Chapter 29
Zane
“I got caught last night,” Hope whispers as soon as she joins me in the kitchen. She has the monitor in her hand, and on the screen, Bellamy is still fast asleep.
“Luna?”
“On the stairs.”
“What did you do?”
“Squeaked? Not my most mature response.”
“Adorable, though.” I tip her face up and kiss her on the mouth. “Well, so she knows. She already knew I wanted you. It’s hard to hide.”
“Oh my God, did you talk to her about it?”
“Before we went to the waterfall.”
“You didn’t tell me!”
“Slipped my mind.”
She rubs her hands on her cheeks, then grins. “She didn’t smite me, so…that’s something?”
“My mom adores you.”
“That’s true,” Luna announces, gliding into the kitchen silently.
Hope spins around. “Good morning.”
Luna points to her chest. “Chose my shirt with care this morning.”
It says un-burn-able witch, and the little hyphens are actually middle fingers.
“That’s my mom,” I say with a groan.
“We’re all grown here,” Luna says crisply. “But I don’t want either of you to hurt the other, so please understand that I will be practicing spells, just in case.”
Hope’s mouth falls open, then snaps shut. She nods. “Got it.”
My phone vibrates in my pocket. Hope’s gaze jerks to the screen as I pull it out, but it’s not Cash.
“Ridge,” I say as I answer it. “What’s up?”
“I need your help this morning, if possible. That fucking bull has escaped again. I’d like to move the heifers to a different pasture, put some space between him and the cows.”
Yeah, that’s important. “I’ll figure it out, yep. Give me a few minutes, and then I’ll saddle up with you.”
When I hang up, I explain the situation to Hope.
“That bull is a randy fucker, which I know is his job, but we need him to breed the heifers, and he thinks the cows are where it’s at.
But the other bull has them covered, or will, and we’re not worried about them taking.
So he needs to be in with the heifers, in a different spot. ”
“Got it. Sounds like a breeding emergency.” She says it straight, but there’s some sass in her voice.
“You have good jokes in the morning, you know that?”
“I try.”
I wish I could stay just like this, side by side, arms brushing as we share our morning coffee. It’s so fucking good and domestic, it makes my heart squeeze tight. The only thing that would make it better is if she was in my bed all night instead of just part of it.
More and more lately I’ve been wondering if she’ll let me be that for her, be her proper mate and Bellamy’s dad, before we get married, or if she’ll want to do it right. I don’t mind. Could do with a little courtship, a little formality to ease us into forever.
As Luna carries her coffee out of the kitchen, I give Hope a final, unvarnished hungry look.
She leans in and whispers, “What are you thinking about?”
I grin at her. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“Yes.” She blushes, looking pleased with herself. Thinking that I’m having dirty thoughts.
I brush my lips against her temple. “Wedding bells, maybe.”
“Oh, please.” She blows a raspberry. “Good deflection, cowboy.”
“You don’t want to know what I’d do to you on a wedding night?”
“I think you’re a funny, funny man.” She pats my chest. “Go help your brother. Your mom and I will be fine.”
“I’m going to call Cash first. See if he’s seen anything worrying. Maybe he can come out here for the morning.”
“We don’t need a babysitter today.” She brushes her lips against my jaw, but before I can turn my head and deepen the kiss, Bellamy wakes up on the baby monitor.
“Duty calls,” she whispers.
Next, I wake up Cash, who checks his surveillance footage from the night. “Nothing here, brother. All quiet, all night.”
I scrub my hand into my hair. “All right. Look, I need to help Ridge move a bull. Could you come out here for lunch?”
“Sure thing.”
I pack a lunch, then head out to the barn and put on my chaps.
Shadow looks happy to spend the day on the mountain, and I don’t blame her.
I’ve been neglecting her a bit. The pasture Ridge wants to move the young herd into is lush but hard to get to on wheels, which means a long horse ride.
And lots of time to think about what comes next.
The weather is gorgeous, cool but clear.
It’s a good day for a ride into the hills.
As we climb, I think about Hope, and Bellamy, and wedding bells. Even though she laughed at me, she didn’t recoil at the idea. She might not think that’s in the cards for her, but she doesn’t hate the idea.
And I really do want to see her with a ring on her finger. My ring.
When we get to the cattle, it’s not hard to spot the errant bull. He’s on top of a willing cow.
“God damn it, you fucker,” Ridge snaps.
“Might as well let him finish,” I say dryly.
He scrubs his hand over his face.
“What’s the plan?”
He gestures to the fence between the two pastures, where there’s a gate.
“Let’s open that, and get him and that cow in with the heifers.
Once they’re done, of course. We’ll use her to motivate him to move with the heifers up to the western pasture, and then once they’re all moved over there, we’ll bring her back.
She’s not going to be too hard to move back on her own.
But worst case, we could just leave her up there, too. ”
“Sounds like a plan.”
That cow turns out to be our best asset.
Ridge has a bucket of range cake, the nutrient-dense pellets the cattle go bonkers for, and she likes that even more than she likes the grass in the pasture, so she follows him, and the bull follows her, and the heifers all follow behind them both because they’re young herd animals.
Which leaves me to bring up the rear and encourage grazers to keep moving.
By the time we get up to the western pasture, I’m fucking starving.
“Let’s break for lunch before we take the cow back down the mountain.”
Ridge grunts and nods at where the bull is mounting her again. “Gives him time to finish another stab at that job, I guess.”
I smirk and pull out the sandwiches I made.
Ridge drains half his water bottle, then wipes his forehead as he looks down toward the ranch. “It’s looking good and green this year.”
That reminds me of the picture Bellamy drew of Froggie. Good and green. I laugh under my breath.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
My phone vibrates. Speak of the devil. “It’s Cash. I asked him to swing by the ranch to have lunch with the girls. Hey, buddy, how’s everything there?”
“Quiet. They’ve finished their kale harvest. Mom’s sending some back with me into town.”
“Oh, that’s perfect. Tell them we’ll be back in two hours, probably.”
He relays the message. “I’m heading out with the kale, then. See you later.”
“Yep.”
I put my phone away.
Ridge gives me a hard look. “You have him doing a lot for you lately. You sure that’s wise?”
“He picked up kale from Luna today.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it.”
“There’s nothing illegal about keeping an eye on things. Not even close.”
“You sure about that?”
“He’s a grown man, Ridge. I’m not asking him detailed questions about the how of it.”
“He can’t go to jail again.” Ridge’s shoulders heave. “It’s not right, what happened to him.”
“We all know that. It’s done and in the past.”
“Never gonna be in the past for me—” He frowns and cuts himself off. “What’s that?”
He points across the valley, to the ridge north of the township road, on the dirt lane that leads to the cell tower on the high point. There’s a shiny glint that isn’t usually there. Like a building or an RV.
I dig out the binoculars I keep in my saddle bag and look in that direction. It’s not a building. Maybe a camper van, someone thinking they won’t get dinged because they’ve pulled in quite a ways off the road.
But when I focus in, I see it’s not an RV, either. It’s just a pickup truck, but the back is packed high, distorting the shape of it.
A sick feeling twists at my insides. I recognize that truck. I yank out my phone to be sure. It’s the same one that Cash’s buddy photographed leaving Derek Hitchkoff’s compound yesterday morning.
Motherfucker.
“How the hell did he find her so fast?” I growl, flipping over to the phone app to call Cash back as I simultaneously snarl at Ridge, “We gotta go back.”
He’s already on his feet, packing up our lunch waste.
The call to Cash doesn’t go through.
I stare at the cell tower again.
He’s fucked with it somehow.
I have one bar of signal, instead of the usual three or four.
That’s probably from another tower further away that doesn’t reach down into the valley.
I bet Cash has left the wifi network of the ranch.
As long as he’s in the valley, he won’t have any signal until he pings off another tower closer to town—and that’s if this Hitchkoff fucker hasn’t somehow messed with the broader network.
“Now,” I yell at Ridge, throwing myself onto Shadow’s back.
I don’t know how long I’ll have any signal for, so I call Mercy first at the diner.
“The Friendly Table,” she says cheerfully. “Can you hold—”
“Mercy, this is urgent,” I growl.
“Okay.”
“I need you to call Cash. Keep trying — he may pick up signal closer to town. Tell him to turn around and go back to the ranch.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m on the mountain and I think Hope’s ex is here.”
“Do you want me to call Jasper?”
Her brother is a local sheriff. And the man who arrested Cash seven years ago. “Not yet.”
“But if I can’t get Cash?”
I urge Shadow to go faster. I ignore the fact that Ridge is behind me, and how disappointed he’ll be in me.
I try to see if the glint is still on the ridge or if that truck has moved. But Shadow is doing her best to get me where I want to go, and we’re jostling too much to make out the ridge clearly.
When it comes to Hope’s safety, I can’t take any chances. “Try to get Cash. If he turns around, I think we can box this guy in. But if you can’t get him, call your brother.”
Then I hang up and call Luna.
The phone rings and rings, no answer.
Fuck.
I’m about to call Mercy back, before I lose the far signal, when my phone rings.
It’s my own name, but that means it’s Hope.
“Hey,” she says happily. “Your mom couldn’t answer her phone, because Bellamy has fallen asleep on her in the greenhouse.
They’re having a cuddle in a camp chair.
I’m just taking Froggie to the house because he fell in a bucket, and if he’s not clean for bedtime tonight, there will be a meltdown of epic proportions. ”
Froggie.
The only thing they brought with them to the ranch that could have a tracker inside it.
Mother. Fucker.
“Hope, listen to me carefully. Derek is there. He’s up on the ridge. I think there’s a tracker inside the frog. Can you run, baby? Run behind the house, so he can’t see you, then drop it and double back.”
Silence is the only response.
I look at the screen. The call has dropped, and I’m out of signal.
Fuck.
Hand shaking, I shove my phone in my pocket.
I did this to her.
I got lost in her mouth and her sweetness and her innocence last night, and wasn’t thinking about all the possibilities. I wasted this morning thinking about fucking wedding bells.
And now I’ve put her life on the line.
Ridge is right behind me, both of us riding hard. It’s another twenty minutes before we come off the mountain and can gallop at full speed across the pastures.
My blood goes cold, then hot, then cold again, and my vision narrows to a tunnel. All I can see is the future I've been building in my head, brick by careful brick, around this woman and her two children.
I dig my heels in. Shadow lunges forward and I give her her head, leaning low over her neck as we tear down the hillside.
The yard comes up fast. I pull my mare to a hard stop by the paddock fence, and I'm off her back and running before she's fully stopped.
Trusting Ridge to take the horses, I take off at a dead sprint. That truck from the ridge is now in the driveway, parked at a hard angle, the driver's door hanging open. The light’s still on, which means whoever arrived hasn't been here long.
And the front door to the house is open.
I force myself to stop at the octagonal greenhouse, letting myself in as silently as I can. Inside, my mom looks up with a start from where she’s rocking a sleeping Bellamy.
“Zane?”
I put my finger to my mouth. Shhh.
Then I mouth, stay here. Don’t come out no matter what.
Her eyes flare with fear, but she nods.
Ridge is behind me. He’ll protect you.
Now that I’ve had my own eyes on Bellamy, and know that she’s not inside for whatever is about to happen, I can go to the house.
White hot fury wraps around my spine.