Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Knox
Operation Daisy had been running since six this evening.
That was what Colt had called it when we sat around the table in the ODRR bunkhouse two days ago and mapped the whole thing out on a whiteboard like we were planning a forward operating base in a foreign country and not a community barn dance in Silver County, Montana. Nobody argued with the name.
After Daisy told me about Trevor, and the past, all of it—nothing sat well with me. Neither did it for Ash, nor Colt, or all the other men here.
The sheriff had warned her that the Brewsters could cause trouble after his announcement tonight. He’d also heard rumors that the Brewster camp planned to disrupt the barn dance somehow. We weren’t taking any chances.
What we built over the next forty-eight hours was an operation that came naturally to us, all military vets who had spent years in uniform learning that the best protection was the kind you set up before anything went wrong.
Jake had the high position, the roof man, sitting and watching from the main barn with a telephoto lens and a radio, keeping eyes on the people from the moment the first truck pulled in.
Anson and Eldon kept eyes on the food line, checking in every fifteen minutes.
A team was on the west side. A team on the east. Colt and Ash and the rest of the guys circulated through the crowd.
We even had the sheriff and his brothers in on it, all of us wearing comms in our ears the sheriff had provided, kept separate from any deputies here tonight.
Me? I was wherever Daisy was, which I had been managing at a careful, watchful distance all evening while she thought I was simply attending a barn dance.
She did not need to know we’d set up the operation just in case Trevor made an appearance or tried anything to do with Daisy or her sisters.
He’d be a fool to approach her here, but I wouldn’t put anything past a man like that.
Daisy had called him devious. I called him dangerous and wanted to keep him as far away from her as possible.
We had also put a couple of men trailing Trevor specifically wherever he was in the county.
They had been on him since noon, when we clocked his vehicle leaving the Brewster property heading north away from Forest Grove.
The Brewsters had held a competing event across the county, including free barbecue, a raffle TV, the whole predictable production of speeches, which was exactly where Trevor should have been.
Only our guys lost track of him. We went to DEFCON One.
On high alert, I quietly begged the universe to send Trevor here so we could teach him a lesson.
As the live band featuring Nicoletta started playing their set, Daisy had approached me. She wanted to dance. Which was surprising, after her speech about wanting to keep things private between us for now. But the overpowering magnetism between us drew us closer. She couldn’t stay away.
Jake’s voice came through the earpiece right as I started dancing with Daisy. “Uh, guys? Think I’ve got eyes on Brewster. South edge of the crowd, green ball cap, wrong jacket for the weather.”
It was all I could do to keep a straight face with her in my arms. While every man on the operation went into alert simultaneously, the way trained people did. Each reported positions in my earpiece, scrambling to get closer eyes on the man Jake pinpointed.
All the while, Daisy danced with me, her head near my shoulder, the daisy bracelet catching the string lights on her wrist. I held it together because this dance meant more than anyone could know.
She had moved across the room toward me, choosing me to dance with.
She let me hold her tight, kiss her, put my hat on her head with everyone and God watching.
That was a gigantic step for her and for us. I wasn’t about to break that up for anything. I had to trust that my guys would complete the mission and deal with Trevor.
I couldn’t give anything away that we were watching. Wasn’t sure how she’d react to it. Pleased that we were taking her safety seriously? Her sisters’ safety too? Because our guys watched over all of them tonight.
When the song ended, Ash came up to me, whispering, “Let’s corner this bastard and call it a day.”
Daisy wanted the restroom. I let her go with a promise that I’d find her again tonight, safely knowing one of our guys trailed behind her, always keeping watch. Now, if I could get my hands on that asshole Trevor, that’d make the night complete, wrapped up with a big old bow.
Ash and I raced to his last-known position. I didn’t spot a green hat anywhere. Ten seconds later, Jake came back on: “Lost Brewster. He moved into the crowd and I lost him in the bodies.”
“Everyone fan out. Keep alert,” Ash called.
I kept my voice flat. “Eyes on Daisy?”
“She went into the restroom. Anson is closest,” Jake supplied.
I shifted my position toward the bathroom further ahead of me. I waded through the throng of people. Whose idea was it to put the food table and portable restrooms next to each other?
“Anson, eyes on Daisy?”
No response.
“Anson. Update? Eyes on—”
“She came out the restroom side, but stopped and talked with a deputy. I looked away for only a few seconds, I swear. They’re gone. I’m checking the barn now, next to the bathrooms.”
“Fuck,” I mumbled and pushed harder through the people desperate to get to the barn, to find Daisy. What would she be doing with a deputy? Then it struck me.
Sheriff Patrick’s words haunted me from the night of the break-in at Daisy’s house. He had his brothers with him instead of deputies to do the investigation. “Sometimes I trust my brothers more than my deputies,” he’d said.
“Shit. Everyone close in on the barn now. I think the deputy isn’t legit,” I shouted, taking off at a run.
In twenty seconds, I reached the barn aisle. The men were there, and we checked every stall, every corner, front to back. Nothing.
“Jake. Can you get into position on the roof and look behind the barn? Anything in the distance?” I asked.
“Copy that.”
“What now?” Colt reached me, eyes huge, adrenaline pumping. He’d been in the Navy, on a ship, and hadn’t seen the action some of the rest of us had.
We both stared out from behind the barn at dark acres of land, nothing but prairie grass and trees.
“Think. Think. If I were Trevor, wanting to take Daisy away from all of this, I’d lure her away from the crowds, to the furthest point possible.” I scoured a hundred and eighty degrees around us from right to left.
There, toward the back of the stable, maybe thirty feet from where we were standing… the door hung open. The light above it was out, and the horses made a ruckus inside.
“Over there! The stables. Now!” I sprinted, carefully slowing at the door. I peeked my head inside for a quick look, not sure if I’d find someone there with a gun, or worse, Daisy’s body.
No one was there, though. I allowed myself one second of relief for that.
Only the horses showed signs of visible distress inside.
Juniper, with her ears flat, pushed against her door to get out.
Scarlett paced. Tank threw his head around, grunting, trying to tell us what they saw. If only we could read their minds.
“Whoa. Whoa. Okay, Juniper. It’s all right.
” I calmed her down enough to pet the bridge of her nose, peering into her eyes.
“Yeah, we’ve been through this before, haven’t we, girl?
” An escaped convict had abducted Willow last fall.
But thank God for Juniper who had busted out of her stall in the barn, racing to Willow just in time to save her.
“Is she part bloodhound? Should we release her and see if she can scope out Daisy’s whereabouts?” I seriously asked Ash.
“Maybe. All right, everyone. Quick sweep here. Look for any signs,” Ash yelled.
“Jake? Anything from up high?” I checked with him.
“Nothing.”
We did a fast sweep at the stables, about to leave, at a loss where to go next. When my flashlight caught something on the floor by the door. I paced to it and picked it up. Silver… Daisies…
“This is her bracelet, the silver daisy chain. She was here!”
I put it in my pocket and went cold. It had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with steel-coated focus.
“Knox? Come see this,” Colt called. About ten feet away from the back of the stable, where the gravel turned to dirt, he found fresh ATV tracks. Not ours. None of us rode out in that direction.
“Where would they go?” I gestured widely at the land before us, too dark to see.
Ash knew. “This part of the ODRR property used to be the Wylde place. I’m almost certain the orchard would be that direction. Pretty daring to take that trail at night on an ATV, though.”
“Would he really take her back to her own house?” Colt scratched his jaw.
“He’d been watching Daisy for years from a distance. He might know this terrain. And the house? Yeah. Everyone is here. Noone is there.” I shook my head at the audacity.
“We can get there faster by truck and the main roads; try to cut them off.” Ash threw more orders out. “Two men take our ATVs and try to follow those tracks as far as they go. Jake: keep on the roof, keep watch for anyone and anything. Everyone else holds positions.”
We ran to Ash’s truck, the nearest of ours and easiest to get off the ranch and onto the road.
“Sheriff Patrick, are you on this channel?” I called.
Patrick’s voice came back immediately, already clipped and operational. “On it. What’ve you got?”
“Daisy has been taken, and I think I know where he took her.”
Colt drove as if the road had caught fire. I sat in the passenger seat with one hand on the door and my eyes wide and alert on the dark road, my mind running through every scenario I didn’t want to face. Ash was in the back, rifles in the bed.
Colt cut the headlights before we hit the driveway, rolling in quiet and slow, the way you approached a position you did not want to announce.