Chapter 72
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
HUNTER
Her phone is on the sidewalk outside departures. Ace finds it. Cracked screen. My text still open. Her half-typed reply in the message bar, cursor blinking.
She never finished writing back to me. But I read the words there with shaking hands.
I love you.
The noise of the airport collapses into a ringing silence inside my skull. We check inside. Every counter. Every gate. Every bathroom. Every security camera angle I can bribe my way into reviewing.
She never went through departures. She never even fucking walked through the doors.
My hands are shaking so bad that Ace had to get in behind the wheel. I haven’t shaken since the day Wyatt was born.
“Call Colten,” I tell Ace. “Get Romeo on the line. Now.”
Ace is already dialing. “Colten. I need to see whatever you’ve been working on today. Anything. Lola’s missing.”
“What?”
“She never got on the plane. Someone grabbed her at the airport. And whoever is behind all this with the Greeks has her.”
Colten goes quiet for half a beat. “I’m putting you on speaker so Romeo can hear.”
“Talk to me,” I yell.
“We got to the bottom of the missing footage. Two things. You ain’t going to like either. But, I’ve triple checked everything, and I’m right.” Colten’s voice is tight. The voice he uses when something is very bad.
“What’s on it?”
“Sending it now. You need to see it to believe it.”
My phone buzzes, and Ace leans over to watch it.
I open the video and hit play. It’s grainy but clear enough. Reese. Standing in a parking lot. Meeting with two men I recognize as Greek operatives. The timestamp is three days after I broke his hand.
“That motherfucker,” Ace mutters.
“Reese went to the Greeks after I fired him,” I say. “He cut a deal. He’s been feeding them information.”
I scratch my stubble. But that doesn’t account for the Greeks knowing I’d be at Ashley’s. Reese didn’t even know I was going there. Unless he was tailing me, which I doubt.
“Colt. Do we think he was working with them before Ashley was murdered?”
“We don’t know. There are no phone logs. No footage. Nothing, until after…”
“After I nearly killed him,” I finish his sentence.
“Hunter.” Ace’s voice changes. “Zoom in. Bottom right corner.”
I glance at him. His face is grey.
“What?”
He turns the phone toward me. I look at the image.
The parking lot. Reese and the Greeks are in the center.
And in the bottom right corner, parked behind a dumpster, half hidden, but it’s there, Beau’s truck.
The navy blue F-150 with the dented fender.
The truck I’ve seen parked outside my house every day.
My brother’s truck. At a meeting with the Greeks.With Reese.
“Fuck,” I hiss. And it comes out sounding as heartbroken as I feel.
“I’ll fuckin’ kill him,” Ace seethes.
“Colten,” I say into the speaker. My voice doesn’t sound like my own. It sounds like something dredged up from a place I’ve never been. “You said two things. What’s the second?”
“Romeo traced a property purchase from eleven months ago in New Falls, right on the outskirts. A house bought under a shell company. The company is registered with a law firm in Scottsdale.”
“Reese’s firm?” I question.
“Yeah.” A pause. “Hunter, the property’s utility account was activated this morning. Someone turned the lights on.”
This morning. The same morning, Beau drove my wife to the airport. Every piece falls into place at once. Not slowly. Not one at a time. All of it—a cascade, an avalanche, the entire structure of lies collapsing into a single, devastating picture.
Beau didn’t drive Lola to the airport. Beau drove Lola to Reese. Beau killed Ashley. Beau framed me. Beau has been working with the Greeks and Reese from the beginning.
He wants the money they’re offering. He wants me gone. And he’s going to use my wife and Reese's hatred for me to make that happen.
And right now, Beau is at my ranch. With my son. “Send me the address,” I say.
“Hunter—”
“SEND ME THE FUCKING ADDRESS, Colten! And get your ass back to the ranch and get our brother away from my son. Beau is in on it; his truck is in the damn footage. Take another look.”
“What the fuck?” Colten hisses.
My phone buzzes as Colt drops the pin. “I’ll head there now. I’ll bring Romeo, get Wyatt to safety, and meet you at the address. It’s going to be okay, Hunter.”
I look at Ace. He’s slamming the truck into gear and speeding out of the parking lot. And I’m calling Jerry to get Wyatt and take him to Colten when he arrives. “Jerry. Where’s Wyatt?”
“Oh, Beau took him about half an hour ago. Said they were going to the grocery store for ice cream. Cute, actually, Wyatt was real excited—”
The phone slips from my hand.
It hits the center console. Jerry’s voice keeps going, tinny and distant, still talking about ice cream while my entire world disintegrates.
Ace watches my face. He doesn’t need me to say it, but I do. “He’s got Wyatt.” My voice comes out barely human. “Beau took my son.”
The silence in the truck is absolute. Ace’s hand closes around the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turn white.
I can’t even see straight. I can’t function. I can hear Ace shouting down his phone at Colten.
My hands aren’t shaking. They’re past shaking. They’re still in the way a man’s hands go still when he’s decided someone is going to die. “Get every person we know to that property, Ace.”
“Hunter—”
I look at Ace. His gun is in his lap. His jaw is locked. His eyes are wet and furious.
“When I find him,” I say, “I’m going to kill our brother.”
Ace nods once. “He ain’t no brother of ours.”
The two people that I love more than anyone in the world are in that address. I know they are. Beau and Reese ain’t clever enough; this is a rushed plan that is about to blow up in their faces.
The man who took them has Sterling blood running through his veins.
Blood he doesn’t deserve.
And then this ends, I’ll bleed him dry. Brother or not. He just lost his right to have our name.