Chapter 18
eighteen
Where was she?
Metal rang against metal, sharp and loud, with each strike of his hammer. Four more horseshoes for Tango, River’s horse, who threw shoes faster than most people changed shirts. He’d been working since Maggie left, but his focus kept slipping toward the door.
She should’ve been back from Haven House hours ago.
Maybe she was avoiding him.
Which, yeah, was entirely possible after last night.
But wouldn’t she have at least stopped by to check on Princess and the kittens?
Bramble huffed from his spot near the kitten house, as if sensing Anson’s unease.
Spark took advantage of the wolfhound’s momentary distraction to make a break for it, tiny orange paws scrambling over the side of the box.
The dog turned his head and gently nudged the kitten back into place with his nose.
“At least one of us is doing his job right,” Anson muttered, returning his attention to the horseshoe.
The metal had cooled too much. He thrust it back into the forge, working the bellows until the coals glowed bright orange.
Heat blasted his face, but he barely felt it.
His mind kept circling the same thought: Maggie should be here by now.
Boone wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
That was why Anson had asked him to drive her.
Boone was the most capable man at Valor Ridge—besides maybe Ghost, but Ghost would’ve spooked her with his intensity.
Still, the afternoon had stretched into evening, and the constant low-grade worry humming in his chest had sharpened into claws.
The forge fire crackled, demanding his attention.
He pulled the horseshoe out and hammered it into shape, working out his anxiety with each blow against the anvil.
Ember and Smoke watched from the kitten box, little heads tilted in identical curiosity.
He wasn’t going to be able to keep them in that box much longer.
Now that they were stronger, they were getting curious. In another week,
His phone buzzed, vibrating against the workbench. He dropped the hammer and lunged for it, not caring that the hot horseshoe clattered to the floor.
“Boone?”
“Hey, tell Maggie she left her notepad in my truck.”
“What do you mean? She’s not here.”
A pause. “Dropped her at her cabin over an hour ago. Last I saw, she was headed toward the forge.”
The unease that had been building all day crystallized into something sharp and cold. “She’s not here.”
“Shit.” Another pause, briefer. “Want me to head over there?”
“No. I’ll go. You see anything unusual today? Anyone who didn’t belong?”
“No, nothing that pinged on my radar. But I’ll talk to Ghost and the others, have them do a perimeter sweep. Check in when you find her. And Anson?”
His throat felt like sandpaper. “Yeah?”
“She’s okay. Nobody could’ve gotten onto ranch grounds without Ghost knowing.”
But somebody had. Somebody evil enough to carve up an innocent cat and leave her for dead. He glanced over at Princess, at the stark white bandages wrapped around her middle, and his stomach twisted.
But he didn’t bother pointing that out to Boone. He hung up without responding and turned to Bramble, who had risen to his feet.
“Stay,” he ordered, pointing to the kitten box. “Guard.”
It was a command he’d never given before, but Bramble understood immediately, positioning himself between the kittens and the door with a low huff of acknowledgment.
He took off the leather apron and grabbed his jacket on his way out the door. Dusk cast long shadows across the ranch, turning familiar shapes strange and foreboding. His breath clouded in front of him as he quickened his pace, not quite running but close.
Her cabin windows glowed with warm light against the gathering darkness. No sign of forced entry, no unusual tracks in the dirt around the steps.
But something wasn’t right.
He took the steps two at a time and rapped sharply on the door. “Maggie?”
No answer. He knocked again, harder. “Maggie, it’s Anson. You in there?”
The silence stretched until he was about to try the handle. Then came a small sound from inside. “Come in.”
The door wasn’t locked. That alone sent a fresh surge of concern through him. Maggie had been obsessive about locking her doors since she arrived. She’d even asked Walker to install a new deadbolt.
He pushed the door open slowly and scanned the room. The cabin was warm, tidy, nothing obviously wrong, except—
Maggie sat on the edge of her bed, still wearing River’s hoodie, staring at the phone in her hand like it might bite her.
Her face was colorless, dark smudges beneath her eyes standing out like bruises against her pale skin.
She looked like she’d been sitting in exactly that position since Boone dropped her off.
“Been waiting for you at the forge.” He kept his voice calm as he stepped inside. “Boone said he dropped you off an hour ago.”
She looked up, blinking, disoriented. “Oh.” Her gaze dropped to her phone again. She was clenching it so tightly, it was amazing the screen didn’t crack. “I was on my way over, but then…”
“Maggie?”
Tears filled her eyes. “He called.”
He didn’t have to ask who. Only one person would put that stark fear in her eyes. “What did he say?”
She held up her phone, hand trembling slightly. “Left voicemails.”
He wanted to tear across the room, rip the phone from her hand, and throw it in his forge. But he kept his movements careful, measured, like approaching a spooked animal, as he crossed the room and sat beside her on the bed.
“Can I hear them?”
She nodded, thumbed the speaker button, and held the phone between them.
“Hey, beautiful.” The voice was male, superficially warm, but with something slick and wrong underneath.
“I know you’ve been taking some space, and I respect that.
I do. That’s why I haven’t pushed, even though it hurts when you shut me out like this.
” A pause, a rehearsed sigh. “But baby, we’re too good together to throw away what we have.
The network needs us. The show needs us.
I need you. And I know, deep down, you need me too.
I’m not giving up on us, Mags. I’m not giving up on what we built together.
I’ll wait as long as it takes, but we both know you’ll come around.
You always do. Because no one understands you like I do.
No one else will ever love you the way I do. Call me back, beautiful. I miss you.”
The message ended. Maggie’s breaths came in quick, shallow bursts as she played the next.
“Maggie, it’s me again. I know you’ve been stressed, not thinking clearly.
Maybe you need help, baby. Professional help.
I’m worried about you. Making decisions like this when you’re not in your right mind.
.. that’s dangerous. For both of us. For the show.
For everything we’ve worked for. Just...
call me back. Let me help you. That’s all I want. To help.”
And the next:
“You know what hurts the most? That you won’t even give me a chance to explain.
After everything I’ve done for you. Everything we built together.
You’d still be nobody without me, Mags. A nobody in a nowhere town.
I made you somebody. And this is how you repay me?
By running away like a coward? That’s not the woman I fell in love with.
That’s not the woman America fell in love with.
Call me back. We need to talk about this like adults. ”
And the next:
“I’ve been patient. God knows I’ve been patient. But you can’t just throw away what we have because I made one tiny mistake. For fuck’s sake, why can’t you forgive me? Everyone else has.”
And the next:
“You think you can just disappear? Start over somewhere else? It doesn’t work that way. We have contracts. Obligations. History.”
There were ten voicemails in total. They got progressively angier, more demanding, more unhinged, ending with:
“Do you really think you can hide from me, bitch? There’s nowhere you can go that I won’t find you.”
Something cold and hard settled in Anson’s chest. A familiar feeling—the calm before violence.
The same stillness that came over him in the military before defusing a bomb or in prison before a fight.
Every instinct screamed to find this man and eliminate the threat permanently.
To hunt him down and make sure he never spoke to Maggie again, never breathed her name, never thought about her without remembering pain.
But Maggie was shaking beside him.
She didn’t need his fury right now.
She needed his steadiness.
He took the phone from her deathgrip and set it face down on the bedside table. Then he simply sat with her in silence, his shoulder barely touching hers.
“It’s not true,” she whispered. “What he said about everyone forgiving him, except me? And we didn’t build a goddamn thing together.
I built it, and he fucked his career and nearly ruined mine with his temper and drug use.
The network won’t take him back, and he thinks it’s because I won’t sign on.
That’s the only reason he wants me. Instead of taking ownership of his poor choices, he blames me.
” She exhaled shakily and scrubbed her hands over her face.
“I don’t know how he got this number. I changed it before I left. ”
“Maggie.” He waited until she dropped her hands and looked at him. “Let us help.”
She gave a bitter laugh, exhaustion and defeat etched into every line of her face. “Help how? The cops never do anything. The restraining order’s been processing for months. The police said they can’t do anything until he actually hurts me.”
“So we won’t go to the police. Ghost and Naomi, they do this kind of thing. Track people. Investigate. Naomi understands how the system fails women, and Ghost isn’t bound by the same rules. He makes his own.”
She studied his face for a long moment. “You really think they can help?”
“Yes.”
Another beat of silence. Then she nodded. “Okay. Let’s talk to them.”