“I know that doesn’t sound very scientific,” Tucker went on, his tone apologetic, “but there you have it. Veterinary medicine has come a long way over the last twenty years, but much of the diagnostic equipment is stationary, primarily because most vets can’t afford the portable versions. I carry more equipment with me than the average vet, but even so, every time I go out on a call, it’s still mostly guesswork. It’s only later, after I’ve returned to the clinical environment and can review the results of the tests, that I know for sure if I guessed right.”
Looking into his unwavering blue eyes, Samantha felt no need to ask how often Tucker Coulter guessed wrong. She ran a trembling hand along her stallion’s neck. “What are your instincts telling you about Blue?”
He gave her a sharp look. “Truthfully?”
“Of course, truthfully. If I didn’t want an honest answer, I wouldn’t have asked.”
He searched her gaze for a long moment and then nodded. “If he were my horse, I’d try another drug, one that’s a complete long shot. I have absolutely no data to justify my reasoning, but if my suspicions are correct and my instincts are sound, it would work a hell of a lot better than these sedatives and would also be much safer.”
“Are you asking for my authorization?”
He hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, I suppose I am.”
For a moment, Samantha stood frozen. Then, with a soft release of breath, she said, “My father believes in you. His opinion counts for a lot with me. What is this drug you’d like to use?”
He sat back on his boot heel. “It’s an opiate antagonist called naloxone.”
“An opiate antagonist? My ignorance is showing, I’m afraid. I’ve no idea what that is.”
“An antagonist is any drug capable of counteracting the effects of another drug, in this case possibly an opiate. I’m guessing morphine.”
“Morphine?” Samantha felt her eyes widen. “Wasn’t it used at the tracks years ago to fix horse races?”
“Until it was outlawed, yes, doping horses to excite them and make them run faster was a common practice. Sadly, if the animal was given too large a dose, the doping often backfired, making the animals go totally berserk or pushing them beyond endurance. Either way, the result was either dead or ruined horses, and eventually laws were passed to prohibit the use of morphine.”
A long-forgotten memory of her ex-husband, Steve, popped into Samantha’s mind. She distinctly remembered his once telling her about doping a rodeo bronco to make it impossible for an opponent to win a competition. The ground felt as if it shifted beneath her feet, and she reached out a hand to steady herself against the wall. For an awful moment she thought she might faint.
Blue, her sweet, beautiful, loyal Blue, might be in grave danger. If the morphine broke through again, there was no guarantee that the ropes would hold the horse and protect him from injury.
“What makes you think it’s morphine?” she asked.
“The symptoms, mainly. The sedative combination I’m giving him should keep him calm for at least a half hour, with lingering effects after the drugs start to wear off. But that isn’t happening. I’d also expect a reduced pulse rate and slower breathing, but I’m not seeing either. It’s as if something else in his system is counteracting the sedatives. Answer—morphine. It’s the first agent that comes to mind because it’s so renowned for exciting equines.”
“And you’re certain naloxone will counteract it?”
He nodded.
“Let’s try it, then.”
“It’s purely an opiate antagonist,” he warned. “It has almost no analgesic effect.”
“In other words, it will do essentially nothing unless Blue has ingested an opiate?”
“Precisely. He could go totally berserk again.”
Samantha envisioned the white powder on Blue’s wet cob. Though it sickened her to consider the possibility, she believed a chemical analysis might prove that substance to be morphine.
She stroked the stallion’s neck one final time. Then she turned toward Tucker. “Give him the naloxone,” she said thinly.
He bent back over his satchel and withdrew another vial. Giving her a questioning look, he said, “Are you sure? Like I said, it’s a long shot.”
“I’m sure,” she whispered.
Within seconds, he was giving the agitated stallion an injection straight into the jugular. “It’s a rapid-onset drug,” he explained to Samantha as he depressed the plunger. “If my guess is right and he ingested morphine powder, we’ll know in one to two minutes.”
Samantha leaned against the wall to wait. As if with a bone-deep chill, she was trembling from head to toe. She could feel her father’s gaze on her. A part of her wanted to run to him and feel his strong arms around her, but an other part of her held fast and avoided looking at him. Shame. That was what she felt, only instead of burning through her, it felt cold as death.
During those endless seconds—each a small eternity of waiting—Samantha remembered all the other times that she’d caused her father pain. In each and every in stance Steve Fisher, the one grave mistake of her lifetime, had been the cause. He was like an inoperable cancer. Over the last year she had convinced herself that Steve had finally been removed from her life. And then when she least expected it, he had infected it again.
“It’s working,” Tucker said softly.
Samantha brought her head up to stare at her horse. Even cross-tied, the stallion looked like his old self again. He held his head as high as the ropes would allow, his eyes were clear and bright, and for the first time since this nightmare had begun, he looked at her with recognition.
“Ah, Blue.” Samantha pushed away from the wall and went to hug her horse’s neck. He chuffed and whickered softly, almost as if he were apologizing for his bad behavior. “It wasn’t your fault, baby. It wasn’t any of it your fault. We all know that.” She breathed into his nostrils to give him her scent. Then she pressed closer to bury her face against his neck. “Can the ropes come off now?”
“Naloxone’s duration of action only persists from forty-five to ninety minutes,” Tucker explained. “If we re move the ropes, accidentally drift off to sleep, and don’t get another injection into him when he begins to get agitated, the opiate could break through again.”
“I won’t fall asleep,” Samantha assured him, and looking into her horse’s eyes, she knew it was a promise she would keep. “I hate seeing him tied up like this. He’s a wonderful, gentle horse and deserves to be treated with dignity.”
When the ropes fell away, Blue Blazes walked directly to the stall gate to nudge Jerome’s shoulder with his nose. Jerome scratched behind the horse’s ears. “I know, son. You remember hurting me. But I don’t hold it against you.”
“He’s sayin’ he’s sorry, clearer than words,” Samantha’s father said with a faint smile. “Poor fellow. Must be terrible to eat something that makes you crazy and not be able to stop yourself.”
“I’ve been crazy drunk a few times,” Jerome replied, still fondling the horse’s ears. “Said and did things that made me ashamed later. I reckon maybe that’s how he feels.”
Tears stung Samantha’s eyes. Without thinking of the consequences or how Tucker might interpret the gesture, she turned and gave him a fierce hug. “Thank you. Thank you so very much.”
For just an instant he seemed uncertain how to react, but then he curled an arm around her waist and returned the embrace. “I’m just glad it worked. I was sweating bullets, I’ll tell you.”
“Me, too,” she confessed with a wet laugh.
When she went to pull away, he quickly released his hold on her. As she stepped back their gazes locked, and something—a feeling Samantha had never felt before—passed between them. It lasted for only an instant, but during that brief expanse of time, the impact was stunning. Even more alarming, he felt it, too. Samantha saw it in his eyes.
The realization filled her with a sudden need to escape. Glancing at her watch, she decided to go che
ck on Tabasco. As she left the enclosure, she saw her brothers sitting on the arena floor with their backs braced against the gate of the adjacent stall. Brown Stetson tipped low over his eyes, Clint sat in a slump, long legs extended and crossed at the ankle, the pointed toes of his boots forming a lopsided V. Beside him Quincy sat with both knees bent, heels planted in the dirt, arms crossed over his chest. Parker and Zach had each taken end positions and looked like two perfectly matched bookends.
“Blue is doing better,” she informed them. “We took a gamble, and he responded to the antagonist.”
“We heard.” Clint thumbed up his hat to settle a chocolate brown gaze on her. “I’m fixing to respond to an antagonist, too,” he drawled. “Only not in a favorable way.”
The anger in her eldest brother’s voice was unmistakable, and Samantha held up a hand to stop him from saying anything more. “I can’t go there right now, Clint. Let me get Blue and Tabasco through this first. Then we’ll talk.”
“You know who did this,” he replied in that same throbbing tone. “It’s written all over your face.”
Samantha had no doubt that Clint could read her expression. He’d been doing so all her life. “What I do or don’t know isn’t the issue right now.”
“What is?”
“Saving my horses!” Samantha heard the shrill edge in her voice and swallowed hard to regain her composure. “I can’t deal with anything more right now.”
“I’m not asking you to deal with it. All I want is a go-ahead from you, and I’ll do the rest.”
“A go-ahead?” she repeated incredulously.
“Somebody’s got to take him to task,” Clint retorted, his voice vibrating with leashed rage. “Time after time we let it go, and now look where that’s landed us. He has no boundaries, Samantha. He won’t stop with this. If you’re thinking he might, you’re dreaming.”
She shook her head. “Please, Clint, not right now. Let me get my horses well, and then I’ll decide what to do.”
“Like you decided before?” His eyes had gone so black with anger, they glittered in his dark face. “Let me handle him this time.”
“No. I can’t have my brother acting like some half-cocked vigilante. There are laws in place, Clint. If Steve did this, he’ll pay, but it won’t be at your hands.”
“The law only works when a perpetrator is caught and proved to be guilty. Steve is smarter than that. He did this. You know it, I know it, and everybody else knows it, too. But mark my words, you’ll never be able to prove it. Is that what you want, to let him do something this vicious and just walk away scot-free?”
Samantha had started to shake again. “Talking to you is like talking to a rock. Why do you never listen to me? I cannot deal with anything more right now. What about that do you fail to understand?”
Spinning away, she headed for Tabasco’s stall. Every step of the way she felt Clint’s gaze burning a hole in her back. She loved her brother, she truly did, but sometimes he made her so furious she wanted to wring his neck.
She was breathless by the time she entered Tabasco’s enclosure. To keep from bursting into tears, she grabbed his brush and set to work grooming him, her strokes brisk and short at first, then settling into longer, gentler sweeps. The horse chuffed and bumped her with his nose. Samantha sighed and stopped brushing him to comb her fingers through his forelock and scratch under his halter straps.
She heard someone enter the stall behind her. That someone deposited some things in a corner and then stepped over to the IV pole. Tucker, she guessed.
“The first bag is almost gone,” she said needlessly. “I can’t believe how fast it went.”
“I’m hitting him pretty hard with fluids. If he ingested arsenic, the more fluids, the better. That, along with the medicines I just added to the IV, will help cleanse his body of the chemical.”
“Have you treated a lot of animals with arsenic poisoning?”
“None, actually.”
“How can you know for certain what medicines to use then?”
“Good question,” another masculine voice very like Tucker’s said from behind them.
Samantha glanced over her shoulder and thought for just an instant she was seeing double. Tucker Coulter—or someone who looked exactly like him—stood just inside the stall gate.
“Your eyesight’s fine,” he assured her with a crooked grin. “I’m Isaiah, Tucker’s twin.”
Over her lifetime, Samantha had known several sets of twins who claimed to be identical, but upon close inspection she’d always been able to see slight differences. Not so with the Coulter brothers. Except for their clothing, they were mirror images of each other—tall, bronzed, and dark-haired, with eyes as blue as laser beams.
“Unfortunately for me, he got the photographic memory,” Isaiah went on, “and I didn’t.” He sent his brother a laughing glance. “He probably read about arsenic poisoning when we were cramming for a final at vet school, and now the symptoms and treatments are chiseled on his brain.”
“You’re a vet, too?” Samantha said incredulously.
Isaiah’s lean cheek creased in a teasing grin. “Our mother dressed us alike and warped our personalities. I’ve never had an original thought in my entire life.”
“That is so not true,” Tucker retorted. “You got married, didn’t you?”
Even as drained as Samantha felt, she couldn’t help but smile at the Coulter brothers’ verbal sparring. It reminded her of the exchanges that took place among her own brothers on a daily basis.
“Okay, I’ll give you that one,” Isaiah conceded. “But marrying Laura was my only individual act.”
Tucker shook his head and winked at Samantha. “Don’t listen to him. Next he’ll be telling you about our symbiotic relationship and his theories on emotionally conjoined twins.”
“They exist,” Isaiah insisted. “Tucker and I are a perfect example. To look at us, we’re exact duplicates, but under the surface that is absolutely untrue. Instead we’re two halves of a whole, neither of us complete without the other.”
Samantha was fascinated in spite of herself. “Really?”
“No, not really.” Tucker sent his twin a disgusted look. “You’re here for the blood samples, right?”
“Nah. I was just out for a middle-of-the-night drive and happened to see the lights.”
“Smart-ass,” Tucker muttered as he crouched over his satchel.
“Ask a stupid question…”
“And get a stupid answer,” Tucker finished. “You got in touch with Ann, I take it.”
“I did,” Isaiah replied. “She made a few phone calls and did some schmoozing at Saint Matthew’s. The hospital lab has agreed to do the blood panels. They figure they can have them finished in about an hour.”
Tucker grinned. “There, you see? Knowing the right people, anything’s possible.” He withdrew the marked vials of blood from his bag. Before handing them to Isaiah, he said, “I need a chemical and heavy-metal panel on Tabasco, and also a kidney and liver function.”
Isaiah accepted the first two vials and tucked them into a pocket of his lightweight jacket. “Got it.”
As Tucker handed over the third vial, he said, “All I need on this one is a drug panel.”
“You’re still thinking morphine?” Isaiah asked.
“I’m convinced of it now.” Tucker related the success of the experimental dose of naloxone. “Worked like a charm.” He gestured toward Blue’s stall across the arena. “He’s calm as can be now, and the sedative has long since worn off.”
Isaiah frowned and shook his head. “Why would any one want to dope a horse with an opiate? That’s brutal.”
Samantha remembered how Steve had laughed while telling her the story of the doped rodeo bronco. It had been a turning point in their marriage, a moment of revelation and clarity that had harshly exposed Steve’s complete lack of compassion for other living things. From that moment forward, she’d been forced to accept that she’d fallen in love with an illusion
. The man she’d believed Steve Fisher to be had never existed except in her mind.
At the time, Samantha had honestly believed that nothing else she learned about Steve could ever hurt her more. How very young and pathetically naive she’d been back then. Now she understood that the heartbreak of her marriage had only just begun with that discovery and still hadn’t stopped, even now.
Her father’s greatest fear had come to pass, she realized with a shiver of apprehension. Steve Fisher had sneaked back onto the ranch to do her harm, just as her dad had always predicted, only instead of targeting Samantha, he’d taken aim at her horses. That was so like Steve. He had a mean streak a mile wide, unmitigated by any measure of empathy for anyone or anything. Inflicting pain on defenseless animals was just his style.
“You okay?”
The question brought Samantha’s head up. With a blink and a slight jerk of her shoulders, she found Tucker gazing worriedly down at her. “Yes. I’m…fine. I’m sorry. My mind wandered off for a moment, I guess.”
He searched her expression. Then he nodded. “I’m going to see Isaiah out. Be right back.”
“Good meeting you,” Isaiah said from where he stood at the gate. He lifted a large brown hand in farewell. “If all goes well I’ll be back with the test results before my dust completely settles.”
Samantha forced a smile. “I hope so. Thank you for being our gofer. I really appreciate it.”
After Tucker and Isaiah left, Samantha returned to Blue’s stall, settled herself on the hay, and pressed her back to the wall, prepared to divide her time between the two sick horses for the remainder of the night.
She’d been alone in the enclosure for only a couple of minutes when her father came in to crouch beside her. “I spoke to Clint. He’s sorry for mouthin’ off at you earlier.”
“He’s always sorry,” she said hollowly. “Why does he always talk at me, Dad, and never to me?”
Her father shook his head. The sadness in his eyes told Samantha how deeply it pained him to have two of his children on the outs. “I don’t have answers, honey. I only know he loves you, maybe more than you’ll ever know.”