Chapter 35
Colt
Iopen my eyes open to darkness. Denver’s side of the bed is cold, and I sit up, listening for her.
“Denver?”
Silence greets me and I climb out of bed. I pull on sweats and try to ignore the tingling at the nape of my neck that tells me something is wrong—but I keep picturing her face when she woke from that nightmare. She was terrified, her eyes wide, face pale as I’d told her she was safe.
In the hall, I call out Denver’s name again.
No response. I check the rooms, even Wilder’s, but she isn’t up here. I thunder down the stairs, no longer masking the fear that’s spreading through my chest.
“Denver!”
I’m striding through the living room when my foot meets something. The item rolls across the floor, banging into the coffee table, and I pick it up.
My glass from earlier. I can’t smell whiskey, though. Did Denver drink it?
But why would it be on the floor?
A sharp, cracking sound has me dropping to a knee.
Instinctively, I reach for the small black box beneath the television that holds my gun.
I focus on where the sound came from, the front door, as I hold my thumb against the scanner on the box.
It unlocks, and I take out the gun, loading it as I stand.
“Denver?” I take tentative steps toward the door.
The crack sounds again.
The door is open, banging against the wall as an icy breeze blows down the hall.
Panic mingles with the wind, and the hairs on my arms lift. I run to the door, striding into the dark and snow.
An empty street. No tire marks. Was I in such a deep sleep that I didn’t hear a car? Or did they take her by foot?
And who?
Marnie’s face flashes through my mind. A mother taken, never seen again, my sister-in-law gone for good.
Spider.
I stride back into the house and take the stairs three at a time, reaching my room and snatching up my phone. Denver’s phone is on the nightstand.
Alistair answers. “Yep?”
“Spider took Denver,” I say. “Do we still have one of the guys from Arizona?”
He’s quiet for a moment. “No, they’re all dead.”
I finish dressing, grabbing Denver’s phone and my keys as I head out the door. “There must be someone alive. Someone we can get information out of.”
“Colt … there’s …” He pauses. “There isn’t anyone.”
I pause in the street, the snow falling around me, the cold already in my bones as I keep the phone to my ear.
I’ve been looking for Spider for years. Since the day he took Marnie from us, I’ve hunted his every move, followed every sighting, took hold of every lead and rinsed it until there were no answers left.
But never has his ability to disappear shrouded me so fucking heavily as it does right now. He has her. He has Denver, and I don’t know how long it’s been, or where they could be, or what’s happening to her.
I swallow the need to panic, because I don’t have time for it. “Check the cameras around the house. He’ll have removed the plates, but you can follow the car. Are you at Finn’s?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m on my way over.”
The snow is too deep to even consider driving, so for the second time in six hours, I run to Finn’s. I fire off a text to Ronan and ask him to meet me at the house.
Once I arrive, I find Alistair with his laptop in front of him.
Finn’s footsteps approach as he descends the stairs.
With our lives, you’re always one foot in the waking world, waiting for disaster to strike, so Finn is alert when he appears in the doorway.
He’s in sweats and a T-shirt, glasses balanced on his nose.
“Where’s the car?” I ask.
Alistair runs a hand across his mouth. “It wasn’t Spider. It was Ranger.”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He won’t hurt her, but he will take her back to San Francisco and use every resource he has to keep her there.
“Track his phone.” I say, but Alistair doesn’t move, his gaze focused on his laptop. “Alistair. What are you doing? Track Ranger’s phone.”
He finally looks at me, resolve in his expression.
“No.” The tension is already thick with panic, but it becomes a tangible thing when betrayal is poured into the mix.
For the first time in almost two decades, something dark and unfamiliar crackles between me and my best friend. “Colt, something isn’t right.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Isn’t it convenient that this has happened?
She decides to stay, then all of a sudden you need to rush out and save her from Ranger?
” He stands. “She has actively worked her way into all our lives. She has Finn on side, you, and the Laus. Is it really so out of the realm of possibility that she’d plan this to kill you? ”
I step forward. “Be careful what you say next, Alistair, because you’re on dangerously thin fucking ice.”
My friend doesn’t flinch. “I’m your best friend, Colt. I’m looking out for you. And I don’t trust her.”
“Well, I do,” I say quietly. “Track the fucking phone.”
Alistair and I don’t fight. We’ve disagreed about the business over the years, but never like this. He’s never once voiced his concerns over Denver being here, and while I knew he hadn’t warmed to her like everyone else, I didn’t expect this.
He still doesn’t move.
“Do you trust my judgment?” I ask.
“Not when it comes to her.”
I flex my fingers. We don’t have time for this.
“Have I ever steered us wrong? Even when I lost Amy, Callie, even when Wilder nearly fucked it for all of us, did I ever misjudge a situation?” I ask, searching his face.
Alistair’s jaw tightens. “I trust her, Alistair. With my life. With Holly’s life. She is not lying to me.”
He runs his hand across his beard and sits before opening his laptop.
Finn says, “I’ll get dressed and call some guys.”
While Alistair works, I rest my hand against the mantle and try to breathe.
My mind is racing, everything that’s happened over the last few hours screaming through my mind, and the thoughts are too quick.
My chest tightens and I rub the back of my neck and force myself to fight the spiral.
I’ll find her. I’ll find her, and I’ll bring her back.
“Ranger’s phone isn’t traceable,” Alistair says, and I face him. “But he’s in the city. His plane landed last night.”
“Can you track Cal’s phone?”
“Cal is still in San Francisco.”
The front door opens and closes, and Ronan appears in the doorway to the living room. “Any update?”
Darkness creeps into the edges of my vision, and the floor feels like it’s tilting from beneath me.
My voice is hoarse. “You can’t find her.”
Alistair shakes his head slowly. “No.”
I close my eyes and run my hands through my hair. My insides burn while my skin freezes, and rage and despair clash in my chest as I try to think, but flashes of her face appear before me.
I want to fall to my knees. To scream. To roar out my anger. To tear open my chest and let myself bleed out on the floor.
“You’re the head of a family, Colt. You can’t afford to make mistakes.”
Every breath is a conscious effort. My lungs fill and empty, fill and empty, fill and empty …
I won’t fall apart. I don’t have the luxury.
I’m Colt fucking Harland.
I don’t give up.
I never have.
Finn is at the door when I face them again.
“Alistair, send men to every private airstrip you can think of. Ranger’s plane doesn’t leave the ground, and neither do any others.
I don’t care what they have to do,” I say, and Alistair nods, standing to make the calls.
“Ronan, I need you to call the Volkovs. Ask them to keep an eye out for Ranger and any of his vehicles. Tell them we’ll owe them.
” He’s on the phone before I finish my sentence. My gaze meets Finn’s.
“I’ll call in every favor I can,” Finn says. “We’ll find her.”
He leaves, and I’m alone.
Hours. We had hours together. And I was too scared to plan our forever.
I take my phone out and dial. It rings four times before he answers.
“I told you she would never be yours.” He says quietly, his voice distant, almost lost.
My hand closes into a fist, and I grip the phone so tight my palm aches. “You have one chance to bring her back, Ranger. One. You fuck that up—”
“What, Colt?” he bites out. “What will you do?”
“I will destroy you,” I say, my voice low, barely controlled rage leaking into every word.
“I will tear through this city, through you, through anyone who stands in my fucking way. You think you’ve never met your match, Ranger?
You haven’t. Until me.” I rest my hand on the mantle, squeezing the wood until my knuckles whiten.
“I will burn you and your life to ashes before I let you leave this city with her.”
Ranger takes a breath, and a tense, painful silence stretches between us before he speaks again. “We’ll be dead before you find us.”
He hangs up.
The quiet is a gag shoved down my throat, robbing me of the oxygen I need to survive. My phone cracks in my grip, the metal biting into my palm as I try to calm the rising anger. Panic bleeds into every thought, every sense.
Would Ranger do that? Kill her to make sure no one else could have her?
I close my eyes and I see her smile and a promise of forever that we both shied away from.
No, this can’t be it for us. I won’t allow it.
My phone rings, but it isn’t Ranger. It’s someone else.
BURNER ONE.
I answer.
JJ says, “I know where she is.”