Chapter 5
five
The ride out to the north ridge was the longest X had ever taken, and they’d barely gone three miles.
River rode point, his shoulders a hard line against the late afternoon light, and he didn’t say a word.
Not one goddamn word. X kept waiting for the joke—the crack about Brandt’s horse, the movie quote, the off-key singing—but nothing came.
X rode Troubadour, the black Arabian prancing beneath him like he’d been waiting all day for an excuse to show off.
The horse kept tossing his head and sidestepping, making X work to keep him in line.
Normally, X would’ve been laughing, leaning into the chaos, letting his energy match Troubadour’s.
But today, the horse’s restlessness felt wrong.
Boone rode Rook, his massive gray warhorse of a gelding.
He didn’t speak either, but Boone’s silence was different—it was a choice, not a wound.
Brandt had been given Lazy Susan, the ranch’s slow, stubborn initiation mare, and X watched the marshal struggle with her from the moment they left the yard.
She stopped to sniff wildflowers. She stared at a puddle like it owed her money.
She ignored every cue Brandt gave her, and Brandt had no idea what to do with an animal that refused to be controlled.
“Pull left rein and squeeze with your right leg,” X called back, keeping his voice light. “She’ll come around.”
Brandt tried. Lazy Susan turned her head, looked at him with what X could only describe as profound disappointment, and resumed her slow march toward a patch of grass.
X waited for River to say something—nice form, Marshal, really inspiring the troops—but River just kept riding, his back rigid, his hands tight on the reins.
That was what scared X most. River Beckett not making fun of Brandt was like the sun not rising. It meant something inside River had gone dark, and X didn’t know how to reach it.
They reached the property line an hour before dusk. X knew it only because Boone raised a hand and pointed—there, through the trees, a rusted gate half-collapsed into the mud, its chain hanging loose. The flood had taken out the fence posts on either side, leaving the gate standing alone.
“Are we close?” Brandt asked.
“Through there,” Boone said, nodding to what was left of the fence. “The cabin’s another half mile up.”
X dismounted to lead Troubadour through the gap. The horse balked, ears pinned, and X had to murmur to him in Spanish, low and soothing, before he’d follow. The others did the same. Brandt nearly lost Lazy Susan to a patch of clover, but managed to haul her back onto the trail.
The forest closed in. The light went gray and soft, filtering through the pines, and the air grew still.
This was Evander Cole’s territory. The man had chosen to live out here, alone, for years.
The cabin appeared suddenly, a dark shape against the darker green, with Coldwater Creek burbling softly over rocks nearby, and X’s first thought was that it looked like a wound.
Half the foundation was gone, washed away by the flood, leaving the structure sagging to one side.
The porch had collapsed, the steps splintered, the door hanging open on a single hinge.
The windows were dark, glass gone from one of them, and the roof had a hole big enough to shove a refrigerator through.
This place hadn’t been lived in for months.
River dismounted from Tango and moved toward the cabin with the jerky, uncoordinated steps of a man who’d forgotten how to walk.
X swung down from Troubadour and tied him to a tree, then followed, his boots sinking into the soft, waterlogged ground.
The smell hit him—rot and mildew and the sour tang of abandonment—and he wrinkled his nose.
“Riv.” He caught River’s arm. “Wait. It doesn’t look solid.”
“I need to see.” River shook him off and disappeared through the sagging doorway, and X swore as he went after him.
The interior was worse than the outside.
Water had come through the roof and walls, warping the floorboards and collapsing a shelf of books into a moldering pile.
The cot was overturned, its mattress black with mildew.
A woodstove sat rusted in the corner, its pipe dangling from the ceiling.
Tilly’s food bowl lay in the corner, rusted and empty. The halter that had hung by the door was gone. The rifle rack on the wall was bare.
Evander Cole was gone. He’d taken his dog and his horse and whatever else mattered, and he’d left this place to rot.
Where the hell had he been building after the flood if not here?
River stood in the center of the ruined room, his chest heaving, his hands opening and closing at his sides.
X watched him, waiting for the explosion, waiting for the joke, waiting for anything.
But River just stood there, staring at the collapsed cot, and the silence stretched until it was unbearable.
“He’s not here,” River said. His voice was flat, dead. “He hasn’t been here in months. Which means he took her somewhere else. Somewhere we’ll never find.”
“We don’t know that,” X started. “Maybe—”
“Don’t.” River turned, and X saw his face for the first time since they’d left the ranch.
It was a stranger’s face—hollow-eyed, gray, the easy grin wiped clean.
“Don’t tell me maybe. Don’t tell me we’ll figure it out.
My sister is out there with a man who killed someone with a knife, and I don’t know where she is, and I don’t know if she’s alive, and every second we stand here talking is another second he could be—”
River’s voice cracked, and he grabbed the nearest thing—an old wooden stool, half-rotted, leaning against the wall—and hurled it across the room. It hit the far wall and shattered, pieces of wood flying, and River screamed.
It wasn’t a word. It was a sound—raw and animal and full of everything River had been holding back for nine years. X had never heard anything like it.
“If he hurts her, if he fucking touches one hair on her head, I will kill him. I will find him, and I will kill him, and I will happily go back to prison for the rest of my life.”
X stepped forward, hands up, trying to find the right words. “River. Hey. Look at me.”
River didn’t look at him. He was pacing now, his boots crunching on broken wood, his hands raking through his hair.
“She’s my little sister. She’s the only family I have left.
And I spent nine years not calling her, not going to find her, not doing a goddamn thing, because I was so wrapped up in my own shit that I forgot I was supposed to protect her.
And now she’s out there with a killer, and I can’t do anything. I can’t do anything, X.”
“You can.” X moved closer, reaching for River’s shoulder. “You can stay sharp. You can help us find her. But you can’t do that if you’re losing your mind in a ruined cabin.”
River shoved him off. Hard. X stumbled back, caught himself on the doorframe, and realized that he didn’t have the words to fix this. That all his charm and all his jokes and all his years of talking people down from ledges meant nothing in the face of this.
“Don’t touch me.” River’s voice was low now, dangerous. “Don’t tell me to calm down. Don’t tell me it’s going to be okay. It’s not going to be okay. She might be dead, X. She might already be dead, and I’m standing here in the ruins of some psycho’s cabin, and I can’t—”
He stopped. His breath hitched, and for a second, X thought he was going to collapse. Then Boone stepped through the doorway. Brandt stayed back, watching through the open door, obviously having decided it wasn’this place to intervene.
That man was one of the few genuinely good guys in this world.
Boone didn’t say anything at first. He crossed the room slowly, his boots heavy on the warped floor, and stopped in front of River. He didn’t touch him. He just stood there, close enough that River had to look up to meet his eyes.
“You done?” Boone asked.
River’s jaw tightened. “No, I’m not fucking—”
“You done?” Boone repeated, and his voice was the same low rumble X had heard him use with spooked horses.
River stared at him. His chest was still heaving, his hands still shaking, but something in his face shifted—the wildness retreating, replaced by something raw and exhausted. He looked away first.
“I don’t know what to do,” River said, and his voice cracked on the last word. “I don’t know how to find her.”
“Then you let us help you figure it out.” Boone reached out then, and put a hand on River’s shoulder.
“Killing Cole won’t bring her back. It won’t undo the last nine years.
It’ll just put you in a cell and leave her alone again.
You want to help your sister? Stay sharp. Stay here. Let us do what we do.”
River’s shoulders sagged. The fight went out of him all at once, like a wire snapping, and a single, harsh sob tore out of him. Boone pulled him in then, rough and solid, one arm around River’s back, and River buried his face against Boone’s shoulder and broke.
X stood by the door, watching, and felt utterly useless. He’d known River for years. He’d seen River drunk, seen him manic, seen him spiral into depressions that made him disappear into his shop, under the hood of a vehicle, for days. But he’d never seen this. This was grief with teeth.
And he didn’t know what to do with it.