Chapter 35
Asher
“Sierra!” I bellowed as I searched the house for my woman.
I’d been everywhere, and she was nowhere to be seen.
I’d had a meeting that had run a lot later than I’d planned, and it was starting to get dark outside.
It was also starting to snow, but I knew that she hadn’t decided to go for a ride on Sadie without me.
Sadie and my gelding were happily ensconced in the barn, chomping on a tasty meal of hay.
I’d already checked to make sure she wasn’t out in the barn.
I was also positive that she wasn’t in the house.
I’d been through every single room, including the lower level where my gym and the pool were located.
Fucking hell!
Why would she be outdoors?
Her vehicle was here, so she hadn’t gone anywhere.
Yeah, we’d gotten some nice Chinook winds earlier, and the temperatures had been warmer than normal. But darkness had started to fall, and the temperatures had plummeted over the last thirty minutes.
Not to mention the snow that was now starting to come down.
I dialed her phone number, but it went to voicemail.
Fuck!
I reached into the closet for my heavy jacket, gloves, and my hat.
If Sierra had gone for some kind of hike, she’d end up lost in this damn weather.
Yeah, we rode together on the ranch, but she wasn’t completely familiar with every area on the vast acreage.
Hell, I had no idea when she’d left.
I’d been in a meeting for almost two damn hours.
She could have left any time during the last two hours.
I frowned when I saw that her heavy jacket was in the closet.
Shit!
Her lighter weight coat, which would have been fine earlier, was gone.
“I’ve warned her a million times about how fickle those Chinook winds can be,” I grumbled to myself.
Obviously she hadn’t planned on being gone for long.
I yanked open the front door, and there on the doorstep was Lucky.
The cat darted into the house like her fur was on fire.
She was an indoor cat.
There were coyotes everywhere on the ranch.
We always kept her inside so she didn’t end up a tasty snack for one of the predators.
My gut twisted as I suddenly pieced together exactly why Sierra was outside.
Lucky must have gotten out of the house when she’d opened the door for some reason.
Maybe she’d gotten a package.
Maybe she’d been shaking out some rugs.
Or maybe she’d just stepped outside because the weather had been uncharacteristically warm.
The cat had bolted, and Sierra had gone after her beloved pet.
“Fuck!” I cursed.
I probably didn’t need to panic.
Sierra had learned her way around the ranch fairly well during our rides.
However, it was going to be different during a snowstorm, and they’d been forecasting blizzard conditions late tonight.
I was going to have to find her.
If she was looking for Lucky, she probably wouldn’t stop until she found her.
I closed the front door so the damn cat wouldn’t get out again and jogged to the barn.
I could cover a lot more ground on Atlas.
She couldn’t have gone that far on foot, right?
For some reason, I was a lot more worried than I probably needed to be.
Sierra lived here.
She knew her way around.
If she was lost, I’d find her.
She was on foot, for fuck’s sake.
The problem was that I had no idea what direction she’d gone, and that was a lot of ground to cover even if she was on foot.
I threw tack on my horse a lot faster than usual, and I made sure to include the emergency gear that I kept packed in the winter for situations like this.
Something isn’t right with her right now.
I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on with Sierra, but she’d been exceptionally quiet for the last three or four days.
I’d asked her what was wrong, and she’d blown off my concerns, pretending like nothing was wrong.
And she had been pretending.
I was certain of it now.
Gut instinct was telling me that something was wrong with Sierra, and that I needed to find her as soon as possible.
It was cold.
It was starting to snow harder.
And some kind of weird intuition was telling me that Sierra was in some kind of danger.
I tried her phone again, but it was still going to voicemail.
I got on my horse and covered the area close to the house first.
Nothing!
I quickly called my brother, who agreed to call Kaleb and Tanner to help search for Sierra.
If she wasn’t close to the house, it would be better if I had some help in the shitty weather conditions right now.
Sierra could be directly in front of me, and I might not see her.
That was how bad the conditions were deteriorating at the moment.
I dialed Devon myself.
“I’ll load my horse in the trailer,” he said after I explained what had happened. “It will be faster than riding over there. Wait! Reese wants to talk to you.”
I waited impatiently as I kept searching.
I liked Reese, but I didn’t really have time for a discussion right now.
“Asher?” she said in a concerned voice. “You have to find Sierra. Soon. She doesn’t need to be stressed like this right now.”
The distress in her voice wasn’t normal for the situation.
“I’ll be trying her phone every few minutes. It’s going to voicemail right now. What in the hell do you know that I don’t?” I said roughly. “What’s wrong with her? Is she sick?”
Reese was a nurse practitioner, and Sierra had made three trips to Billings earlier in the week.
Hell, was there something wrong with Sierra that I didn’t know about?
Was that why she’d been acting differently in the last few days?
Some kind of illness or disease?
Reese was a women’s health clinician.
Did Sierra have some kind of female cancer or health issue she wasn’t telling me about?
“I can’t tell you that,” Reese said firmly. “Just find her.”
I disconnected the call.
If she was Sierra’s provider, Reese wasn’t going to give me any information because she couldn’t.
There were privacy issues that had to be considered.
I was going to assume that Sierra wasn’t well because I’d been able to hear the distress in Reese’s tone.
There had been some serious concern in her voice, and she wasn’t the type to panic.
I should have pushed harder over the last few days to get some information out of Sierra.
Deep in my gut, I’d probably known that something was wrong.
She’d turned down the opportunity to ride for the last few days, which probably should have made me suspicious of something more than just distraction on her part.
I’d just never considered that she could be sick or having medical issues.
I’d thought that she might be distracted by the book she was currently writing or that maybe she was struggling with some kind of artistic issue.
I’d figured that she’d tell me when she was ready to talk.
She always did.
I gave Atlas the signal to stop and started to survey my surroundings.
I knew exactly where I was, and it was making me crazy that Sierra could have gotten this far from the house.
Could she have walked this far?
She wasn’t all that familiar with this area because we didn’t usually ride this way.
She’d be more likely to get lost here, which was why I needed to keep going.
I looked around frantically, looking for the red coat that I knew she was wearing.
The bright color would help if I could get close to her.
I was definitely going to need help because I needed to cover all directions, and the distance was getting to be too much for me to handle alone.
My phone rang, and I answered it because it was Cole.
I briefly told him my location and what she was wearing.
“We’ll find her, Asher,” Cole said adamantly. “Tanner and Kaleb are here, and Devon is on his way.”
“We have to find her,” I said hoarsely. “Something isn’t right with her, Cole. I can feel it. I wish I’d thought about doing some kind of location sharing with her on our phones. She’s not answering.”
He didn’t question my intuition.
We were brothers, and we were close.
I wouldn’t doubt his judgment, either.
“I’m on it,” he replied. “The weather is going bad, but she shouldn’t be impossible to spot with that red coat on.”
“It’s not a heavy coat. She’s got to be cold by now.”
I didn’t need to explain to Cole how dire the situation could get if Sierra wasn’t found soon.
We were born and raised in Montana.
We both knew how fast exposure could lead to hypothermia.
I disconnected the call and moved on.
I didn’t need to think about negative outcomes right now.
I was going to find my woman, and she was going to have a hell of a lot of explaining to do.