Love, Like Water by Rowan Speedwell Read Free Book Online

spring. He’ll be good at that—quick as lightning and agile as a snake. Mustangs make good rodeo horses, once they’re socialized.” Eli leaned on the porch railing. “So what else did Rodney say?”
    “Who’s Rodney?” Joshua frowned. “Did I meet him at lunch?”
    “No, he’s the vet. Was here this morning when you were asleep.” Tuck turned back to Eli. “Clean bill of health for the stock he saw today—he’ll be back next week to look at the rest.”
    “Good.” Eli nodded. “Oh, by the way, I stopped for the mail.” He pulled the wad of papers out of his back pocket. “We made the front page.”
    “What?” Tuck took the mail from him and opened the newspaper. “Profiler? Heh. Joshua, you know you’re a noted FBI profiler?”
    Joshua raised an eyebrow. He did look better, some, Eli thought—he was still gaunt, that wouldn’t change overnight, but some of the shadows had vanished from beneath his eyes, and while those still weren’t anywhere near human, they at least weren’t quite as dead. They at least looked like they had a soul behind him. Probably due to Sarafina’s feeding him.
    God , Eli thought, he’s gonna be nice looking when he gets some meat on his bones and some life in his face . He shook himself mentally.
    “Profiler?” the guy said. “Well, better that than the truth.”
    “What’s the truth?”
    Joshua looked at him. “Failure, mostly.”
    “Failure? That’s bullshit, boy!” Tucker rarely got that incensed, and Elian didn’t remember the last time he’d flown off the handle like that. It was so unlike the soft-spoken horse trainer he knew that he recoiled in surprise. “Your mama told me they were able to put that whole damn gang behind bars and you never even had to testify because the information you got them was so solid. So don’t you go saying you’re anything like a failure around where I can hear it, you understand?”
    Glancing at Joshua, Eli noted that the man’s head had gone back, his nostrils flared, and his eyes had gone flat and dead like they had been the first time he’d seen him. Just like a mustang fresh off the range might look, faced with a stranger with a rope—defiant, frightened, wary. “Tuck,” he said quietly.
    His boss stopped, blinked, took a good hard look at Joshua, and deflated. “Shit,” he said softly. “Sorry, Josh.” He put out his hand, slowly, carefully.
    Joshua looked at it, at him, and dropped his head forward, letting out a long sigh. When he raised his head, his eyes were tired. “It’s okay,” he said wearily. “It’s just your truth. But you gotta remember something, Uncle Tucker. The end almost never justifies the means.” With that, he got up and shambled back into the house.
    “Fuck,” Tucker said. Eli was surprised. Tucker almost never swore like that.
    “You okay?”
    “I’ll live. Damn it. I blew that one, didn’t I?”
    “He ain’t gonna be easy, Tuck.” Eli took the couple of steps up to the porch and hiked himself up onto the railing. “He’s smart and he’s tough, and he’s pretty damn bruised. You just gotta hope he’s got heart underneath all that bruising. He kinda reminds me of one of the horses we get from the ASPCA—maybe he’ll respond to the same kinda treatment.”
    “He’s a man, not a horse.”
    Eli shrugged. “Both animals, in the long run. You’re a smart man, boss. You’ll figure him out.”
    “It would help if I knew what happened to him. What drove him to the drugs. I mean, shit, Eli, the boy I knew couldn’t ’a done that. Something must have changed him drastic.”
    “Mebbe. Whatever it was, he’s dealing with it now, and that’s what matters.”
    “True enough.” Tucker sighed, then said, “Another thing—speaking of Animal Cruelty….”
    “Shit, we got another one?”
    “One? Hell, we’ve got five. Outta Kansas. Trailer’s coming in Saturday. Three mares, two geldings. Old man died on his farm and nobody knew about it for weeks.” Tucker