Chapter 43
Chapter Forty-three
Zara
Zane gave his horse a dirty look as he backed away. “Never again, Ranger. We’re done.”
Mrs. Keller patted his shoulder and laughed. “You are absolutely adorable. Won’t you and Steven join me for dinner?”
Zane glanced at me. “Are you cool with that? I know we’re supposed to be doing the whole sibling-bonding thing—”
I shooed him off. “Go, go. Have a nice dinner. I’ll just hang out with my boyfriend.”
Mrs. Keller pulled a sympathetic face. “Such a hard job.”
I dusted off my hands, grinning. “It is, but someone has to do it.”
Once they left, I helped the ranch hands take care of the horses. That was when I discovered why I wasn’t hearing any chatter on my walkie—the batteries were dead. I should have known it had been too quiet.
Tom, the assistant ranch manager, was finishing up directing a couple hands on a task. When I walked up, he offered me a friendly smile.
“Nice ride?”
“It was. We were out longer than intended, but it was good. I noticed smoke up north. What’s going on with that?”
He nodded. “There’s a small brush fire. We sent a drone out to get images. For now, it’s nothing alarming. We’re keeping an eye on it, watching how it spreads. As long as it keeps reading farther north, it’ll run out of vegetation to burn and die on its own.”
I rapped my knuckles against the wall. “Knock on wood.”
That got him chuckling. “Of course. Wouldn’t wanna jinx it.” He glanced around the barn then back at me. “I expected to see Cormac with you.”
I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “I’m going to go hunt him down. He’s probably waiting for me in his office.”
Tom cocked his head. “No…he isn’t. He went out about an hour ago to look for you. Said you were running late. He seemed worried. You didn’t cross paths?”
My jaw loosened in confusion. “He was looking for me—on the trail?”
“Yep.” He scrubbed the white stubble on his jaw. “Took Dusty out. You really didn’t see him?”
My brow dropped low. “There was no one out there. You know how narrow the trail is. We couldn’t have missed him. Are you sure that was where he went? Maybe you misunderstood.”
“I didn’t.” He walked over to the wall, taking the clipboard down, and returned with it. “Right here. He signed Dusty out at six thirty.”
Cormac’s handwriting was there, plain as day. So why hadn’t I seen him?
“Can you call him on the walkie? Mine’s dead.”
“Sure.” Tom slipped the walkie from his belt, holding it up to his mouth. “Cormac? It’s Tom. You there?”
Dead silence.
“Again,” I pleaded.
Tom repeated his message. When he got nothing back, he fiddled with the controls then tried one more time.
“He might have the volume turned down.”
“Or maybe his is dead too,” I ventured, not believing a word of it.
“That’s likely.” Tom pulled the bill of his hat lower over his forehead. “Let me ask around on the channels, see if anyone’s spotted him.”
“Okay.” I staggered back until my heels hit a bale of hay, then I sat, my pulse roaring in my ears.
There was no reason to feel so panicked. Cormac was going to walk through those doors any minute. He wouldn’t stay out after dark. He’d lived here his whole life and knew how dangerous it was. One wrong move, and his horse could break a leg, he’d get thrown—
No. I wasn’t going to catastrophize.
He’d be back, and we’d laugh about how freaked out I got for all of two minutes. That was what he got for making me love him this much.
No one had seen him.
He hadn’t walked through the doors.
It was pitch black out. Countless ranch hands were out in trucks and UTVs with spotlights, searching for him. They’d tried to make me stay back, to wait at the Kellys’ house for word, but that wasn’t going to happen.
I couldn’t sit and wait helplessly.
The thing was, even as we drove the ranch roads, deep down, I knew what we were doing was useless.
Cormac had been out on horseback. Any of the trails he could have taken were only passable on hoof.
We wouldn’t find him in a vehicle, and certainly not when it was too dark to see more than a foot in front of us.
We kept at it for a couple hours anyway. If it were up to me, I never would have stopped looking, but I was too numb to put up a fight when Lock drove us back to his and Elena’s house.
When we arrived, Zane and Steven closed around me and didn’t move. They were pressed into my sides on the couch, like I might’ve bolted if they’d moved an inch.
They weren’t wrong to be worried. All I wanted to do was go back out there and scream Cormac’s name until my throat was too raw to make another sound.
I stared out the window, nothing but black looking back at me. The entire thirty-thousand acres of the Kelly ranch had been swallowed whole by darkness. Even the moon was hiding out, a sliver of silver barely giving off a glow.
It was too dangerous to keep searching for Cormac right now. We’d start again at first light. Hours from now.
Way too long.
I stared at the front door like I could will it to open.
“He knows this land,” Zane murmured into my hair. “He grew up on it.”
“I know,” I whispered.
That didn’t help, though. He was out there, thinking I was lost. How far would he go to find me? No matter how dark it got, he’d keep looking. It was in his blood to be my hero, but for once, it wasn’t me in distress.
In the kitchen, Elena stood at the sink, though there was nothing in it. Lock stepped up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. She sagged into him for just a second before straightening again.
“He’s strong,” she said quietly.
“I know,” Lock replied, his voice low and steady. “He’s so strong.”
I pressed my hands to my knees to stop them from shaking.
If the moon were full, at least he’d have light. At least he could see the trail. The ridges. The drop-offs. The dry creek beds that twisted without warning.
Instead, it was the darkest night of the month, because of course it was.
A knock on the door splintered the quiet despair in the house. As if choreographed, everyone’s heads snapped in that direction.
Lock moved first, crossing the room in long strides. I was already on my feet before he opened it, revealing the last two people I would have expected to see.
Victoria stood on the porch, a sweater thrown over pajamas, her face pale. Melanie hovered behind her, eyes red, shoulders drooping inward.
“What’s going on?” Lock asked.
Victoria spoke first. “There’s something we really need to tell you. About Cormac.”
My stomach twisted at his name coming from her lips.
Victoria turned to Melanie, giving her back a shove. “Tell them, Mel. You have to.”
Melanie didn’t lift her head. Her hands opened and closed at her sides.
Finally, she started talking. “Earlier, I ran into Cormac. He said Zara was late returning from a ride. And I…I told him there’d been a change of plans and Zara had taken the north trail.”
That didn’t make sense.
“But there was no change. We were on the east…”
“I know.” Her hands twisted together in front of her. “But I told him north. I said it without thinking. If I’d thought—”
“You told him they were headed out to the ridge,” Victoria added, her tone tight. “You told him they might be running late because it was harder terrain.”
Silence fell heavy, the implication of what she’d done settling over all of us like a lead blanket.
“He asked if they were okay,” Melanie whispered. “I said you never know out there.”
Lock’s jaw tightened, his hand on the door gripping so hard his fingertips went white.
“You sent him north,” Elena said, her voice breaking on the word.
Melanie’s eyes filled as she rushed to defend herself. “I thought he’d get out there and see they weren’t on that trail. An inconvenience, you know? Then he’d turn back.”
“But he didn’t come back,” I finished for her.
He rode toward the fire, thinking that was where I was. And he was still out there in the dark. Because…I couldn’t even begin to think why Melanie would have lied. Nothing about this made sense.
Elena pushed forward, her spine steel as she faced Melanie down. “Why would you tell him that? What was in it for you?”
“Nothing.” Melanie covered her face with her hands. “I made a mistake. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
Victoria shook her head. “She was mad Cormac broke up with me and thought she’d get a little revenge by sending him on a wild-goose chase.”
What? I couldn’t breathe. That couldn’t be the reason Cormac wasn’t here. That wasn’t possible. It had to be something else. Something bigger, more noble. Because if this was it…if this was why Cormac was missing…
Elena jerked like she’d been struck. “My son is out there, in the dark, because of some petty revenge fantasy? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“It was a mistake,” Melanie keened, desperate.
If I’d been less numb and had use of my limbs, I would have clawed her crying eyes out. She’d done this. And for what?
Nothing.
“A mistake is giving someone the wrong change,” Elena hissed. “This was not a mistake. You purposely endangered my son. If he—if something happens to him, I—”
All her steam wore out in a helpless puff. She fell against Lock’s chest, quiet sobs racking her shoulders. Lock held her close, addressing the two women on his porch.
“If we need anything from either of you, we’ll call.” His jaw rippled. “You will answer.”
“Of course,” Victoria rasped. “We’ll do anything you need.”
Lock closed the door and ushered Elena into the living room. I could only stare at the glow coming from the porch light as I swayed. There were so many things I needed to do, but I couldn’t grasp which should come first.
Zane stepped closer behind me. “Zara—”
“I need to go,” I said, reaching for the doorknob.
Steven blocked my way. “No, baby. You can’t go anywhere right now.”
“He’s out there because he thought I was in danger.”
“And you will be in danger if you ride out blind in the dark,” Steven replied, not raising his voice. “You know that.”
A ball of furious helplessness burst in my chest, and it was all I could do not to slam into Steven, shove him out of my way, and run into the night—then keep running north until I found Cormac and put my hands on him.
But he was right.
Deep down, under my anger, I knew he was.
The north trail wasn’t forgiving, even in the best of circumstances. There were too many drop-offs, too many places for horses to misstep.
“I can’t just sit here,” I said, my voice breaking. “I have to do something.”
“You won’t. We’re going to make a plan,” Elena said softly, crossing the room to take my hands. Hers were cold and shaky, but they held on tight. “At first light, we’ll go out. We’ll find him.”
I wanted to believe her. She sounded so certain. But I was terrified. This was what I’d always been afraid of. I remembered that day in college, when all those people kept coming up to Cormac, and I felt him slipping away from me; knowing no matter what I did it was going to happen, I let him go.
I wouldn’t let him go this time. Not without fighting with every ounce of rage I had in me. Thanks to Jackson and now Melanie, I had plenty to fuel me.
“Okay,” I croaked. “We’ll make a plan.”
Zane wrapped his arms around me from behind, and Steven joined, sandwiching me between them. I folded into them, my composure close to cracking.
“He’s all alone.”
Zane rubbed his cheek against my temple, humming softly. “Not for long, Z. We’ll find him.”
I lifted my head, looking toward the window again, and the invisible stretch of land beyond it. He was out there because he was my hero. He couldn’t help himself. It was who he was and a big part of why I loved him so.
This time, he might need saving, and I’d be the one to do it. I swore to myself I would. Just a few more hours, and I’d find him. Come hell or high water.
“Hold on,” I whispered into the night, hoping the wind would carry the words to him. “Just hold on until morning.”
Because that was all I could do.
Wait for the sun.