Chapter 19
nineteen
. . .
FINN
I must’ve fallen asleep at some point—though with the way my body protested and the grittiness of my eyes when I blinked them open, it couldn’t have been long—as Reagan attempted to slip out of bed.
“Planning on running off with my shirt again?” I asked, my voice a low rumble.
She whipped toward me, a sheepish grin appearing on her lips.
“Considering I’m wearing my own?” She toyed with the hem, reminding me how fucking high the hem sat. Making me wonder if she wore panties or if her perfect pussy was bare beneath. “And considering I’m not running off?”
“Then where are you going?”
“To make coffee, sir,” she said in a way that had my dick twitching. The sass turned me on something fierce. “That okay with you?”
I gave her a mock salute, and her giggled followed her out of the room.
The shirt she was wearing wasn’t hers, though.
In fact, it had once been mine—the same shirt she’d thrown on the morning after our tryst. It had looked so good on her, I couldn’t make her take it off.
I loved that she still had it, that she still wore it.
Had she forgotten she’d stolen it from me?
Or did she wear it and remember that night I’d been unable to forget?
You could imagine how well that conversation had gone with West when I called for a ride back to the ranch the next morning and asked him to bring me a new shirt too.
To this day, he still made fun of me for it.
Waking up next to her this morning, though short-lived, was too damn good, something I had to remind myself not to get used to. She wasn’t mine to keep—she’d made that clear.
But I’d be damned if I couldn’t imagine doing every day for the rest of my life.
Still, something had changed last night. Sure, I’d barged in uninvited, but she hadn’t turned me away. She’d trusted me. Let me in. Shared her nightmare, knowing I’d understand the significance.
Finally, I dragged myself out of bed, stuffed my legs back into my sweats, and padded barefoot out into the kitchen, greeted by the scent of freshly brewed coffee.
Reagan poured me a mug.
“How do you take it?”
“Black is perfect,” I replied, accepting the cup and taking a sip.
Damn, was I glad I stocked this place with my favorite coffee. I’d be perked right up in no time.
Unable to keep my eyes off her, I watched as she moved around, navigating the kitchen like she’d lived here for years instead of a week.
Reagan, as it turned out, did not take her coffee black, and I made a mental note of the caramel oat milk creamer she splashed into her mug before leaning on the counter across from me to sip it.
“Thank you for coming for me last night,” she said, almost conversationally, as though she didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. I didn’t like the way she avoided my gaze when she said it, either.
I fixed that in a hurry, setting my coffee down and clasping her chin between my thumb and pointer, turning her face to me until her eyes met mine.
“I will always come for you,” I assured her.
That was the second time I’d said as much to her, and I wondered how long it’d take for her to believe it.
Those gorgeous green orbs darted around my face, testing the seriousness of my statement, before she nodded once and pulled free.
My attention snagged on the clock on the stove over her shoulder.
“Fuck,” I hissed, lifting my coffee to my mouth and chugging it down, not giving a single fuck about the burn in left in my throat.
“What’s wrong?” Reagan frowned.
“I didn’t bring my phone over last night, and I should’ve been at the barn hours ago. I have to get going.”
I passed her the empty mug and said, “Thanks for this.”
She gave me a small smile. “Thanks for last night.”
Nodding, I left before I could do something crazy like say fuck work and drag her to bed, give her something to really to thank me for.
A wall of notifications greeted me when I lifted my phone off my nightstand back at my house, the top one a phone call from my foreman.
I dialed him back.
“Hey, I’m so sorry,” I said when he answered, not letting him get a word in.
“Everything okay?” Abel asked.
“Yeah, it’s fine. Just a personal thing I had to deal with. And speaking of, can you handle things on your own today? I’ve got something else I need to take care of.”
“Of course,” Abel said. “That’s what you hired me for.”
“Thanks, Abel. I owe you one.”
“Get your mama to make her baked mac and cheese for lunch one of these days, and I’ll consider us even.”
I chuckled. “Deal.”
That call completed, I immediately dialed my twin as I headed into the bathroom, stripping out of my clothes so I could shower.
“Sup.”
“You busy today?”
West snorted. “I’m a business owner. I’m always busy. And so are you.”
“I know, but there’s something I need to do that’s more important than work, and I want you to come with me.”
“More important than work,” he mused. “Let me guess: this involves Reagan.”
“Of course it does,” I snapped. “You gonna help me or not?”
“Obviously. I’ll head over now.”
“Great. I’m hopping in the shower, so let yourself in.”
“Always do,” West said, then hung up.
I raced through the shower, using my shampoo as body wash, which I spread around with my hands, not bothering with the loofah Aria had bought me ages ago.
Had to admit, though…women knew what the fuck they were doing with those things. It got into all the nooks and crannies and made my skin smooth as fuck.
By the time I toweled dry, dressed, swiped on some deodorant, and brushed my teeth, West was waiting in the living room, scrolling through his phone.
“Took you long enough.”
“Fuck you. It took fifteen minutes.”
“And I’ve been here for ten.”
I walked over and kicked his feet. “Get up and let’s go.”
“Where exactly are we going?” West asked once we were in his truck.
“Airport.”
He caught my eye, a brow raised in question, so I quickly explained about Reagan’s dream.
“That hero complex is gonna get you in trouble one day,” he chuckled. “Bursting into women’s houses without permission.”
“Technically, it’s my house, and I thought she was in danger.”
“So what’s our plan?” he asked.
“Grid search.”
“Off the record?”
I glared at him. “You know Lane would never condone this. He’d insist on calling in the fucking National Guard or something, and the last thing we need is a bunch of those assholes hogging my airspace.”
“Fair enough.”
When we arrived at the hangar where my Cessna Skyhawk was stored, West pulled his truck right inside and killed the engine. We climbed out and headed for the long table along one wall, above which hung several maps of the area and state.
Focusing my attention on the one of our county, I tapped the surface.
Thankfully, the map was already divided into a grid, each square representing ten square miles.
Dusk Valley was located in the southernmost county of Idaho along its shared border with Oregon.
I dragged my finger to the quadrant in the bottom left corner of the state.
“We’ll start here, work our way east until we hit the edge of the county, then head north and back to the west.”
“And you’re sure this fucker is keeping Lainey somewhere in the county?”
I shook my head. “Not entirely. I mean, I don’t have any reason to suspect that except a gut feeling. But if they met here seven years ago and she was taken from here, I think logic dictates he’s local, right?”
“Agreed,” West said, then picked up one of the maps on the table—replicas of the ones on the walls, this one the same as the one I’d been pointing at. “So let’s go.”
While I went through my pre-flight checklist, West sat in one of the chairs we kept in here and started jotting down notes and coordinates, which is precisely why I’d brought him along.
While I focused on flying, he’d be responsible for keeping us within the grid by updating the nav system.
He was also responsible for ruling out any areas we could safely do so, mainly our ranch land and any bordering farms we were familiar with, where we knew no such house like the one from Reagan’s dream existed.
We didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. We simply relied on the “woo-woo shit” to guide us, communicating in looks and gestures.
Plus, this wasn’t the first time we’d set off on a mission like this.
In the Rangers, there had been a time when three of our team members had gone MIA.
Our team only contained six total, so the remaining three—me, West, and a guy we’d nicknamed Spike—were responsible for locating them, extracting them, and bringing them back to our basecamp safely.
And that was precisely what we planned to do with Lainey. We only had to find her first.
Once I ran through my checklist, we loaded up and locked in, taking off once the air traffic controller confirmed all was clear. Our little airport was too small to have its own, so when I made an impromptu flight, we relied on the guys at the Boise airport to help us out.
We’d taken off toward the east, so I swung us around and headed west, toward the first quadrant.
“Alright,” West said through the headset. “Remind me what exactly we’re looking for.”
“Maple, oak, and birch trees. Fields with mountains nearby. Reagan seemed to think this was some sort of old farmhouse, and she said the mountains weren’t particularly tall, but it was difficult to judge because of the distance.”
“So likely somewhere near the end of the range,” West mused.
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
The first square we’d fly over fit the bill perfectly.
The tallest mountains in the state sat more northerly and centrally.
Boise, for example, was located right on the edge of the Northern Rocky Mountains, which dipped down into the Columbia Plateau.
But smaller ranges cropped up all over the state, and there was one located right at the edge of our county—the ideal place to begin our search.
I cut across the area until I reached the southwestern corner of Idaho, then tipped it back toward the east, flying along our border with Nevada. The plan was to note anything that looked promising from the air before passing our findings along to Lane.
There was no denying my brother was a great sheriff and a hell of a cop to boot, but West and I agreed we weren’t going to bring him in on this until we had a more complete picture of the area and something concrete to share. Better to ask forgiveness than permission.
Besides, we weren’t doing anything illegal or interfering in the investigation in any way.
If anyone asked, we were simply taking a joy ride—missing it from our days in the service.
There was nothing better to me than being in the air, anyway. Up here, I could think clearly and breathe more freely than I could on the ground.
Sometimes, though, these trips to the sky hit a little too closely to memories that ought to stay buried. Flyovers of decimated towns, bodies blown apart and strewn in the streets. Racing against the clock to save a comrade, only to arrive too late—a recovery, not a rescue.
I’d gotten good over the years at accepting the things from my past I couldn’t change, but that didn’t mean the memories didn’t still assault me with all the finesse of an AK-47 now and then.
“Do you ever have war flashbacks?” West asked softly, as though reading my mind.
“Yeah.” Sidelong, I glanced at him. “You?”
“All the time. Nightmares too.”
“More like night terrors,” I muttered. “At least nightmares are figments of our imagination. But the shit we’ve seen?”
“Yeah. Real.”
“I’m always here for you, brother,” I said, lifting my fist, which he bumped. “And I won’t judge you if you need to talk to someone else. Seems to be working well for Crew.”
West nodded, his knuckles resting against mine for a fraction longer than necessary.
Right back at you, he said wordlessly.
The longer we flew, naturally, my thoughts turned to Reagan.
I wondered if I could talk her into taking a ride with me. I wanted so badly to show her this side of me, to experience my favorite thing with her.
As if he could sense where my mind had gone, West asked, “You gonna tell her about this?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. I don’t want to get her hopes up, and there’s no guarantee we’ll find anything. Hell, there’s no guarantee that dream meant anything.”
“You and I both know it meant something,” he said.
On the surface, West was the good-time twin. The one always down to party, always down to fuck, always quick with a joke to diffuse a tense situation. The flipside of his coin was me, the one who was more serious, more in my head, more…reserved.
But there wasn’t a fucking thing West wouldn’t do to protect the people he cared about, something me and all of my brothers had in common.
And while he played the part of a himbo well, I also knew—likely only because I was his twin—that he felt things deeply, possibly even deeper than me, who had been open about the way the shit I’d gone through in the service had affected me.
All that was to say, whether he ever spoke the words aloud, West was as concerned as I was with bringing Lainey home safely, though for entirely different reasons.
“Storm’s rolling in,” West said. “We better get back.”
We’d spent two hours in the sky, but we didn’t find anything that fit Reagan’s description, which left me irritated by the time we landed. I wanted to keep going, but if we were late for family dinner, Mama would have our asses. Plus, we barely touched down before the storm broke.
As we pulled out of the hangar to head home, West clapped me on the shoulder.
“We’ll find her, bro.”
“You’re goddamn right,” I answered.
For Reagan’s sake, I’d accept nothing less.