Patricia Rosemoor - Stealing Thunder

Ella locked gazes with him. What should I do? Tell me!

Go, Ella, get out of here!

No, I won’t!

Her heart thumped with a strange beat. As men with burning torches approached, Jimmy Iron Horse among them, her head went light. The flicker of something powerful and scary blossomed inside her.

Ella let go and felt her mind opening…

The sky darkened…the clouds stretched…the earth rumbled…

“No, Ella!” Father yelled. Even hunted and bound he was aware…one with the earth as was she. “It’s not time! You’re not ready for this! Nathan, stop her before she is destroyed!”

Hands gripped her hard and whipped her around and the earth tilted. She looked up into a distorted face and blinked to make her cousin come into focus.

“Nathan! Help me free him!”

“We’re not strong enough to stop this, Ella.”

She kicked Nathan hard. His grip loosened just enough to let her pull away from him. She turned to see the kindling already burning. Flames licked her father’s body. The smell of flesh and hair scorched her senses.

“Nooo!”

Ella launched herself toward him, bare hands beating at the flames, ignoring the heat shooting up one arm as her sleeve ignited. Nathan tackled her and rolled her along the ground, smothering the flames.

Father!

The word echoed over and over in her mind as Nathan covered her eyes so she couldn’t watch her father burn.

Black Hills, South Dakota, 15 years later

A wave of homesickness as wide and deep as the Irish Sea swept through Tiernan McKenna as he sat his roan gelding Red Crow and studied the Bitter Creek Mustang Refuge—grassy meadows amidst winding rugged canyons, ragged rock spires backing pine and cedar forest.

The trees gave the Black Hills their name, because from a distance, the foliage made the mountains look black. Missing the rolling land and lush green valleys of the Emerald Isle, Tiernan gazed out over the valley below, where mustangs grazed. Nothing like the Thoroughbreds he’d worked with all his life, horses he’d trained and ridden, these horses were feral.

He’d thought this was what he wanted—a complete change from his old life, a way to get out of his brother Cashel’s shadow, a chance to cowboy. He’d grown up watching old American Westerns on the telly. Cimarron, The Magnificent Seven, High Noon, Billy the Kid —those were only some of the movies that had entranced him. So here he was in the American West and ironically, an historical Western film called Paha Sapa Gold was just starting to shoot in the Black Hills, mostly on refuge land, thereby infusing the organization with sorely needed money.

Longing seared Tiernan as he gazed out on the film’s camp in the distance. There were trailers for the production staff and the stars behind the supposed Main Street, though mostly facades like cardboard cutouts represented the town. The only interior sets here were the jail and the saloon. The remaining interiors would be shot in an L.A. studio.

On adjoining reservation land backed by ragged pinnacles of rock, a dozen tepees made up the Lakota Sioux village set. And up in the hills—Tiernan wasn’t certain if it was reservation land or refuge—was the sealed-off entrance to an old gold mine. He’d heard the production company was planning to use that, too, since Paha Sapa Gold referred to the Custer Expedition’s search for gold in the Black Hills despite it being Sioux land.

In the flat below were two side-by-side fenced pastures, empty now, that would hold the horses to be ridden in the film. They would come both from the MKF Ranch where he worked and from the reservation. Even the refuge mustangs would be used as a wild herd in a couple of scenes.

Too bad he wasn’t part of that—the old films had fascinated him, had enticed him to make his move from Ireland to America. Well, that and not wanting to answer to Cashel anymore. Whether it was horses to train or psychic abilities to control or women to woo, Tiernan didn’t want to be second best to his older brother anymore. He needed to be his own man, wherever that would take him.

So, after considering long and hard, Tiernan had left Ireland to make a life of his own. Second cousins had taken him in, had allowed him to test himself, to see if this life really was for him. While satisfying, the reality of it—the hard, dirty, unromantic work of cowboying, the answering to yet another relative—took the luster out of those films he’d loved so much. He’d thought that, like the silver-screen cowboys, he would find a way to make his own mark, on his own terms.

Now he realized he’d been telling himself a fairy tale.

Now a confused Tiernan didn’t know what he wanted.

Now, missing his brothers Cashel and Aidan despite himself, missing Ma and Da, missing the green countryside and near-daily rains that brought life to Ireland’s estates separated by hedgerows and limestone fences and paved roads, he wasn’t so certain.

Had he made the biggest mistake of his life in leaving behind everything he knew and loved?

McKenna pride wouldn’t allow him to admit it, to go crawling back—he had to make a go of it here. He had to prove to himself that he would find that elusive something that would give him the mantle of responsibility and make him feel like his own man.

Riding out on the Bitter Creek Mustang Refuge run by his cousin Kate and her husband, Chase Brody, alone on his day off, Tiernan felt even more lost as he was swept up in a timeless, borderless land without end—nothing but raw nature in every direction, not even a road in sight. The sensations filling him were simply overwhelming.

For all he knew he could be days—weeks, months—from civilization…he could simply imagine it…

Below, the feral horses stirred, then were instantly on the move. Flight instinct kicking in, they roared down the valley as one unit—grays and chestnuts and bays and sorrels and Pintos and Paints. His own mount danced and squealed, and a wave of psychic energy that nearly obliterated his vision engulfed Tiernan as he fought to keep the gelding under control. He shook away the dark, sought the reason in the opposite direction, looking to the forested red cliffs, expecting to see a mountain lion, the only real predator to threaten the herd.

Nothing jumped out at him, neither man nor beast, but once infected with the fear, he knew something—or someone—was out there.

About to take his mount down to the valley to look for the danger, he was startled to hear his name yelled from behind.

“Tiernan, wait! I want to talk to you!”

He turned in the saddle and saw Kate Brody riding straight for him. Kate was one of his second cousins, her mother being a McKenna, and them having the same great-grandparents. Feisty and outspoken, she was a veterinarian, able to sit a horse or doctor it as well as anyone he’d met.

The smothering sensation of a moment ago flitted away like the morning mist. “A good afternoon to you,” he said as Kate drew alongside him, her freckled face wreathed in a smile, her wild red hair poking out from under her brimmed hat.

“I have great news. It’s Quin—he just got the call. He’s going to be chief of police of Blackwood, which is only thirty-some miles north of here. Everyone’s so excited!”

“How grand for him.”

“For us all. That means he’ll stay and not disappear again.”

Tiernan was closest in age to Kate’s youngest brother, Quinlan Farrell, who’d been a federal agent working mostly undercover until he’d recently returned to his home state with his wife-to-be, Luz Delgado. The Farrells were throwing a big engagement party for the couple. Quin had been hoping for a lawman’s job in a smaller venue and now he had one. Well, good for him. Tiernan could appreciate a man wanting to cut his own path rather than follow the one his family set out for him. Quin was lucky his family was so supportive of his choice.