Page 2 of Savage Fire

After seconds long enough to count in years, Jorge gave a single nod. “Via con Dios, hermano.” Go with God.

But it wasn’t God that followed after him, vicious, ravenous, snapping at his heels.

Heavenly Ranch

Heavenly, Wyoming

Seven Years Ago….

Violent shaking tore her from her restless dreams. She hadn’t slept well the last four years. Not since she’d grown boobs.

“Wake up,” a voice rasped urgently in her ear as thin fingers dug into the skin of her shoulders. “You have to get out of here.”

Rolling over, Condesa blinked up at the terrified face of her mother.

“Mom? What’s going on?” she asked, her own voice rusty from sleep.

Her mother took Condesa’s face between her freezing cold, trembling hands and whispered, “They’re coming for you. You have to get out of here!”

Immediately, fear tumbled through her. “Who? Who’s coming? What’s going on, Mom?” Her mother moved away from the bed, reaching into Condesa’s tiny closet to grab the small traveling bag she stored there for carrying books to and from the library.

“Mom?” she tried again. “What’s happening?”

Her mother whimpered but continued to pull clothes from Condesa’s dresser and throwing them into the bag.

Her fear ratcheting higher, Condesa threw herself from the bed, her sleep pants overlarge and wrinkled from kicking around in her sleep, her loose, worn t-shirt bunched up around her generous hips.

“Seriously, Mom, you’re freaking me out!”

Her mom halted, a pair of old, worn work jeans in her grip.

“Youshouldbe freaking out,” she snapped. “If you don’t leave right now, you willneverget to leave—and that is not the life I wanted for you,mi amor.”

Taking her mom’s smaller frame in her arms, Condesa implored, “You have to tell me what’s going on…please.” Her voice breaking on the last word, Condesa took the pair of jeans from her mom’s hold and tossed them on top of the open travel bag on the floor.

“Jacob…” her mother muttered, making Condesa cringe. Everything about that man made Condesa cringe. And she had good reason for that, too. He was the reason she hadn’t slept a full night in four years. The man had a wondering eye, and it too often wondered over to her. She never felt safe around him, and she always made sure she was never alone with him, which was easy in the main house. Living on her own, however….

Eight years ago, Condesa’s mom, a single mother working three jobs to make ends meet, literally stumbled into an older, charismatic, wealthy man one day on the sidewalk outside the diner where she worked nights. Condesa slept in the back room of the diner, and she and her mom were headed home near dawn when a man seemingly slipped out of the shadows right into their path. Ten-year-old Condesa had been afraid, Condesa’s mother, Lisa Ramos, twenty-six and struggling to raise a child on her own, had been charmed. After that encounter, the man—Jacob Mannerly, a forty-eight-old rancher—kept coming around, giving her mother gifts, sweeping her off her feet. Apparently, Jacob was in town to complete a deal with a local slaughter house to provide them with his cattle. The deal shouldn’t have taken more than a few days, but Jacob had smiled at Lisa, told her she was worth sticking around for, and stole her desperate heart. Lisa and Jacob were married two months later, and he was moving them from the tiny, rundown studio apartment in Redding, California, to a sweeping ranch house in the middle of cattle country Wyoming. At first, Condesa had been wary, unsure. It wasn’t normal for life to take such a big, dramatic turn—even a ten-year-old knew that the stuff of books and TV didn’t happen in real life. She knew that, had already lived that in her short ten years. But her mother was happy. So very happy. So very in love. And Condesa wanted that for her mother. So she didn’t voice her fears that Jacob wasn’t quite right. That his fawning over Lisa and her young daughter seemed off. Forced. Contrived.

At first, Jacob was the kindly stepfather, giving Condesa whatever she needed, going out of his way to make sure she got all the material things he thought girls her age would want. He dressed her up like a doll, outfitted her bedroom in girly decorations and beautiful furniture. In all honesty, Condesa had been living the dream, and so had her mother, who’d fallen so hard for Jacob that what happened next shattered her.

One evening, two years after Jacob married Lisa, he came home with a young woman draped under his arm, a huge smile on his face. He told them that Anna, a quiet eighteen-year-old girl, would be joining their family.

As his new wife.

Condesa’s mother was understandably confused, angry, hurt. But she went along with it, moved her things into one of the guest rooms, and allowed her husband to fuck another woman in their bed. Condesa didn’t understand what was going on, but she did know that her mother changed that night.

And if that were the only time, Condesa believed her mother would have settled into a life of contentment, learning to share her husband, her home, her life with another—younger—woman. But that wasn’t the only time.

By the time Condesa was seventeen, Jacob had married three other women. Jacob Mannerly was a polygamist. One man. Five wives. Twelve children and counting.

Condesa was the oldest child, the one given the responsibility over all her younger stepsiblings. Thankfully, her mother never gave Jacob a child, so Condesa never had to share her mother’s attention…at least not like that. If Lisa wasn’t caring for the household, directing the other, younger wives, or overseeing some of the ranch duties, she was with Condesa. And in those short moments every day, Condesa loved on her mom. Held her mom when she cried. Shared with her mom about her day—taking and giving the pieces of themselves they could in those quiet moments when it was just the two of them.

“Condesa! Listen to me,” her mother implored, shaking her from the past. “Jacob is coming, and if you don’t leave—” a strangled sob wrenched from her chest. “If you don’t leave, he is going to take you to his bed.”

A fist the size of a boulder slammed into Condesa’s chest, making the air in her lungswhooshout.

“What?” That couldn’t be right. She was hisstep-daughter.

---