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so did everyone else.
    â€œCan’t I paint the wall after the suspension?” he asked, thinking he’d prefer to do it during the weekend. Having the entire school watch him suffer such humiliation held little appeal.
    â€œNo,” came her emphatic reply.
    â€œWhy not?” he demanded, clenching his fists.
    â€œBecause I need you for other things.”
    â€œWhat things?”
    â€œPacking.”
    That captured Tom’s attention. He waited a moment, then asked, “Are we going somewhere?”
    â€œMontana.”
    His heart nearly burst with excitement. She’d found a way. His mother was taking them to Montana. This was good news, better than anything he’d anticipated. “We’re visiting Gramps?”
    She didn’t answer him right away. Tom watched as her hands tensed on the steering wheel. “Not exactly. I handed in my two weeks’ notice this morning. We’re moving.”

Two
    S am Dakota bolted upright out of a sound sleep. His heart slammed against his rib cage with a punch almost powerful enough to hurt. Cold sweat dampened his forehead and clung to his bare chest. One ragged breath followed another as his body heaved in a near-desperate effort to drag oxygen into his burning lungs.
    The dream always woke him. Whenever he had it, he would feel that panic again, the fear as vivid and real as the first day the prison door had clanged shut behind him. It had echoed against the concrete walls, reverberating in his ears. Twenty-four months into freedom, and he still heard that terrible sound. It invaded his sleep, tortured him, reminded him constantly that he was a living, breathing failure. Thankfully he didn’t have the dream often anymore—not since he’d started working for old man Wheaton.
    Closing his eyes, Sam lay back down, his head nestled in the feather pillow. He swallowed and flexed his hands, trying to ease the tension from his body, forcing himself to relax.
    It was over. Over.
    Prison was behind him, and so was the life he used to live. Yet at one time he’d been a rodeo star, riding bulls, flirting with fame. Fame and women. He’d had his own following, groupies who chased after him. They stroked his ego, cheered for him, drank with him, slept with him and, on more than one occasion, fought over him.
    The groupies were gone, the way everything that had once been important to him was gone. In his rodeo career and after his accident, he’d faced danger, injury, death, and he’d done it without a trace of fear.
    Riding the wave of success, he’d achieved everything he’d ever wanted. That was at the rodeo championships in Vegas, six years earlier. But the silver buckle that proclaimed him the best of the best had been pawned to help an old man hold on to his ranch. These days Sam stayed out of trouble, kept his nose clean, minded his own business. When the urge hit him, he moved on.
    Sam didn’t like to dwell on his rodeo days. That was all in the past, finished. The doctors had warned him of the risks of ever competing again. Another fall like the one that had ended his career could cripple him for life. Or kill him. It was that simple. The money, what little of it he’d managed to save, had been swallowed whole by doctor and hospital bills.
    Friends had stuck by him for a time, but he’d driven them away with his anger and frustration. Even his parents didn’t know his whereabouts, which was just as well. Pride had prevented him from ever letting them know he’d landed in a Washington-state prison for second-degree assault. After two years of silence it hadn’t seemed worth his trouble to write and fabricate an account of where he’d been and why he’d stayed away.
    It’d been a few years now since his last contact with family, and as the months went on, he thought about them less and less.
    Until he ended up at the Broken Arrow Ranch, Sam had drifted across three or four