Chapter 17 #2
And he hadn’t said it. Hadn’t told her. Had walked out instead, had chosen pride over honesty, had let her think for even one second that she was too much trouble when the truth was, she wasn’t enough trouble.
Wasn’t demanding enough, wasn’t asking for enough, wasn’t taking up enough space in his life or his heart or his future.
He wanted more. Wanted her toothbrush next to his in the bathroom. Wanted her clothes mixed in with his laundry. Wanted to argue about what to watch on TV and how to load the dishwasher and whether the kids needed jackets when it was fifty degrees outside.
Wanted normal. Wanted boring. Wanted every ordinary moment of a shared life.
Sarah’s voice echoed in his memory, clear as if she were sitting in the passenger seat.
“Never let the last words be angry ones. You never know which goodbye will be the last one.”
Please, Ethan prayed, to God or the universe or Sarah herself. Please let me have another chance. Please let me fix this. Please let them be okay. Please.
The prayer repeated itself in his head like a mantra, keeping time with his racing heartbeat. Please. Please. Please.
A sharp curve appeared, and Ethan took it too fast, tires screaming, the truck’s back end sliding out. He corrected, straightened, accelerated again. The mountains blurred past. A hawk scattered from a fence post as he roared by.
Eight miles. Seven. Six.
He was making good time. Too good, probably. Definitely over the speed limit. Definitely driving recklessly. But he couldn’t slow down, couldn’t ease off the accelerator, couldn’t do anything except push forward toward whatever was waiting for him at that farmhouse.
His phone buzzed. Ethan grabbed it without looking away from the road, hope surging?—
The station. Just the station, asking if he could cover a shift on Thursday.
He threw the phone onto the passenger seat and gripped the wheel with both hands.
Five miles.
The road straightened out, giving him a clear view ahead. Empty. No other cars. Just him and the pavement and the terrible certainty that he was too late, that something had already happened, that the worst-case scenario his brain kept conjuring was real.
More images flashed through his mind, unbidden and unwelcome:
Sarah’s car, crumpled accordion-style around a telephone pole. The drunk driver’s truck barely scratched. The unfairness of it making him want to scream.
Lydia’s face when Tom had shown up at the house. The terror in her eyes. The way she’d shaken in Ethan’s arms afterward, her whole body trembling like an earthquake.
The Harper farmhouse burning. Flames lighting the evening sky. Caleb and Michael’s impossible rescue. How close they’d all come to dying.
Tom’s rage on the porch. “I’ll burn this fucking house down with everyone in it!”
What if he’d made good on that threat? What if he’d followed them to the farmhouse? What if?—
Four miles.
Ethan’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. His jaw ached from clenching. Every muscle in his body was taut, coiled, ready for action, but unable to act because he wasn’t there yet, wasn’t where he needed to be, wasn’t?—
Three miles.
The turnoff came into view. The gravel road that led to the Harper property. Ethan barely slowed, just yanked the wheel, and the truck slewed sideways onto the gravel, rocks pinging against the undercarriage.
Two miles.
The road was rougher here, rutted from weather and neglect. The truck bounced hard over potholes. Ethan’s head nearly hit the roof. He didn’t care. Didn’t slow down. Just kept his foot on the gas and his eyes on the road and his prayer running on repeat … please, please, please.
One mile.
The farmhouse came into view through a break in the trees. Or what was left of it. The blackened ruins stood stark against the November morning. The stone chimney reached toward the sky like an accusing finger. The barn stood intact beyond it, red paint faded and blistered but still standing.
And there, parked near the barn. Lydia’s sedan. Caleb’s Ford pickup.
But something was wrong.
Ethan knew it before he even parked, before he killed the engine, before his boots hit the ground. The same way he’d known something was wrong when he woke up. The same way he’d known in Kandahar when the marketplace had gone too quiet thirty seconds before the bomb went off.
The barn door was open. Hanging crooked on its hinges. One of the windows was broken.
And there was no one in sight.
No Lydia. No kids. No Caleb.
Just silence.
Ethan’s hand went automatically to his hip, reaching for the sidearm he hadn’t carried since he’d left the Army. His fingers found nothing but the fabric of his jeans.
Stupid. He was stupid and unarmed and unprepared and?—
Movement. There, by the barn door.
Ethan ran.
His boots pounded across the frost-hardened ground. Thirty yards. Twenty. Ten. He rounded the corner of the barn and stopped dead.
Caleb.
Caleb was on the ground.
On his back. Eyes closed. A crowbar lying next to him. And blood. There was blood matting his hair on the left side, dark and wet, too much blood.
“No.” Ethan dropped to his knees hard enough to bruise, his paramedic training taking over even as his mind screamed in panic. “No, no, no.”
He reached for Caleb’s neck, fingers finding the pulse point. One second. Two. Three.
There. A pulse. Strong and steady. Thank God, thank God.
“Caleb.” Ethan’s voice came out rough, urgent. He put a hand on the man’s shoulder and shook him gently. “Caleb, can you hear me?”
A groan. Caleb’s eyelids fluttered.
“That’s it. Come on. Open your eyes.”
Caleb’s eyes opened slowly, unfocused at first, pupils slightly uneven, possible concussion, Ethan noted automatically. Then they sharpened, widened, and Caleb tried to sit up.
“Easy, easy.” Ethan held him down with a hand on his chest. “You’ve got a head wound. Don’t move too fast.”
“Lydia—” Caleb’s voice was slurred but urgent. He grabbed Ethan’s arm with surprising strength. “Tom?—”
Ethan’s blood turned to ice. “What about Tom?”
Caleb’s eyes focused on him, and in them Ethan saw fear. Real fear. The kind that made a former firefighter who’d run into burning buildings look scared.
“He must have been waiting,” Caleb managed. His hand tightened on Ethan’s arm. “By the barn. I didn’t see him—” He gestured weakly toward the barn door. “I saw a gun as I was knocked out. He had a rifle.”
Gun. Tom had a gun. And Lydia was … where was Lydia? Where were the kids?
“Where are they?” Ethan demanded, his voice sharp with panic. “Caleb, where’s Lydia? Where are Eli and Rosie?”
Caleb’s face crumpled with guilt and fear. He pointed into the barn with a shaking hand.
“He must have taken them.”
Five words. Simple words. But they detonated in Ethan’s chest like a grenade.
Tom had them.
Tom had Lydia and the kids.
Tom, who’d already tried to burn them alive once. Tom, who’d threatened to kill them all. Tom, who’d stood on Ethan’s porch and promised violence.
Tom had them.
And he had a gun.
Ethan stood, his mind already racing through scenarios, through options, through the training that had kept him alive in combat zones.
The barn. Maybe they were in the barn. Or they had been.
How long ago? How much of a head start did Tom have?
Had he taken them away in his car? At the moment, there was only Caleb’s truck and Lydia’s sedan.
“How long?” he asked Caleb, his voice deadly calm despite the terror screaming through his veins. “How long since he took them?”
“No idea.” Caleb struggled to sit up, blood running down the side of his face.
Ethan was already moving toward the barn. It could be a minute, it could be five. Ten. Caleb had been passed out, so he couldn’t know for sure.
No. He wouldn’t think about that. Couldn’t think about that. Had to focus on what he could control.
Find them.
Get them back.
Keep them safe.
“Ethan!” Caleb called after him. “He’s dangerous. You need backup. Call the sheriff?—”
But Ethan was already at the barn door, his paramedic calm stripped away, leaving only the soldier underneath. The one who’d learned to function in life-or-death situations. The one who’d made impossible choices under fire. The one who’d do whatever it took to protect the people he loved.
And he loved them.
God help him, he loved them. And he was going to get them back.
He approached the barn, registering the sound of someone mumbling. Had he been too distracted to hear it before? The blood pounding in his ears too loud?
For the first time since Sarah died, he felt real, bone-deep terror as he approached the barn doors.
Not for himself. For them.
Please, he prayed again. Please let me find them. Please let them be okay. Please let me have the chance to tell them I love them.
His phone. He needed to call the sheriff. Needed backup. Needed?—
But even as he pulled out his phone, Ethan knew he wouldn’t wait. Couldn’t wait. Tom had minutes on him already. Every second he stood here making calls was another second Tom had to hurt them, to take them farther away, to?—
No.
Ethan dialed 911 as he moved, already scanning the barn for clues, for direction, for any sign of which way Tom had gone.
“911, what’s your emergency?”