9
Nighttime adventures
Lawson’s Landing, end September
But something woke her, and she wouldn’t fall asleep again until she’d done a walkthrough.
She slipped from the bed and plodded through the living area and up the stairs.
Both girls were fast asleep, safely tucked under their duvets.
Back on the first level, she popped her head into Preston’s room.
Her son was on his back, his bedding crumpled at his feet.
It was no good pulling it up. Preston slept hot.
She backed out of the room. All was good.
Retracing her footsteps, she found the charging iPad on the kitchen counter.
A few taps later the security feeds opened.
She scanned the various images, not seeing anything out of the ordinary.
And besides, whoever was on duty in the security control room would alert her if there were issues with her horses.
About to close the app, she caught movement on the one feed from Elsa’s paddock.
She tapped the image, and it filled her screen.
The mare paced near the back corner, her body rigid. Agitated.
Brandy switched to the second camera and scanned the black and white image video. Rain and Smokey were both lying down, fully at ease with their surroundings. Swapping back to the first feed, she panned in on the restless mare. Now stationary, she faced the tree and pawed the ground.
Brandy drew in a breath. Something wasn’t right.
She dropped the iPad and rushed to the mudroom, cursing the time it took to fasten her boots.
Wrestling her arms into the padded flannel jacket, she stormed out the door.
Reaching the carport, she swore, spun about, and raced back to the mudroom, grabbing the flashlight dangling from a hook beside the jackets.
Back outside, she hopped onto the UTV, gunned the engine, and lurched off.
Bypassing the stables, she headed straight for the paddock, pulling to a halt at the gate.
Flashlight in hand, she shone the beam down the fence line.
The mare had resumed her pacing, her attention still firmly focused on something by the tree. Heart thumping, hand on the latch of the gate, she paused, considering calling security.
Then she heard cries.
Human cries.
She entered the paddock and rushed across the ground, stopping a few yards away from Elsa.
And found—
Rafferty.
Lying on the ground under the tree.
He was in the throes of a dream — nightmare — thrashing about and calling out incoherently.
His tortured moans tore right into her soul.
“Rafferty,” she called out, keeping her distance. She wanted to shake him awake but knew better.
He cried out again, and she walked closer.
“Rafferty!” She nudged his foot with hers. “Wake up.”
His body jerked. And he surged to his feet.
With a freaking weapon in his hand.
Brandy staggered back in fright, dropped the flashlight, and shoved her arms in the air. “Don’t shoot.”
“Brandy-Lyn?” Rafferty barked, shoving the gun in the waistband of his pants. “What the fuck, woman?”
She clutched her hands to her chest, keeping her poor beleaguered heart from escaping. “Dammit, Rafferty Lawson. What’s with the weapon? You scared the crap outta me,” she accused.
“I could’ve shot you, Brandy,” he suddenly yelled, running fingers through his hair, looking everywhere but at her.
“How was I supposed to know you decided to sleep in a paddock with a gun in your hand?” she yelled back.
He scooped up the flashlight, keeping the beam pointing down. “It’s the fucking middle of the fucking night.” His eyes darted about. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
She wasn’t the only one breathing hard.
“You were dreaming.”
He narrowed his gaze to mere slits. “And how the fuck do you know that?”
“Something woke me up. I checked the security feeds and noticed Elsa walking the fence line pawing the ground, so I came out to see what was upsetting her, and then … I … I heard you … cry … out.”
Even the dark couldn’t hide the color leaching from his face. She reached out, touched his arm. “Raff? Are you—”
He gasped and wrenched his arm away. “Don’t touch me.”
She held her hands up. “Sorry.”
“What did you hear?”
“N-nothing.” She took another step back, not liking the hostility in his tone. “You were incoherent.”
“You don’t come out here in the middle of the damn night with nothing but a flashlight,” he snapped, voice low and harsh. “You call security. You send someone else. And you most certainly don’t walk up to someone like me — half-asleep, and not in his right mind.”
She blinked, caught off guard by the fury behind his words. “I wasn’t thinking about security, Rafferty. I was thinking about an upset horse. And then … you.”
“Well, you should’ve thought harder,” he said bitterly. “What if I’d pulled the trigger? What then? I don’t need the death of another woman on my conscience.”
She glanced around at the open paddock, then back at him. “Why are you out here?”
He gave her a look — flat, tired, and hollowed out by something she couldn’t see. “Better than captivity,” he muttered.
She didn’t know what to say to that.
He aimed the flashlight along the fence, the beam unsteady. “You should’ve left me alone to my nightmares.”
She looked at his hand gripping the aluminum casing. It was shaking slightly. “You were hurting, sugar. I had to wake you,” she said softly.
His stare focused back on her, his exhale ragged. “You best stay away from me, Brandy-Lyn. And never, ever approach me while I’m sleeping. I’m damaged goods, darlin’, not fit to be around you.”
The anger was gone, replaced with resignation.
Her eyes watered, and she sniffed away the burn in her nose. “Don’t say that. You’re a good man, Rafferty Lawson.”
He barked a bitter laugh. “Don’t dupe yourself, darlin’. I’m rotten to my core.”
“Raff—”
“Just go, Brandy-Lyn.” His swallow was audible. “Please.”
His earnest entreaty negated all the harsh things he’d said about himself — he was a good man — but it also screamed that he truly believed every self-deprecating word he’d spoken.
And he was partly right.
He was unpredictable, and that made him unsafe to be around.
Unsafe. But not rotten.
“You’re not rotten,” she whispered.
A long pause followed her whispered statement. “Don’t worry your pretty head about me,” he murmured.
Her spine straightened. “I was worried about Elsa .”
The beam of light moved, finding the mare. She stood a distance away, motionless. “She’s fine.” He held out the flashlight. “Go, Brandy.”
Her hand closed around the extended handle. She hesitated, her back half-turned, heart thudding with adrenaline and something heavier. Instinct screamed to stay, to reach for him again.
“Please. Just go.”
His hoarse plea gutted her.
He wasn’t just asking for space. He needed it like oxygen.
She swallowed hard, forcing herself to let go. “Night, Raff,” she said, turning around. “I hope you can catch some sleep.”
*
Rafferty watched her walk away, the beam of her flashlight bouncing ahead of her. He hadn’t meant to scare her. When he’d jerked awake and found someone looming over him in the dark, grabbing his weapon had been a kneejerk reaction.
But that he’d pointed it at Brandy-Lyn ?
Well, that scared the shit out of him.
Almost as much as the nightmare she’d woken him from.
His chest ached as she passed through the gate, drove off on the UTV, and disappeared around the corner of the barn. The silence that followed was heavier than it had any right to be. He rubbed a hand over his face, gritty-eyed and hollow, the adrenaline crash leaving him raw.
He wanted her. He wanted her like a man starved.
But what he wanted and what he could have were two very different things.
He was still too broken. Too full of shadows and sharp edges.
She deserved solid ground, not a man still clawing his way out of the dark.
And she was his brother’s ex-girlfriend.
Taboo, taboo. Taboo .
Yet he felt her absence keenly, a hollow ache that settled into his bones like the coming winter.
Rafferty stumbled back to the sleeping bag and settled against the tree trunk. The Sig P365 dug into his spine. With a grimace, he leaned forward and pulled it free, balancing the compact pistol in his palm.
You almost fired it tonight, Trick, old boy.
He hadn’t felt the need to carry since coming home, but the meeting earlier with the DEA had set him on edge.
He thumbed the release and caught the magazine as it dropped free. Then he racked the slide, ejecting the chambered round, which he caught before it hit the dirt. Rolling the bullet between his fingers, a shudder wracked his body. The small piece of lead and copper could’ve ended her life.
You’re not in any state to be carrying.
He pushed the round back into the magazine and set both it and the pistol on the ground beside him.
You’re not alone in the field anymore. And there’s a small army of security watching for trouble.
He leaned his head against the rough bark and closed his eyes. Snippets of the meeting with the DEA agent in Brazil replayed in his mind.
Infiltrated penthouse in Manaus.
Kamila Carvalho not in residence.
Documents found in her office.
Aerial shots of Blaze County.
And Lawson’s Landing.
Rafferty cursed again.
Kamila. Beautiful. Lethal.
Chefe of the Fantasma Cartel.
But he hadn’t known that salient detail when he’d first set eyes on her all those months ago in a bar on the banks of the Negro River in Brazil …
The overhead paddles beat a futile rhythm against the relentless and cloying heat circulating through the rooftop bar.
He was on his sixth, or maybe seventh glass of cachaca .
The drink distilled from sugarcane juice tasted vile — imagine a nauseating mix of rum and vodka — but it dulled his senses, and that was exactly his aim.
For so long his soul had burned with revenge.
But now?
Sweet vengeance was a misnomer. A fallacy.
There was nothing sweet about his soul.
There was no sense of relief. Nor accomplishment.
None.
Just the sick taste of self-disgust.
Of shame.
He lifted the drink to his mouth and slugged it back.
And that was when he noticed her.
His eyes widened, and he slowly lowered the glass to the wooden counter.
She was just what he needed.
Tall, with curves luscious enough to make a grown man cry, she was dressed in a short, figure-hugging bronze dress, her very shapely and lighter-bronze-but-not-by-much legs ended in wedged nude open-toe pumps.
A waterfall of brown tresses cascading over her shoulders.
She threw her head back and laughed, her plump, dark-berry lips wide and inviting.
His hand itched to grope that mane of hair and hold her captive while she sucked him off.
Carnal lust surged through him and for the first time in many, many months, his cock swelled.
He stared at her. Long and hard.
Long and hard enough for her to have felt it because she turned her head and looked straight at him.
And smiled.
Too far to make out the color of her eyes, he decided to get closer, keeping his gaze fixed on her, lest she disappear. On the way through the crowd, a man stepped up beside her and her smile fell away.
And Rafferty stopped in his tracks.
He knew that man. Or rather, he knew of that man.
He was on the most wanted list of the DEA.
Second on the list to be exact.
Luis Barbosa, presumed right-hand man to none other than Francisco Carvalho, number one on said list, and reclusive leader of the largest cartel running drugs and weapons out of Latin America.
A cartel he had intimate knowledge of — the Fantasma Cartel.
Barbosa clasped his hand around the woman’s arm and tugged. She tried to pull it away, but even from Rafferty’s vantage a few meters away, he could see Barbosa’s knuckles turn white.
Rafferty was not a fan of abuse against woman and children, and he needed no further prompting and surged forward.
“Ei!” he called out, drawing the man’s attention to him.
It was the opening he was looking for, and a solid swipe delivered right to the thug’s Adam’s apple took the brute to the ground.
He turned to the now-gaping Brazilian beauty. “Are you okay?” he asked in Portuguese.
Her eyes were brown. A warm golden-brown.
He blamed his seven — eight? — shots of cachaca and complete fascination with the woman on not noticing the approaching danger.
And when he heard the slide of metal on metal, it was too late. Four weapons were aimed on him, two of them good ole AK-47 assault rifles.
A deathly silence descended over the rooftop bar.
Rafferty put his hands up, bracing for the slugs to cut him in half.
“N?o!” Her command cut into the night. “Lower your weapons,” she ordered in Portuguese.
“Chefe?” one of the men queried.
Chefe? Rafferty blinked. Boss?
“Agora!” she spat. Now!
She was the boss?
He willed away the alcohol fog, shifting through information he’d picked up during his time in the region.
He had heard the rumblings that Francisco Carvalho had died but assumed it to be rumors.
He’d also heard rumors that Carvalho’s only child, a daughter, had assumed leadership.
He’d dismissed them out of hand as the Fantasma cartel was a misogynistic group, and Francisco had a nephew.
But if this woman was Francisco’s daughter …
His brain kicked into overdrive, and the beginnings of a plan took shape.
A whinny wrenched him back into the present. He blinked rapidly, dispelling the memories of the time he met Kamila Carvalho.
Their … association had lasted a few months.
Until she’d discovered his identity.
And he’d discovered that her evil streak surpassed her father’s.
He let out a weary breath.
And today’s meeting highlighted the fact that she knew he hadn’t perished in the raid on the village. She was planning revenge. Here. In Texas.
He’d brought danger to his family.
I should never have come home.