Chapter 13
Grayson
The phone rang in my ear as I stared out at the city of Charlotte, dark clouds looming over it. It was hurricane season, and Hurricane George was heading straight for North Carolina. It would hit the coast in two days, but by then, Red Snake Investigations would be in its secondary location.
“Grayson,” a deep voice greeted after the fourth ring.
“Mags,” I returned, my voice tight. “Sorry for not calling you back sooner.”
The cowboy chuckled. “Fuck, your boys were right.”
I tensed. “Excuse me?”
“You’re fucked up,” he continued, sounding amused.
My jaw tightened. “What did they tell you?”
“More than they probably should’ve,” he answered, seeming unbothered.
I bit out a curse under my breath.
“Relax,” he said. “They’re just worried about you.”
“And they run to you?” I quipped, turning around to face my desk.
“Considering I’m the only one who truly knows you, Grayson? Yeah, they ran to me.”
I was silent for a moment before putting the phone on speaker and set it on my desk. My eyes shot up to double check my office door was shut—and locked. Nosy motherfuckers.
Bracing my hands on the desk, I bend my head and let out a sigh.
“What’s eating at you, brother?” Mags asked.
I shook my head, refusing to let the thoughts I’d managed to push back last night take over. “You called me, remember? Something going on?”
He was silent.
The thing about Mags was, he was always silent. He was never much of a talker, but there was something about this silence that worried me.
“Fuck, you are fucked,” he muttered. “Fuckin’ lost track of time over that woman, haven’t you?”
I blinked, my brows snapping together. “What? No, I haven’t.”
“Last week was the tenth, brother,” he reminded me softly—too softly.
My stomach twisted, a stabbing pain taking over at the reminder.
The tenth of June.
I closed my eyes, the phantom pain in my face taking over. “Shit,” I pushed out.
“Gray—”
“Fuck, Mags,” I breathed through clenched teeth. Memories of that day came rushing back. The rusted knife, the terrorists in masks holding me down on the table as they demanded answers I would never give. My scar ached, and I brought my hand up to it.
“Fuck,” he growled. “Dammit, I’m fucking sorry, Grayson. I shouldn’t have—”
“Don’t worry about me, Mags,” I said, lifting my head and letting out the breath I’d been holding. That was the only thing that seemed to make the phantom pain to disappear: stop breathing.
Go fucking figure.
“How are you holding up?” I asked.
We’d made a promise to each other to always check in on that day, no matter what. Years ago, Mags didn’t want to have a cell phone. He wanted no communication outside of Hallow Ranch, but our promise was the exception. He’d written letters, and I wrote them back, no matter where I was or who I was hunting. When he got a phone, we never missed a call. I’d always make sure to call him back by midnight on that day.
I failed that.
I broke our fucking promise because I was so wrapped up in her.
“Fuck, Mags…” I trailed off, shame coating my tongue.
“Grayson, it’s okay,” he said calmly. “I figured you were on the hunt.”
“Are you okay?” I pressed. That day was a trigger for both of us.
“Yeah, brother, I’m okay,” he said quietly. “It’s getting easier. Truth be told, I’d almost forgotten the date, but then Val invited everyone up to the house for dinner, and I saw the calendar on the wall.”
Val. Valerie. Denver Langston’s wife.
“She invites you boys up to the house?” I asked in disbelief.
He grunted. “Once a week. She’s a good woman. She’s good to Caleb, like a mother to him,” he mused.
“Jigs, Beau, and twins? How are they?” I asked, taking a seat. I’d met all the Hallow Ranch cowboys a few years ago when I first went to Hayden, Colorado. They were like family to Mags, and I was happy he’d found his place in the world after getting out of the Marines.
A part of me was still searching for mine.
He went on to tell me about each of the cowboys and the shit they were getting into. Beau was going to Denver every weekend now to let off some steam, Jigs was still “old as dirt but a hard worker”, and the twins were thinking about going into bull riding.
I talked to my buddy for about an hour, and during those sixty minutes, he didn’t ask me about Carrie Hale.
Then, that came to screeching halt when he said, “Tell me about her.”
I looked to the ceiling. “I wanted to break your jaw when Jeremy Jones called me,” I grumbled.
Mags chuckled. “I fucking bet,” he muttered, knowing full well he wouldn’t let me.
“I didn’t bring her back,” I admitted after a few seconds of silence. “Did the gossipers tell you that?”
“Nah, they didn’t have to. I knew you didn’t.”
Fuck. He read me like a fucking book. I hated it.
When I didn’t respond, he said, “Is she okay?”
“Yeah,” I replied as I cleared my throat, trying to stop the lump from swelling. “Yeah, she’s perfect.”
“Perfect,” he parroted.
I nodded slightly, even though he couldn’t see it. “Perfect,” I murmured.
He grunted again. “She’s stunning, isn’t she?”
“You have no fucking idea,” I told him, staring at the picture of her on my desk. I hated that photo—her wedding day. She was drowning in a pile of white fluff and lace, her eyes sunken in, her cheekbones too sharp, her shoulders pointy. She looked like a fucking zombie.
“But it isn’t about her looks, is it?” he pressed. My jaw tightened, and he hummed at my silence. “That’s what I thought.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I clipped.
“It fucking means you felt something,” he shot back. “There’s no shame in that, Grayson. There’s no shame in feeling something for someone.”
Frustration burned in my chest. “You don’t get to say that shit to me,” I warned.
“Bullshit, I don’t,” he clipped, his voice hard. “You have the right to be happy just as much as everyone else.”
I barked out a harsh laugh. “That’s rich coming from you,” I snarled, thunder booming outside. “You haven’t left Hallow Ranch in over a decade. Don’t talk to me about happiness.”
“When did I ever say I wasn’t happy?”
His question rocked me.
“I’m the happiest I’ve ever fucking been, Grayson. Hallow Ranch is my home.”
I bent my head again, sighing softly. “I know that.”
“My happiness looks different from yours, but the difference between you and me is, I didn’t run from it the second I got a taste.”
Leave it to Mags to gut punch me.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered, pinching the bridge of my nose.
“You and Denver…cut from the same damn cloth,” he mumbled.
“You’re talking like I should go back up there and—”
“—would you?”
My mouth snapped shut, and my eyes found her photo once more, focusing on her smile, hating how forced it looked—how fake it looked. Everything about this version of her was fake, and I had no interest in it. I only wanted to know her, the real Carrie, underneath all that shame, pain, and torture. I wanted to find her sunshine.
My voice was thick as I gave Mags the truth. “I’d do anything to see her again,” I whispered.
It scared the shit out of me.
He chuckled. “I fucking knew it,” he said before hanging up.
I found Hayes in the weapons room, cleaning his pistol. I knocked on the door frame.
“Yeah?” he asked, not bothering to look at me.
“You coming with us to Denver?” I asked. Dominic and Ash were loading the truck while Jake backed up our files and shut all the electronics down. He raised his head, and I held back the curse on the tip of my tongue. He looked like shit.
“Yeah. I need to get out of this fucking city.”
“Right,” I muttered, unsure of what to say.
A thick silence drifted into the room as he leaned back against the gun lockers, his head tilted back, eyes on the metal ceiling. “Thought I was going to marry her,” he finally said, his voice strained.
Fuck.
“She didn’t deserve you,” I told him, meaning it. Cheaters were scum of the damn Earth. I’d only met Veronica once or twice, but she seemed like a nice woman.
Apparently not.
“Went on a hunt while you were gone, came back, and she was fucking her ex in our fucking bed,” he explained, his voice dark.
“You get a name?” I inquired, crossing my arms.
“Jake already hacked into his accounts.”
I nodded. “Anything?”
He looked at me, his green eyes hard. “Not anymore.”
Translation: the fucker’s accounts were drained.
I gave him a look. “Transferred to?”
“The women’s shelter downtown.”
I nodded. “Right. Look, I wanted to apologize for yesterday. I wasn’t in the right head space.”
“Neither was I.”
I stepped into the room, holding out my hand, the red ink of the snake bright under this light. “We solid?”
He pushed off the wall, taking my hand with a smirk. “Always, Gray.”
Two hours later, we were packed up and on the road.
Twelve hours after that, we stopped in Little Rock for the night, staying with one of Hayes’ old friends. They served together in the military and were currently stationed at the air base there. We ate, showered, slept, and got back on the road.
Twelve hours later, we were in Denver.
Once we were at the office, we parked the vehicles in the parking garage, unloaded, and took the elevator up to the thirtieth floor. The boys and I went our separate ways, appreciating that the cleaning staff managed to make sure the place didn’t go to shit while we were gone. Jake and Dominic went to the left, Hayes and Ash to the right, and I went straight, heading for the wall of glass in front of me.
The last time I was here was last year, on a hunt for a politician.
Pulling out the key card, I swiped it over my office door, letting myself in. The glass door shut slowly behind me as I took in the space: colorless. Utterly colorless. The desk matched the one back in Charlotte, black with a glass top, a black leather chair behind it. The walls were white and bare. I hadn’t had the desire to hang anything, but now…
Shaking the thought away, I rounded the desk and turned on the computer, pulling my laptop out of my bag, leaving Carrie’s file tucked away for now.
I pulled up our clients on this side of the country, cleaned up the contact list, and answered emails. About an hour later, Ash came in after swiping his card.
“Got a hit on the Miller case,” he announced.
The Miller case was new, a simple hunt. I needed something simple.
“Wife is certain the husband is cheating with a woman in Nevada. She wants Red Snake to get evidence.”
I nodded. Simple. These cases were so common that I’d become bored with them, but now, I’d give anything to keep my mind off her.
“I’ll take it,” I declared.
Ash nodded, stepping forward and handing over the file. “Didn’t want Hayes to take it. He might kill the fucker,” he said.
We both knew it wasn’t a joke. Hayes wouldn’t even blink when he pulled the fucking trigger.
“I don’t want to hide another body,” I muttered, opening the file and scanning the information.
Normal.
Normal.
Normal.
Just what I fucking needed.
“I’ll head out now.”
Ash lifted his chin. “Dominic is ready in the safe whenever you are.”
Raising a brow, I asked, “You think I need more than my usual?”
Ash’s eyes dropped to the file. “The husband is on the FBI’s watch list.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake…
I lifted the top page, reading the details about the husband. “As long as he isn’t on The Red list, I don’t give a fuck,” I said, dropping the page. The Red List was created by the talented FBI hacker I’d met in St. Louis, filled with names of high-ranking individuals within the American Government who were suspected of human trafficking. I rose from my seat, rounding the desk to head to the safe.
The safe was the weapons room, identical to the one in Charlotte. It was a walk-in safe, commissioned by one of Ash’s old Navy contacts, with a twelve-inch-thick steel walls and door. It housed Red Snake’s weapons—including the ones we weren’t supposed to have. I punched in my code on the keypad and scanned my eye, and the door clicked open.
Dominic was organizing the ammo on the far wall. “Already heading out?” he guessed.
“Need to,” I told him, going to the wall of semi-automatics to the right. They were in cage-like lockers, a white backlight behind them.
“Ash tell you about the Miller husband?”
“Yup.”
Dominic came to stand beside me then. “Good. What do you want?”
I wanted to get the blonde woman out of my head.
I wanted to feel normal again.
But most of all, I really wanted to shoot something.