it was Grant, trying to go around her blocked cell phone, it just didn’t have that vibe to it.Grant wouldn’t have hesitated to talk, for one thing, if he’d gotten through to her.Unfortunately, Cal had gotten his phone system back in the early nineties and hadn’t bothered to upgrade it since practically before Daisy was born. There was no incoming call display number on the old gray and black screen. Not that that meant anything; so many spam callers spoofed local numbers anyway to tempt the unwary into answering.There were so many things it could be, really. Glitchy phone. Someone who was butt dialing with their cellphones -- Cal had a number of employees and not all of them were entirely stupid, and that was being generous. Or one of the many smaller ranchers in the area who’d been bought out or were in the process of being bought out, and wanted to give Cal a piece of their mind, without having worked up the courage.Daisy speculated on the call on and off for the next hour, while the phone didn’t ring, and she did her job.Cal had recently been making several land purchases and gotten a ton of building permits, and Daisy needed to correctly label and file them all. It was tedious work, really, especially since the files were thick, and she had to bend out the bottoms of the folders in order to get them to stay straight. Her hands were aching inside of twenty minutes.Daisy got up, stretched her back gingerly, listening to each pop and snap of her spine to make sure it was only normal joint noise and not anything more. She was going to get a cup of coffee; not that she particularly liked coffee, but the warm mug would be soothing against her hands and it was an excuse to be away from her desk for a little while.The phone rang again.“Zabo’s Ranch, Cal’s offic--”“Daisy?”“Yes, you’ve reached Daisy Johnson, how can I help you today, ma’am?” Daisy said. She twisted back into her chair and reached for pen and paper. She didn’t always need to take notes on calls, but having the pen in her hand reminded her that she was supposed to remember. Like putting a sticky note on a memory, writing or doodling helped her concentrate.“I… my name is Jiaying,” the woman said, hesitating between each word as if English wasn’t her first language, or if she wanted to make very sure of what she said.“Jiaying,” Daisy repeated, drawing a little image of a stick-figure horse on the margin. “Is that your last name, ma’am--”“First name,” she said. “I wonder, could I ask you some questions, personal questions?”Daisy squinched one eye shut. “Ma’am, if I might know what you wanted, I could--”“When is your birthday, Miss Johnson?”“I’m sorry, who is this?” Daisy asked. Birthday was personal information, the sort people could use to start the process of identity theft. Not that anyone with a Facebook account couldn’t usually figure out someone’s birthday. And maybe, if Daisy Johnson was a normal person, she wouldn’t have worried about it too much.But Daisy wasn’t normal. She was thirty years old and she knew she was born in the summer, in 1988. But while her birth certificate listened July 5th, it could have been anywhere from June 30th to the 5th, as far as the hospital staff knew.Her mother had brought her in, broken in a dozen places, screaming and undernourished, and just left her there, protected by the Safe Haven laws. No one knew who her mother or father were, and not a lot of effort had gone into finding her parents. Daisy told herself she didn’t miss her parents; she had parents. Melinda and Phil were her parents, and they’d done a damn fine job of raising her, too. She was safe, well looked after, and if she was still living in her parent’s home when she was an adult, well, that wasn’t unexpected, either.Daisy needed help, a lot of the time, getting up in the morning, or when she managed to clip her finger or crack her collarbone. It just wasn’t a workable solution for Daisy to move out and live on her own.Sometimes she resented that, too, and Phil and Melinda for everything that they represented.“July second,” the woman on the phone said, firmly. “You were born on July second, just after sunset. Eight-thirty, or so.”Daisy’s fingers tightened around the pen and she scribbled a few notes, Jul 2. 8:30p? before turning her attention back to the phone.“How do you know that, Miss Jiaying?”“I know a lot about you,” the woman said. “You should be very careful, Miss Johnson.”“Was that a threat?” Daisy demanded. “Are you threatening me?”The line went dead.
What the hell was that about?
“Is who threatening you?” Cal called from his office. Daisy hadn’t raised her voice, she was sure of that, but Cal could also smell interesting gossip a mile away.“I don’t know,” Daisy said. “She didn’t give me her whole name or anything. Wanted to know when my birthday was.”“I hope you didn’t tell her, sounds like a phishing scam.”“No, I didn’t,” Daisy said. She lightly touched the phone in its cradle, like it was a feral animal that might her, or might be calmed.“Smart girl,” Cal said.“Thanks,” Daisy said. “I think she called a few times this morning, too.”“Well, if it keeps up, I’ll get someone to look into blocking the number,” Cal said. Daisy gave him a smile. She liked Cal; despite everything that people said about him, the man looked out for her. Made her feel… well, safe, somehow.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Yeah, I know, it’s okay,” a soothing voice said. “Yeah, I know, you’re still a little shy, but it’s okay. I wouldn’t hurt you, you know that, right? You remember that, huh? Yeah, you remember--”Robbie rounded the elbow turn in the long stable, hesitated. The soothing voice was Daisy, and he’d gotten some very particular instructions about Daisy and what Daisy was and was not allowed to do.The problem was, Robbie’d already figured out that Daisy was going to do whatever the hell she wanted.The other problem was, what was he supposed to do now?He couldn’t barge in while she was in the stall with Lucy. That could spook the horse, and a spooked horse inside a small stall was a danger to whoever was in the stall with her. A double danger to Daisy, whose brittle bones could easily be snapped by a wild animal.Robbie had a sudden, vivid recollection of Gabe in the hospital, covered with bandages, while a sober and serious doctor told Uncle Eli that it was unlikely that Gabe would ever walk again, we can’t know for sure until he wakes up, but we’re not getting promising nerve response from his lower extremities…
“Hey, at least it doesn’t hurt,” Gabe had said, after Robbie helped prop him up in the hospital bed, “like that’s good, right?” Without realizing how very, very bad it was.
Gabe screaming when he realized that he was never going to walk again, screaming and cursing God and fate. And then he’d gone very, very quiet. Terrifyingly quiet. His eyes went big and round, but he didn’t talk. He barely said a word for several days.
“He’s processing,” the doctor had said. “It’s a rough transition, and you may see more anger, later. Grief. I’d advise getting him into some therapy.”
Gabe had, point blank, refused to cooperate with the therapy, and Uncle Eli had fussed and worried about the cost, so… that hadn’t gone well at all.
Robbie shook himself out of his daze.Theoretically, he could go back to the mobile vet’s office and tell Simmons that Daisy was in Lucy’s stall. On the other hand, Robbie’d been accused of being a ghost before, walking so silently that no one heard him. Maybe Daisy hadn’t heard him approach and thought she was safe. That she’d slip away as soon as Simmons came into the stable.She’d still be in trouble. Both Fitz and Simmons had been clear on that, Daisy was not supposed to be anywhere near Lucy, not until they were more certain that the mare was soothed. And maybe never.It’s a labor of love, Simmons had told him. She loves that mare.Lucy whickered. Robbie’d been standing there, stuck in indecisiveness, long enough that the scent of the cut apples he had drifted down to her stall. Robbie was not above bribery.“What’s that, Luce?” Daisy wondered. Robbie could hear her shifting around in the stall, feet rustling the clean straw. The latch for the stall opened and-- “Oh.”Robbie gave her a quick smile, ducking his chin. It was hard to look at her, because every time he saw her, he wanted to look more. She was pretty, that much was true, and fragile. And elegant in her careful way of walking.But more than that; Robbie sensed a deep core of stubbornness in her. This was a woman who wouldn’t -- maybe even couldn’t -- back down. Daisy was not a quitter. Look at her situation with the ex; even when she should quit on something (or someone) she was reluctant to give up.A lot of people would have given up on Lucy.Robbie wasn’t sure if it was an admirable trait, or a stupid one. Sometimes, you just had to walk away.But not today.“Hey there, girl,” Robbie said, absently giving Daisy the same, soothing voice that she’d given the horse, like someone he didn’t want to startle. He rolled his tongue around in his mouth a little before grinning at her. “Seems I heard someone wasn’t supposed to be within arm’s reach of that hellbeast.”“She’s not a beast--” Daisy started, hotly, before realizing that Robbie was teasing her. “Are you gonna snitch on me?”“Me, girl?” Robbie spread his hands wide, the bucket of brushes dragging against his wrist as he gestured. “I’m not a snitch.”“Thanks,” Daisy said, almost reluctant, as if she wasn’t used to people doing her favors.“Look, I brought some apples to try to bribe her highness into letting me do some grooming,” Robbie offered. “If uh, if you want, you can feed them to her outside the stall while I give her a brushing?”“Still trying to keep me in my little glass prison,” Daisy sighed.“No way, girl,” Robbie said. “Trying to get you paroled.”Daisy’s expression went soft, her eyes wide, and her mouth curved into a lovely smile. “Give me the apples,” she demanded.***“This is no’ ever gonna work,” Fitz said, throwing the aluminum racing plate across the room. It hit the wall, sounding almost exactly the same as a tin can, and clattered to the floor.“What’s never going to work?” Daisy bent and picked up the plate -- similar to a horse shoe in purpose, to protect the hoof, but made of aluminum to reduce weight on a racehorse. The plates were for the front hooves, the back shoes slightly different and called caulks. Fitz had an assortment of them on his work table.“I’m tryin’ ta make a glue that’ll fit the plates, just long enough for the race,” Fitz said. “Maybe last ten days, for need, but th’ glue that’ll hold, won’t come off again, an’ everything else I try comes off soon as it get wet, practically.”“Well, why would you want to?” Daisy wondered. “There’s no glue on the planet you could make that’s going to be cheaper than eight horseshoe nails.” There were commercially available glues for horseshoes; some of them worked, some of them came right off. Some of them wouldn’t come off at all. For most horses, it wasn’t a big deal. For racehorses, anything that happened to the shoe mid-race could be the difference between winning and losing.“Lucy’s go’ a quarter crack on two hooves,” Fitz told her. “But I was thinking, if we could glue on th’ shoes and then jus pop ‘em off when we were done with ‘em, like ladies pop off those acrylic fingernails? That’d be so much better for long term wear and tear. I’ll get it, I’ll get it one day.”“If you were talking about anything other than horseshoes, I might think you were going all mad scientist on me,” Daisy told him.“Angry. Angry scientist,” Fitz said.“You’re thinking about this for Lucy?” Daisy spun the shoe around on her finger, getting up enough momentum to flip it when she hit the open end, catching it again delicately on her extended index finger.“Her hooves are in bad shape,” Fitz said. “Lazy stablehands and hard training, they’re soft. I don’t know if it’s any good trying to put shoes back on her. You may have t’ face the possibility that she’ll ne’er race again.”“Well, if that happens, that happens,” Daisy said. “She’s more than just a racer, she’s a friend. She’s family, Fitz. We couldn’t just leave her there.”“I’m not saying you should have. No one who mistreats an animal like that should have ‘em. I jus’ want you to check your expectations. I know you think she’ll run a winner again.”“We all have dreams,” Daisy said. She tossed the horseshoe up again. And caught it wrong, hitting just above the joint in her finger. She heard the sound of the bone cracking before she felt it, managed to control her expression enough to catch the shoe and place it gingerly on the table. “Right now, I’m dreaming about lunch.” There, that sounded right, not like she was in pain, she could just--Fitz looked at her, flat and unfooled. “Daisy.”“Leeeeeo,” she whined back at him.“Mr. Reyes,” Fitz said, and Daisy whirled, finding Robbie in the doorway to the vet’s lab. “If you’re finished with th’ barnwork for today, would you sit on Miss Daisy here a wee minute while I get a splint for her finger?”Robbie’s eyes went right up. “Does he mean that literally, do you think, girl?”Daisy found a chair, sat down, and patted her thighs. “Probably.”Robbie was light, thin, like all riders were. He felt like a bag of bones settling across her legs, but also warm and light. He hooked an arm around the back of her neck to grab onto the chair, for balance.There was something so comforting about his playful humor, his insistence on listening to everything Fitz said, and the tenderness with which he treated Lucy that made Daisy pay attention to him. Rather than feeling put upon (or sat upon in this case) she felt… like she was being gentled, the same way Lucy was being gentled.An act of love for the horse.And a kindness toward the owner’s bullheaded daughter.She leaned against him, resting her forehead on Robbie’s shoulder. “This is oddly nice.”“Best seat in the house,” Robbie teased.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Daisy really should have known it was too good to be true. Deleting Grant’s number out of her phone, ignoring his messages, that had been oddly liberating.She’d been so grateful when he’d decided to move away; a job offering somewhere else, and she couldn’t go with him. Even if he’d asked -- which he didn’t. He’d hinted around it, waiting to see if she would ask if he wanted her to. But Daisy couldn’t have gone. There was no way she could ask Grant to pay for her health care, and she wouldn’t live without it.Even with Fitz taking care of her various bone breaks and joint dislocations, her medication alone was a good portion of the income she made from working for Cal.Her parents had her on their insurance for as long as they could, but then she had to get her own. Cal offered pretty good insurance, for what it was. Risking being unemployed for any length of time was a risk she wasn’t willing to take. She couldn’t put that burden on someone else.So Grant had gone, and he’d left her behind. They hadn’t even played much with the idea of a long distance relationship. Grant had said he’d text her, but the first time she’d not answered a text in less than thirty minutes, he’d… just stopped.It was, she thought, unrealistic of him to expect her to drop everything just to pay attention to him when he wasn’t even in the same damn state that she was in.But it was too good to last, being free of Grant’s expectations.Getting out of bed had been agony that morning. She wasn’t sure what she’d done; when Fitz got in, she’d see if she could get up long enough to get an xray done. Her chest ached, her back hurt. Sometimes she’d fractured ribs from coughing, and on one particularly notable occasion, she’d gotten a micro-fracture in her spine from sneezing.She didn’t remember doing anything before bed, and if she’d done anything in her sleep aside from dreaming, she didn’t know about it.“Cal,” she said, when she called. He didn’t answer, but the answering machine would get the note to him. “I can’t come in today.” Cal wouldn’t ask; he knew about her brittle bones, he knew about the pain she lived with. Another reason why she didn’t want to move; finding another town and having to start over, being a burden, getting sympathy instead of support. She couldn’t face the effort involved. At least the people around the ranch knew. They knew, and most of them didn’t ask how her day was going.Some days were better than others, and some days were downright terrible. That day was off the charts awful. She considered just staying in bed all day, but not eating would just make things worse, later. She had to eat before she could take her medication. If she didn’t take her medication, she could kiss the entire week goodbye. At least.She was cold, even though the sun was promising a nice, hot day. She tottered out of bed to fix breakfast. Something soft. Scrambled eggs and toast. She wasn’t sure her mouth could handle biting something. Not today.Daisy almost walked into him before she noticed Grant Ward was in her damn kitchen.She shrieked at the intruder and leaped backward, almost falling over one of the chairs, but Grant caught her in time. “Hey, there, easy,” he said, smiling at her in that fond, somewhat condescending way of his, the one that said she was a child who needed looking after.“Grant, what the hell are you doing here?”“Oh, come on, don’t be like that,” Grant said. “I know you’re sore, but seriously, I’ve been trying to get in touch with you.”“When someone doesn’t take your calls that means they don’t want to talk to you, not that they want you to break into their house,” Daisy spluttered. Her heart was going a mile a minute, she was still cold, and now she was angry.“You’re being unreasonable,” Grant said. “I wanted to pay you back for bailing me out, and how am I supposed to pay you back if you won’t talk to me?”Grant was… making good on a debt? What universe did she wake up in this morning. “You could have mailed me a check,” she said, crossly, not wanting to admit that maybe, maybe she was overreacting. Although him pointing out that she was unreasonable didn’t help his case any.“I think I deserve a chance, Daze,” Grant said, giving her his best puppy dog look. It was unfair, truly it was, that he was so damn attractive. Was it easier to be mad at people if they weren’t so easy on the eyes? Maybe.“Haven’t you had as many chances as you deserve?” Daisy wondered. “And why do I have to be the one to give it to you? You left, you were done. We were done, Grant. I bailed you out from some misplaced sense of… I don’t know, lingering affection.”“You still like me,” Grant said. “Look, I came all this way, and it’s not really my fault that you still leave your spare key behind the rock near the henhouse. So… I didn’t break in, either.”“You weren’t given permission to use that key,” Daisy protested.“Why are we doing this? I came to pay you back what I owe, not to get in a fight with you,” Grant said. He was being… very reasonable. Calm even.Maybe she was being edgy, hostile for no reason. Daisy sat down in a chair. Her bones hurt too much to stand up even if they were going to stop arguing.“Okay, Grant,” she said. “You can pay me back what you owe. Sorry.”Grant gave her that wide, fond smile again. “There’s my girl,” he said, and Daisy didn’t want to be pleased that she’d made him happy. It was just relief, she decided, that they weren’t going to have to fight about this. “Look, here’s a check, it covers half what you paid out for me, and in another week or so, I can get you the rest. Things are starting to turn around for me, honey. Promise.”“California not go so well,” Daisy surmised.“Yeah, it was--” He was going to say more, but Daisy’s stomach complained. Loudly. “You… you don’t look so good, come to think of it. You having a bad day?”Daisy nodded. “Yeah, I was gonna stay in bed all day, but I got hungry.” She was absolutely not going to think about how badly she’d have been scared if she had stayed in bed all day, and if Grant had decided to drop the check off in her bedroom. But Grant wouldn’t have hurt her, she knew that. Well, he didn’t mean to-- sometimes he was just a bit rough.“Oh, I can make you some breakfast, if you want, just… you just sit there,” Grant said, like he was giving her permission for something she was already doing. “And let me do all the work.” Like she was incapable of making breakfast. He didn’t even ask her what she wanted, just set the kettle on the stove and started heating water for oatmeal.She didn’t want oatmeal, she wanted eggs and toast.But Grant was being nice, and he was trying to help. She peeked at the check that he’d written her. Almost half, ha. More like a little over a quarter of it. Cheapskate.
You didn’t even expect to get any, what are you complaining about?
She was too tired and in too much pain to figure it out. When she asked nicely if Grant could get her a glass of juice and her pills, he did it with a smile, and then gave her a bowl of oatmeal. Walnut raisin. Ug. Raisins were evil. And she didn’t like crunchy bits in things; her teeth weren’t in great shape either and having to be careful with every mouthful that she didn’t get a nut wedged in the wrong spot.He’s being nice to you, the least you could do is be grateful, she told herself.“You’re quiet today,” Grant observed.“Just tired, I guess,” she said. “I probably ought to just go back to bed.”“Here, tell you what,” Grant said. “I’ll stay for the afternoon, just until your parents are back. In case you need anything. Don’t worry about me, I’ll watch television or something. You won’t even know I’m here at all.”There was something wrong with that, Daisy thought, but between the pain medication and her general state of mind, she didn’t know what. “Yeah, yeah, okay, thanks, Grant.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“That’s a girl,” Robbie said. Lucy didn’t seem inclined to bite his ear off, or stomp on his feet. She did push him up against the side of the stall, leaning her considerable weight against his chest and kept him pinned there for a while.But that almost seemed affectionate, the horse version of a hug, and she tolerated him patting her shoulder while she did it.Progress.He gave her a last pat when she moved away and left the stall to fetch curries and brushes. Grooming was an important trust routine, as well as being good for the horse. Community grooming, like monkeys. Robbie grinned to himself.The tack room was filled with saddles, bridles, smelled of glycerin soap.Large rubber buckets, labeled with sharpie, held curry combs, picks for the underside of the horse’s hooves, dandy, body, and face brushes. He grabbed a kit bag, filling it with the supplies and then a handful of the tiny, “reject” apples that the orchards mostly threw away because people wouldn’t eat them. The horses, on the other hand, were crazy about them.“All right, you want to look pretty, miss?”Lucy whickered, sticking a velvety nose over the edge of her stall, and Robbie slipped her an apple. He was going to have to go after her teeth for a good cleaning, eventually, but at the moment, he didn’t want to do that. Even horses who hadn’t been beaten head-shy by a bad trainer, could be touchy about their teeth.Lucy let him back into the stall.Robbie offered her the grooming kit, each brush and pick, each item, for her inspection. She snuffled at the equipment, tried to bite the dandy brush. She threw it onto the straw floor, pawing at the ground.“Yeah? You don’t like having your legs brushed? I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on that,” Robbie told her.Curry first; a black rubber circle with a strap on the back; the inside were three circles of blunt teeth. He worked in small sections along Lucy’s back, scrubbing in round arcs, getting the loose hairs out, stimulating the horse’s skin, shaking free any fly mites or eggs that might have gotten into the mare’s coarse hair.Horse hair flew in little clouds, and Lucy looked enormously fluffy by the time he was done with her off side. The near side, where a rider would mount on the left (a distant remnant of the time when soldiers would mount with a sword, and didn’t want to smack their mounts with the sheath), made her a little flinchy. Her skin rippled and she shied away from him.Every time Lucy shied away, Robbie would offer her the brush. “See, this isn’t gonna hurt you, girl,” he said, soothing.“You have a good, gentle hand with her,” Jemma observed. She held her hand out flat, offering Lucy a-- looked like an oatmeal cookie.“Trying to bribe her into submission? She already likes me better, you’re too late,” Robbie teased.“Good to know where I fall on the spectrum,” Jemma said. “Daisy’s not feeling well today, I don’t think. Why don’t you give a tap on the door after lunch and see if she needs anything.”Robbie’s eyebrow went up. “What are you doing? She knows you better than me.”“Daisy-- needs a friend,” Jemma said.“Are you matchmaking?”Jemma opened her mouth a few times, closed it again without saying anything. Finally-- “I just think she could use a wider circle of friends.”“Is that what the cool kids are calling it these days?” He didn’t mind; unlike some of the blind dates the trailer park tias would set him up on, Jemma had Daisy’s best interests in mind, not Robbie’s.“If you don’t find her company delightful--”“I’ll go see if she wants lunch, or anything,” Robbie said, shaking his head.“Good, you do that,” Jemma said, firmly.That was a little odd, really, when Robbie went back to grooming. Jemma was meddling, there was no doubt about that, but there was an extra bit of fervor to it. If Daisy was ill, really ill, then wouldn’t someone have stayed home with her?Of course, Shield was a working ranch, her parents would have been at their day’s duty.Robbie couldn’t quite get the expression on Jemma’s face out of his mind, the way her forehead had a little wrunkle between her brows, and the way it smoothed out when Robbie said he’d go up to the house.Finally, Robbie gave Lucy a wipe down with a lightly oiled cloth. She was as handsome and well groomed as she would get, at least for the day.“All right, girl,” he said, “gonna go check on your mistress, see if she’s fallen down the well or something.” Robbie didn’t make a very good guardian angel, or a Lassie for that matter. But he was what was available.Robbie didn’t bother to unpack the grooming kit; he’d need to wash all the brushes out. Save it for later.He almost forgot his lunch bucket, and that would have made him look ridiculous, go up to share lunch with a sick girl and expect her to make him a sandwich? Idiot, he called himself.The house wasn’t that far from the barn, but Daisy’s illness would have kept her house bound. When he got there, he rapped on the door a few times, with no answer, but the second time he knocked, the door opened up. Someone hadn’t closed it properly.“Daisy?”Robbie stuck his head into the mudroom; piles of shoes in boxes near the door, the washer and dryer with their loads of clothing. A basket on top of the dryer was empty. Robbie checked, looked like the washer load was done, and ready for a dry.Might as well give a girl a hand, he decided.Robbie washed his hands in the mudroom’s sink, put the dry clothes in the basket, and transferred the wet to the dryer.He grabbed the laundry basket; if Daisy wasn’t up for lunch, he’d fold the laundry and leave it in the basket.Robbie knew the basic layout of the house; it wasn’t too complicated, and his madre had been a maid in one of the uptown houses. They were all the same, really.Movement from the office, a quiet shuffle of papers. Hah, maybe she was feeling better. “Hey gi-- the fuck, man?”That self-same asshole from the bar the other night, what had Daisy said his name was? Didn’t matter, that J. Crewe asshole was in Coulson’s office, thumbing through some files.The guy jumped about two yards; he’d have gone further if there wasn’t a wall in the way; startled, and going all the way to hostile in a moment. A spray of photographs, mostly a younger Daisy’s collection of school pictures, one of her on horseback, another with her standing in front of a ribbon wall.“What the actual fuck are you doing here, does Daisy--”“Grant, wha--”Daisy appeared in the hallway, wearing nothing but a long tee, her legs bare, and long and shapely, and it was really wrong of him to be noticing that at a time like the present. “Robbie?”“This dick’s in your dad’s office, rummaging through his shit,” Robbie said, pointing, although his heart was sinking somewhere into his boots. She’d called out for Grant, she obviously knew he was here. Still, sleeping with the boss’s daughter was no excuse for stealing.“What the fuck is he doing, sneaking around here like some sort of rapist?” Grant demanded, pointing an accusing finger at Robbie, and suddenly Robbie was wondering if Jemma had suspected that Grant was here. Sent him up to check up on Daisy, yeah, the hell?Daisy lowered her face into her hands, the splint rings glittering along her fingers, a delicate contrast to the amber tones of her skin. “Can we stop with the yelling?” she asked, plaintive. “I feel like crap. What’s up, Robbie?”“I came up to see if you wanted to have lunch with me,” Robbie said, baldly. “Jemma said you were feeling poorly-- and then this--”“Why do you have my laundry basket?”“Was going to fold it for you, give you a hand,” Robbie said.Grant was pushing the photos into a pile, went to tuck them inside his jacket.“Hey, what-- what are you--” Daisy moved into the office, hand outstretched to grab the pictures. Grant smacked out at her, knocking her hand aside and she hit the desk with the heel of her hand, hissing in sudden pain. “The hell!”Robbie acted without thinking. The laundry went onto the floor like a scattering of snowdrifts. Within a breath, he had Grant pinned to the desk, arm wrenched up behind his back. “The lady asked you a question. What are you doing with those?”“Look, I know,” Grant said, gritting his teeth. “It’s over with us, I know. I just… wanted something to remember you by.” He didn’t even look at Robbie, just gave Daisy an imploring stare.Daisy twitched, still rubbing at her hand thoughtfully. “Let him go,” she said, and Robbie did, stepping back and letting his shoulder tense, just in case Grant was stupid enough to come up swinging. For a moment, Robbie thought he was going to, and even if it was perfectly justified, he was probably going to get fired if he got into a fistfight in the owner’s study.“Go,” Daisy told the room and they both looked at her to determine which one she meant. Grant dodged around her, the photos still in his hand. A moment later, the door slammed.Robbie pursed his lips, raised an eyebrow. "I could catch him, if you wanted to call the cops?"“I just want him to go,” Daisy said, and she sounded frustrated and exhausted all at once. “I don’t want to fight again.”“Again?”Robbie held out his hand, palm up, and Daisy hesitated before laying her hand over his. The skin was already going red and swelling. “You think he broke this?”Daisy shrugged, winced. Her face went through some amazing emotional acrobatics. “Probably,” she admitted. “Can we just… let it go today?”“Today,” Robbie promised, because she needed help, not him going off chasing after her ex. “Let’s get you down to Fitz, he can--”“I don’t think I can walk down to the barn. Not today.”“I can carry you,” Robbie told her. He scooped the laundry back into the basket so he didn’t have to look at her if she winced about that, too.It was probably just a sign of how much pain she was in that Daisy didn’t protest. “Okay.”They were about halfway to the barn, Daisy a neat little package in his arms, when she said, “Thanks for helping. With, the laundry, and this… and Grant.” She said that last bit even lower, like she was worried that someone was listening.“I’ll let it go today, girlfriend,” Robbie said, fervently. “But if I see him again--”Daisy just bit her lip and didn’t argue.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Turned out Grant had, in fact, broken her wrist.“Well, even on a normal person,” Fitz said with a sigh, “this is a tough break t’ heal up. The capitate bone is in the very center of the wrist.” He pointed to the films that he’d taken. “There’s only one little vessel that carries blood to this area, which means that healing is time consuming. Six weeks, at least. Immobile.”“Fitz--”Fitz raised a hand to stave off her protests. “It’s broken, Daisy. The only other thing you can hope ta do about it is surgery. Little bit of that composite organic polysaccharides goop in there, close the crack. But still, surgery requires time to heal, too. Four weeks recovery from surgery, and medical expenses, or six weeks in a cast. Tha’s your choice.”“I couldn’t just--” Daisy started to complain but the look on Fitz’s face stopped her. “It’s really bad, isn’t it?”“No’ as bad as it could have been,” Fitz said. “I can pu’ the cast on to just past your knuckles and you’ll have partial mobility. And we can leave your thumb out. I’ll get the 3D printer to fabricate it, it’ll even look nice. You can shower an’ everythin’. Wash your hair.”Daisy sighed. There’d been a time, when she was a girl, where she couldn’t shower on her own, or even at all. She’d taken a tumble and broken her leg in four places, her arm in two, and the casts weren’t nearly as good as more modern ones.Melinda had to bird-bathe her every few days, and while that would be more embarrassing as an adult, it hadn’t exactly been humiliation-free as a twelve year old, either.“All right,” she said. Fitz nodded. It would take a while to fabricate the cast-- a few hours, and in the meanwhile she was sort of stuck doing nothing. Fitz had wrapped her wrist in a temporary but any actual chores would be right out.Robbie hadn’t said anything the whole time, just standing there. It was strange, though, how his standing there seemed less fraught with meaning than when Grant just stood there. Like Robbie wasn’t waiting for her acknowledgement, just providing comfort.“It’s good,” she said, just to hear herself talk. “The 3D cast, I mean. Old plaster stuff, that could do all sorts of crap to your skin, and it’s impossible to bathe in. I got sores one time that I broke my leg.” Daisy clamped her mouth shut, no one wanted to talk about how filthy and infected her skin had gotten, or how bad it itched and how doctors told her not to complain, it was fine… just to find out when they cut the damn thing off, that she’d had a very slight cut before the cast had gone on, which had gotten infected, and actually left scars. She put her hand lightly over the spot.“Yeah?” Robbie said, as if he was actually interested. “My little brother, Gabe, he’s in a wheelchair, and we gotta take special care with his skin, make sure his clothes fit properly. Otherwise, he won’t feel it if his circulation gets cut off or anything.”“Oh? What happened to him?” Daisy asked before she could even think not to. “If you don’t mind me asking, of course.”“I don’t mind, girlfriend,” Robbie said.She liked that he called her that; it was cute, and somehow not condescending like a lot of nicknames. Grant called her baby all the time and she resented it. He could call her girlfriend and she could call him boyfriend and it didn’t seem like it meant anything, except that they were equals. Partners.“Because, I’m not just being nosy, I mean, I am being nosy, but I’m also interested--”“No one really knows what happened,” Robbie said. “Gabe… doesn’t remember. He had a head injury, too. You know, he was big into sports, kind of a dare devil and all, wild child. They -- some stablehands, you know -- found him in one of the paddocks. Head injury, out cold, he’d been stepped on by some of the horses. Broken back. He’s immobile from the waist down.”“But he doesn’t remember anything? I mean, that’s good, because it sounds scary, but what was he doing in there in the first place?”“Gabe doesn’t remember anything after school that afternoon,” Robbie said. He shook his head, and Daisy wasn’t sure if Robbie was just gesturing, or if he didn’t believe his brother. If Gabe had been doing something stupid, like trying to ride a green-broke horse, he might not have wanted to get in trouble. But really, how much more trouble could you get, with a broken back?“Huh,” Daisy said. She vaguely remembered hearing about it, come to think-- “This was at Cal’s place, wasn’t it?”“Yeah, which is nowhere that Gabe ever should have been.” Robbie paused, went to say something else, and his phone buzzed. He tugged it out of his pocket and checked it. “Crap. That’s Gabe now. The axle broke on his wheelchair, he needs a ride.”“I have a truck,” Daisy volunteered.“You can’t drive right now, girl--”“But you can. I can’t do anything until Fitz gets the cast made. And we all won’t fit in your hot rod. So, let’s take my truck, I can meet your brother, and you can make sure I don’t do anything stupid while waiting for you to get back.”***The axle on Gabe’s wheelchair was, indeed, broken, but it didn’t look anything like an accident. It more looked like someone had been standing, and perhaps jumping on it. The seat canvas was torn, too, but that might just have been the pressure.Gabe looked a little less than in great shape, too, filthy and his cheek and chin were scraped.“What happened?”“I just fell, Robbie, okay?” Gabe had that stubborn set to his mouth, he wasn’t going to snitch on whoever pushed him and broke his wheelchair.Not that it mattered, much. Even if Gabe told, it wasn’t like he could go to the cops and do anything other than cause trouble. The gang -- whoever they were -- would back each other up, and if there weren’t any neutral witnesses, and it seemed like, with bullying, there never were, the cops couldn’t do anything.Even if they wanted to. Which often, they really didn’t.But it might have been nice to know who to pick a fight with, next time.“Come on, Robbie, just… it’s fine, okay? I didn’t want to go all the way to the ramp, so I tried going over the sidewalk.”Daisy, who so far hadn’t said anything beyond hi, looked around, curious. “And you got your chair all the way back here by yourself? That’s pretty impressive.”“Who are you again?”“Daisy Johnson,” Daisy said. She offered Gabe her hand in its cast. “And I know all about not wanting the people you care about to worry about you, so your secret’s safe with me.”“I don’t have any secrets,” Gabe insisted and his eyes flitted from Daisy to Robbie and back, a little frantic. So, the kid did have some secrets. Not that he was going to spill them to Robbie, especially not to some strange girl that he just met. “Didn’t I see you the other week?”“Yeah, my ex called me at fuck o’clock in the morning to come bail him out,” Daisy admitted, and there was a flash of triumph on Gabe’s face for having successfully changed the subject. “It’s the last favor I’m going to do for that guy, though.”“Yeah, how are you doing that?”“Badly, to be fair,” she said. Daisy tipped the wheelchair and looked under it. “You know, I know a bit about welding, and we’ve got a full blacksmithing rig back at the ranch. I bet I could fix this-- My dad, Phil, he did go-kart racing when he was younger, so if I can’t, bet he can.” She scowled at the wheelchair, like its cheap, second-hand nature offended her in some way.“Yeah, can he put an engine on it, that’d be super cool,” Gabe said. “I kinda miss being able to go fast.”“You couldn’t go fast even before you had a chair. Slowest outfielder in history,” Robbie teased.“You don’t need to run fast if you can hit far,” Gabe said.“So, like here’s the thing,” Daisy said. She was texting furiously, thumbs moving nimbly over the screen. “We might actually be able to put a go-kart engine on this, or you know, make you a special cart, but--”“There’s always a butt coming,” Gabe muttered.“Well, an electric wheelchair is expensive, and if you’ve already got people knocking over your stuff and generally being mean, we don’t want to just give it to them, might as well gift wrap it.”“It shouldn’t be happening in the first place, none of it should,” Robbie burst. “Why do people have to bully a kid in a wheelchair?”“You can’t fight my fights for me, hermano,” Gabe said. He eyed Daisy. “So, what have you got in mind?”“You come on out to the ranch, let us fit you up with a hot rod chair, and you can use it on the ranch? At least until we get this bully problem fixed up,” Daisy said. She looked up at Robbie, “you know, if that’s okay with your brother?”“Robbie, can we, please, yeah, we can do that, it’s cool--”“We’re not your charity case, girlfriend,” Robbie said, because he felt like he needed to put up some sort of protest. They’d already given him a job, more just seemed like pushing it.“Exchange of favors,” Daisy said. “You’re helping me with Grant, I’m helping your brother. It’s all fair, comes out in the wash, right?”Robbie chewed his lip. On the one hand, charity burned. On the other, well, if Gabe was going out to the Shield ranch to play go-carts, he wasn’t going to be on the streets between school and home. He’d be someplace safe, having fun, where Robbie could keep an eye on him.“Hey, Robbie.” A slender brown hand came down on Robbie’s arm. “You’re not still beating yourself up about this, right?”“What’s that?” Daisy asked.“Robbie blames himself, so the-- this,” Gabe said. “It wasn’t your fault.”“How do you know, you don’t even remember it--”“I know enough,” Gabe said. “I went to the barn. Don’t remember why, but… you wouldn’t have been able to talk me out of it.”“So, okay. Dad’s headed back to the shop, he’ll meet us there in about an hour. You know, if you want to. If nothing else, let me get this chair fixed for you, so you still have your mobility aids. I don’t know how you feel about yours, I personally hated mine for a long time, but we got them all jazzed up and pretty, and I feel better about them now. We could do some decorations. I got all kinds of washi tape and spray paint.”“Yeah, that… that sounds fun, right Gabe?”“Yeah, it’ll be good,” Gabe agreed.Daisy just beamed at both of them, her smile brightening up the day. Robbie couldn’t help staring at her, his heart squeezing a little under his ribs. And then--
Oh. Oh, shit.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Hey Phil,” Daisy chirped, trying for cheerful as they walked into the shop. Robbie was carrying Gabe like a backpack and Daisy had hauled the broken chair into Phil’s workshop. She noticed, but decided to pretend that she didn’t, the way Phil’s eyes tightened just a little bit.Her adopted parents had never mandated that she call them Mom and Dad, but she had. For a long time, she had. And while she’d always known she was adopted, she hadn’t really given much thought to what that meant until she was twelve.Strangely enough, it hadn’t even started with her.It had started with a classmate. Who was also adopted. An overseas baby -- from Korea -- and he had opinions about adoption, particularly white families who went in, let their wars and their capitalist freedoms mess with other countries, no concerns as to who else was getting hurt as long as they got their oil, or kept their idealism.“I was adopted by some white couple because they could just buy me,” he would say. “And I don’t know anything about where I come from, or who I am, or what I could have been. Saving these poor orphans, bullshit. They’re the ones that made me an orphan to start with.”Daisy was a teenager, she was young, she was angry with her parents for existing and for not being able to fix everything.When she’d asked about her parents, she’d gotten the completely honest answer of, “we don’t know, it was a closed adoption.”But she hadn’t wanted to hear it, and after a bad fight with Phil and Melinda about something entirely unrelated, she started calling them Phil and Melinda.Phil had never insisted, or gotten angry.He had, once, when she was sixteen, sat her down to talk to her about it, and that he considered himself as her father, and that any time she wanted to switch back, she could, and he wouldn’t make her feel awkward about it.But by that time, it was habit.Sometimes she remembered and said Dad, and sometimes she forgot and said Dad.But she always noticed when she forgot and said Phil. Because Phil tried to stifle that look of heartbreak and never quite succeeded.To make up for that bit of thoughtlessness without drawing attention to it -- or apologizing, because she didn’t want to do that, either, for reasons that never quite made sense to her logically -- she hugged her dad and stayed hanging around his neck, like she was a baby koala. “So, these are my new friends, Robbie and Gabe Reyes.”“You’re making friends with the staff?” Phil said, eyebrow going up and his mouth quirking in that sardonic way of his. “What will the neighbors think?”“That we’re normal people, just like everyone else?” Daisy suggested. “Don’t mind him, he thinks he’s funny.”“I’m hilarious,” Phil said. He offered Robbie a nod and shook Gabe’s hand. Jokes aside, meeting them as people instead of employees had a significance.“Just not today,” Daisy agreed amiably.“Underappreciated in my time,” Phil bemoaned. “So, if you wanna just hop over here and have a seat, I’ll take a look at your chair.”Carefully, Robbie put Gabe down in the car that Phil had indicated. Lola. Huh. A convertible, Phil had the top down and the door open, so it was just like a normal seat, or as normal as you could get in a workshop-slash-garage, but“Wow,” Daisy said. “Usually he doesn’t let people touch Lola.”“I’m attached to my car,” Phil said, “but I’ve seen your brother’s, so I think we understand each other.”“Don’t damage the car or you’ll skin me, got it,” Gabe said.“Smart kid.”Just like that, everyone was friends. Robbie took a deep breath, relaxed. She could practically see the tension moving out of his neck and shoulders. For some reason, the release of stress made Robbie seem younger. He was young, Daisy thought. Probably not yet twenty-five, although she’d never asked.Daisy gave Phil an extra squeeze, then watched as Robbie climbed onto one of Phil’s workstools, his jeans clinging exquisitely to well-muscled rider’s thighs. Daisy swallowed, mouth suddenly dry as she watched him.“So, yeah, this is fucked up--” she glanced at Phil to see if he was going to make an issue of her swearing, but he didn’t do that either. She struggled to flip the chair. An older, cheaper model, it weighed a lot and it was awkward, but Phil let her do it on her own, which she appreciated more than she could say.Honestly, Phil deserved her to be a little more self-aware.“So I see,” he said. “Shouldn’t take long to fix though. This is good metal, not that cheap mix. A little time with the acetylene torch, she’ll be good as new.”“Better than new. Let me get my kit.” On the far side of the room, she had a clip-top plastic storage case with stickers and spray paints and stencils. She even had stickers that looked like racing flames. “We can start with the leathers and wheels while Dad fixes that axle.”“Thanks, Daisy. Mr. Coulson. I really appreciate this,” Gabe said, leaning forward enough that she was mildly concerned that he’d spill out of the car. But Gabe had a strong grip, and good balance. He was also tougher than he looked; probably tougher than his brother was letting him prove, and using his arms, he climbed out of the car and scooted over to where Daisy was digging through her things. He shot a quick, triumphant glance at Robbie when no one stopped him, or offered to assist.Let her ask for help if she needs it, Phil. Melinda’s voice came back to her. She hated asking for help, hated being thought of as weak and sickly. Even if she was. Especially when she was.It was part of love, she decided, watching Robbie as he watched his brother. The people who love him want to help. It’s not a burden. She smiled down at the teen boy. “So, I have kitten stickers--” Gabe made a face. “And some flames, and… oh, look, snakes and skulls.”“I’ll go for the snakes and skulls,” Gabe said. And then took a kitten sticker anyway, affixing it to his shirt like a name tag. “And for today, a kitten. In like, solidarity for your ugly-ass crutches.”“You haven’t even seen my ugly-ass crutches,” Daisy said, joking about her aids the way she never had before.“Don’t gotta,” Gabe said. “I bet they’re all fluffy. Not cool.”“Fluffy,” Daisy agreed. “And a hundred and ten percent cool.”***Gabe couldn’t shut up about Daisy for the entire ride home. Or when he wasn’t talking about Daisy, he was crowing about his new decked out chair. Or how cool Phil Coulson was, working with heated metal like that, building a go-kart wheelchair, just for the challenge of the project, and that Gabe would get to benefit from it, that was just cinnamon on the churro. So to speak.Like a real kid, Robbie thought, and then scolded himself for ableist thinking. Of course Gabe was a real kid, of course he wanted to do kid things. They kept telling Gabe that his life hadn’t ended just because he ended up in the chair.And it was that just that was the painful part, like just, only, barely. A little bit broken. Only half of him wasn’t working anymore, he was half good.Gabe isn’t a car that you crashed, asshole, Robbie chided himself, but it didn’t do any good. He still looked at his brother and saw a kid whose future had been cut and shaped to a narrow box.Stephen Hawking spent his whole life in a wheelchair, Robbie reminded him, and look at everything he did.Robbie let out his breath with a long sigh, trying to keep up with the conversation. He moved on from Daisy and Coulson to the blacksmith shop, to some of the horses they’d seen, to wondering if it would be possible to ride a horse, now that his back was broken, did Robbie think a saddle could be rigged up for him?“Oh, yeah, probably,” Robbie said. “But we don’t have a horse, shortstuff. Which makes it a little difficult.” Robbie had his own saddle; he’d be reworking it soon to fit the back of whatever race-horse he was going to seat. Lucy, if they could get her regentled in time. Maybe Coulson had a different runner, if-- “Yeah, yeah, sure.”“I knew it!” Gabe crowed.“Wait, what?” What had they been talking about that had Gabe so excited, while Robbie was woolgathering on races he may or may not sit for.“You think she’s cute.”“Lucy?”“No, idiot, the girl,” Gabe said. “Daisy. You couldn’t take your damn eyes off her.”“Yeah, my choices are look at a balding old dude, you, or a girl, of course I’m looking at her,” Robbie said, even though his heart was pounding more than it should. Enough that he felt it in his throat, his ears.“No, you like her,” Gabe opined.“She’s okay.”“I think if you actually didn’t like her, you’d say so,” Gabe said. “Which means you do. You like her like her.”“What is this, fifth grade?”“You gonna ask her out?”“She’s my boss’s daughter,” Robbie protested. “Besides, she just got out of a crappy relationship. If I ask her out now, she’s going to think I’m one of those damn vultures who go around preying on girls that are lonely.”“So, you do like her,” Gabe circled around to that again. Because he was a little shit.“Yeah, okay, mamasita is pretty,” Robbie said. “Out of my league.”“Not at all,” Gabe reassured him. “She was looking back. Why do you think she’s being so nice to me?”“Uh, because you’re a cool kid and she’s a nice lady?”“And she likes you,” Gabe said. “What you need, hermano, is a plan. Gotta be smooth. Gotta be suave. Gotta have moves.”“If you say something about that damn shoulder touch, I will put skim milk in your cereal,” Robbie threatened.“No, that’s Uncle Eli, not me.”“I don’t need a plan, because I’m not going to ask my boss’s daughter on a date,” Robbie insisted.“But I have a plan,” Gabe said, just tossing that out like some sort of conversation grenade.Robbie got most of the way home before he turned to his brother. “What’s the plan?”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The day was cloudy, the wind high.For reasons that Daisy never could explain, windy, rainy days made her feel a little more alive. Something about a day when people didn’t look up, didn’t see her, were just in a hurry to get where they were going, those were good days.Cal had a gazebo outside the office building.Ostensibly it was for smokers, so they could comply with the law about smoking more than twenty feet away from the front door, but no one enforced it, and so Daisy mostly walked past the gauntlet of choking smoke.But that did mean that the gazebo didn’t stink of smoke and usually was unoccupied.There was a man-made pond by the building, with a little water fountain in it. Some ducks and a few turtles that made their home there. A little bit of the back-east, Cal called it.Daisy liked to eat her lunch there, when she could manage the walk. It wasn’t a hike, by anyone’s standards except her own. But at least half the days she worked, she couldn’t make it out there. Or knew she could make it out there, but wouldn’t be able to make it back, and she’d have rather shot herself in the foot than ask Cal to come out and carry her back to the office. Probably because she knew he would do it.The ducks had long since learned she was a soft touch, and they came up, quacking and looking for a handout. There weren’t lots of fish in the pond -- if any, really. Cal would have had to keep it stocked, and that didn’t seem worth the effort, for what was essentially a hole dug in the ground. Just keeping it full of water was probably wasteful.Daisy kept old frozen peas and cut up lettuce for the ducks -- bread crumbs weren’t good for them, long term, and they’d make for a moldy pond bottom, over time.“It is a nice prospect,” a voice said, as Daisy threw another handful of peas for the ducks to argue over. She nearly jumped. She hadn’t known anyone was there. The weather should have kept any casual strollers away.Not that people usually just walked around on Cal’s property.“If you’re into rainy days and spoiled ducks, then yeah,” Daisy said. She glanced out of the corner of her eye to see a woman. She would have been handsome if it weren’t for the scarring on her face, a rough cheek that looked like someone had taken a cheese grater to it.Road rash. Daisy had seen that before; sometimes from jockeys who took a bad fall, or motorcyclists. Usually she saw it on arms, or legs.She didn’t stare.The woman turned all the way to face her, and it was almost as if she wore a half-mask of scars. Like a real-life phantom of the opera.“It’s nice to meet you,” the woman said. “Daisy Johnson.”“Do-- I don’t--” Daisy spluttered, because she hadn’t told the woman her name. Of course, who else would she be, with her silver finger bracers and her walking cane. Most of the locals knew who worked for Cal and who didn’t.“Jiaying,” the woman said.“You called-- a few weeks ago,” Daisy said.“Yes,” she replied.There was a long, uncomfortable silence between them, and Daisy didn’t want to be the one to break it. That seemed like admitting that she was losing, or something. The silence stretched out like taffy, like it would go on forever as Daisy ate her sandwich, tossed more peas to the ducks. She wasn’t going to-- fuck, she absolutely was going to.“You know me,” Daisy said. She didn’t ask it, there was no point in asking.“Yes, I know you,” Jiaying said.A terrible suspicion grew in Daisy’s mind. She returned her attention to the ducks. A crust of bread followed the last handful of peas. The ducks could have a treat today. Daisy wasn’t hungry anymore.“You know me, too,” Jiaying suggested.“You’re my… my birth mother,” Daisy said, dully. She’d imagined this moment a dozen times or more. What adopted child hadn’t? It had never gone like this, a woman just walking up to her and making an announcement.“Yes.”“I don’t need one of those,” Daisy said. “A mother. I have one.” Fierce anger burned, coiling around her spine and giving her strength.“Yes,” Jiaying said. That was a fact, and perhaps Jiaying knew it.“So, what do you want?”“Who gave you the name, Johnson?”Daisy shrugged one shoulder. “Someone at the hospital, I guess. I had to have some last name, and they use Doe for corpses.”“That’s true,” Jiaying said. “I would have thought Smith, maybe. Or you might have taken your new family’s name.”“They’re not new,” Daisy said. “I’ve been Phil and Melinda’s daughter since I was born, practically. There was no old family--”“Then why keep the name Johnson, that belongs to no one?”“Because it’s mine,” Daisy said. “Someone gave it to me, and it was the first gift I ever had. And it’s mine.”“I named you Daisy. Chuju.” Jiaying said, digging in her bag. She pulled out a small, folded piece of paper with a set of Chinese characters on it and offered it to Daisy, who didn’t take it. After a few minutes of silent waiting, Jiaying put it back in her bag.Daisy noticed she still hadn’t answered the question. What did her birth mother want; no one with a blind adoption, who used the safe harbor laws to keep from being identified, randomly wandered up to her child and introduced herself. Maybe Jiaying was dying and wanted some sort of closure.If so, that was damned selfish of her, because Daisy didn’t have closure, that was for sure. Daisy had a whole lot of gaping wound right now. Or money. That seemed to motivate a lot of people to do things that they thought were done with.She inspected her lunch box, as if there might be something else in it, aside from a few empty wrappers and crumbs.Jiaying patted Daisy’s arm, very gently. “You, be good, take care of yourself.”Like any mother would, Daisy suspected. “Do-- do I have any brothers or sisters?” Maybe Jiaying had a whole other family, somewhere else. People who might understand her, or not. It was hard to say. If they’d grown up with their mom, they might resent an interloper.“No,” Jiaying said. “I never married.”Well, like what did that have to do with anything? “Thanks for telling me,” Daisy said.“So strange, you ending up here,” Jiaying said.“I guess,” Daisy said. Where else was she supposed to go? Everything was very convenient for her parents to adopt her from the local hospital, without shipping a baby all the way around the country for someone else to adopt. And Daisy liked her home.Would she like it, she wondered, if she’d grown up somewhere else?Jiaying stood up, opened her mouth as if she was going to say something else, and then closed it again. Without taking her leave or giving Daisy any contact information or anything, she turned and walked away.Daisy sat there for a while, watching her leave. Jiaying went out to the parking lot, got in a small, brown car that was more rusty than brown, and drove off. She didn’t wave. Or beep. Or even look back.Daisy knew, because she watched the entire time.Daisy watched the empty space for a little longer.And then she pulled out her phone. Hesitated with her fingers over the screen. She probably should call her parents first. Instead, she hit the button for her boss.“Daisy? Did you fall?”“Cal, yeah, hi,” she said. “No, no, I’m I’m fine, just finished up having lunch. But...” She looked up, knowing that Cal knew where she ate lunch and waving to his window. She couldn’t see in, but somehow, she just knew he’d be looking. “See? I’m okay. Just… I got some unexpected news and I’d like to take a personal day for the rest of the afternoon?”“Sure, sure,” Cal said, easy going as he always was with her. “We’re a little behind on those mailing lists, so if you could come in over the weekend, maybe, and finish them up-- what happened?”When she looked back on things later, she didn’t know why she told him. It really wasn’t Cal’s business.“Uh, my mother-- my birth mother,” Daisy said. “Contacted me.”There was a long, practically pregnant pause. Something had changed, and Daisy didn’t know what. It wasn’t like everyone didn’t know she was adopted.“I see,” he said. “Sure, go ahead. I’ll see you Saturday.”“Absolutely, thank you,” Daisy told him, and then disconnected.A moment later, she brought up her texts.
You busy?
New text from Reyes: Not even. You need something?I think I need a friend. Buy you lunch, my treat.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Robbie hadn’t really cared where the cafe was where Daisy wanted to eat, and walking into the little J-pop style tea room and macaron patisserie was somewhat jarring. The colors were all bright and cheerful and there was Babymetal playing in the background. Some of Robbie’s friends had mocked the teenage girls who sang death metal about chocolate, but Robbie didn’t much care. Whatever made people happy.Daisy was already there with a plate full of assorted cookies in front of her and a cup of-- something she called matcha. “What’s your favorite flavoring?”“Uh, chocolate mint?”Daisy ordered for him, a frozen boba tea with chocolate mint. “It’s like the tea equivalent of a Starbucks frappe, really. There’s some tea involved, but it’s mostly covered up with sugar and flavoring. Do you like tapioca?”“Rice pudding? Yeah, I mean, I guess.”She nodded at a question the server put to her. “There. Hope you’ll like it.”“How’d you even find this place?”“Culture shopping,” Daisy said, and offered him the plate of little cookies. Robbie picked up a yellow one and discovered it was chewier than it looked with a cream filling. “Excuse?”She held up a dark green cookie, considered it for a moment, took a bite. Chewed and chased it with a sip of tea.“I knew I was at least half-Asian,” she said, “and my-- Melinda, my mom… my adopted mom-- she’s Chinese, but raised American. Obviously, Phil’s your typical midwestern white guy. So, you know, I’m raised American, and I don’t. I mean, you know how it is. You don’t really fit in. You’re always the token Asian -- or the token black girl. There’s rarely more than one of you in any group. Oh, sorry, we’re full up on girls of color, check with the next lunch table down the row.”Robbie shrugged. “There’s quite a lot of Latinos in the park, where I live.”“And they’re your friends whether you like them or not, because there’s really no one else,” Daisy said.“Ah, some of the crew’s okay,” Robbie said. “But I get where you’re coming from, girl. Nothing like a human being to stuff people in boxes, right?”“So, yeah-- I did this, and I went through a hard-core wouldn’t eat anything but Chinese food phase. And then I found out from Melinda’s mom that what I think of as Chinese food and what she makes are-- yeah, completely different things. Almost. I’m embarrassed to admit, I like my General Tso's chicken too much to give it up.”“That’s not authentic Chinese?”“Barely,” Daisy said. “It’s like pizza is nominally Italian, but not really.”“So, did you find anything while you were looking for yourself?”“I discovered a hell of a lot of racism,” Daisy said. “Especially with the whole white guys who love Asian women and are really just looking for a docile little wifu.” She took another bite of cookie. “But no. Today-- today, I had a breakthrough, and I thought I’d stopped looking.”“Yeah? Hit me.”“My biological mother dropped in on me,” Daisy said. “So, wow, that’s big,” Robbie told her. “Um. Do you want sympathy, encouragement, someone to rant at, or to just tell someone else so you don’t have to hold a secret, and we’ll talk about something else.”Daisy stared at him like he’d just handed her a Publisher’s Clearing House check. One of the really big ones that was hard to balance and they used to pose for pictures.“You’d do that?”“Yes,” Robbie said. “But you have to tell me what you want, chica.”“I just… wanted to say it out loud. To someone that I think might care,” Daisy said. The tea arrived and Robbie took a sluck out of his straw. The bubble part of bubble tea was apparently a thick layer of tapioca pearls that got stuck in the straw. It wasn’t… entirely terrible.“Okay, then,” Robbie said. “Let me tell you about this stunt that Gabe pulled the other day--” and went on to regale her with Gabe’s high school antics that had involved tapping into the school’s PA system and blaring Hot for Teacher over the morning announcements.Daisy was giggling, practically spitting her tea onto the plate of cookies. Gabe really had a way about him that even when he pulled off pranks, most people still liked him. Teachers, at least. That was better than Robbie. Not much of a student, really, was Robbie Reyes. Didn’t need to be. He was going to be a grand champion jockey.“Yeah, you are,” Daisy said, and her eyes were so bright, and her mouth was so perfect. “You and Lucy are gonna do really great, I have a feeling.”Robbie was just considering whether or not he could -- would be allowed to, would she even want him to -- kiss her, when her expression changed.“Grant,” she said, by way of explanation. Robbie didn’t turn around, didn’t gawk at the ex-boyfriend. He did look around the cafe for reflective surfaces, and sure enough, there was a blurry, angry mass roughly shaped like a dickhead coming toward the cafe. “Too late to dodge him,” Robbie said. “You wanna go to the ladies, let me chase him off for you?”“No fighting,” Daisy said, putting her hand on his wrist. “Text me when he’s gone.”***The bathroom smelled overwhelmingly like lilac, and the music was somewhat louder. There were even flushers on top of the toilets. That was one of the things Daisy had read about, where some cultures were so nervous about having actual bodily functions that women would flush before they urinated, to cover the sound, wasting serious amounts of water.So the flusher imitated the sound, keeping water usage normal. She did actually pee (using the flusher, because why the hell not, it was there, right?) and washed her hands and checked her look in the mirror. Brushed out her hair and reapplied her lip liner.For a moment, she’d actually thought Robbie might try for a kiss, and she’d still been trying to decide if she was going to let him. She kinda wanted to kiss him; he had an amazingly plush lower lip, and gorgeous, sharp cheekbones, and the little mustache thing he had going was trying really hard -- it wasn’t quite there yet, but she liked the boyish edge it gave to his face.He was adorable and intense and-- that smile, and those eyes. “You are pathetic,” she told her reflection, but she touched up her blusher anyway. If he was going to kiss her, she absolutely was going to let him, and she wanted to look her best when she did.She checked her phone; no text.Which was sort of worrisome, but since she figured that the proprietor would start screaming if someone picked an actual fight, at least that probably wasn’t going on.Tempted to move closer, to see if she could hear anything, Daisy pushed the door open carefully with tented fingers.There was a hush of conversation, two men talking in serious, flat tones.“-- oesn’t want to see you,” Robbie said. “You should go, dude. The stalker look is not attractive.”“When did Daisy start lettin’ you speak for her? Is that some sort of machismo, Hispanic thing?” Grant responded.“Every time you talk to her, you upset her,” Robbie told him. “So, she doesn’t need to talk to you anymore, because all she’s going to tell you is to get your ass in gear, and get it gone.”She debated with herself about going out there, but even now, she’d lingered in the ladies’ room long enough that she’d have to explain it, that she was actually hiding from Grant, and while Robbie knew it, and she knew it, and Grant knew it, and probably the shop owner knew it, being forced to give an explanation, to explain herself, once again, to Grant fucking Ward, just made her tired.The bells jangled over the door, and she peeked further out to watch Grant striding off. She’d missed it, whatever he’d said at the end there, too lost in her own thoughts to pay attention. It probably wasn’t important anyway.“He’s gone?” She waited a little longer before coming back out.“He’s gone,” Robbie said.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Robbie offered the brush to Lucy again, who sniffed at it, then snorted, blowing hot air through her nostrils. Shook out her mane, and went back to eating.Trust; a horse that was nervous wouldn’t eat, it was too dangerous. Her lipping at the oat mash in the bottom of her feeding bucket was a good sign.Robbie entered the stall, closed the gate behind him. The last several days running, he’d brought the tack in, leaving it on the sidewalls of the stall. He didn’t try to put it on her, just let her get used to it being around. The smell of it, the flash of light on the buckles.She might never race again, but she might make a decent saddle mount. She might be able to tolerate breeding, again.But he was kinda hoping for a racer.Robbie wanted to race.Somewhere in that equine soul, he thought maybe Lucy wanted to race.Robbie groomed the horse, starting from her withers and going all the way down to the base of her tail. She was sleek and shiny and the last of her hoof damage was clearing up. She could bear a rider. If she wanted to.Robbie stroked the short, stiff-bristled brush over her flawless flank, watching the skin judder as her muscles twitched. “Would you like that, girl,” he asked her. “To go for a run?”Lucy flicked her ear at him. She heard him, but she wasn’t listening. That was good, Robbie thought. She didn’t see him a a threat. She didn’t see him as someone who was going to hurt her, as someone who had to be hurt first.Robbie put the brush back in the carry-bucket. He plucked the bridle, a simple rubber snaffle-bit, off the peg and showed it to her.Lucy didn’t flinch back, she didn’t shy away. She flicked her ear again, but then turned her head to face him. Interest.“Wanna go out?”Jemma was going to kill him; she wasn’t cleared for riding yet. At the best, Robbie could have taken her for a walk with a halter, leading her a few times around the ring.“You don’t want that, do you girl? Boring. You’re better than that.”Lucy nudged the leather and made a soft whickering noise. She nosed in her bucket again, lipping up the last bits of oats, but her ears were tracking Robbie like radar dishes.“Yeah? I see you pretending you don’t want out,” Robbie teased her. He patted her shoulder with one hand and she raised her neck.He offered her the bit, and she took it, sliding her tongue around the rubber until the bit was resting just behind her teeth.Robbie slipped the leather straps over her ears, and she helped him along a little, stretching out her face so the straps fell the way they were supposed to. Here was a horse who’d once been eager to ride.“Good girl,” Robbie whispered. “You’re so good, you’re such a good girl. I’m gonna take care of you, if you trust me.”He buckled the throat latch, tucking the tag end into the brass buckle. She didn’t flinch, just blinked at him. The nose piece was hanging a little low, so he tightened the cheek piece.“Good girl.”He left the saddle where it was. He could mount up without a stirrup and if she was going to throw him, a clean fall was best. He did lay a blanket on her back.Lucy snuffled at him, like she wasn’t sure what he was up to, and wasn’t positive she approved.“Want to go out?” Robbie put his hand on the stall latch, twisted it up, and opened the door, letting it swing forward on silent hinges.He kept the reins loose in one hand, and Lucy stepped out of the stall just at his shoulder. She stuck a velvety nose at his ear and whuffled. “Good girl,” Robbie said, as quiet as he could. He grabbed a brain bucket on his way past the tack room. He hadn’t worn a hard hat in weeks, but it felt good, snug around his ears. He snapped the chin in place. “You ready?”She watched him placidly, working the bit with her teeth. Robbie faced her, got a handful of mane just above her withers, took a skipping step and threw himself onto her back, toes automatically curling around the barrel of her chest, thighs going tight to grip.Her ears flicked backward at him, and then Lucy turned her neck all the way around to look at him, like hombre, what are you doing back there?Robbie gathered the reins in one hand, patted her shoulder. She hadn’t thrown him yet; she hadn’t even tensed like she was planning on it.Well, what did he expect? Lucy’d been carrying a mount since she was a yearling. It wasn’t like the weight of Robbie’s slender form was too much of a burden.And he’d proven to her, in the last months, that he was never going to hurt her.She could trust him.Lucy whickered, took a step forward, looked back at him.“Good girl, that’s right,” Robbie said, not even tapping her side with his heels. Let her take the lead.Another few steps.“Excellent.” He shifted forward a little, preparing to dismount. No need to push his luck.Lucy bounced forward, not quite a trot, but a smooth little quick shuffle. Unconsciously, Robbie leaned down, centering his balance, and Lucy took that for a signal to go faster. The shuffle became a trot. The trot became a canter. The canter lasted one turn around the ring and then she broke formation, went straight up the center of the ring, four distinct hoofbeats hitting the dusty ground.“Fuck me,” Robbie said, and he clung tight to her mane with both hands as Lucy took the bit in her teeth, and jumped the fence.Once she was on the other side, she turned in a lazy spiral, slowing down to a walk. She snorted again.“Suppose you’re proud of yourself,” Robbie said as she stopped. Her ears were upright, twitching and flexing, but not panicked.She snorted, like she was laughing.“Yeah, good girl,” Robbie said, patting her shoulder. “But I suppose we shouldn’t do that again.” He dismounted, gathered up the reins. “Probably enough for one day?”Lucy turned, pressed her face into Robbie’s chest and whickered.The equine version of a hug, like a cat, rubbing for attention.Robbie couldn’t speak around the sudden lump in his throat, just patted her neck. Good girl.***Daisy was barely breathing, watching the ring from the upper window. Robbie was bareback, only a rubber bit and a penchant for landing on his feet between himself and a possible broken neck. She was practically chewing her fingernails off, screeching in terror, yelling in triumph. Lucy was doing it. She was doing it. Daisy didn’t dare run out to congratulate him and risk spooking the mare. She didn’t dare do anything. Oh, Fitz and Simmons were going to have absolute kittens. Riding wasn’t on the plan, it wasn’t on the schedule, but Robbie was like Daisy in that regard. Schedules didn’t matter, plans didn’t matter, it was what was in the heart that mattered.
It’s the heart that matters most...
She waited, phone in her hand to call an ambulance if she needed to, until Robbie dismounted, lead the horse back into the barn.“Yes, yes yes!” Daisy jumped around her room -- carefully, it wouldn’t do to take a fall and get injured from something as wonderful as celebrating -- screaming joy. Then, unable to contain her excitement any longer, she dashed down the stairs. Champagne, surely she had some, and -- oh, that was an idea.Daisy opened a bottom cupboard and pulled out the picnic basket. In short order she made up a handful of sandwiches; roast beef, chicken, and egg salad. Tossed a few bags of chips and some cold soda. Two plastic glasses for the champagne. A handful of mandarin oranges, some leftover slices of raspberry pie, and a blanket to spread on the ground.She latched the basket and headed out to the barn.Robbie was just shutting the stall gate when she got down there.“Hey, girlfriend, it’s not--”“It’s exactly what it looks like,” Daisy said. “I thought you might want to have a bit of a celebration picnic?”“Yeah? Is this a date? ‘Cause it kinda sounds like a date?”Daisy laughed, feeling her neck heat. “Yeah, boyfrien’,” she said, drawling out her words. “It’s a date.”“So, we’re dating now?”“Are we doing the DTR right now, in my parent’s barn?”“You want to pencil me in an appointment?”“Despite my ex-boyfriend issues, I think I’m relatively baggage free,” Daisy said. “I haven’t been dating in a while, I’m not seeing anyone else, and I’m not hung up on Grant Ward. So, that means, yes, I’m available for dating. I don’t have the energy for drama, so it’d be exclusive right now--”“I’m not seeing anyone else,” Robbie told her. He deftly removed the picnic basket. “Did you have any idea where you want to go eat?”“There’s a little table and stuff out near my mom’s flower garden, it’s pretty enough,” Daisy said. “If you’re okay with not going hiking or anything.”“Still feeling a bit rough?”“I want to have a nice date, and not break anything for a change.”“Your mom’s garden sounds great, girlfriend.” And this time there was stress on that word that Daisy hadn’t heard before. Really, she was almost thirty, she shouldn’t get freaking butterflies in her stomach from someone calling her girlfriend, but she did, and after a moment of feeling moderately Teen Beat magazine about it, she decided she’d just enjoy it. It’d been a while since she’d r eally enjoyed the company of someone else.Robbie seemed to want and accept her for who she was; so far he hadn’t asked for anything she wasn’t willing and eager to give. Maybe it was okay to be excited about it.“Does this whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing come with, you know, hand holding and kissing?”Daisy laughed. “What are you, twelve?”Robbie turned to look at her, very seriously. “I’ve seen how your ex treats you,” he said. “So I-- that’s not me, chica. I’m going to make sure you’re onboard and interested. If you don’t want me to hold your hand, I won’t.”Well, that was new. Daisy raised an eyebrow, felt her lips purse. “Okay, so, no on the hand-holding, but you can put your arm around my shoulders, if you want, while we walk.”“I can do that.”She wormed her way into the crook of his arm, tucked right up against his side. It wouldn’t be comfortable long, the man put out a ton of body heat and it was hot as hell most of the time anyway, but for the moment, it was comforting and nice. Those butterflies in her stomach kicked it up a notch. “And we can talk about the kissing thing once we’re out of sight of the house.” She was an adult, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to answer questions about necking with the hired help.Not just yet.This was a secret thing between her and Robbie.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Robbie helped Daisy spread out the blanket, covering the picnic bench, which was old and mossy in places. The table itself was made from ceramic tiles, each one hand painted, Daisy told him.“My mom -- Melinda, you know -- and I used to go to these pottery events,” Daisy told him. “Once or twice a year or so, and I’d get two tiles to paint. And we’d date them and she’d get them baked, and then I never saw them again.”“Saving them up for this table?”“She gave this to me on my eighteenth birthday,” Daisy said. “She’d saved every tile, and Dad made the table for it to go in, and she sealed it. I don’t know, we joked about it being in my kitchen someday, but I think we all know I’m not likely to move out. Jemma suggested we put it in the garden, so that we could enjoy it, rather than saving it up for a special occasion.”“Well, if you get a place of your own,” Robbie said, entertaining for a moment the idea of this bright, childishly painted table in the kitchen in his trailer, “then you can always get the wood frame replaced. I mean, it’s not the wood that’s important, right? It’s all these memories?” He traced his finger around a simple smiley face, drawn in pink, that was near one corner. “You were, what, three?”“Nah,” Daisy said, pointing to a few on the other side that were nothing but thickly painted scribbles. “These were three. That was six.” Robbie slowly chewed one of the sandwiches, looking at each tile in turn, watching the girl become a woman in slow, steady progress. There was one picture of three stick figures holding hands, and the little stick figure was wearing a cast, indicated by a loop of different colored paint. Even then, as a kid, Daisy would have had to be extra careful.And despite all her hardship, she had grown into a bright, vibrant woman. With some bad days, sometimes. Oddly enough, it gave him hope. Gabe was a bright kid, he was moving on with his life.We’re all just one bad accident away from being disabled, Robbie thought. Doesn’t mean our lives are over. “You look serious,” Daisy said, teasing him. “Are my bad fifth grade drawings so terrible?”“Not at all,” Robbie told her. “I’m thinking… happiness comes in strange places, you know. At the beginning of the summer, I was freaking out, because I couldn’t race. It was a bad thing, life had a bad turn. And yet--”“Here we are, eating sandwiches on white bread, in a garden,” Daisy said. “It’s a very nice garden,” Robbie said. “I like that boulder, that is a nice boulder.”Daisy followed his finger to the rock. “Oh, yeah, there are a few of those. We gardened around them. Mom thinks they add to the aesthetic, whatever that means.”“It means things are still beautiful, even if they’re not perfect,” Robbie said, offering Daisy a forkful of raspberry pie. It was sweet and tart, even if the crust was a little soggy.She leaned in to take the bite, teeth biting down on the fork for a moment before her lips closed on it, to pull the morsel off. “God, that’s good. Dad won’t tell anyone how to make his pie, it’s his secret. Like we’d throw him out if he didn’t provide good pie for us, or something.”“It’s butter,” Robbie said.“What?” “In the pie crust. It’s butter.”“Oh my god, really?” Daisy squealed. “Are you sure? I… seriously, after lunch, we have to test this theory, oh, god, I could kiss you.”“You certainly could,” Robbie told her.Okay, maybe that had been over the top, and Robbie half expected her to laugh at him, or to roll her eyes, but she didn’t. Her eyes widened and then she fluttered her eyelashes. Not flirting, Robbie thought, but honestly embarrassed. “I could,” she said, as if this thought had just occurred to her.“Mmm-hmm,” Robbie said, as naturally as possible. He wanted to kiss Daisy. Wanted to do a hell of a lot of other things with her, too, but he also didn’t want to frighten her off. Not that, he reminded himself, she was going to be afraid of him. Daisy was a strong woman, she was----kissing him.He was so startled for a moment, even though they’d just been talking about it, that he sat there like a bump on a log, mouth closed, eyes open, just feeling her body heat, the way she pressed into him.Soft and light and her tongue flicked out to tease at the crease of his lips.
Get with the program, Reyes.
He reached up, sliding one hand along her cheek, noticing how soft her skin was, and then his hand was in her hair, thumb resting against her ear, cradling her head. The kiss turned from nearly chaste to scorching as he slanted his mouth over hers. He opened his mouth, letting her in and she took that invitation with heat, plunging her tongue into his mouth.She tasted of pie and lemonade and of a smoky lingering flavor all her own. Heat and wanting flared between them, and Robbie pulled her closer, being gentle, careful, not wanting to hurt her.Daisy practically climbed into his lap, straddling his thighs, and she rolled her hips against him. He could never get enough of her, he thought wildly, hands in her hair, feeling the silky strands, her scent in his nostrils, the puff of air against his cheek, the way her lips moulded to his, the way they melted together.“Do you want-- do you want to?” she asked, a breathless whisper against his ear, and then she was licking the shell, blowing warm air over wet skin, sending shivers down his spine.“Girlfriend, you don’t even know,” he told her.She ground down on him and he could feel the heat of her through her jeans. “I think I have some idea.”“I didn’t, you know--” he stammered, “plan this.”“It’s all right,” Daisy told him. “I did, and I have, you know, condom and such. Also, I’ve got an IUD, in case that matters. Accidental pregnancy could, well, I’m likely to break bones giving birth and there’s all sorts of added complications, so yeah, I’ve been careful.”“That’s smart,” Robbie said.Daisy made a face, a flattening of her mouth. “I’m used to the idea.”She was used to providing for a forgetful man, for taking care of herself because no one else was going to do it for her. “We don’t have to.”“You’re cute, being all considerate and thoughtful and stuff. I like it. And I’m happy you’re concerned and want to be safe. But if you don’t lay me down and fuck me, I might get cranky,” she said, her smile growing sly and sensual. It was wicked, listening to a woman talk frankly about sex was molten hot.“I think I might want you on top, girlfriend,” Robbie said. “I’m not heavy, but this isn’t a featherbed, either.”“I can do that,” Daisy said, and she got to her feet long enough to strip off her tee, showing off a thin lacy bra, while Robbie struggled to get his jeans down at least to his knees. “Ho, my god, yes, thighs. Nice.” She leaned over him, her nipples poking at the cup of her bra, to run her hands up his legs, admiring the thick muscle.The scrape of her printed cast brought him back to reality, a detail he would have never thought to add on his own. He quaked under her touch, spreading his legs as far as he could. The table was cold under his thighs, but warmed at his body heat. She followed the line up until her fingers were brushing against the sensitive skin of his inner thighs.Robbie cupped her breast with one hand, feeling the nipple pucker under her bra. He thumbed it and smiled when she drew in a breath. “That feel good?”Daisy nodded, then said, “Don’t pinch, okay? I don’t. I don’t need that much.”“Your wish,” Robbie told her. He leaned in and licked at the stiffening peak, tasting the satin of her bra. She arched backward, letting him catch her around the waist to hold her up. Trusting him not to drop her.She made a soft, obscene, wanting noise, deep in her throat, a rumbling mewl. When he drew back to see the effect his mouth had on her, she was luminous, face flushed, eyes wide. She gave him a liquid smile, then pulled back, enough to unbuckle her pants and shimmy out of them, drawers following, and she tugged her bra down and around to unhook it. Bared to his sight, Daisy stood there for a moment, tiny bare feet on the grass, letting him look, her chin lifted slightly as if daring his critique. There wasn’t a thing wrong with her, perfectly imperfect. Her breasts were full and round, and dotted with a few freckles. He drew her in and kissed each one, tasting the skin. Robbie curled a hand around her thigh, then lifted a little, pressing his fingers against the slit of her. He moved slowly, deliberately, as she quivered and stood there, as shaky as a newborn colt, and he drew out the torment of suspense, added teasing to wanting. He waited until her eyelids were flickering, her mouth open, before he finally touched her, spread her folds, until he reached the very center of her, warm and wet.She put both hands on his shoulders to keep her balance, spread her legs a little, and let him rub against her, testing each wrinkle of skin, each narrow inch of her. He found the bud of flesh -- the little lady in her canoe, he’d heard it described once -- and worked it in slow circles as she bit her lip and swayed gently.“So warm,” Robbie told her, “right here.”“Robbie--”“You want me?”“You know I do.”Robbie nodded. “Get your condom.”Daisy flushed, dark on her throat and rose patterns across her chest and belly. “It’s there-- in the basket, pocket near the back.”Robbie got it, tore the little packet. “You want to put it on?”“Uh-huh,” Daisy said, and she was deliberate about it, rolling it on and touching him through it. His dick shook like a dowsing rod, seeking her heat and wet. It was a little awkward as she climbed up the table and straddled his lap, trying to be careful, but they were together soon enough.“Hold on,” Robbie told her, and she pushed herself up a little, arms around his neck. The cast scraped against his scalp, sending frissions of sensation down his spine. It was real, it was really happening, and-- he moved her so she was over his dick, let her down slow, felt himself sinking up into her pussy, wet and eager.They rocked together, slow and easy. The wet sounds they made, moving against each other, seemed unnaturally loud for a moment. She moaned, sweet, as if she could barely breathe, and he kissed the sound out of her mouth, her hair getting in his face.She held on, her grip around his neck tightening, as he bounced her in his lap, feeling the grip and slide of her inner walls.“Robbie--” She rolled her hips, side to side, and that changed the angle, making it perfect and incredible.“I got you, girlfriend, I got you,” he told her, bucking up against her, once, twice. She squeezed on him, a butterfly flutter of motion against his cock.He let her ride him, like he was the prized champion and she was the jockey, an eager thrust of motion, the way her thighs tightened on his, the way she clenched and rocked. He got a hand between them, a little awkward and pressure, but there, he dipped his thumb against her clit, circling in time to her movements, and she got more erratic, her breath coming in eager gasps until she stiffened and arched backward. If he hadn’t had a good grip on her hip, she might have fallen, but he had her, he had her, she was good, she was magnificent, and he exploded under her, body moving as it would. But at the same time, utterly and completely aware of the need to cradle her, to keep her safe and whole. Her name was on his lips as he lost himself to pleasure, decreasing in volume, until it was the barest whisper. “Daisy, oh, Daisy.”She pulled herself up, practically climbing him like a tree, until she was settled back in his lap, his dick softening inside her. “Yeah, I’m here,” she told him.Robbie found himself resting his head against her sweaty, heated chest, listening to her heart as it throbbed inside her. Never go, he thought. And he knew he’d found something, someone. The best thing, the best possible person.He’d be a fool to let her go. So he didn’t.Until she squirmed uncomfortably. “Come on in the house,” she said. “We can sneak in a shower.”“Yeah, that… that sounds good, girlfriend.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
They didn’t sneak into the shower, since there was no one home. And Robbie certainly didn’t slink out to his car when he kissed Daisy goodbye and went to go home for the evening.So why did he feel so much like a teenager who was caught climbing in a window when Coulson met him halfway across the drive. “Reyes, can I have a word?”Robbie sighed inwardly. “Yes, sir, what can I do for you?” Here it comes, the I have a shotgun and you’re sleeping with my daughter speech.“Well, mostly I wanted to tell you that I’ve got your brother’s powered chair ready, and, also, this--” Coulson walked into the garage and indicated a-- something, on a table.“Uh, thanks?”“This is a smallish motor, I can hook it up to his regular chair. Shouldn’t be flashy enough to draw the attention of his bullies, but will help him get around easier. All you need is a power outlet to plug it in, it has about six hours of battery life. Ish. You’ll have to test it with a full load and let me know how it goes.”“Oh, uh, thank you, sir, I wasn’t--”“Weren’t expecting me to follow through on helping your brother? Or… no, I see. You were expecting a shovel talk,” Coulson said.“Might have been, yes sir, if Daisy was my daughter--”“As it happens, she’s mine,” Coulson said, a little sharply. “And while I will be very disappointed, of course, if you break her heart, part of being her father is recognizing that Daisy is an adult now. She makes her own choices, good or bad or otherwise, without my interference. I’m not going to threaten you, because even if you believed I’d carry through on those threats, it’s not likely to change your behavior, or hers. It will just make her more likely to not confide in me when she needs help.”“Thank you, sir,” Robbie said, rubbing at the back of his neck. He hated telling adultier adults that he was, in fact, a grown up. Especially when he felt like he was just winging this whole adult thing and really had no idea what he was doing. It wasn’t like he could admit that. Especially not to, say, Uncle Eli, who was depending on him.“That said, I will remind you that you do work for me, and if I think the relationship is making a conflict, I will expect you to handle it,” Coulson said. “Or I will. I don’t want to be on bad terms with you, I’ve had experience doing things the hard way, and if I have to be honest, I’d rather do things the easy way. So, you don’t piss off my daughter and you don’t make life harder around here for any of us, and I won’t have to get involved.”“I think I can agree to that,” Robbie said.“Good man, Reyes,” Coulson said. He offered Robbie his hand, and Robbie shook on it, not entirely sure what they were agreeing to, and certainly feeling that he’d somehow gotten a shovel talk without actually getting a shovel talk. “All right, get out of here. We’ll see you tomorrow.”He was almost back to his car when he saw Melinda, watching him from under one of the big trees. She forked her fingers at him as he was getting in the car and then pointed to her face. I’m watching you.So much for adultier adults.On the one hand, it was infuriating that people expected him to take on all the responsibilities of an adult with this superior attitude of better than you. On the other, having someone keeping an eye on him to make sure he didn’t screw up was… comforting.Robbie tipped a little salute at Daisy’s mom, threw his car into drive, and got the hell out of Dodge.He beeped at the barn -- and Simmons and Fitz -- as he sped off, feeling like a million bucks. Like everything that could go wrong had already happened, and it should be clear sailing from there on out.Which only went to show, in retrospect, that Robbie absolutely should not have trusted his feelings. Like. Ever.***Daisy had keys and codes to the office, which was good, because for a change, she was the first one in that morning. She punched her code into the front door, which didn’t even beep at her. It was too early in the morning and she hadn’t had nearly enough coffee for this. She punched the code in again, but nothing happened.Slid her key in the lock and the door opened. It was dead silent in the building. No lights.Daisy moved inside, flicked the switch a few times. Nothing.“Well, that’s not creepy at all.”There’d been a storm last night, all high wind and a little bit of rain. Supposedly some hail mixed in, but Daisy hadn’t seen any of that. She’d cancelled her date with Robbie, though, because of impending weather -- everyone, it seemed, forgot how to drive as soon as the roads got wet, and she just didn’t want to deal with it. Robbie’d been sweet on the phone, and then she’d snuggled in bed with a book and read until the power went out.Guess they hadn’t gotten it on at the office yet.She pulled out her cell and called Cal.“Hey, boss--”“What, what’s wrong?”Daisy blinked. Cal sounded rough, like he hadn’t slept in days. “Nothing,” she said. “Well, power’s out at the office, and… did you get like a call from the police or something?”“Uh, no, no cops--”“Okay. The door electronics are fried, then, too. I thought the security company was supposed to send up an alarm if the power went out.”“Yeah, I’ll uh, I’ll call, yeah,” Cal said. “You may as well go home for the day, can’t get work done without the computers.”“I’ll call the power company,” Daisy said, walking back toward her office, “and find out when they expect--”Her office door was open. She was sure she’d locked it on Friday when she left, although sometimes there were people in on the weekends. Although not usually people with keys to her office. She pushed the door the rest of the way open, peering around in the half light, and--All but tripped over the person laying on the floor.“Oh, my god.”“Daisy?”She kept her phone up to her ear by sheer muscle memory, not any sort of conscious decision.There was a person laying on the floor.She moved closer, trying to deny what she was seeing. It was dark, it couldn’t possibly--Daisy made a strange, choking noise in her throat as her foot sank into the carpet, which was wet and what oozed out from her shoe was dark red, almost black. “Oh, god.”“Daisy? Are you--”She couldn’t be sure, it couldn’t possibly--“Grant?”She reached out and turned the body. And screamed.***There were days that Robbie wished he could just lounge in bed all day, and there were days when he leaped to his feet, eager to start the day.And then there were days when he was in the middle of his first cup of coffee when sirens blared and the flash of blue lights echoed through the tiny trailer park. His neighbors, Robbie could already hear them, scattered. Some of them worried about ICE or their kids. God knew, the cops pulled into the trailer park regularly to deliver Child Protective Services decrees, to arrest single mothers with four kids because they’d had to leave the kids with abuela and someone was concerned.It wasn’t unusual for the cops to show up at the park, that wasn’t anything new.And it wasn’t entirely unusual for them to show up at Robbie’s trailer. Their uncle was a gambler and a drinker, and sometimes there were concerns.Everyone was so concerned, right up until someone needed actual help.Robbie opened the door, and there were more than two cops. Usually there were two, a main speaker who would bark questions and make demands, and the silent one. It was usually the quiet one who was more trouble, and Robbie had already learned that lesson.“What can I do for you today?” Robbie asked, keeping his hands in sight, keeping his tone even. Never give them an excuse.“Roberto Reyes?”“Yes, sir,” Robbie answered. “Ma’am, how are you this evening?”“Can you account for your whereabouts for yesterday, after six in the afternoon?” One of the cops asked Robbie, his expression holding an eager edge that Robbie didn’t like. “Yes, sir,” Robbie said. “I was over at my girl’s until just before dinner. Drove home. Stopped and got gas, dropped off a Redbox for my brother, poked the machine a while but didn’t see anything I wanted. Grabbed dinner from Strawberry Jack’s, and came home.”“Around what time did you get home, Mr. Reyes?”“I dunno, eight, maybe?”“Did anyone see you enter your home?”Robbie shrugged. “My brother was over at his friends’ place, didn’t get home until eh, eleven or so, maybe?”“So no one can verify where you were?”“I’m sure the diner’s got a ticket for my food,” Robbie said, nervous. “What’s this about?”“We’d like you to come in and answer some questions, Mr. Reyes.”“About?”“It’d be best if you just come in and answer the questions,” the cop said. “Am I being charged with anything?”“That depends how the questions go.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
They were letting him hear them, Robbie knew. Letting him get nervous.“... diner’s waitress says she remembers seeing him, but not when…”“No, he paid cash, they don’t ring those all out until the end of shift, could have been in anywhere between four-thirty when her shift starts, until--”“No alibi.”“No alibi.”
“No alibi.”
“Why would anyone want to kill Grant Ward?”Like anyone who’d ever met the man could have told them that. Robbie always hated the way people acted, once someone was dead. Like death cancelled out a wide array of character flaws. Oh, no one would want to kill Grant, he was a fucking angel. My father didn’t have any enemies, everyone loved him. Who would want to kill Grant? There was a fucking line, apparently. Daisy had found him, he’d been told.Well, not directly. They’d let him know he’d been found in Cal Zabo’s office, by the secretary, but they knew he knew who that was.Daisy had found him; the man who’d broken her wrist recently, who’d gotten her to bail him out of jail. Who’d gaslit her and emotionally abused her, and those were bruises that didn’t get left behind on the skin.Daisy would have been a prime suspect.Should have been, really. Adopted, half-white, crazy girl. Sick all the time, couldn’t hold down a job, until Zabo showed pity. She’d be the perfect fall guy for a murder.Except Cal Zabo had apparently marched right into the police office with a lawyer and told Daisy to shut up.Which left the boyfriend.Who just so happened to have been arrested, not a few weeks before, for getting into a bar fight with the same Grant Ward.Robbie was pretty sure that the cops did not, in fact, believe that he’d murdered Grant Ward, if only because they believed themselves too smart, and him, too dumb, to not have ample evidence for the crime when they showed up.Except that they were cops, and they didn’t like not having answers. If Daisy wasn’t going to give them answers, Robbie was supposed to.They didn’t believe he was guilty.Yet.“Do you own a gun, Mr. Reyes?”“No,” Robbie said. That was true, although he knew what they’d hear. He hadn’t purchased a weapon through an official shop. He wasn’t licensed to carry concealed. Nothing… legal. And everyone knew that all the Mexicans had guns. They were supposedly running guns and drugs up through the border, even though mostly, the guns went the other way. And they were so far from the border here as to have a few states between them and Mexico.So, not having a legal gun probably meant -- to cops -- that Robbie had illegal guns. The fact that the one time he’d gotten into a fight and used a weapon, it’d been a length of chain from the garage, and he’d only used it because those gringos had been drunk and spoiling for a fight. If he’d tried to face them down with fists, he’d be dead.“So, if we happen to look around your trailer, we won’t find a gun,” the cop said. He had some rank, something. Robbie didn’t know, he wasn’t looking at them. Meeting their eyes would be considered defiance, not innocence.“It’s not my trailer,” Robbie said. “Uncle Eli will want you to have a warrant.”“Oh, we can get a warrant,” the cop said, smooth as silk. “Easier not to bother everyone.”“I can’t give you permission,” Robbie said. “It’s not my house.”He didn’t know if Uncle Eli owned a gun. He’d never asked. Eli had never said. He did know that Uncle Eli owed a lot of people money, and that he never let strangers into the trailer. Even Gabe’s girlfriend had been pushing it. And probably only because she was a girl. And it was Gabe. Gabe didn’t understand things yet, like gambling debt. Or if he did, everyone pretended that he didn’t.“We understand you have a mechanic’s license,” one of the cops said.“Yeah,” Robbie agreed, because that was true. He’d gotten it in high school, part of the auto-shop classes, and a few summer internships. Something to fall back on, if riding wasn’t lucrative. Or so he kept telling himself. He probably should have known he’d never do anything but race.“So, you know electrical systems,” the cop continued.Robbie shrugged. Enough to fix a blown fuse, or to wire speakers through a car. Not all that.“Like, for example, the electrical system at Zabo’s office, where mysteriously the security system turned off,” the cop continued.Robbie just looked at him. “I would like to speak to legal representation, please,” he said.“What you need a lawyer for?”“Mostly because you’re asking that question, sir,” Robbie said. “I’m not going to answer any more questions until I speak with an attorney.”Not that there was any such thing as an attorney in this part of the state that wanted anything to do with someone like him. No money, no prospects, no status. No one would care. He’d get some assigned thing, and--Yeah, he was in trouble.***Daisy was laying on the sofa. She’d told Melinda that she was going to binge watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or something. She thought she’d said that. Melinda had brought her a pitcher of iced tea, an insulated cup, and a metal straw. Along with a pan of slightly-burned at the edges brownies.Melinda’s way of being motherly.“I’m fine,” Daisy said, when Melinda removed one of the brownies from the pan and offered it on a napkin. “Oh, come on.” Melinda said. “I only do this kind of emotional labor once every other year or so. If you refuse the brownie, than I might skip it this year entirely.”Daisy wasn’t hungry. She kept closing her eyes to see the sticky pool of dark blood, and her appetite had packed its bags and moved to Tahiti without a goodbye. She probably wouldn’t even get a postcard. Weather is here, wish you were beautiful.“Jesus, I’m high,” she said, fingering the edge of the napkin. “What the hell did they give me in the hospital?”“Valium for stress,” Melinda said. “You should not be high. Rather the opposite.” She was also giving Daisy that look, the one that wondered how Daisy knew what being high felt like. “Oh, come on, Mom, everyone knows what pot feels like,” Daisy said, then covered her mouth. “Whoops, I probably shouldn’t have said that.”Melinda rolled her eyes, shook her head, and smiled a little. “Despite your pretense toward being a hoodlum, you’ve been a delight,” she said. “In case you didn’t know how I felt about it. You were a good girl, and a reasonable adult.”“Reasonable?”“You’ve met a number of adults in the world,” Melinda said. “Reasonable is about the best you can expect, really.”“What about Phil,” Daisy wondered. “Is he reasonable?”“Your father is a good man, a decent human being. Maybe one of the best I’ve ever known,” Melinda admitted.“You married him because he was a good, decent person?”“I married him because he makes me laugh,” Melinda said. “The decency, that was an unexpected benefit. Why so full of questions?”Daisy licked her lip. She couldn’t feel her lip, but she knew it was there, so she licked it. “I might have met my mother, the other day. I don’t know. I told her I already had parents, and she left. I’m not really sure how I feel about that.”“This doesn’t seem like the time to talk about that,” Melinda said.“Yeah, I know, met my mom, saw my murdered ex-boyfriend, got given Mommy’s little helper drugs at the hospital, I should really be a lot more into these brownies you made,” Daisy said. “I’m not. Whoops.” She peered at her mom. Melinda… Melinda was her mom. The other person was just -- she didn’t even know. An incubator, maybe. “Are you mad? It’s always hard to tell when you’re mad. Your… your face, just does a thing.”Melinda sighed.“Yes, that thing, right there, you’re doing it right--” Daisy said, pointing and then she burst into tears. She didn’t think she was going to do that, she thought she’d already cried more than she really needed to over Grant Fucking Ward. What had that man done to deserve her grief“You’re not grieving for Ward,” Melinda told her, and Daisy realized she’d said all of that out loud. “It’s only natural to feel a shock, when someone’s died. Even someone you weren’t close to, seeing them, like that. There’s nothing wrong with taking a few moments to be human, Daisy.”She found herself practically sitting in Melinda’s lap, being rocked back and forth, while Melinda patted her on the back and soothed her. Nonsense words, really. There, there. It’ll look better in the morning. I have no idea what I’m supposed to say here, Daisy, help me out.Daisy startled herself with a laugh that dissolved into more tears. “That’s good, that’s better,” Melinda said. “I’m hysterical,” Daisy wondered, “and you think that’s an im… im… improvement?”“Mhmm.”“You might not be very motherly,” Daisy said, “but you’re a wonderful mom.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Reyes, visitor,” someone said, and Robbie looked up. He was still in central holding, although that probably wouldn’t be where he’d stay. There was no way Uncle Eli had bail for him, not for suspicion of murder. He ran a hand over his scalp, trying to work up the energy to stand. It had been a long day, he’d barely slept, and of course, there’d been no coffee.Breakfast had been a cup of beans, some scrambled eggs and two tortillas, with a half cup of unidentifiable “juice” to wash it down.Which was all he’d eaten since he got arrested in the first place. His stomach had given up growling at him a while ago, but he was damn thirsty.He managed to get to his feet, swayed more than walked over to the guard. The guard draped him in chains; a set of shackles between his ankles that kept him at a low hobble, hands in front of him, and the whole thing locked together between wrists and feet.Like he was dangerous. Like he was supposed to be a killer.He hadn’t killed anyone, even if he’d be the first to argue that Grant Ward needed to be smacked upside the head a few times, he hadn’t needed killing.They hadn’t let him call a lawyer, even if he hadn’t said a word throughout the entire interrogation once he’d requested one. When the guards led him into the visitor’s area, he saw someone he never expected -- he might have expected Gabe, or Uncle Eli, or maybe Daisy, if she was feeling up to it, or if she’d decided he hadn’t done it. Because God only knew, she might believe it.It wasn’t that big of a town, she could have suspected him and he wouldn’t have blamed her.Instead, he saw Leo Fitz sitting next to a long-legged man with round, polished spectacles, a briefcase, and a concerned smile.“Fitz!” Robbie exclaimed, practically falling into the chair opposite them, and not entirely because the guard shoved him,“Yer doin’ well, then?” Fitz said, looking him over as if to see signs of bruising or abuse.Robbie raised one hand, still clinking chains against the table. “Así así,” Robbie said, wobbling his hand back and forth. “For being accused of murder and all.”“Could we do something about the chains, here?” the other man asked, his accent British, delicate, almost fancy in a way Robbie couldn’t quite put his finger on. “I’m quite certain this man is not a danger to us.”The guard sighed, much put upon to unlock a couple of shackles. Robbie rubbed at his wrists as they fell away. “Thanks.”“This is one o’ my best friends,” Fitz said. “Meet Amadeus Hunter. Most o’ us call him Lance, but--”“You can call me Hunter,” he said, pushing his chair back a little and looking at Robbie with a shrewd gaze. “Unless I decide to take on the case, in which, you may certainly call me Lance. Do not, under any circumstances, call me Amadeus.”Robbie tried to control his expression. “You’re a lawyer?”“Barrister, across the pond, but yes, I am able to represent you in a court of law, Mr. Reyes,” Hunter said. “The question remains, do I wish to do so?”“Pretty sure you don’t,” Robbie said. “Given that I can’t pay you. I’m getting the impression here that you only came out as a favor to Fitz, which he’s now used up. Thanks, though.”“Did you murder Grant Ward?” Hunter asked, still tipped back in his chair, utterly calm and unconcerned.“No,” Robbie said.“More’s the pity,” Hunter said. “That’s a man that probably deserved a good murdering. That said, tell me what you do remember.”“There’s nothing to remember,” Robbie burst out. “I never saw him, haven’t seen him since that day at the tea shop.” He counted backward in his head. “Like, almost a week ago. He was stalking Daisy around, wanted to talk to her. I ran him off.”“Daisy Johnson?” Hunter asked.“Is there another Daisy in town?” Robbie couldn’t decide if the guy was a pedant for the pleasure of being annoying, or if it was a lawyer thing. Making sure he had precise information that another lawyer couldn’t twist around. He huffed out a sigh. “Yes, Daisy Johnson.”“Tell me what you do know about Grant Ward,” Hunter said. “Just things you’ve witnessed, not what Miss Johnson has told you.”“He was texting her,” Robbie said. “I showed her how to block texts on her phone. Before that, I bumped into him at a bar. No idea who he was. He was… a failed social interaction.”Hunter laughed. “That’s the night of the bar fight? Failed social interaction, I like that, we’ll see if we can’t work that into your trial. Did you seek him out, after that? Even when he was texting Miss Johnson too often?”“I didn’t,” Robbie said. “Don’t even know where he lives.”“Do you have a key, or access, to Miss Johnson’s office?”Robbie rolled his eyes. “No. I work for her parents.”“Her foster parents,” Hunter corrected in that proper, persnickety voice of his.“Phil and Melinda Coulson, yes,” Robbie said. “I’m working with one of their horses, to get her race ready again.”“And that’s all the interaction you’ve had with Mr. Grant, or Miss Johnson?”“Daisy’s... my girlfriend,” Robbie said. “New. We just started dating. I think that upset Ward.”“Don’t speculate on Ward’s feelings, you’ve got no way to know them,” Hunter said.“He exhibited perceived hostility, whe’ he found out that Robbie an’ Daisy were involved,” Fitz said, inserting his opinion for the first time during the conversation. “So, we have two men here, vying for the same woman,” Hunter said. “One of them is dead, and the other one does not have a good alibi.”Robbie shrugged. “I can have a grudge against the man without being a murderer.”“True, but a jury’s not likely to see it that way,” Hunter said.“The truth doesn’t matter,” Robbie said with a shrug.“It doesn’t matter what I know,” Hunter said. “Or what is the truth. All that matters is what I can prove. You got a cell phone?”“Not on me,” Robbie said.“Do you keep it with you most of the time? On, charged, and ready for your next round of Bejeweled or something?”“Sometimes,” Robbie said. “I keep it on silent, or off, a lot. Buzzing scares the horses.”“Do you know if it was on, the night of the murder?”Robbie thought back. He and Daisy had exchanged some texts, hadn’t they? “I think so.”“Good. We’ll subpoena your phone records. Cell phones ping off the tower, if you’re using them or not. Might help prove your location at the time of death.”“Big brother is watching you,” Robbie intoned.“It won’t count as hard evidence,” Hunter cautioned. “You could have given your phone to a friend, left it at home, but it’s a start.”“You’re going to take the case?”“Yes, I am,” Hunter said. “Even though I can’t pay you, you know I can’t.”“Pro bono,” Hunter said. “I’m required by the state to do a certain number of hours on an annual basis anyway.”“Tha’s because he gets in trouble with th’ judge, rather regular,” Fitz contributed. “Pro bono work’s supposed t’ be punishment.”“Great.”“I prefer to choose my own cases, Mr. Reyes,” Hunter said. “Pro Bono or otherwise.”“So you’re going to take a free case, for a Latino jockey who’s been accused of murder,” Robbie said. “For what, fun?”“It’s a challenge,” Hunter said. “Besides, everything they have on you is circumstantial. There’s no proof that puts you at the murder site. Reasonable doubt can easily be established.”“And I might care about that if my skin wasn’t brown,” Robbie pointed out.“For what it’s worth, I don’t think you did it,” Hunter said. “You don’t seem angry enough.”“Oh, I was angry with Ward,” Robbie said, and there was a demon in the back of his skull that wished, somehow, that he had done it. But he hadn’t, and that was all there was to it. Ward didn’t exactly not deserve it. “I have motive, I had opportunity.”“You watch too much TV, Mr. Reyes,” Hunter said. “It’ll be fine. After the arraignment, we’ll get you bailed out. Something else will come up. It always does.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Daisy stepped into her office, tentative. She hated that she seemed to have become timid, that she kept waking up from dreams where Grant was dead on the floor, and sometimes, worse, dreams that he wasn’t dead and still at all, but still alive and coming after her. Or dead and coming after her.Bad enough she had a stalker ex boyfriend, because what else could Grant possibly have been doing in her office aside from stalking her, but to make him into some… horror show of a haunting. That was worse. She had an appointment with her therapist; she’d done that in college, and again after school, but never stuck with it for very long.She was just whining, she felt. Boohoo, feel sorry for the half-Asian girl with the chronic illness. There were so many other people who had so much going on that Daisy felt like she was wasting a therapist’s time, and her own money.But at least this time, with a dead man haunting her dreams, she thought maybe a therapist would care about that, would have something to say. Would maybe be able to help her.Cal told her there’d been people in, to replace the carpet. But that all her files and stuff had to be removed from her desk, and she’d probably need to reorganize everything. And to let him know if she found anything that was missing.How she was supposed to find something that was missing, she didn’t know.She also couldn’t imagine what carpet guys would find interesting about real estate and purchasing agreements. Why would anyone steal her papers?Why would Cal worry that someone would steal her papers?She was on edge and strange mysteries didn’t make things any easier.She was just upset, she told herself. Anyone would be.Having a project to go through and reorganize her desk, that would help. Something boring and calming to do. And somewhat annoying.There was no dead man on the floor, and Daisy hated how relieved she felt.She shouldn’t expect there to be a dead man on the floor. She couldn’t even see the traces where the blood had been. The carpet guys had done a bang up job.Daisy found herself on the floor, checking the legs of her desk for blood. There wasn’t any, although it wasn’t a new desk, and she imagined more than actually could, detect reddish stains on the bottom drawer.Would she ever be able to come in here again and not think she smelled the copper tang of blood?She pulled out her chair and forced herself to sit down.Breathe.She hadn’t seen Robbie, but that wasn’t surprising. He had court things to do; the detective had told her Robbie was going to be charged with murder. She couldn’t decide how she felt about that, either.She was pretty sure Robbie hadn’t killed Grant, but how could she know? She rested her hands on her thighs. She barely knew Robbie; only a few months.Which didn’t mean anything.She didn’t like the idea, obviously. She didn’t want him to be guilty. For more reasons than just she didn’t think she had such bad taste in men as to date an abuser followed immediately by a murderer.Cal stuck his head in and Daisy nearly shrieked, her fingers digging into her thighs until she could feel the nails bite in, even through her work pants. “You doing okay?”What do you think? Daisy wanted to scream. She didn’t. “I guess,” she said, slowly. “I don’t know.”“Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do, I don’t know, get a scented candle in here or something?”Daisy almost laughed. A scented candle would cover up a murder. “I’ll be okay,” she said, and it probably wasn’t a lie. “Just had a lot going on, and this doesn’t make it any easier.”“No, I expect not.”He disappeared again. As far as Daisy could tell, Cal was utterly unaffected by someone being murdered just outside his office door. Like it was just something nasty that needed to be cleaned up. Hidden. The scent masked. Carpeting replaced.She checked her inbox; there would, or should be, a bill for the carpet, which she should make sure that she got sent off to accounts payable. She didn’t find one, but who knew, sometimes companies took a while to get around to billing. It had only been a week.A very long week, she decided.Her files were a mess. Whoever had moved her desk around hadn’t bothered to keep anything in any sort of order, just piled them all in stacks, probably in the other room, and then moved them back. Finding out if anything was missing was going to be nearly impossible.All right; she’d gotten this office in order once before, she could do it again.By lunch, she was certain that she was never going to notice if anything was missing. But it was almost lunch and instead of spending three hours brooding about the dead man on her carpet, she’d gotten about half her desk back together.It wasn’t until she got her lunch box from the fridge and went out to sit under the gazebo that she realized; none of her personal things were in her desk; her appointment book, her addresses, the pad of paper she kept all her account passwords on.None of that had made it back into her top drawer.Daisy froze, half-eaten bite of tuna fish sandwich still stuck in her mouth.
What the hell?
She tucked the sandwich back in its plastic wrap, grabbed her things, and headed back into her office. She needed to tell Cal, she needed to change all her passcodes and make sure nothing had been logged into or changed from an offsite location, she needed--Why would someone take her passwords? It just didn’t make any sense. Well, she supposed if it was a terrible movie or something, Grant could have just been the victim of bad circumstances and his own stupidity. If someone broke into the office for the purposes of stealing, and Grant had followed -- either on purpose or by accident -- and been killed by the thief?No, that didn’t make sense, either.In either case, she’d already wasted enough time, she needed to get back into her office right away and--The door came flying open and nearly knocked her over. Ow. She was pretty sure she cracked a bone in her hand when she smacked the door.“Excuse me!” Daisy barked, cradling her hand. Damn it, she’d just gotten the cast off.Eli Morrow scowled at her. “What, you in on it, too?”Daisy blinked. “Aren’t you Robbie’s uncle? In on what?”“You tell that no-good swindler I won’t stand for this anymore,” Eli barked. “He’s messed with my family enough.”“I literally have no idea what you’re talking about,” Daisy spluttered, backing away from Eli’s wagging finger.“And you-- you stay away from my nephew,” he finished. “Both of them. They don’t need you around.”Daisy stood there, outside her office, as Eli climbined into his truck, sprayed gravel everywhere as he threw it into gear, and drove away.“What the hell is going on here?” Daisy demanded of the air.She went inside, headed to the small kitchen to grab an ice pack for her hand, just in case it wasn’t broken and might help. “Don’t you let him in here again. This is enough of a shitstorm as it is.” By an acoustic trick of the pipes and air systems, Daisy had learned once that voices in Cal’s office carried directly into the kitchen. She’d never bothered to mention it, since most of the time, she could also hear him pretty well from her office, and, for that matter, what would Cal be talking about that was all that important that it be private.She froze.“Yeah, boss.”“Did you find what we’re looking for?”“No.” Daisy didn’t know who the second man was, calling Cal Boss. She’d never heard him before. But if a voice could sound big, and dumb, and aggressive, this one did. Someone she wouldn’t want to bump into in a dark alley. Or even in a well lit boulevard. She’d been run into enough recently.“Jiaying didn’t leave her an address, that’s--”Daisy went cold. Why would Cal care about Daisy’s biological mother? For that matter, she didn’t think she’d ever told cal Jiaying’s name. Daisy had barely spoken it, she had mostly just called the woman her biological mother. Not Mother, or Mom, or even Jiaying. She wasn’t a real person yet, as far as Daisy was concerned, and she was still utterly disconnected from her.What the hell was going on?She put her lunch away and grabbed an ice pack. Went back to her desk.Daisy sat down, trying not to pay attention as the two men hastily shut up. “I’ll call you, boss, if I make any progress,” the new guy said. He was, in fact, huge, burly and unpleasant-looking, with a fiercely receding hairline.Daisy gave him her professional smile, as if nothing at all was wrong.“Who’s that?” she asked, after the man had gone.“John Garrett,” Cal said, sharply. “He’s doing some contract work for me. Are you all right?”“Hurt my hand,” she said, waving the ice pack at him.“Well, let me know if you need to leave early. We’re so far behind now, I don’t think another half day will make any difference.”“I think I’m okay,” Daisy said.She opened her desk drawer to grab a fresh post-it pad so she could start making all the password changes--And her notebook, schedule, and address book were all back where they were supposed to be, although somewhat hastily shoved in there.As if someone had just returned them.Daisy took out the scheduler and opened it.“You sure you’re okay?”“Fine,” Daisy said, giving Cal a smile. That was a straight up lie. Nothing was fine, but she wasn’t going to tell Cal until she figured out what the hell was going on. And the first step in that was going to be talking to Robbie.And then maybe actually looking for her mother.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“This is exactly how nothing ever works out,” Robbie said. He hung up his cell, having just finished explaining to Fitz why he wouldn’t be in for work, probably ever again. Fitz had said something about short leave of absence pay, and while Robbie probably should have stayed on the phone until Fitz finished his explanation, he just didn’t want to hear it. We’re sorry, we have to let you go, blah blah blah and make Robbie end up apologizing.“What’s that?” Gabe asked. He was nose deep in his homework.“This--” Robbie pointed down to the ankle monitor. He had an electric perimeter around the trailer where he could and could not go. Not a danger to society, the judge had decided, and granted bail. Robbie’d talked to the bail bondsman. It wasn’t like he had anywhere to go, but even his share of the bail, the ten percent, had them hurting. And now Robbie was going to lose his job.They’d be lucky if they weren’t all on the dole by this time next month.“I’m supposedly out on bail, but they’re making it hard to leave the trailer park. Might as well be in jail, since out here, I gotta feed me.” Technically, Robbie was allowed to go to work, but he had to notify his caseworker before he left, and get permission. Since the caseworker, as far as Robbie could tell, never answered the phone, that was becoming difficult.And God help him if he was caught off the park without permission; he’d forfeit his bond, go to jail, go directly to jail, and he couldn’t even guess what would happen to Gabe in that situation. “Call your lawyer,” Gabe suggested. “Get him to call the judge and the caseworker. That’s what you’re paying him for, right?”“Not paying him at all,” Robbie muttered, but it might have been an idea. He called Hunter. His assistant, Bobbie Morse answered the phone, took down all his details, and promised to have Hunter call him back in a few minutes.“You’re very smart,” Robbie told his brother, as if this was some great admission.“Not yet, but I’m working on it,” Gabe said. For a while, there was no sound, except the flipping of pages, the scribbling of Gabe’s pen on paper. And then, hesitatingly, “Am I allowed to ask about it?” “About what?”“The murder.”“I didn’t kill that--”“I know that,” Gabe assured him. “I mean, details and stuff that they’re not putting in the paper.”“I don’t really know any of them,” Robbie said. “Ward was found dead in Daisy’s office. Shot, I think. At least the police asked me if they could search for a gun.” Which was not the same, Robbie realized, as saying he’d been shot.Gabe was rubbing at the back of his head, not looking at Robbie. “I’m just wondering. Do you think he was killed there, at Miss Daisy’s office.”“What, you think someone moved the body?”“It could happen,” Gabe said. “They moved--” Gabe shut his mouth so fast he almost bit off his own tongue. And Robbie wouldn’t have thought anything of it, except Gabe side eyed him, as if worried that he’d noticed.“What was that, hermano?”Gabe sighed. “Okay, man, but you can’t tell Uncle Eli that I know this, all right?”“Promise,” Robbie said. What the hell was this about?“Look, they moved me,” he said. “When-- it wasn’t an accident, and I didn’t forget everything. Some guys came. Guys from Zabo. Big guys. Wanted to send Uncle Eli a message, about his gambling debts at the casino.”Robbie stared at his little brother in horror. “Why didn’t you say anything?”“I don’t think they meant to kill me,” Gabe said. He folded his hands together in his lap and stared at his fingers. “But they almost did. I fell against a walk-rail, hit my back, my legs-- well, you know what happened to my legs. They panicked, that was a lot worse, I think, than they were expecting. I was about out of my mind with pain. They dumped me in the paddock and stirred up the horses. The horses would trample me, kill me, cover any evidence.”“And you said nothing?”“They were gringos, man,” Gabe protested. “High rolling white guys. And-- they think I don’t remember, think that I don’t know, or that I won’t talk, so they’re not still coming after me. Or you. Or Uncle Eli.”Eli must know. Even if he didn’t know that Gabe remembered, he knew that Gabe’s injuries had been a warning.Had been his fault. “Eli--” Robbie started, rage building up. And then he wondered, “wait, you think that Ward...?” Obviously the guy was murdered, but that he was a warning, maybe, to someone?“I don’t know, but it seems really weird to me that he ended up over at Zabo’s offices, doesn’t it seem weird to you?”A man with a history of violence, of doing things to people to warn others who loved them. “Shit. Daisy.”***One of the many things that Daisy loved about her adopted father -- who was more of a father to her than any flesh and blood could be -- was that he didn’t dismiss her concerns out of hand. He didn’t tell her she was overreacting, and he certainly didn’t act like she was some sort of hysterical female.Having had the object in question do almost all of those things; treated her like she was an idiot who needed to be protected and coddled, a bunny and not a woman, Daisy both appreciated it, and felt stupidly guilty.Grant was dead, he’d paid for his arrogance and abusiveness as much as he ever could. And then some. He might have been a dick, but he didn’t deserve to be stabbed, or shot, or whatever he was, and then left on the floor like a gum wrapper that someone forgot to throw out.All of which conspired against her.Daisy burst into tears and was unable to talk coherently for quite some time, waving a hand around helplessly as she tried to collect herself.“It’s all right, Daisy,” Phil soothed her. “You’ve had a rough couple of days here, just let it out.”She’d promised herself once that she’d cried her last for Grant Ward, but she’d never expected to be going back on that promise for something like this.“I think--” she managed, finally, “that Cal might have had something to do with Grant’s death. That he-- Cal might have murdered Grant.”“That’s a serious accusation,” Phil said, but it wasn’t judgemental or even doubting. It just was. “Tell me why you think so.”And so, it all came spilling out; the missing information from her desk that seemed to be returned as soon as she’d noticed it, Cal’s weird conversations, his temper, the questions.“I know,” she said, “I know that it’s circumstantial, and what are we supposed to do, anyway, it’s Cal Zabo. He gave me a job when no one else would, and he’s… he’s powerful and rich and--”“All of these things are true,” Phil said. “Your evidence is circumstantial, but so is the evidence they have against your guy. Which didn’t stop them from charging him. So I suppose the question is, what do you want to do now?”Daisy shook her head. She didn’t know. Everything seemed so real, consequences that would affect more people than just herself. “I can’t talk to Robbie about this,” she said. “If-- there’s no way anyone would believe him. The only evidence we have is the word of a man who’s being accused of murder. I didn’t do it, it was the one-armed man. No one would even listen. Just as bad as if I go to the cops about it. I’m Robbie’s girlfriend, the dead man is my ex, and I’m a woman. No one’s going to listen to us.”“You have a remarkable grasp on the truth,” Phil said, giving her a rueful grin. “Someone might listen. The thing about a murder, Daisy, is that you need three things for it. A method -- knife or gun or whatever -- to commit. The means to do so; was Zabo unaccounted for at the time. Certainly, he would have been able to bypass any security at the office, delete any tapes or misplace them. But the big question; what was the motive?”“Motive?”“You can have all the facts in front of you, coincidental or circumstantial or otherwise, and no one’s going to listen until you know why Zabo killed Ward. Reyes has a motive; Ward is your ex, and obviously he was poking around in your office. Suspicious behavior all on its own, really.”“What if Grant wasn’t poking around in my office,” Daisy wondered. “He was found there, but-- what if he was poking around in Cal’s office?”“That’s speculative,” Phil said. “You’d have to look closer at Ward’s activities and motives. But if Zabo found him breaking and entering -- well, first off, nothing was broken into, and two, why not just report a break in? Zabo shot an intruder. Wouldn’t be the first time a Castle defense was used.”“I can probably get the sheriff to let me look at Grant’s stuff. Everyone knows I’m his ex-girlfriend, there might be personal things to look through,” Daisy said, and then she felt her throat getting tight, those tears prickling her eyes. Grant was an asshole, but he didn’t deserve this.Probably.“Do you still have a key?”“No, I gave it back,” Daisy said.“Hmm, well, it’s been quite a long time,” Phil said. “But I might be able to manage the door.”“What?”“You don’t think I always ran the ranch, do you?” Phil was grinning, boyish and excited.“Do I want to know, Dad?”“I don’t know, daughter,” Phil said. “Do you?”“This sounds like a story,” Daisy decided, but she was already getting her things together and pulling on her shoes. She wanted to do this before she lost her nerve.“Maybe, someday, I’ll tell you how your mother and I met,” Phil said.“Oh, no, no,” Daisy protested, “that’s not fair. You said you worked together.”“Yes, well, I didn’t exactly say what we worked on together, now did I?”‘Yeah, spill,” Daisy demanded, as they climbed into Phil’s truck, and he told a completely ridiculous story about how he and May had worked for a while as bounty hunters, bringing in, usually, people who’d stiffed their bail bond agents and left town, but sometimes others. Daisy wasn’t sure if she believed him or not, but it would make sense, some of the things they could do. “Why’d you settle out for ranching?”“Well, a veterinarian couple hired us to do some investigating,” Phil said. “It wasn’t what we usually did, but it wasn’t too far out of the way. The owners ended up going to jail in the resultant mess, and we ended up bidding on this place in an auction. Turned out for the best for everyone.”“I think you’re fibbing,” Daisy said, “turn here, Grant’s apartment is down Chester Drive.”“You can think that if you want,” Phil said. “But every word of it’s true. Ask your mother if you don’t believe me.”“Don’t think I won’t,” Daisy threatened. “And I’m sure she’ll tell that story just a little differently.”Despite her doubts on the veracity of his information, it only took Phil about eight seconds to pick the lock to Grant’s apartment, a rental that was part of a four-family building. She moved through the apartment. It was calm there, not quite empty. Grant hadn’t moved all the way back in, he had only brought a few things for this second visit. She thought she’d heard that his brother owned the buildings, and had kept this place open for him, but Daisy wasn’t sure. Grant wasn’t always on good terms with his family. His older brother, Christian, in particular.She glanced over the mostly unfurnished living room, a card table and chair in the dining room. The kitchen had dirty dishes in the sink that would likely never be washed again, and gently rotting take-out in the fridge.Nothing seemed particularly out of the ordinary.Until she got to his bedroom.The bed was unmade, dirty clothes in a messy heap in one corner, and a cork board on the wall that hadn’t been there before.On the board were neatly pinned several pieces of paper, some photographs.“Jiaying,” Daisy said, touching the photo. What the hell was Grant doing with a picture of Daisy’s biological mother.Underneath were several hundred dollar bills.Torn in half. She unpinned them and counted them out. “This is almost five thousand dollars,” Daisy said, “or it would be if the rest of the bills were here. What the hell, Dad?”Phil poked over the board, and the plucked another photo, very old, like a prom picture from the 80s. “I think that’s exactly the question that Ward was asking, and it might be why he’s dead now,” Phil said.She took the picture with shaking hands. It was prom, or some sort of school formal, and a very young, earnest looking Jiayin stood there, beaming up at her date.Who was unmistakably, Cal Zabo.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Daisy nearly let the photo drop from her fingers, and only the fact that she couldn’t seem to unclench her hand kept it from hitting the floor.Do you-- she didn’t even say that outloud and she had to take a few breaths, try to center herself. “Do you think--”“Zabo’s your biological father?” Phil asked, saying the words so that she didn’t have to.“Yeah?”“I would say that the odds are good,” Phil said. May the odds be ever in your favor, Daisy thought nonsensically. “Or bad, I guess.”“It does make Ward ending up dead in his office even more suspicious,” Phil pointed out.“Great, so my possible father is allegedly a murderer.”“Might be a good time to be grateful you’re adopted,” Phil suggested.“I’m always grateful for that,” Daisy said, utterly sincere.“That’s good to hear,” Phil said. “I knew it, but it’s nice to hear, regardless.”There was a long silence, not precisely awkward, but tense and drawn out as both of them struggled with their thoughts and emotions. “What now?”“Do you think it’s enough?”“I think we should see if we can find your mother,” Phil said. Jiaying, I mean, not Melinda. I know where Melinda is.”“What for?”“Confirmation.”“If he is my father, and a murderer,” Daisy said. “I don’t know if I want confirmation.”“It’s always better to know the truth then to believe a lie,” Phil said.“It’s weird,” she complained, “but it makes so much sense. There’s no reason-- I mean, he hired me, when no one wanted to give me a chance. If-- if he knows. He knows and didn’t tell me, all these years?”“If I was your father, your real, biological father, and I was involved in as much shady shit as Cal Zabo, possible murderer or otherwise, I don’t know that I’d tell you, either. I might rather keep you away from it, as far as possible.”“Somehow, I don’t think Cal’s motives were that pure,” Daisy snorted. “I need-- I need to sit down and think this over. Preferably while drinking heavily. I don’t-- why didn’t the cops come here, find this?”“Real police work isn’t much like the shows, Daisy,” Phil said. “They think they have the murderer. Why look deeper? He’s got motive, means, opportunity. Honestly, if I didn’t know him, I’d probably believe he did it, too. And--”“And he’s hispanic,” Daisy said. “Everyone always wants to believe the worst.”“Our brains automatically put people in boxes, it’s a survival trait,” Phil said. “Getting to know someone, realizing that your assumptions aren’t true? That takes work, and a lot of people aren’t willing to put in the effort.”“I’m glad you were,” Daisy said.“Let’s see if we can find your mother, and then we’ll see what she knows,” Phil suggested gently. “Plenty of time to see what we want to do about Zabo, once we know the truth. And Daisy?”“Yeah?”“Just remember, just because they’re your biological parents, that-- that doesn’t mean you’re like them, or you have to be like them, or their sins weigh on your soul.”“Biology is fact,” Daisy said.“Biology is a fact. One of many. You have a lot of good influences in your life. None of that changes just because we know who was responsible for your genetic makeup.”[]Daisy nodded slowly. “I’m gonna take Tripp and go trail riding for a bit,” she said. “I need to think.”“All right,” Phil said. “I’ll be here if you have any ideas on how to locate Jiayin.”“I don’t know,” Daisy said. “But she’s one of like three Asian women in town, and you’re related to the other two, so I don’t think she’ll be that hard to find.”“Good point,” Phil said. “I’ll ask around. Maybe if I’m the one looking, no one will ask too many questions.” Daisy gave him a quick hug and headed down to the stables.One of the things she always loved best about the stables was the smell, rich and luxurious and thick; horse waste did not, as most people probably thought, smell particularly bad, unless the horse had been eating something they really shouldn’t. Or was ill. Hay and waste, leather and grain, it created a comforting sort of miasma that hung over everything. She stood in the middle of the aisle and breathed in, trying to forget everything. She’d told Phil she wanted to think, but it was more that she did not, in fact, want to think at all.Lucy poked a pinkish nose over the wall of her stall and snorted, ears forward, eyes dark and interested.Well, if there was a way to prove that Daisy wasn’t thinking…She didn’t even allow herself to think that she shouldn’t be going it. Lucy would smell her fear, her uncertainty, and that would make the delicate horse nervous.Daisy fetched the tack and a simple, snaffle-bit bridle. “It’s gonna be just fine, girl,” she said. “You’ll see. Robbie will be fine. I’m gonna be fine.”Lucy ducked her head to let Daisy slip the bridle over her ears, flicking them once with almost idle curiosity. She didn’t bare her teeth, or flatten those ears down on her head. In fact, the horse acted, and therefore was, because horses didn’t lie, like nothing was amiss at all. Like they were just going to go for a ride, the way they used to, when Daisy was younger. Before Lucy had been so mistrusted.Once Daisy had the girth strap in place. “Breathe out, you lazy horse,” she scolded, because Lucy had sucked in, an old trick to make the girth looser as soon as the lungs deflated a little. Lucy whickered at her and huffed out the breath. “Hedonist.”Once she was prepped, Daisy opened the stall and led her out, through the back, so that Phil didn’t see her from the house. So, maybe she was thinking, just a little, because she didn’t want to worry Phil. It was a test, Daisy decided. A test of luck. If the luck was with them, Lucy wouldn’t throw her, the ride would go well, Robbie wasn’t guilty of murder, and that would be provable. Somehow.Daisy swung herself into the saddle and Lucy turned herself all the way around, hooves making tacktacktack sounds against the hard packed ground.“You’re fine,” Daisy told her. Lucy snorted and then tossed her head. “Want to go for a bit of a walk?”Daisy didn’t even have to touch her heels to Lucy’s flank, just leaned forward in the saddle a little and chirruped to her. Lucy took a step, two steps, then walked, headed toward the back trail without production.As if there was nothing at all wrong. As if love and affection could cure everything. Like they could, in fact, glue a broken plate together.***Phil texted her somewhat after Daisy had untacked and brushed down Lucy, giving the horse a few apple slices as a treat for being well-behaved. She would have baked Lucy a cake if that was a thing you could do for horses. Lucy had been amazing, not shying at anything, her gait easy and unconcerned.Sometimes a horse did that; associated a trauma with a thing or a person, and as long as that thing or person wasn’t around, then it was good.On the other hand, she also knew some horses who associated with the wrong thing. She knew one mare who’d been stung be hornets and forever could not be convinced that apple trees did anything other than bite.Right idea, wrong target.Lucy, it seemed, was associating her trauma with something (or someone) else, and as long as Daisy and Robbie treated her with kindness, she was going to be okay.Proof was in the fact that Daisy’s cell phone buzzed and Lucy just nuzzled at her pocket, curious.New Text From Dad Found herNew Text From Dad meet at the library as soon as you get this“Well, apparently I can go from sixty to minus twelve on the happiness scale in zero point five seconds,” Daisy complained. She gave Lucy another pat. OMW“Hey, Fitz,” she called, walking part the Vet’s truck. “Did your lawyer friend ever tell you if it was legal to record a conversation?”“You have t’have consent,” Fitz said, “of at least one party t’ the conversation. So, you coul’ for instance, record this conversation between you an’ me, so long as you knew you were doin’ it, but you couldnae record a conversation between Jemma an’ I, if neither of us knew. Why? You thinking about becoming a spy?”“Something like that,” Daisy said. “Speaking of spies, you’ll probably want to know I took Lucy for a trail ride today, and you might want to look over her hooves.”“You,” Fitz spluttered. “You are either tryin’ to distract me, or you’re tryin’ to kill me, an’ I’d at least like to know wha’ it is.”“It was an impulse decision,” Daisy admitted. “But it worked out all right.”“One of these days,” Fitz said, wagging a finger at her. “I’m gonna quit, and then where will you be?”“Seeing if Jemma needs a partner, I suppose,” Daisy teased. She darted in and kissed Fitz’s cheek. “You love me, admit it.”“I do love you, you wee daft imbecile,” Fitz said. “Which is why I would love it if you gave even the smallest amount of consideration t’ the rest of us, who worry about ye.”“It’s nice that you worry,” Daisy said, which was routine by this point. “But--”“I know,” Fitz said. “I’m jus’ saying. Go carefully?”“Sure,” Daisy agreed. “Could you give me a ride into town? Dad wants to meet up at the library.”“Where you’re going to record a conversation?” Fitz wondered. “Should I see if Hunter’s got a time for you?”“Yeah, do that,” Daisy said. “Once this ball gets rolling, I’m going to hope that it goes somewhere.”“Just don’t get yourself flattened by it,” Fitz commented.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“What’s this?” Robbie wondered.The group of kids who gathered around his brother handed him a paper bag. A quick glance in the bag showed a handful of tattered ones and fives, tens, and a twenty. “Donations, man,” one of the kids said. “It’s not right, you being unable to work and getting thrown out of the park.”Robbie plucked one of the casino chips out of the bottom of the bag. Purple with green accents, the $500 clearly stamped on one side, the casino’s logo on the other. “Where did you get this?”“My sister works at the casino,” one of the boys said. “We didn’t steal it. Some old boomer gave it to her as a tip.”“Seems like that’s money you all need, not me,” Robbie said.“Nah, she doesn’t want it,” the boy said. “Guy made her feel like a whore, she wasn’t going to take the money at all, but-- customer is always white.”There was a nasty bit of laughter that went around the group at that. “Most of it’s from that Chinese lady,” the girl said. “What Chinese lady?” Robbie wondered, because if Daisy was giving him money through some back channel shady street begging, he was going to have words with her. It was one thing to ask for help, it was something entirely different for her to give him charity.“I don’t know, some Chinese lady,” the girl insisted. “She’s living in the motel.”Definitely not Daisy. Maybe Daisy’s mother. But why would she try to help him?“Thanks, then,” Robbie said. “We… I wouldn’t take it for anything less.”“We know, man,” the first boy said. “You got our backs. We got yours. That’s how it works.”There was a round of high fives and fist bumps, and then Robbie was counting the money at the kitchen table. “I’m going to need--” well, shit. Gabe couldn’t go into the casino, he was underage. Giving the chip to Uncle Eli was going to be like handing a junkie cocaine and telling him to buy groceries with it. “You know I can pick that thing right off you,” Gabe said, looking down at the ankle monitor. “It’s not that hard.”“How do you always know what I’m thinking?” Robbie wondered. “I need to go to the casino, cash this in.”“And maybe go talk to Daisy’s mom,” Gabe said. He was already getting his toolkit out. “You don’t have to lie to me, hermano. It’s what I’d be doing, seeing what that la señora is up to.”“Maybe,” Robbie said. He propped his ankle up on one of the kitchen chairs and tried not to think about what a stupid idea this was. “You bump that thing wrong and I’m going to go to jail, you know that, right?”“I know,” Gabe said. “And you won’t have long, anyway. I can confuse the sensors for about two hours, but at the three hour mark, it’ll report in that there’s been tampering and they’ll send out a car. They may send one anyway, but if your butt is back in a chair, they won’t know for sure.”“This is such a dumb idea,” Robbie moaned, knowing he was going to do it anyway.“Yep. Isn’t it fun?” Gabe inserted a little tool into the anklet and it clicked off. Robbie couldn’t help himself but rub at it. Freedom felt good. “Hey, hermano, you still got that spy recorder?” Gabe had gone through a period where he’d decided he wanted to be a spy when he was a kid, so he’d bought this little device, like eight hours worth of voice recordings on something the size of a paper clip. As far as Robbie knew, Gabe had only ever used it as a poor man’s iPod.“You planning on recording yourself doing an illegal thing?” Gabe raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, I got it, it’s in my night stand, top drawer. Bring me a towel while you’re in there?”“Sure thing,” Robbie said. He got the necessary items, dropped the towel in Gabe’s lap. “Not sure, I mean, whatever she says, my lawyer can hear it, even if it’s not admissible, right?”“May as well be hung for a chicken as an egg, right?”Robbie laughed, because Gabe was right. He was already in trouble. He leaned down and kissed Gabe’s hair, then ruffled it. They both knew what he wasn’t saying; there weren’t very many options left.“Gotta roll.” Robbie threw himself into his car and drove like there were demons chasing him. Casino first. If nothing else, they needed the money. At least it was only $500, which meant there’d be no need to fill out capital gains tax; that paperwork would for sure bust him.Robbie checked his watch. There was still time, provided the casino let him in and out, to see Daisy’s mom (probably Daisy’s mom.)He went in, grinned at the girl behind the barred cage. “Cash me out?” He gave her a wink, and she barely even looked at him. The kind of money these people saw, every single day, and couldn’t touch? She wasn’t the least bit concerned.Robbie slid her a twenty out of the stack as a tip and she pocketed it. “Thanks. Come back any time.”“Not on your life,” Robbie said, as he walked away. He’d rarely been in the casinos, didn’t want to be there. Uncle Eli spent entirely too much time there and they’d hurt for it.Maybe even literally.Robbie tried not to notice as some of the security beefcakes took note of him. One of them said something, touching his ear. Not subtle. But they didn’t bar his way out of the casino, and that was all Robbie really cared about.Checked his watch again. Little more than an hour. He drove, avoiding the two roads in town that frequently had speed traps; that was all he needed. Finally, he was pulling into the parking lot with about forty minutes to talk, get the information he needed, and drive the ten minutes home. He was going to be cutting it damn close.It cost him another two of the dwindling stacks of twenties to get the room number for the Jiyang. At least knowing her name made it look like it might have been legit business. Maybe.It didn’t much look like the day manager of the motel cared.Robbie rapped on the door and hoped that she was in, that she was Daisy’s mother, and that she had some damn reason for giving the Reyes family so much money. There were more cars in the motel lot than Daisy would have expected. She climbed out of Phil’s truck, gingerly hopped down, ignoring her father’s hand, “What the hell is Robbie’s charger doing here?”“I suspect you’ll get to ask him shortly,” Phil said. He didn’t seem to have taken offense to her spurning his help. Again. But he was a bit stiff as his fingers went automatically to her elbow. She really needed to get out of that bad habit. Her parents loved her. People loved her, and she needed to accept that sometimes, help was an expression of that love.“He could get in a lot of trouble,” she said.“If he’s here,” Phil replied, “I’m sure there’s already trouble. Or he’s connected the same dots that you did.”Phil had already done all the hard work -- Daisy suspected she didn’t want to know anything about it -- and gestured toward the unit near the end. “Around the side,” he said. “We can listen at the window for a bit, see if your boyfriend’s in trouble.”“Remind me what you did before you decided to raise horses,” Daisy said.“That’s classified,” Phil replied with a grin.“Do you think--” Daisy didn’t even want to ask.“Yes, I think Robbie’s in trouble,” Phil said. “Move, now.”“What?”“That’s Zabo’s truck at the light. If we’re lucky, he hasn’t seen us yet,” Phil said, urging her forward faster. They got around the side of the building just before he pulled in.“Do you think he saw us?”“Probably not,” Phil said, “and I suspect he does not know my car, although he may know Robbie’s.” Phil leaned against the wall to peer around the corner, reached under his shirt and--“Dad, is that a gun?”“I was expecting trouble,” Phil said. “You’re investigating a murder. Do you know how many times murderers get caught because they ended up killing more people trying to cover it up? I didn’t want to be caught flat-footed.”Well, Daisy was certainly flat-footed. “I didn’t even know you owned a gun,” she hissed. Well, rifles and shotguns, sure. They lived out in the great wide open; shooting the occasional snake or coyote was something that happened. But a hand gun? Something that was made just for killing people? “You really need to tell me about this classified bullshit at some point.”“Maybe,” Phil said, “but not today. Now, hush.”Daisy pressed her lips together and glared impotently at the back of Phil’s head. He was holding his gun in a very professional manner, low, his finger away from the trigger.Do not ever point a gun at something you don’t intend to shoot. Melinda had told her that, once, a long time ago. Why is it that I know nothing about my own life, Daisy wondered suddenly. She didn’t know who her biological parents were, and as she started to figure that out, she realized how much she didn’t know about Melinda and Phil.
Time to start paying attention, Daisy.
“Half my life, I gave away my daughter and I wondered,” Jiaying said, cradling an ancient mug that had a foul-smelling tea in it. “Was she all right, was she happy? I didn’t know. I gave her to a Safe Haven. That was-- no one knew who I was. I couldn’t take care of her, even before I knew how ill she was. I didn’t have the money. My parents, they were in the country illegally. When I went to Daisy’s father… he said he wouldn’t pay, not one red cent, and if I tried to force him, he would turn in my parents.”Robbie sucked in a breath. “That’s terrible.”Jiaying nodded. “So I did not know. But about a year ago, this boy comes to me, this boy who says he knows where my daughter is. He has pictures of her, and shows them to me. He asked me for money, to give them to me. I did this, because I wanted to know more about my daughter. I do not know how he knew to even look. Even knowing my daughter, how did he know she was mine?”“Blackmail?”“Not me,” Jiaying said. “He wants to introduce me back to my child. I think his plan was to use us as a way to get back into Daisy’s life. I come back to this place, and I do some investigating. Daisy broke things off with Grant, she was not happy. I refuse to allow him to drag me into his plans. He threatens to tell Daisy I am here. So I went to her. There is no blackmail if there are no secrets.”“And what happened?”“Cal,” Jiaying said. “I find her, working for Cal. I don’t know what to tell her. I don’t know why he hired her. I think, maybe he changed his mind about being part of her life. Cal tells me to leave, that he will take care of this.”“Take care of,” Robbie repeated, slowly. “You think he killed Grant?”“I do not know what to think,” Jiaying said. “Daisy is happy. She is safe. She has a good family and friends who take care of her. She has a nice man-- Cal wants me to leave, and I do not think that Daisy needs… she does not need me as her mother. She has a mother. I will leave. And then, Grant is dead, you are in jail, and Daisy is not safe.”“So why give me money?”“You are in trouble,” Jiaying said. “And I don’t think you murdered Grant. Too tidy.”“What?”“The police, they like everything simple,” Jiaying said. “You have a grudge with the boyfriend. You must have killed him. It makes sense. But life… life doesn’t happen like that.”Robbie almost swallowed his tongue when someone banged on the door. “Ji, let me in!”Cal Zabo.
Fuck.
“Hide, go!” Jiaying shoved him toward the bathroom. “He won’t stay long.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“I told you to get the fuck out of town,” Cal spat. He had a gun, Daisy could see the bulge it made in the back of his shirt, tucked down his pants like he thought he was being subtle.“You do not tell me what to do. Turns out I was needed here,” Jiaying said, and then their voices went indistinguishable as the door slid closed behind him. “Dad,” Daisy hissed.Phil pressed against the door, listening, waving one hand at her to be quiet.Daisy joined him, trying to hear past her own heart throbbing, to hear and understand past the panic and betrayal and confusion.And the fact that she felt like she was in a bad episode of Scooby Doo or something. Daisy kept looking around to see if anyone else was planning to show up, if the cops were going to arrest her and Phil for being creepy. If--“This is all your fault,” Jiaying said. “You and your secrets! Make such a big deal out of something that was not that important. That--”“Yeah, tell me another one,” Cal said. “Everything’s always my fault, huh, Ji? And you let that little punk come around, try to blackmail me?”“He has paid for his bad judgement as much as he can, Cal,” Jiaying said, calmly. “You killed him, and then you panic and you want me to tell you it is not your fault, just like I always have. I will not, not this time. This is the bed we made together; we will lay in it.”“Are you threatening me? Is that it?”“You are finished,” Jiaying said. “You are a bad man, Cal Zabo, and I regret that it took me so long to see.”“Well, we all have regrets,” Cal said. “Guess you’re the lucky one, Ji. You’re not going to have to live with them.”Everything happened very fast then, so fast that Daisy should not have been able to make sense of them at all, but somehow, in the surge of terror and adrenalin, it was as if she could see everything in slow motion. Not that time had slowed down, but that she, herself, had sped up.Phil tried the knob and cursed; it was locked. Safety feature, Daisy’s brain said, suddenly. Phil staggered back a step, and then kicked the door. Unlike in movies, it didn’t go flying open on a single blow, but a second kick and the doorknob was badly bent and the door let go.Someone yelled from inside the room, a male voice--“Robbie!”“This will not help you, Cal,” Jiaying shouted. “Let her go!”Jiaying was pinned at Cal’s side, his arm wrapped around her chest, one hand in her hair. The other hand was on the gun, directly pointed at her head. The way she squirmed and yelled, Daisy wasn’t even sure she knew he was pointing the gun at her, only inches from death.“Get back, all of you-- Daisy?” Cal’s eyes grew wide with shock and he lurched a step backward, dragging Jiaying with him, who’d just realized the danger she was in.“It’s me, yes,” Daisy said, keeping her hands out to her sides. Not a target. Robbie, who’d apparently been in the bathroom, was holding the shower’s curtain rod like it was a weapon, looked no less shocked. “Girlfriend, what are you doing here?”“Could ask you the same, but I think the discussion will wait until later,” Phil snapped. “Zabo, put the gun down.”Daisy barely heard the random threats and demands. All she could see was the man who made up half her genetic material, holding her biological mother. “Cal-- Cal, let her go, this isn’t what you want.”“Daisy--”“Girlfriend--”“Daisy,” Cal said, and he was crying. Not sobbing, not noisy, but steady. “I never meant--”“I know,” Daisy said. “You never meant this to happen, everything just got out of control. It’s okay, though. You still have choices.”“Put the gun down, Mr. Zabo,” Phil said again, steady and strong. “The cops are already on their way,” Robbie said, but he wasn’t looking out the window or hearing sirens. He was looking at his watch.“I didn’t know,” Cal said. “Not for years.” It was like they were the only two people in the room, everything else was unimportant. “And then, when I… I suspected, offered you a job. You were happy, you were taken care of, you didn’t need me as a father, you already had one. But I could take care of you. I could, a little bit. Help make things easier for you.”“I know,” Daisy said, and her throat ached. “What happened? Did Grant put the pieces together?”“Little shit, tried to blackmail me--”“That was wrong of him,” Daisy said. “It doesn’t-- it wouldn’t have changed anything, if I knew. It doesn’t change anything.” She took a step forward, ignoring Phil, Robbie. She reached up and brushed her fingertips over Cal’s face. She knew his face as well as she knew her own. Better, even, since she never saw him with the same awareness of his flaws as she saw her own reflection. “You--”“Let my mother go,” Daisy said. “And we can all talk about this. It’s all right. No one else needs to be hurt.”“Daisy--”“Dad. Let her go.”And it was over. Cal dropped the gun and Jiaying scurried to the other side of the room, hiding behind Phil. Cal crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut, and Daisy lowered herself to his side. She hugged him, feeling the powerful man sobbing. “It’s all right, Cal. It’s over.”“Daisy--” That was Phil, her real father, his voice aching with fear.“Take Jiaying and Robbie outside. Wait for the cops, and don’t let them shoot Robbie out of some ridiculous act of misplaced heroism. Explain. I’ll be right here. Cal and I need to talk.”“I’m not going to leave you in here with--”“Robbie, please. Phil, take Cal’s gun.”He was already on it, using a pen to lift the gun by the trigger and Jiaying handed him the ice bucket to put it in. One of these days, Phil was going to tell her his own history, but right now, Daisy wanted to learn hers.Soon enough, they were gone, and it was just Cal and Daisy in the dingy hotel room.“You know,” Cal said, once he stopped sobbing, “I found you, and you’re better than I ever imagined. And I imagined you as perfect.”“Nobody’s perfect, Cal,” Daisy said. She wouldn’t -- couldn’t -- call him Dad. “How long did you know?’“I knew Ji was pregnant, and I knew she gave you up,” Cal said. “I didn’t know who-- didn’t care to learn who. Until you were fifteen, maybe? And I found you. And I got to know you. And found that I had lost something precious without ever knowing what it was. Regrets. But I could do right by you, that was my plan, I was going to do right, get you in my life, keep you there, keep you close. I didn’t want to-- make a fuss, or… I didn’t want you to know. I’m not a good man, I know that. And you deserved better.”“Thank you,” Daisy said. “Phil’s a good man. He’s a good father. The best, really. Thank you for… letting me stay with them.”Cal nodded. “I’m… I’m sorry to drag you into all this. There’ll be talk, and scandal, and I’m going to jail. Probably for the rest of my life.”“Yeah, probably,” Daisy agreed. “There probably won’t be a lot left, after all the fines and fees,” Cal said. “But I want you to know. The Ranch, the casino, all of that. It’s always been meant for you.”“You know I’m just going to give it back,” Daisy said. “The farms and animals and riders.”“Yeah.”They sat that way in silence for a bit, and Daisy heard the wail of sirens over the muffled sound of Cal’s heart, the harshness of both of their breath.“Will you, will you visit me, once in a while?”“I will, I promise.”“Best day ever.”“I guess you’ll have a lot of those,” Daisy said.“Just the one,” Cal said. “The day I found out about you.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Robbie stared up at the big building; penitentiaries always looked the same. Blocks of concrete, surrounded by wire and fences.They were cold, official, depressed, and angry buildings, full of depressed and angry people.Fortunately, Robbie wasn’t one of them.Daisy’s father was in there, held without bail, on charges of racketeering, blackmail, extortion, assault, and murder.According to Hunter, Cal was probably going to get knocked down on the murder charge to homicide, given that Grant Ward was threatening him. But even so, all the rest of the charges were going to put him away, at least for a while. He’d given over most of the titles and property to his daughter; Cal Zabo was a multimillionaire. Even having given away his ranch and stable property, he had plenty of money for the state and lawyers to take away.Still, he was a rich, middle-aged white guy. Chances were good he’d serve a light sentence, five to ten, and be back, doing whatever it was he was doing, in seven years with good behavior. It wasn’t enough, really, but the system was stacked. He who had the gold made the rules.Daisy was proving to be a much more benevolent landlord. She’d made arrangements for payments to Gabe -- to pay off their medical bills, and for tuition toward college. Two weeks ago, Robbie and Gabe had moved out of the trailer park to a small ranch house on the edge of Coulson’s land. Much more wheelchair accessible and close to work.He was officially Shield’s Rider, and had his pick of the horses they’d recently acquired.But at least for this upcoming race, he was going to ride Lucifer's Hell Charger.Daisy appeared at the door, escorted by security.True to her word, she visited Zabo regularly.Robbie had mixed feelings about that.Because of course, Zabo was her father, and she had promised.On the other hand, Zabo was a murderer. And responsible for Gabe’s injuries. And a crime boss. There wasn’t much admirable about him, and Robbie wasn’t sure why Daisy continued to visit.Robbie, on the other hand, had no interest in going inside the building. He was pretty sure he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, or his expression even close to civil, sitting across the table from the man who’d ordered his little brother beaten within an inch of his life.It was hard to get behind the whole idea.But Daisy wasn’t her father.And Robbie knew how complicated families could be. Hadn’t he had a screaming argument with Eli about what happened to Gabe, and-- well, they weren’t necessarily on good terms, but Eli was pretty much all they had left, so.Maybe Christmas, they could have him over. Or something.If Gabe decided he was okay with it.“How’d it go, girlfriend?” Robbie asked, sliding his arm around Daisy’s shoulders. He couldn’t go in with her, but he could be as supportive as he could. She usually needed a cry, or an ice cream, or sometimes both, after visiting with her father.A lot of people had difficult families; not loads of people were trying to build a relationship with a murderer. Robbie’s hatred of the man colored his own feelings on that. If it was best for her to even try. How could it even be good for her. But it wasn’t his choice to make, so he did the best he could to support the choices Daisy made.“Not too bad,” she said. “He was maudlin, which is better than other options.”Zabo full of regret and grief was how Robbie preferred him, even if the man mostly regretted choices that made his life difficult for him, without realizing yet that other people had hopes and dreams that Zabo had stormed all over. Regret was certainly better than the days she was there for less than three minutes because Zabo had gone into a rage of yelling and screaming.“He asked me about the race. Asked me if I forgive him.”“Do you?”“No,” Daisy said. “I don’t know if I can. He… he doesn’t see things like a person. He’s sorry I’m upset, but he doesn’t understand why I’m upset that Grant Ward is dead. I always saw movies about psychopaths when I was a teenager, but they’re nothing like the real thing. He’s not emotionless or cold or calculating. He doesn’t think his anger is justified or righteous or any of the things murderers do in movies.” She snuggled in closer to him. “He scares me.”“So why go back?”“Because it’s not a horror movie, and the monster’s not vanquished,” Daisy said. “I don’t do it for him. Or even for you. Or from some sort of twisted idea of family. But I recognize-- Robbie, I recognize some of his anger in me, and I need to understand that, if I’m going to fight it. It’s complicated. I wish it wasn’t, but it is.”“No, I know,” Robbie said. “I worry about you, but you’re tough. You’ll figure out what it is you need to figure.”Daisy leaned on him. “I will,” she said, simply. “And you’ll help me. And we’ll make it through all this. Together.”“Sounds good,” Robbie said. “Which is really great, because tomorrow, tomorrow you’re gonna be dating a race track winner.”“I know. Looking forward to it. I’ll even help you take your boots off.”“Love it when you talk dirty to me, girlfriend,” Robbie told her.“I know.” She looked back at the prison, as if she could see through the walls, then visibly shrugged it off. “Let’s get out of here.”It was always a fine moment when Robbie handed his woman into his car. And this moment… this moment was fine.