34. Cash
34
CASH
O ld Harry’s is jam-packed with scrawny-looking cowboys. I wouldn’t have chosen it for a bachelor party night. I’m pretty sure Holden just wants to get this over with so he can get back to Rosie. He didn’t want to leave her, but she insisted he at least have a few beers with the guys before walking down the aisle.
I’ve been nursing the same beer since we got here because I’m the driver. Duke’s best friend, Sam, has joined them at the bar. They’re taking another shot, quizzing Sterling about his first year in the Marines. He earned an impressive scar over his left eyebrow somehow, and I’ve yet to hear the story about how.
My eyes roam across the stage with a lone guitarist before I check my phone again. Monroe hasn’t texted me back. I’m sure she’s bonding with the girls, which makes me antsy. It seems like they’re getting closer, which should be a good thing. It makes my skin crawl. I need to know what’s being said. Dolly has never liked a single woman I’ve brought around, which hasn’t been many. With the absence of a mother, Dolly and Rosie are the only women in my life whose approval matters to me.
Approval for what? You’re not dating her.
“What’s on your mind, brother?” Holden tips his beer back over his lips. His gaze is lazy and bored as he surveys the television screen, where the professional bull riding finals are being streamed.
“Just wondering what the girls are up to.”
He chuckles, shaking his head. “That’s not a good sign.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not a good sign for the chances of you coming back full-time to help me run the place.”
“After the tour?—”
“You’ll be here half the time, if that,” he cuts me off. “You just gotta embrace it now. No way to stop it.” He tips the beer bottle back over his lips again.
I stare at my older brother’s profile. He taps the bar, signaling to the bartender that he’s ready for another beer.
“I’m finishing up the tour, and then I’m done.”
“So, you’re just gonna let her go? You’ve been back for less than two weeks, and even I can tell you’re way beyond that with her.”
I haven’t confessed to anyone my realization of my feelings for Monroe, but my brother has somehow guessed it. I pop my knuckles, staring straight ahead.
“What would be so bad about traveling with her and living here half the time? You’d still be a part of the ranch. We don’t need you all the time, just the peak seasons.”
It’s not just about the ranch .
“I’m not cut out for it. She’s in the spotlight twenty-four seven.”
“And you’re obsessed with her. You think I planned to fall for the woman whose father had locked me away for three and a half years? You have no control over that shit.”
I remain silent. He’s right, but I’m not ready to admit it.
“This is more about your commitment issues than her job. Mom’s death affected us all like this. She was the glue of the family. She brought out the soft, feminine side of Dad. After she was gone, we all started talking with our fists. Once you can’t communicate that way with someone, it’s easier to run and hide than it is to open up and use your big-boy words.”
Holden has always been able to see right through me.
“Are we at a bachelor party or a fucking counseling session?”
He laughs, slapping my back. “I’m becoming a dad. That shit changes you.”
“Damn. For the better?”
“I’m talking about my feelings, aren’t I?”
Our conversation is interrupted by the buzzing of Holden’s phone. He swipes on the screen to answer it.
“Hello, beautiful.” The smile fades from his face.
Shit.
Rosie’s pregnancy has already been hard. Between her condition and Dolly’s heart defects, there’s no telling what went wrong.
Holden slams the beer down on the bar and spins around, signaling to Duke, Sterling, and Sam as he marches toward the exit. “Where is he now? ”
“Where is who?” My stomach drops.
We shouldn’t have left them alone.
“What’s up?” Sterling’s face is hard. Our younger brother has done some growing up since he left home for the Marines.
Holden still has his phone pressed to his ear as we storm through the parking lot, rain falling on us. I unlock my truck, and we all climb in, except Sam.
“What happened?” Duke asks.
Holden clenches his jaw. His eyes meet mine briefly, and the fear in their depths makes my throat constrict. My brother isn’t afraid of much.
“Sam, you and Duke go in your truck. Follow us and call Sterling. We’re going hunting, boys.”
The engine roars to life, and we take off down the street. My phone screen is still black.
“What was he driving? Which direction did he go?” Holden says.
I wrap my hands around the steering wheel, making the last turn toward the ranch. The dirt road we’re on will take us right up to the gate in ten miles. My speedometer climbs close to ninety miles an hour before he points a finger out the windshield at an approaching vehicle.
“Rosie, what was the license plate? Did it start with an H ? Okay, baby, breathe. Help Dolly. We’ll be home as soon as we can.”
“What’s wrong with Dolly?” Sterling leans forward.
My heart races. My sister’s heart condition has the potential to turn critical at any point. My boot lifts off the pedal, slowing us down more. I reach into my console, pulling out my nine millimeter. In the back seat, I hear Sterling grabbing the rifle hanging on the window. Holden is always strapped. Tonight is no exception.
“That one—run him off the road,” Holden instructs, pointing at the black van approaching us.
I swerve, skidding toward the side and taking up the majority of the road and forcing the van off on the shoulder. He doesn’t slow down. Instead, he tries going around us.
“Stop that fucker, Sam!” Holden roars at Sterling’s phone, where Sam and Duke have been listening on speakerphone.
“Don’t flip it! She could be in the back,” I yell at the phone.
It’s too late. In my rearview, I see Sam’s black dually truck hit the van head-on. His grill guard on the front end smashes into the van at about thirty miles an hour. My heart jumps in my throat. My truck spins around and nearly hits the fence. It’s muddy from the continual rain, but I flip it into four-wheel drive and reverse back onto the road. I want to stop him without risking hurting whoever might be in the back of the van.
“Don’t let him go. It’s your girl’s stalker.” Then, he says into his phone, “We got him, Rosie. He’s not getting away.”
Adrenaline spikes in my veins. I hit the accelerator, ramming the front of my truck into the side of the van, crushing the side of the body and nearly flipping it on its side. Sam’s truck is still smashing the front end, slowly pushing the van into the fence.
I can see into the driver’s seat of the van now, but all I can make out is the silhouette of a dark-haired man. Monroe described the man’s face to me when he broke into her hotel room, but the only defining feature of his description was a notch in his left ear, like he’d had a piercing ripped out.
Is she in the van? My pulse races, my fingertips tingling. This was the only way to stop him, but if she’s injured I’ll never forgive myself.
“Is she in the van? Holden! Is she in the van?”
“Rosie, is Monroe there?”
I can’t wait for the answer. “I need to get up close to him.” I throw the truck in park and get out into the downpour.
I walk up to the driver’s door, but the man starts climbing toward the passenger side.
“Duke! Cut him off on that side!” I signal to my brother, who immediately springs into action.
We herd him like cattle, making it impossible for him to escape with half of his demolished van against the steel fence and two big trucks keeping him trapped there. He climbs in the driver seat and makes one last desperate attempt to flip it in reverse and press on his accelerator, but he only manages to slam into my truck again before Sam presses him farther in.
The glint of steel in his hand causes me to raise my weapon.
“Put it down,” I command.
There’s a bloody gash decorating the side of his face. He finally looks up at me, dark eyes calculating before he lifts the gun and shoots. I fire mine in unison with him. Pain splinters through my side, causing me to double over. Glass shatters as the bullet from my gun pierces his window .
Holden jumps from the truck, descending on the driver’s door of the van.
“She’s safe! She’s at the ranch, Cash.”
Relief and adrenaline surge through me, even as the dull pain slices through my side. Sterling is beside me, his arm coming out to wrap around my shoulders.
“I’m fine. It grazed me.” I reach down, lifting my hand back out to see the blood coating my fingers. “Flesh wound.” I press forward on the muddy shoulder of the road just as Holden jerks the man from the van by his collar.
“This your guy?”
The man’s face is in a grimace, his shoulder and face bleeding from shards of glass and the steel embedded somewhere in his chest. I ignore the pain in my side from where his bullet grazed me, approaching him with my weapon still drawn. Holden kicks the man’s gun under the van.
“Let me see his left ear,” I say over the rumble of the thunder in the distance.
Holden jerks his head sideways, revealing the left ear, where a clear notch is in the side of it. My muscles tighten. I step forward, snatching the man’s collar from Holden and dragging him toward me through the mud. He screams in pain, trying to clutch at his shoulder.
“Check the back of the van.” I throw the man on the ground, pressing my boot to his chest. “What did you call her? What was the name you used?” My voice is strained, spit spewing from my lips as I attempt to not crush his windpipe before I get the answer I need.
“I only wanted Kitten! Kitten was the one I was after! Not the other girls, only Kitten! ”
The proof that he was the one spying on her and stalking her all over the Eastern Hemisphere is all I need. I look up when I feel a hand on my shoulder. My chest heaves as I attempt to control myself, to calm the fuck down. Holden is beside me, but he’s not trying to hold me back.
I look up to see where my brothers have the van open, relief coursing through me when they don’t find Monroe.
Sterling and Duke are digging through the back of the van. Duke steps out, holding up a ring of red rope and a roll of duct tape. Sterling walks toward me with a stack of papers. I can’t make them out in the rain until he gets closer, revealing posters covered with individual cutout pictures of Monroe. They’re not from magazines or tabloid photos. They look like printouts from a cheap camera, not professional shots. Most of them seem like they’re from the close seats at her concert or on the street while she’s getting into her car. The backgrounds of all the pictures were cut out so it’s not clear where they were taken, but her various outfits and hairstyles indicate that there were possibly hundreds of different dates that the pictures were snapped.
“How long has he been stalking her?” Sterling asks, flipping through the photos.
My jaw clenches. Blind rage overtakes me, making my limbs start to shake.
“He’s dying. We need to get off the main road,” Holden says from beside me, leaning down to press his fingers to the man’s neck. “What else do you need from him?”
“A slower, more painful death.” I look up at Duke, who’s stopped searching through the van and is now standing in front of us. “Let me see your pocket knife. ”
He pulls it out of his pocket and hands it over. I flip it open and squat down beside the bleeding man. I press the blade into his chest, using the point of the knife to dig my bullet out. He screams in pain the entire time, but all I can think about is the fear and pain in Monroe’s eyes every time he got close to her, when he stalked her across the entire fucking world and left dead birds in her dressing room, just to terrorize her. I think about his intentions tonight, waiting until we left them alone and stocking up on rope and duct tape for God knows what he had planned for her.
I dig in his back pocket and extract his wallet. I look at the ID.
Tony Ziggler.
Finally having a name to call him other than ‘the stalker’ doesn’t bring me any peace. After I get the bullet out, Holden and I lift him together and toss him in the back of my truck. He’s still breathing, but barely.
“Is the van drivable?” Holden asks.
Duke opens the driver’s door. “I bet I can get it to go a little ways.”
“Get his gun from underneath it,” I tell him.
We’re only a few miles from the edge of Redford Ranch. I climb into my truck and turn onto the remote road. We drive to the closest gate with me in front, Duke in the van behind me, and Sam bringing up the rear.
“You had no choice. He tried to shoot first,” Holden tells me.
My eyes are trained on the wet road. “I don’t feel a damn thing besides relief. ”
He reaches over, peeling my shirt up. “You might need a doctor.”
The adrenaline pumping through me is masking the pain. All I can feel is a dull ache on my side. The truck pulls up to the first gate on Redford Ranch. Sterling jumps out to open it. We wait for him to get back inside after all the vehicles make it through. The overgrown road here is rarely used.
I pave the way, leading them deeper into the thousands of acres that make up Redford Ranch. We buried a body here last year when Rosie was kidnapped and held hostage. Murder isn’t something we take lightly, but when it comes to protecting our women, the Redford brothers don’t fuck around.
“Turn left. Let’s make sure it’s far away from the grave we already dug.”
We’re somber as we approach a small clearing. I get out of the truck, pulling the man from the bed by his ankle. He’s not breathing, having succumbed to his injuries and the blood loss. I don’t feel any remorse for what I did, knowing she’s safe now. We pull his body from the bed of the truck, and the rain starts to wash away the traces of his blood.