Chapter 2 #3
“My daughter’s name is Enya. She’s twenty-four, and a barrel racer who has been chasing points all year.
She ran in El Paso three days ago in the last show of the season.
” He glanced at Rowan, pride warring with worry in his expression.
“Her and Rain, the horse we bought from your folks, only went and won the damn Average with a fourteen-point-zero-two run.” His throat worked once, hard.
“After the awards and dinner, she went to check on Rain and never made it back to our trailer. Rain was still in his stall, all the tack was still there, and nothing looked out of place. It’s like she just vanished into thin air.
We didn’t think nothing of it when she didn’t come back; she often sleeps in the stall with Rain when he’s stalled at the fairgrounds where they’ve been competing.
He can be a handful, but he’s a big old pussy cat when she’s with him. ”
Gael leaned against the doorframe, sipping his coffee, saying nothing yet.
Rowan listened to the sound of the man’s voice.
He recognized the emotion, and his guts told him there was no way this was some kind of whacked setup.
He even understood Enya wanting to sleep with her horse.
When you were a horse person, you tended to be more comfortable with them than you were with most people.
“I called everybody I can think of,” Moore went on.
“Local cops are insisting that she’s a grown woman who can walk away from everything if she wants to.
” He met Rowan’s gaze. “My Enya had no reason to walk away, and even if she was mad at me and her mom over something, she’d have taken Rain with her.
He’s an extension of herself; she’d never have left him behind. Ever.”
That I can understand.
“What about the FBI?”
“Feds said with no evidence of any crime and no indication anything happened across state lines, they have no jurisdiction. I hired private guys, even paid one of those recovery firms out of Houston. They managed to find a ping from her phone outside Nogales, right near the border, yesterday. But they think her phone went dead after that.”
That’s not good.
He was impressed that Moore was pushing hard and searching for all the resources he could. Most people would trust the police. This man knew his daughter and refused to be brushed off. That fact alone urged Rowan to help him. A glance at Gael told him he felt the same.
Damn.
Moore slid a folded paper across the table. “That’s every ounce of cash I can pull together. If you need more, I’ll sell everything I have to get it for you. My daughter matters. She’s more than another damn statistic.”
Rowan’s eyebrows flew upward. Stronghold didn’t take non-government jobs.
Hell, they barely took government ones at this point, and even the ones they did were all plausible deniability ones where nobody knew they were involved at all.
If someone was talking about them on the dark web, then he needed to send Theo down there to scrub that shit off before they drew attention they didn’t need.
He unfolded the check, his eyes widening at the amount, before he pushed the paper check back across the table.
That amount of money would keep Stronghold afloat for five years.
It was tempting, oh, so tempting, but when they’d rostered out of the Navy, both he and Gael had agreed not to do private work.
“You’re chasing ghosts. If she crossed the southern border, you don’t want to go digging in cartel country. We don’t dig into cartel country. That’s not what we do anymore.”
Moore’s gaze lifted. The man’s voice cracked as he pinned him with unflinching eyes. “You are the only one who is listening to me. You are her only hope. Your mama called you both heroes...”
“We’re not those men anymore.” The words his mom had told this man landed in his heart like a punch, and an old reflex stirred deep inside him.
He knew Gael was the same; the Operators, who were still very much a part of their make-up, were already getting on board to measure distance, time, and extraction windows.
Fuck.
He took a slow breath, fighting down the urge to jump a bird and head off south of the border.
Tracking the untraceable was what he was born, reared, and trained to do.
Saying no to this man was harder than saying no to Uncle Sam had ever been.
“It’s not our field of expertise anymore,” he almost bit back the words, but managed to force them out of his mouth.
“You want help, you call feds or the cops, not a couple of retired Seamen running a horse ranch.”
“None of them will do anything to find one missing girl.” Moore’s hands tightened on his coffee cup. “I’ll give you everything I have and everything I can beg, borrow, or steal. Just please help me find her.” The older man’s voice cracked, and he sucked in a breath.
Silence stretched out between them, coffee cooled, and the clock kept on ticking, steady as a heartbeat, as Rowan gave the devastated father a moment to gather his wits.
He knew what his guts told him to do. He also knew what they’d promised not to do for the next four freaking years.
Hell, those promises were the reason his twin didn’t live in freaking Italy with the man who owned his heart.
Can we really risk it all for one woman?
No.
No, we can’t…
But, fucking hell, I want to.
He scrubbed his hand down over his face and finally glanced toward Gael. He could read his twin like a damn book and recognized the same thought sitting behind his eyes. They’d both heard this kind of plea before. They’d turned them down every time before, too.
So why is this one different?
Maybe it’s the horse we sold them, and the connection to our folks.
That had to be it, he decided. The Moore family owning an SHR-bred horse made them family. Horse family.
If Gael says no. It’s no. If he says yes, I’ll agree to it.
As if his brother read his mind, Gael broke the silence first. “We can at least run the name through our channels, see what comes back.”
Yes!
Even as every instinct he had warned him that nothing good came from breaking the rules, he did an internal fist pump at Gael’s agreement to edge right on the line of the agreement they’d signed with the President of the United States.
I knew he’d say that.
“Come on, Mr. Moore.” He got to his feet. “Gael will take you back to your truck.”
“You’ll look for her?”
“We’ll run some searches.” Rowan dumped what was left of his coffee down the sink. “Make no mistake, though. We’re not promising anything more than we’ll look and see if there is something there to find.”
“It’s more than I had an hour ago.” Moore got to his feet. “Thank you. Thank you, both.”
“Do you have copies of her IDs, photos, or any police report you filed with you?”
“They’re in my truck.”
They’d probably have been able to find all the intel Moore had pretty easily.
But having them already would save them some time.
Rowan glanced at the clock and figured Former Green Beret, Theo “Cross” Madden, might be just about done with the morning feed routine in the barn.
If he wasn’t, he would be by the time Gael came back with the intel packet they needed to start their search.
He’d call him as soon as Moore had left.
“We might find nothing,” Gael warned. “Come with me, and I’ll take all the information and printouts you have. “We’ll call you later today.”
Moore fished his phone out of his pocket. “My number—I gotta look it up—”
“I have your number from when you messaged at the gate.” Rowan grabbed his keys from the counter, tossed them to Gael, and walked them to the door.
He waited for the door to close behind them before he unlocked his phone, tapped their secure app, double checked he’d pulled up the correct number, and hit call.
“Cross, Rowan. Can you come up to the main house when you’re done with feeding? ”
The reply came almost instantly. Theo’s voice sounded low and amused. “Sure thing, boss. But if you’re pranking Gael again, and I get caught in the crossfire, I’m gonna be pissed.”
“Nope.” As amusing as it would be to make Gael lose his dang mind over glitter in the house for the second time in less than a week, he had learned his lesson.
Itching powder in his sock drawer had cured him of the need to do another round of tit-for-tat-make-my-twin-batshit.
“We want your opinion on a potential job.”
“Roger that, boss. I’ll be right up.”
While he waited for Gael and Theo, Rowan went into the pantry and scooped two bowls of dog food. Opening the back door, he yelled for Gael’s farm dogs to come get breakfast,
“Trident, Frog, come and get it, boys.” He placed one bowl at either side of the porch just in time for the two cattle dogs to come barreling around the corner of the house from the direction of the barn.
He pointed Trident to the bowl on the left and Frog to the right, “No fucking fighting this morning, assholes.” He warned them both as they sat in front of their bowls, waiting for the command.
“I’m not in the mood.” He clicked his fingers, “Essen. Eat.” Neither needed to be told twice and dived right in as if they hadn’t been fed in a month.
“All y’all are liars, because I know you had two dinners last night.
Yours and mine.” If Gael didn’t put manners on these two soon, he was going to ban them from coming into the house at all, because losing his chicken-fried steak more than once was not something he wanted to deal with.
“Morning.” Theo unzipped his padded Carhartt jacket as he walked up the steps. “Tell me you have the good coffee on and aren’t on a mushroom coffee kick like fucking Edge.”