The bachelors are a small band; it’s just Kyle, another three bays, three dun-colored seven-year-olds, and two lanky sorrels that look like siblings. The sorrels are starting to show their age. According to their paperwork, they’re sixteen. Robbie reminds himself to ask Megan if there’s another kind of mineral supplement that might help them keep their weight on. He gives them each a critical once-over, but he can see they still have healthy, round barrels, apparent even through their plush winter coats. Still, they’re leaner than the rest of the group, despite constant access to hay.

“Clear out, gentlemen,” Robbie says, waving his arms, and when that doesn’t faze them, whistling and cracking the ends of his reins against the leather saddle. It makes a sharp noise that finally scatters the bachelors, but they’re more grudging than afraid as they trudge off toward the trees.

Robbie wraps the reins around the saddle horn and dismounts, leaving Poco ground-tied. He turns off the solar charger that’s feeding a pulsing electrical charge into the wire that he can hear like a tick. When it’s safe, he adjusts the fiberglass posts and the wire strung through them so that the horses can reach a fresh bale. He’s using his pocket knife to cut loose the twine bundling the bale together when his phone rings.

Hearing his phone while he’s up in the meadow is always a little surreal, like he imagines it would be to get a call from home while visiting the moon. He has a sense of being a world apart and out of reach, and yet he can hear the tinny voice of someone in his ear when he takes the call.

It’s Danny calling, which leaves Robbie instantly worried. Even though he wishes that Danny would call him from school on the east coast every few days, like a dutiful younger brother might, he doesn’t. So, Robbie’s first thought is that Danny is in the middle of some emergency.

And as it turns out, he’s not exactly wrong. It’s just not Danny’s emergency.

“Danny?”

“Robbie? Hey...can barely hear you.”

“I’m up in the hay meadow. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Or I mean, nothing with me. Listen, I need you to do me a big favor, okay? Lance called me. He’s in jail, and I need you to go bail him out.”

Chapter Three

Lance

“Hey, man,” says the jail attendant, who Lance now knows is named Tim. Hard to pass a night with a guy who talks you down from a panic attack and not emerge on a first-name basis. “I’ve got really good news. Robbie Chase just posted your bail.”

Robbie Chase.

Just his name manages to penetrate the ugly haze Lance has been swimming in since sometime around eight last night. It’s better now, with a little bit of sunshine coming through the high, small window opposite the cell, but not by much. He still feels sick, like a fever rages in his body, building toward a breaking point that won’t come.