Flashback

busy week, m’girl, teaching all those new riders a thing or four. But how about a ramble up in the hills with me?”
The horse butted her arm emphatically.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said with a laugh.
With the speed and skill of a lifetime of practice, she had the gray groomed, tacked up and ready to go. She borrowed a ball cap—the one thing she’d forgotten—from the tack room, pulled her hair into a ponytail through the gap in the back and settled it to shade her face. She led the eager mare out into the early-evening light and swung up into the saddle.
The moment she cleared the school grounds Alex felt the odd mood begin to lift. There had not been few problems in her life that had been helped by a long ride on a good horse. Not only was it a passion in and of itself, but it helped her think, and that was something she needed to do a lot of right now. Not to mention the interesting things that had happened, she thought with a smile, remembering the last time she’d ridden this trail. Justin had been watching her then, and her life had been about to change, though she hadn’t known it. Yet.
She had a lot of data on Marion and her life. And her death. The problem came in trying to tie it all together in a way that made sense. A way that could steer her in the right direction. A way that could bring justice, albeit belatedly, to the visionary who had made this place possible.
As she rode, the ground began to rise beneath them. Clearing the first hill above the school had always been a marker for her. Once you started down the other side, and the sprawl of Athena was out of sight, you could easily imagine there was no one and nothing for miles around. The landscape was untamed and unmarred, much as it had been before man of any persuasion had set foot here. It was starkly beautiful, and contrary to what many thought, full of life.
And utterly, totally unforgiving.
It was also one of Athena’s best training tools. One of the first things newcomers were taught was that it could kill. The desert didn’t care if you were weak or hurt or thirsty or lost. It is what it is, they were told, and no amount of talking, bargaining or whining would ever change it.
Either you learned how to survive, and then thrive, or you didn’t and the desert won. Those who made it through learned that there wasn’t much difference between that impassive desert and life. Expecting it to change because you weren’t up to the battle was like playing Russian roulette with an automatic.
They were halfway down the other side of the first rise when Charm—short for Charmeuse, one of the textiles on which the Forsythe family fortune had been built—suddenly shied.
Alex collected the mare, drawing in the reins with the featherlight touch that was all that was necessary with this horse. Still the gray snorted and tossed her head in protest. Or in warning…
Alex was jolted back to her situation. She’d thought herself safe here, but then, she’d thought that before. Evil had struck at Athena more than once, and there was nothing that said it couldn’t happen again. And wasn’t she investigating one of the worst incidences of it? And if she’d been followed to her hotel, as it seemed she had, why not here?
Charm snorted again and danced sideways, away from a clump of sage growing over a boulder. The horse pivoted on her forelegs, keeping her eye warily on the brush. Then she shook her head at it. The actions were familiar, and Alex adjusted her assessment. Judging by the air temperature and the time of year, she guessed snake.
“Good girl,” she soothed the horse, and guided her carefully out of range. That it was a rattler seeking out the warmth of the sun-heated rock was not a theory she cared to prove. She was fortunate to be on a sensitive, clever animal, and glad not to be so stupid she thought she knew more than the horse’s finely tuned senses.
They went on, Charm forging forward willingly, Alex sucking in long, deep breaths of the clean desert air that was not yet too hot. The messages were both strong and faint, the tang of the creosote brush, the radiation of the sun that promised the blistering heat of the summer to come. All of it was familiar and loved, and she—
Charm leaped as a smaller boulder in front of them oddly cracked.
A sound echoed. Twanged. An all-too-familiar sound.
A ricochet.
Someone was shooting at them.

Chapter 9
Alex hadn’t seen what direction the shot had come from. And the ricochet had distorted the direction of the sound. She was certain she hadn’t heard the shot itself. Silenced? Possible.
She made a split-second judgment based on the crack in the stone the fired round had hit. The shooter was likely above them.
She spun Charm on her haunches and put her heels to the gray’s flanks. A puff of dirt spattered as another round struck near the horse’s heels—too near. The mare bounded forward, taking the twisting, rock-strewn slope as if it were a grassy pasture back at the farm. The nimble horse responded to Alex’s slightest cue and never put a foot wrong on the treacherous ground.
Within seconds they were down in a gully that Alex hoped would make further shots impossible for the moment. Assuming that she was right about where the shooter had been, the angle should protect them.
She nudged Charm up against the steep side of the gully. The horse was clearly unsettled but went as asked. Alex slowly, and as quietly as possible, walked the horse south, to where she knew the bank had been undercut by a flash flood years ago.
She found the spot she’d remembered, a bit bigger now, perhaps enlarged by subsequent