Chapter 27
Renata is moved out of the ICU roughly twenty-four hours after surgery, and preparations begin almost immediately.
Her room—which is more of a suite than a hospital room—becomes a base of operations of sorts, with phone calls being made to every resource in the Caldwell contact list who could possibly assist with not only getting Grace out of Braxton as soon as possible but also ensuring Bellamy Whitlock spends the rest of his life behind bars.
It’s late afternoon on the second day of their mission—Clint is in the midst of an email exchange with a few other ranch owners, gathering intel on what they know of Braxton; Cooper is on his laptop tracking down any notable sales related to equine reproduction in the area over the past five years; Renata is on the phone with Paul Freeman, assuring him she’s recovering just fine and would like to waste no further time pushing forward this operation.
Caia, having just gotten off her own phone call with Henry Flanagan, the family attorney, watches all of this in quiet awe.
Her family could bring down an entire government if they wanted to.
When Crew walks back into the room, he’s wearing a smile Caia hasn’t seen since she’s been back in Texas. He looks genuinely pleased, maybe even a little proud. She tilts her head, surveying him. “Good news?”
Crew nods. He slips his phone into his back pocket, walks over to give Renata a kiss on the cheek.
Their mother angles her head to let him, then waves him off, still speaking firmly—but politely, always politely—to Paul.
Crew’s smile turns into a grin, and Caia throws her hands out, more than ready for whatever good news he has to offer.
They could all use some good news right about now.
“I talked to Reese,” Crew says. “They think they know where she is.”
“You’re kidding,” Caia says, shaking her head in disbelief. “That guy is more connected than Mom. Trying to find a single palomino in Texas is like trying to find a grain of salt in a sandbox.”
Crew nods. He looks like he’s about two seconds away from being outright giddy. “I know.”
“All right, honey,” Renata says to Paul, holding up a finger to signal to her kids to stop the conversation lest she miss any more of it. “We’ll be ready. Thanks for putting your foot on the gas with this. I’ll make it up to you somehow.” She nods, smirking. “All right. Bye now.”
Renata hangs up, then looks between Crew and Caia. “What’d I miss?”
“Reese has a lead,” Crew says. “He thinks it’s a good one.”
There’s a sparkle in Renata’s eyes as she smiles at this. “Good. One more thing to check off the list. What’d Henry say?”
“He’ll be here this evening,” Caia says.
“He doesn’t seem too concerned about anything—sounds like whatever he was able to dig up about Warren and Melissa Underwood was dated and basically forgotten.
Graywood PD didn’t even know who they were.
And with what Coop and Dad have already found, we’ve got enough to hand over to the cops to bring him down. ”
“Great,” Renata says. She claps her hands together, glances over at Clint and Cooper, both still deep in their own investigations, and says, “Paul’s ready to move as soon as tomorrow morning. He’s already spoken with the Everlake police. They’ll be ready, too.”
“So, it’s happening,” Cooper says, pausing his furious typing. “We’re gonna get him—get all of them. We’re gonna save Grace.”
Renata’s eyes flit to Crew, whose bright grin fades into something more earnest, more pained. Even with everything coming together, the ache in him at not yet having Grace here, safe, with him, is written all over his face. He nods, his jaw flexing. “Yeah. We’re gonna bring her home.”
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·
That evening, Caia meets Henry outside of the hospital and walks him to Renata’s room.
They discuss the legal logistics of Bellamy’s crimes, as well as Grace’s, and make sure they are all on the same page about what happens next.
As a public-facing family, they have to be careful about this—nothing can fall through the cracks that could come back to haunt them.
When everyone is confident the case is airtight, Caia excuses herself to the hallway for a brief moment.
She needs a second to herself to breathe, to be surrounded by something other than the strategizing chatter.
She leans against a wall, lets her eyes fall shut, and zones out completely to the idle sounds of the surrounding rooms. The beeping of machines, the low murmur of the nurses’ station, the mechanical hum of the elevators.
“You okay?” a voice asks, and Caia’s eyes flutter open to find Crew staring at her with big-brotherly concern.
Caia nods. “Just needed a minute.”
“It’s been a lot, I know. I…” He trails off, and his eyes fall to the floor. “I wanted to thank you. For being here, for doing all of this.”
Caia’s brows pull together. “I’m not doing—”
“Cai, I mean for all of it. For helping me see that she’s worth every plan, every phone call, every favor. Grace, she—” He swallows, then shakes his head quickly as if to rid himself of the urge to cry. “She’s worth this fight. She’s…everything.”
It’s a lovely sentiment, and Caia feels her heart warm, hearing her brother speak of someone with such reverence.
He’s never been particularly soft, or open, or willingly vulnerable, especially after the tours—but Grace has clearly brought out something in him that was long dormant, if it was ever there in the first place.
She’s softened his edges, and it’s striking, this evolution of Crew who is standing before her.
“That’s what we do,” Caia says, offering him a reassuring smile. She steps forward, stopping right before she gets to him. “Us Caldwells. We fight for our own. And if Grace is yours, then she’s ours, too.”
Crew nods, then opens his arms and wraps Caia in a tight hug.
Caia rests her forehead against Crew’s sternum, feeling hopeful about the next twenty-four hours and about her brother’s future.
But then Crew suddenly tenses, squeezing Caia hard enough that she squeaks.
“Fuck,” he blurts out. Caia tries to pull back, but Crew keeps her in place.
“Crew, what the—”
“Listen,” he says in her ear, and his voice is miles away from the way it has sounded up to this point.
Talking to her now is the brother who tried to ply her with Starbucks and new shoes after he dropped her favorite headphones in the creek.
The brother who would barter with her for the last piece of Ronnie’s apple cinnamon cheesecake, offering to do her chores for the following week—a deal she never took him up on because that cheesecake was simply too good.
Caia’s hackles start to rise at his tone, because she can’t even imagine what could bring it out now.
“There was something that I had to do, when I found out Mom and Dad got hurt. I made a promise and I had to keep it. But you’re…
well, you’re not going to like it. Just know that I’m sorry. ”
Caia tenses. A thousand possibilities race through her head, each worse than the last. She catastrophizes for a few seconds before replying to him with a firm, “What?”
And then she hears a voice, and her question is answered.
“Well, that certainly looks cozy.”
Caia’s entire body floods with ice at the click of bootheels accompanying the question, growing louder and louder with each step.
She digs her nails into Crew’s back, hard enough to hurt.
It’s partly on purpose, and partly reflex—her claws are out, ready to protect her.
He hisses, but doesn’t pull away from her. He knows he deserves it.
The voice speaks again, all crooning and lilting and perfectly charming. The affectation of it makes her want to vomit. “Got room for one more?”
Slowly, Caia releases her brother, and though every molecule of her body is shouting at her not to turn around, not to look into the eyes of the man standing behind her, she does it anyway.
When she finds Easton Beckett’s all-too-familiar shit-eating grin, it takes every ounce of composure she has to not reach out and slap it right off of his face.
Caia levels Crew with a glare that could kill a man dead, and her next words are practically spit. “What the fuck is he doing here?”