Rough Rider (Hot Cowboy Nights, #2)(65)

“Told you I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I didn’t want to talk about my past either.”

Dirk stiffened in the saddle. “You want me to unload all my shit on you? Is that what you want?”

His dark expression and gruff response told her she was pushing his comfort zone again, but she wasn’t going to back off so easily. “Don’t you think it’s only fair when you made me unload mine?”

*

He said nothing for the longest time but the clouds of vapor came harder, faster as he fought the impulse to spur his horse and leave the questions behind. But he couldn’t outrun the memories even if he tried. They were always with him. Part of him. Even now, it was still a daily struggle to keep thoughts of that time and place at bay.

“I’d been floundering for months,” he began. “Didn’t know what the hell was wrong with me. I was so restless, like I wanted to crawl out of my own skin. But watching the life drain out of Seth Lawson flipped some kind of switch. I had to get away. Clear my head, so I got in my truck and drove. Didn’t even know where I was going, just had a powerful yen to see the ocean. I headed west on I-80 and didn’t stop until I hit San Francisco. I remember parking the truck at Ocean Beach, pulling off my boots, and wading out into the surf. Jeans and all. Jesus, it was cold! I hadn’t expected that.

“I stayed a couple of days and then headed south down the Pacific Coast Highway and ended up in San Diego. An old rodeo buddy of mine was stationed there at Camp Pendleton. I called him up and then suddenly it was perfectly clear. I enlisted the next day in the U.S. Marine Corps. Oorah. Semper fi.

“At first I was zealous for the war, certain we were right. That the cause was just. Yeah, that’s exactly what I told myself. We took down the Evil Empire and cleaned up the whole f*cking mess in Iraq. Mission accomplished. Or so we thought.” He shook his head with a bitter laugh.

“When I re-upped, I thought it was the same war, just a different mission. But it wasn’t the same war. We were stalking that murdering sonofabitch Bin Laden in a place where you couldn’t ever know who was the enemy. The day I lost my leg was just a normal day patrolling a quiet mountain village. We were walking among men, even women and children, who nodded, smiled, and salaamed even as they were planting IEDs to blow us to kingdom come.

“We didn’t see it coming. Maybe we should have. It had been too quiet for too long. Without warning, all hell broke loose. Explosions everywhere. Men screaming. Bodies disintegrating before our eyes. Do you have any clue what an IED can do? Helmets and body armor are useless. They don’t kill. IEDs vaporize. I had to have pieces of my best buddy surgically plucked outta me. That’s the f*cking devastation of an IED.”

Janice whispered, “I can’t even begin to imagine it.”

“No. You. Can’t,” he replied through clenched teeth. “No one can who hasn’t seen it.” He shut his eyes finding it hard to breathe. He never allowed himself to think about it because it always sucked him down into the dark place—a hell filled with smoke and fire, sweat, and blood, excrement…and death.

The old feeling of panic started closing in, the terror that still jarred him awake in a cold sweat. Janice’s soft voice pulled him back. “But you lived, Dirk. At least you got to come home.”

“Yeah. I lived. Small consolation when I lost six men and then had to deal with a f*cking court martial to defend our actions.”

“Dear God. I didn’t know. What happened?”

“Acquitted and came home. End. Of. Story.”

“But—”

“I’ve told you about as much as I can stomach. I don’t want to talk about this shit anymore…or ever again for that matter. Ready?”

*

Dirk didn’t wait for her reply but urged his horse forward and up the steep and rocky incline. They rode another hour in a tense silence before discovering the first tracks in the snow. On examination, they proved to be equine rather than bovine.

“Horses?” Janice asked. “Who would have ridden horses up here?”

“They weren’t riding. These tracks are from a band of renegade mustangs that Wade and I saw.”

“Mustangs? Where the heck did they come from? I thought the only herd left in all of Montana was over in the Pryor Mountains.”

“Not anymore,” Dirk said. “’Bout twenty miles north there’s an outfit that took on a bunch of them from the BLM.”

“Really? I hadn’t heard anything about it. Which outfit was that?”

“The Circle S, old man Sutton’s place,” Dirk replied. “It seems his widow has pulled out of cattle and now plans to turn the whole spread into a wild horse sanctuary or some shit like that. Of course she doesn’t know what the hell she’s getting into, but the BLM don’t care. They’re just desperate to get as many horses off their hands as possible.”

“Isn’t that the truth.” Janice shook her head. “There’s a real problem in Nevada right now with the ongoing drought. It was on the news all the time. There’s over twenty thousand wild horses living in that desert and not enough water to sustain them. They were planning some emergency roundups when I left. Hopefully some of those horses will find homes.”

“Lottsa luck there,” he scoffed. “What kinda fool’s gonna mess with a Mustang when even dead-broke ranch horses are a dime a dozen?”