He follows her to a room off to the left, where she flips a switch. Lights hum overhead, deleting all but the faintest shadows. The room is immaculate. It has oak floors, and white cabinets with silver handles running along the walls. A steel sink, and in the room’s center, a table and a few circular stools.

“Take a seat,” she says. “I won’t bite.” Opening a drawer, she takes out a pair of bandage scissors, pack of gauze dressings, white tape, and a small sponge. She pulls on a pair of purple rubber gloves and says, “Gonna need to cut up your jeans a bit. Hope that’s cool?”

Hunter looks down at the bloody knee and grimaces. “Do what you gotta do to clean it up. Last thing I want is an infection.”

Starting just above the wound, Tara cuts up to the pocket and spreads the denim apart. Clear liquid has oozed to form a sheen over the wound. She rolls her stool over to a counter and opens a drawer, taking out a plastic bottle of brown liquid. Rolls back to Hunter and he asks, “You a doc?”

“Nurse. I work part time at the county ER. I’m one of those educated farm girls. I know this business through and through. Helped my daddy make his fortune; now I want him to retire.”

“Get out while the getting’s good.”

“Someone needs to make Daddy realize that. Don’t need the money, I’m a registered nurse working part time, but it keeps me busy and licensed, just in case.” She pauses. “This is gonna burn some.”

“Sounds like a bad date.”

Smiling, she says, “Comedian.”

“Gotta find something to laugh about—I just dumped a thirty-some-thousand-dollar custom bike.”

Pouring Betadine onto a swab of cotton, she dabs it on, staining the wound a reddish brown.

“That’s gotta hurt,” she says. “The bike, I mean.”

“It’s nothing I can’t fix. But yeah, it sucks.”

Looking at the wound, she says, “I’ll put some antiseptic gel on it and bandage you up.”

“Appreciate it. How long you lived here with your dad?”

“Over forty years—basically all my life. He inherited the place from my grandparents. Been in the family for over a century.”

Out the doorway, at the other end of the hall, Hunter and Tara can hear Purnell telling Itch and Nugget to eat whatever they want and that there is beer in the fridge too—bottom drawer.

Blotting a trickle of antiseptic from his calf, Tara laughs. “He’s always helping someone.”

“Well, I appreciate it. My first wreck.”

“Really? Ever? How long you been riding?”

“Ever,” Hunter says. “Been riding for over twenty years. I work on bikes for a living. How many times you fall off a horse?”