Chapter 43
I get to the crash site in under six minutes.
That’s six minutes too late.
Blue and red lights paint the street like a crime scene mural, glass still glittering across the asphalt like teeth. The SUV sits mangled at an angle that makes my chest seize. The passenger side is crushed inward, the back door on Peyton’s side bent wrong, like it was wrenched open.
My vision tunnels.
Ignoring the police tape, I park the truck next to one of the cruisers and rush out. My boots hit the pavement hard enough to jar my spine as I sprint toward the scene, shoving past a cop who starts to say my name and thinks better of it when he sees my face.
“Sutton?” I bark.
She’s sitting on the curb, wrapped in a blanket, shaking but upright, alive, and talking to a medic. Relief slams into me hard enough to be painful.
But Peyton—
“Where is she?” I demand, crouching in front of Sutton. I grip her shoulders gently but firmly, forcing her to look at me. “Peyton. Where is she?”
Suttons eyes fill instantly. “They—Colter, they took her. They opened her door. Not mine. They went straight for her.
My jaw locks.
This wasn’t a random attack or an opportunistic crime against the family. Peyton was targeted. But why? I’ve been guessing that all of the small intrusions on the ranch had something to do with her arrival, but this confirms it. Someone has been trying to get to her.
I stand and slowly scan the scene with new eyes. The angle of the impact. The clean extraction. No panic. No overkill. Whoever did this know exactly how much force was needed to disable without killing.
Professional.
“Did you see anyone?” I ask Wyatt, Sutton’s driver, who is bleeding from a cut above his eye, but he is still standing. “Anything at all.”
He swallows. “Two vehicles. One hit us. One behind. Van. Dark. No plates.”
Fuck.
I turn away before the rage leaks out in front of witnesses. Ace is on the phone, pacing, barking orders into it like a man trying to outrun hell.
“She’s gone,” I tell him.
“I know,” he says grimly. “I’ve got eyes on every road leading out of town. Cameras. Plate readers. Nothing has come back yet.”
“They planned this,” I say. “They knew where she’d be. Knew she’d be with Sutton. Knew John would send a driver.”
Ace goes still.
So who told them?”
That’s what I haven’t figure out yet. But I do know one thing. It had to have been someone within the family.
Headlights sweep across the wreckage, braking hard at the edge of the chaos. I don’t have to look to know who it is.
John’s truck skids to a crooked stop behind a cruiser, door flying open before the engine even cuts. He barrels out like a man possessed, eyes wild, scanning the scene until they lock on Sutton.
“Sutton,” he bellows, rushing toward her. Sutton hears him and whatever fragile control she had left collapses.
“John—” Her voice breaks completely as she scrambles to her feet and stumbles into him.
He catches her just in time, arms wrapping around her as she sobs into his chest, fingers clutching his jacket like it’s the only solid thing left in the world.
“They took her. I’m so sorry. They took Peyton. I tried—I swear I tried—”
John’s hand cups the back of her head, holding her tight, his face twisted in something raw and unfiltered. “It’s okay,” he murmurs, kissing the top of her head softly. “You’re safe. You’re here.”
But his eyes lift over her shoulder.
They land on me.
And the temperature drops.
He gently hands Sutton off to the medic, steps away from her like he’s afraid his rage might spill onto her skin, and then is moving, fast, furious, and unstoppable.
He shoves me hard in the chest.
“This is your fault,” he snarls. “You said she was protected. You promised when you claimed her that she wouldn’t be touched. I warned you…”
I don’t move. Don’t flinch. I let him hit me again if he wants to.
“You didn’t warn her what we are,” he continues, voice cracking with fury. “You talk about me keeping secrets, but you let her walk around like she wasn’t a fucking target.”
“She was already a target,” I snap back. “Long before she ever met me.”
That stops him for half a second, but not enough.
“If you hadn’t claimed her and dragged her into—”
“This has nothing with my claiming her,” I cut in, low and lethal. “Not all of it, anyway. Someone was after Peyton before she stepped foot in Crimson Ridge. The boundary issues we’ve had is proof of that.”
His face goes red, hands curling into fists. “She is my daughter.”
“And she is my future wife,” I growl. “I kept her blind to aspect of the family because of you. Because you were too much of a coward to tell her the truth of her mother and your past. I told you, I warned you, that my father wasn’t going to let me give her information about who we are until you opened up to her about Sadie.
You decided to keep it a secret from her. ”
“The past is buried,” he roars.
“No,” I tell him coldly. “It dug its way back out.”
Behind us, Sutton lets out another sob, and the sound cuts through the shouting. John turns, torn. Grief wars with rage as he looks at his wife shaking in the medics arms.
“I’m tired of the two of you bickering over this shit,” Sutton cries.
“Peyton did nothing wrong. All she wanted was the truth.” She turns her gaze to John and shakes her head in disappointment.
“This is as much your fault as it is his. Don’t pretend that it isn’t.
I know you miss Emma. Hell, I miss her too.
Every single day, but Peyton deserved to know the truth and you not telling her put her in danger. ”
I swallow hard.
“You’re right,” I agree quietly. “And that is why this ends tonight.”
John turns back to me, eyes burning. “If anything happens to her—”
“It won’t,” I promise, every word carved from stone. “But whoever did this is inside out circle. Someone fed them her location. Her timing. Her protection detail.”
Ace steps closer now, his voice grim. “I know who it,” he says grimly, his fingers typing furiously on his phone. A photo pops up as he turns it for us to see.
John’s face drains of color as the implication hits him full force.
I pull my phone from my pocket, already dialing. “Rage later,” I tell him. “Right now, we hunt.”
The betrayal sizzles in my veins.
They will regret the day they took what is mine.
I will tear this town apart until I have her back.