Chapter 13 #2
Land that I've been digging into.
I push off the fence slowly, the pieces locked in now, solid and undeniable.
"Dusty," I say. "Why didn't you ever say anything?"
He looks into his coffee cup.
"Because the last man who tried to," he says quietly, "didn't ride again."
Riley is right where I left her.
Relief hits first, quick and sharp, followed just as fast by something tighter that doesn’t let me relax all the way.
I half expected her to be gone when I got back to her. The kind of woman Riley is, the kind who keeps her head when everything else is moving, who makes decisions based on logic instead of fear.
She's standing by the vendor where I left her. Her jacket back on, her hands wrapped around a water bottle she bought somewhere, and she looks up the second I come closer like she's been tracking the sound of my boots on the ground.
"Well?" she says.
No preamble. No, are you okay or what took so long? Just straight to it, because that's Riley. Right now I don't have the space to find that anything other than exactly what I need.
I stand across from her in the narrow space, and tell her.
Not pieces of it. Not the edited version I'd give someone I was trying to protect from the weight of it. All of it. Lane's confirmation about the equipment.
Dusty's accounting of the Caldwell circuit, the fixed rides, the money, the way it stopped clean four years ago because someone buried it instead of letting it surface.
I tell her about the Miller land.
About what I found out there and what it means now that I understand the context behind it.
I watch her face as I talk. She doesn't interrupt, doesn't flinch, doesn't do that thing people do when information gets heavy where they start to pull back from it.
She sits with it, her eyes steady on mine, processing in real time the way I've seen her do with Hadley when something's wrong and she needs to understand it before she can fix it.
When I finish, she’s quiet.
"Colt Ramirez," she says, "I dated him for a while once a long time ago. He didn't take the break up very well. He was here tonight. I saw him near the chutes before the ride."
I go still. "You used to date him? And you saw him near the equipment tonight?"
"Near enough." Her jaw tightens slightly. "I didn't know what I was seeing."
That shouldn't surprise me. Riley notices things. She noticed the truck before I confirmed it. She noticed the shift in the crew before I pointed it out.
She's been reading this situation from the rail with the same instinct I've been using from the inside, and the fact that I didn't account for that sooner sits uncomfortably in my chest.
"You should have told me what you knew earlier," she says, and there's no accusation in it, just honesty delivered clean. I had no idea you used to date Colt. That could explain some of this.
"I know."
"I could have helped."
"I know that too."
She holds my gaze for a moment, something working behind her eyes, and then she nods once, like a decision just got made that she's not going to walk back from.
"So what do we do with it?" she asks.
That single word lands somewhere it wasn't standing before.
We.
The word settles heavier than it should, not just a shift in phrasing but a line neither of us has crossed in a long time. I feel it land somewhere solid, something I’m not pushing away.
I look at her. This woman came back into my life carrying a secret and a daughter and more composure than anyone I've ever known. I feel something settle in me that has nothing to do with the investigation and everything to do with her.
"First," I say, "we make sure Hadley is somewhere safe."
Riley's expression doesn't change, but something behind it does.
Because she already knows what I'm not saying yet.
If Colt is scared enough to leave warnings in my trailer…
He's scared enough to use whatever leverage he can find.
And the most visible thing in my life right now…
Is that little girl.
I need to call my brothers.
Not because I can’t handle this. Because that’s not how we do things. Whatever is buried on that land, whatever Colt has been protecting, it’s McCallister land now. Which means it’s a McCallister problem. All four of us.
Brooks would want the facts laid out clean. Wade would want to hit something. Luke would ask the question none of us thought to ask yet.
Right now I could use all three.
We don't waste time after that.
Riley is already reaching for her phone before I finish the sentence, pulling up her contacts with the kind of focused calm that tells me she's running on the same frequency I am now, threat assessed, priority identified, moving.
"She's with Piper," she says, the phone already at her ear. "They were by the main stands."
I nod, pushing past people, my body already angled toward the stands while she waits for the call to connect. The rodeo feels smaller than it did an hour ago, tighter, like the walls moved in while we were putting pieces together.
The call goes to voicemail.
Riley's jaw tightens. She tries again.
Voicemail.
"She probably can't hear it over the noise," I say, keeping my voice even, because one of us needs to be. The look on Riley's face tells me she's two unanswered calls away from losing that composure she holds so well.
We hustle through the noise of the grounds together, the rodeo still running behind us like nothing happened, like the world didn't just shift on its axis. The lights are bright and the crowd is loud and everything looks exactly the way it's supposed to look from the outside.
I hate that.
My eyes move automatically, scanning the way they've been doing all night, checking sight lines, checking exits, checking the spaces between things where someone who doesn't want to be seen would stand.
The truck is gone from the outer lot, and my chest tightens because that’s worse, not better, gone means it moved. It means timing, it means whoever’s driving it is close enough to adjust when I do.
We cut through the crowd fast, weaving between bodies that don’t move fast enough, shoulders brushing, voices rising around us.
The crush of noise and heat pressing in as people shift and block our path just long enough to slow us down.
Riley a half step beside me, her phone still in her hand, trying Piper again.
The stands come into view and I'm already searching faces, already looking for that small dark-haired girl who somehow managed to rearrange everything inside me in the span of a week.
I spot Piper first, standing near the edge of the stands, her own phone out, her expression carrying that specific kind of tension that hits me like cold water before I even reach her. Hadley not far from her.
"She is right here," Piper says the second she sees Riley, her voice tight, controlled but barely. "She just walked over there to talk to him for a second."
"Where." My voice comes out harder than I intend it to.
Piper points toward the far end of the grounds, toward the narrow corridor between the stock pens and the equipment storage, the part of the arena that sits just outside the reach of the main lights.
I'm already moving before she finishes the sentence.
Riley is right behind me, and I can hear it in her breathing, the thing she's holding back, the fear she hasn't let herself give a name to yet because naming it makes it real.
We clear the edge of the stands and I see her.
Hadley.
She’s too still, shoulders tight, her eyes wide and locked on something in front of her.
Standing twenty yards away, completely still, her small hand held by a man crouched down to her level, his back to us, his voice low, saying something I can't hear from here.
She's not crying.
She's not running.
But her eyes find mine over his shoulder the second I come around the corner, wide and uncertain in a way that hits me somewhere primal.
The man starts to straighten.
And when he turns around…
It's Colt.