For the first hour she said nothing. She memorized the route anyway. Habit was a kind of prayer.
As the sun sank and the air cooled, Luke slowed his horse. “That collar,” he said without looking at her. “Crane put it on you?”
Clara’s hand rose to her throat by instinct. “Yes.”
“Is there a lock?”
“No.” The word tasted like rust. “It’s welded.”
Luke went quiet. In the fading light, his jaw tightened as if he were biting down on anger. “When we get to my place,” he said, “I’m cutting it off.”
Clara’s breath caught. “Why?” The question slipped out before she could stop it. Curiosity was dangerous.
“Because no human being wears a collar like a dog,” Luke said, and the hardness in his voice was not for her. “Not on my land.”
She didn’t know what to do with that, so she held it carefully, like a fragile thing she didn’t trust not to break.
The ranch appeared over a low rise: a modest spread, log cabin, barn, corral, a creek lined with cottonwoods. Nothing grand, but everything looked tended, the way a man tends what he actually values.
