Chapter 3
three
. . .
FINN
SEVEN YEARS LATER
I clicked my tongue, and the miniature horse I was working with in the paddock next to the barn trotted over to me.
“He’s healing up nice,” Abel, my foreman, said from where he watched outside the fence, his arms resting across the top board.
Nodding, I reached for the horse’s reins and led him to the nearby water trough.
As a rescue ranch, we took in all kinds of lamed and otherwise wounded animals, as well as ones that were unwanted and abandoned by previous owners.
The mini horse, who came to us as a foal, was the king of mischief around here.
His most recent escapade involved him breaking free from the barn in the middle of the night and going on a jaunt across nearby fields.
Unfortunately, he’d fallen into a ditch and broke one of his front legs.
We got him patched up, which meant surgery to properly reset the bones and two months of physical therapy.
Finally, though, he appeared almost back to normal—but we were keeping a close eye on him lest he tried to do something similar again.
After he drank his fill, I walked him into the barn and secured him in his stall.
I was about to enter my office when my phone rang, and I peeled off my glove, tilting my hat back to wipe the sweat off my brow before answering.
Sheriff, the readout said.
Couldn’t be anything good if big brother was calling.
“Hey, Lane.”
“You and West busy?”
I glanced at the mountain of paperwork on my desk, then to the manure fork resting against the wall on my left, then down the alley and twelve stalls I knew needed mucking.
Yeah, I had time.
I had a slew of stable boys to do the shittier parts of this job, but sometimes, I liked to come out here and do it myself. As the boss, I didn’t need to get my hands dirty, but I liked to remind my employees I wasn’t above doing the same hard work I asked of them.
“I don’t know about him, but I’m free. What’s up?”
“I need you to fly the SAR chopper out to a scene. A couple hikers reported a suspicious campsite, but it’s dicey getting in there with anything bigger than an ATV, and it’s several miles off the closest access road. Figured having you to evac if need be was a good idea.”
My dark little brain brightened some at that.
“You think there’s someone there?”
“A woman recently filed a missing person’s report for her sister who was supposedly in the area. Could be nothing.”
Helping someone was exactly the kind of distraction I needed.
“I’ll wrangle West and we’ll be on our way. Send me the coordinates.”
We disconnected, and I dialed my twin.
“Yo.”
“Get your ass up to the house. Lane needs our help on a call.”
“Fuck yeah,” West said. “Anything to get out of changing sheets in these fucking guest cabins.”
I could hear movement in the background, a muffled curse, and West saying, “Peace out, losers!”
“You still haven’t found a new housekeeper?”
“No!” he whined. “Good help is so hard to find.”
“So are brothers who aren’t dramatic as fuck.”
West chuckled. “You love me.”
I did. Loved all my brothers, and Aria, but as twins, it was different with West. Especially given the shit we’d done and seen together in the service. Those kinds of situations bonded you for life, and having endured it all with him by my side was both a blessing and a curse.
“Hurry up,” I grumbled
A door slammed, a loud diesel engine turned over, and West shouted, “Aye, aye, captain!” before hanging up.
After tidying a bit and letting my foreman know I’d be taking off for the rest of the day, I walked toward the big house—the house we’d all grown up in—where Mama and Aria still lived. I poked my head in long enough to tell them where we were headed and chug a glass of water before West arrived.
Crossing the Lawless family ranch land from his dude ranch to my rescue ranch took five minutes on a good day, but West must’ve been desperate to get out of cleaning cabins, because he made it in less than half.
He’d barely pulled to a stop when I hopped into the passenger seat.
“Where to?”
“Airport.”
West nodded and stepped on the gas, peeling away from the ranch.
Owyhee County airport wasn’t a commercial affair.
In fact, its small hangar only housed two aircraft—a Cessna 172 Skyhawk, which happened to be mine, and a Bell 429 search and rescue helicopter, which we’d be taking out today.
There was no real runway, only a strip of hard-packed dirt cut into the field from years of little planes taking off and landing.
West pulled to a stop in the gravel lot next to the hangar, and we rounded to the bed where he kept extra gear stored for situations like this. We quickly suited up, easily shedding our ranch owner personas for the Rangers we’d been barely six years ago.
Though Lane made it sound as though this was nothing more than a routine recovery, I’d walked into too many “routine” situations only to have them go sideways to head into the mountains without my tactical gear.
“Hello, wee birdie,” I murmured to the chopper when we got inside, approaching it to do my checks while West opened the hangar door and loaded equipment, like ropes and harnesses, as well as EMS supplies like a rescue basket, neck brace, and various bandages, tapes, and gauze.
My brother wasn’t fazed by me speaking to the helicopter; he’d long since gotten used to my antics where aircrafts were concerned.
The sky was my happy place.
We’d been given numerous opportunities thanks to the Army, especially as far as what we did while we were enlisted went. I’d always known I wanted to be a pilot, and West hadn’t given a fuck what he did as long as he had a gun in his hands.
We were simple creatures like that.
Being able to get my pilot's license and provide aerial support for a number of highly classified government ops over the years truly wasn’t where I’d seen my life going, growing up in this small town.
But I was grateful for the experience—even more so because, when we were ready to retire at the ripe old age of 28, the Army let us go with little fanfare and a lot of money in our bank accounts.
Money we put right back into Lawless Rescue & Dude Ranch.
Personally, I was happy to be free of the military, where, while we’d been paid handsomely after joining the Rangers, we were treated as little more than a set of numbers. Cogs in some great machine with no idea who pulled the strings.
I didn’t like the power those unnamed, faceless forces had over us, oftentimes turning us and our unit into contract killers to carry out vendettas that had no rhyme or reason.
Sometimes, though, I thought West was a little…
listless without it. Many men and women made lifelong careers out of it, but that was never on my and West’s radars.
Still, it had been the only thing we’d known from the time we’d signed on the dotted line at eighteen to the day we walked away a decade later.
The dude ranch was good for him. It gave him a place to channel his energy, to fuck around and act like his crazy, reckless self without causing too much damage.
And nights like this helped, when we soared off into the sky on a mission like the good old days.
Pre-flight checks finished, I gave West a thumbs up, and he climbed into the passenger seat beside me. We both donned our headsets, strapped in, and sealed the doors shut.
Then I ran through my next set of checks, including the pedals, throttles for both engines, emergency equipment and lights, communications systems, and a slew of other shit that was all muscle memory to me now.
When I’d first moved home and been asked to take over for the previous rescue pilot who was getting ready to retire, I’d had to certify in order to fly this specific helicopter, but I hadn’t minded. Any chance I had to get up in the air, I was taking it.
Once we lifted off and reached cruising altitude, I had West punch in the coordinates Lane had texted me.
Our comms system was connected to the same channel as Lane’s sheriff’s satellite phone, and we’d been airborne for maybe five minutes when it crackled to life, our older brother’s voice coming down the line.
“Sheriff Lawless to N652AA. Come in. Over.”
West and I shared a look, more of a glare at our brother’s formality, before I opened the line and said, “Captain Lawless of N652AA here. What do you want, Sheriff?”
West’s chuckle resonated through my headset, cut off by Lane’s world-weary sigh as he opened up his end of the line again.
“What’s your ETA?”
I glanced down at the nav system, the topography of the Idahoan landscape speeding past, and calculated our distance from the scene.
“Ten minutes.”
Another sigh from big bro. “There’s a clearing about a quarter mile out to the west that you can touch down in.
I texted those coordinates.” West pulled his phone out, then punched the new numbers into the system, and our course altered slightly.
“One of Crew’s guys will be waiting on the ground to lead you in. ”
“You’ve got the fire department out there too?” West asked.
“They assisted with the search.”
I noticed how he pointedly didn’t mention the second half of what SAR stood for—and rescue. That combined with the lack of urgency told me we would not find someone who could be saved, and my heart twisted in pain for the friends and family of this lost soul.
“So it’s a recovery.”
“Yes.”
“Where was our call?” West said. “You know we’ve got more experience than our baby brother and his guys.”
“You were busy.”
I snorted. Bullshit. Ranch business didn’t come before the welfare of Dusk Valley citizens or lost campers, and he damn well knew it.
Shit like this was the whole reason I even had access to the SAR chopper.
Hell, I was the only person within a hundred miles of this place who could even fly the damn thing.