Chapter 41
forty-one
. . .
FINN
The moment Aspen walked back into the barn, I rushed to her side before Crew could whisk her away.
“Where’s Reagan? Is she okay?”
“Easy, killer,” Aspen chuckled. “She’s fine. Said she’d be right behind me.”
“Okay,” I said, relaxing a bit.
With her out of my sight, I was a bit on edge, unable to fully release the tension in my muscles until she was back at my side.
I followed Crew and Aspen to the bar, eyes routinely darting toward the door even as we took a celebratory shot with my brothers.
When ten minutes passed without Reagan reappearing, I began to worry.
Excusing myself from my family, I did a lap around the reception, wondering if maybe she snuck in without me noticing.
But then, why wouldn’t she come right to me?
Unsurprisingly, I didn’t find her inside, so I stepped out into the night, squinting toward the house, not seeing anyone.
After a lap around the barn during which I only succeeded in startling West and Tyler out of a compromising position, my panic had risen to nearly unbearable levels.
My intuition told me something was very goddamn wrong.
I returned inside, West and Tyler hot on my heels.
Not wanting to raise the alarm yet, he encouraged her to join the rest of our brothers’ dates on the dance floor to do the Cupid Shuffle, the newlyweds leading the charge, while West and I headed for the bar, where Lane, Trey, and Owen stood, shooting the shit.
“Has anyone seen Reagan?”
Their jovial expressions from a beat before fell instantly at my tone.
“Not since she went up to the house,” Trey said, craning his neck to search the crowd for her. I barely leashed my irritation. As if I hadn’t already done the same thing.
“What’s going on?” Lane asked. “Why do you look like someone just died?”
“Reagan is missing,” I managed to choke out.
“Are you sure she’s not still up at the house?” West asked.
Shit. I’d merely taken Aspen at her word that Reagan was right behind her.
I took off, sprinting from the barn and up the hill, calling for her as I went.
When I received no response, I tried to assure myself she was still in the house.
Everything was fine.
Only…it wasn’t.
I reached the spot where the hill plateaued onto the driveway, tripped over something laying in the grass, and nearly fell on my face.
Once I steadied myself, I pulled my phone out of my pocket, clicked on the flashlight, and probed the ground until they landed on the offending object.
My blood ran cold.
Reagan’s shoes, carelessly tossed down.
My girl didn’t care much for material possessions, but I knew she’d never leave her shoes lying around—especially not in the middle of the yard, and especially not the expensive pair of red bottoms she’d been wearing tonight.
Not unless she’d been forced to.
My flashlight caught a reflective surface as I swept it over the grass, and my blood ran cold as I approached the object.
Half on the lawn, half on the gravel drive lay a phone. Reagan’s, I recognized from the beige and black polka-dotted Loopy case.
I flipped it over. The screen was cracked, bits of rock smashed into the fissures.
Even though I knew deep in my bones Reagan was no longer on this ranch, I rushed into the house, calling her name as I raced through every room, nook, and cranny.
She was nowhere to be found.
My brothers followed me inside, and we silently gathered in the foyer.
“I don’t know what the fuck to do,” I admitted to them, my tone edged with hysteria, gripping my hair in fists, needing something to do with my hands that wasn’t throwing my fist into Mama’s drywall.
Lane, of course, took charge.
“First things first, we’re in agreement Crew and Aspen don’t hear of this. The last thing we need to do is ruin their night.”
We all nodded, though I knew both of them would be pissed as hell when they eventually found out.
“Secondly,” Lane continued, checking his watch, “the reception is about to wrap up. As soon as we send Crew and Aspen on their way, we convene at Trey’s. Deal?”
“Deal,” the other three said. I was mute, numb, afraid if I allowed what was truly happening to sink in, I’d spiral.
“Now we’re going to go back to the barn and put on the fucking show of our lives.”
“Someone here took her,” I ground out. “And you want to act like nothing is happening? What the fuck!”
Those final three words echoed back to us, and West put a steadying hand on my shoulder. Lane’s expression turned stern, though edged with sympathy.
“I have a plan,” he said, placing his palm on my other shoulder. “Trust me to do my job, Finn. Okay?”
All I could do was nod. The longer we waited, the further away Reagan got. While I was chomping at the bit to tear this fucking ranch, town, the world beyond apart until I found her, the last thing I wanted to do was pop the bubble of Crew and Aspen’s perfect day.
Even in the face of my worst nightmare come true, I refused to destroy their dreamlike reality.
Doing my best to put on a brave, happy face, I trailed behind my brothers to the barn. Thankfully, as we crossed the threshold, Aria was up on the mic telling everyone to gather outside for Crew and Aspen’s sparkler send-off.
I merely went through the motions, allowed Lane to shove one of the stupid, sparkling sticks into my hand, pasting on a bright, fake smile as Crew and Aspen danced down the aisle formed by the guests still remaining.
He helped her into his truck, both of them blowing kisses and waving like the fucking King and Queen of England, basking in the attention of their adoring public.
When their taillights faded into the distance—they were heading to Boise for an overnight before flying out to Hawaii in the morning for their honeymoon—I turned to Lane.
“Find. Her.”
Though his eyes narrowed, and I was sure he would scold me, he merely sighed deeply through his nose and faced the crowd.
“Excuse me!” he shouted, and the guests who had started to peel off, moving toward their vehicles, stopped. Under normal circumstances, Lane wasn’t a man you wanted to ignore, but especially not when he adopted his sheriff tone. Everyone watched him expectantly.
“First, on behalf of Crew, Aspen, and our entire family, we want to say thank you all for being here tonight. It’s been the perfect day, and I speak for all of us when I say we couldn’t be happier for our baby bro and his new wife.
Unfortunately, though, something…unimaginable happened here tonight. ”
A collective gasp rose from the crowd, murmurs kicking up and filling the silence in the wake of Lane’s words.
“One of our own, Reagan, seems to have gone missing. So before I can let any of you leave, I’m going to need everyone to come back inside so we can conduct some interviews and searches.”
“You can’t hold us!” someone shouted from the back.
“You’re all under suspicion,” my brother replied. “As far as the law is concerned, holding you is exactly what I’m entitled to do.”
Several people grumbled in annoyance but didn’t put up a fight as my brothers herded them back into the barn. In their absence, Mama, Aria, Delia, and Owen approached me. Owen held a sleeping Jace against his chest, and all of their faces were lined with concern.
“She’s really gone?” Mama asked.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
Owen inclined his head to where Lane had flipped on his sheriff mode, organizing people into little groups and directing Trey and West to question them.
“They’ll find her.”
They.
I should be—needed to be—involved, but at the moment, I was completely useless. All of my training had vacated me the moment I needed it most, needed it to save the woman who meant everything. Whose loss I would not survive.
“What do you need from us?” Aria asked.
“Stay—” I started, but my words were cut off as the roar of an engine filled the quiet night.
A beat later, headlights flipped on, illuminating a section of the drive and yard beyond the house, where we’d instructed guests to park. Tires spun and gravel flew as the vehicle peeled out.
I burst into action, racing down the road after it. But of course, the driver was speeding like a bat out of hell and put too much distance between us too quickly.
I didn’t think as I turned to Owen, the only one who had followed me, despite carrying his dozing son.
“Keys.”
“You’ve been drinking…”
“Keys, Owen!” I shouted.
The longer he stared at me, delaying giving me what I asked for, the further away the escapee got.
And so did Reagan.
Because I knew without a doubt she was in that truck against her will and being taken away from me.
Finally, Owen dug in his pocket and passed the keys to his rental over.
I clicked the lock button to locate it, then rushed toward it and threw myself behind the wheel, peeling out exactly as the fucker who had taken my girl had.
While he had a headstart, there wasn’t anyone on the planet who knew this land better than I did—except, of course, my family—and that gave me an advantage.
I drove on autopilot, navigating the curves and hills of the access road that connected our ranch to the county road ahead, pressing the speedometer to sixty, seventy, eighty.
Was it reckless? Absolutely.
Did I give a fuck?
Hell no.
Reagan’s life was on the line. At the moment, mine didn’t matter.
When I reached the T formed by the ranch drive and the county road, fields expanded in all directions.
Nothing but silence and stillness greeted me. Not even a flash of taillights.
“Fuck!” I screamed, slamming my fist over and over against the steering wheel.
Taking a stab in the dark, I headed right, where the road would take me further away from town, deeper into Lawless ranch land.
My head was on a swivel as I sped down the dirt lane, whipping toward trails and two tracks that cut into the woods and fields in either direction.
I gave myself five miles before I had to accept the driver—and Reagan—had slipped through my fingers.
I reluctantly turned around and headed back to the ranch.
“What the fuck was that?” Lane asked when I parked near the barn and climbed out of the SUV. “You can’t just go all cowboy and take off whenever you feel like it!”
“Let all these people go,” I said. “None of them are responsible.”
“How do you know?”
“Because one of them snuck free of your little round up and took off down the road. I was trying to catch them. I think it’s safe to assume they have Reagan.”
My words were flat. I couldn’t even consider where my girl was now, what state she was in, what she was enduring at the hands of some unknown creep.
“Fuck,” Lane muttered, scrubbing a hand down his face.
“Yeah. Great work, Sheriff.”
Lane lifted his finger into my face and stepped closer, but Owen stepped in and shoved us apart before fists could fly.
“What we’re not going to do is turn on each other,” our eldest brother said.
“He’s being a prick,” Lane retorted.
“Some asshole just took the love of my life away from me!” I screamed in his face. “How do you think you’d feel?”
Lane stilled, as though he hadn’t stopped to consider that—hadn’t reminded himself that Reagan was now the center of my universe.
“Fair enough,” he said, backing off, then raising his voice to speak to the guests. “Sorry about that, folks. Everyone can go home.”
A mass exodus ensued, and when the final car disappeared down the drive, we gathered in a loose circle.
“So now what?” West asked.
“Now, we head to my house,” Trey said.
An hour later, I sat in Trey’s living room while he and Lane were holed up in Trey’s office, combing through the Swallow footage from that day and night seven years ago and tonight’s from the big house.
I barely noticed what was happening around me, my eyes focused on some middle distance while I tried not to think about what was happening to Reagan.
“How’s it going in there?” Owen asked when West rejoined us.
“They started with the cameras from the big house. Whoever attacked Reagan did a hell of a job hiding their identity.”
“What about the truck? Did they get a plate?”
West shook his head. “Tag lights were disconnected. All we can be sure of is the truck was big, dark in color, and had a huge ass brush guard.”
“Which describes over half the vehicles in this fucking state.”
I didn’t bother joining the conversation. The truth was…I was barely holding it together.
Images of the present, of being here, in Trey’s living room with my brothers, seemed to cut in and out of focus, replaced in blips with memories from the past.
A briefing room on the other side of the world.
Coordinates to a safe house where several members of our team were being held as prisoners of war.
More lives I couldn’t fucking save.
My chest tightened, like a fifty-pound weight sat on my sternum. I gasped for air, but it barely made it into my lungs.
The harder I tried, the more constricted my airway became.
One of my brothers scooted next to me, put a hand on my shoulder, and said, “Breathe.”
Owen, using the same tone of voice he’d used to command offenses for years.
The word seemed to reach me from a thousand miles away.
I couldn’t. I sank further below the surface. The edges of my vision went hazy, darkness slowly creeping in.
Finally, I let it win, let it drag me into the deep and block out everything else.