24. Gabriel
Gabriel
I wake to an empty bed.
That isn’t unusual. Evie’s been getting up earlier lately, usually because our daughter has decided five in the morning is an acceptable time to start turning somersaults beneath her ribs.
Sometimes she goes down to the kitchen for crackers.
Sometimes I find her sitting on the porch with a blanket around her shoulders, staring out at the pasture like she’s still surprised she gets to wake up here.
I reach across the mattress anyway. The sheets on her side are cool. That is unusual.
I open my eyes. Gray morning light presses at the curtains. The clock says six forty-three. Her boots are gone from beside the dresser. So is the cardigan she wore last night.
I lie still for a second, listening. No water running in the bathroom. No footsteps in the hall. No soft murmur from downstairs. The house feels wrong. Not quiet. Stoneridge is often quiet in the morning. Empty in a place that should contain her.
I get up and pull on yesterday’s jeans.
The new phone I bought her is on the nightstand.
I stop.
Evie takes it everywhere. Not because she likes the thing. She doesn’t. But her mother might call. The clinic might call. And after everything with Voss, Ethan made her promise it stayed charged and within reach.
I pick it up. The screen is dark. No message. No note. Nothing.
A slow pressure starts beneath my sternum. Fear.
I’m out of the room before I’ve put on socks. The hallway is empty. So is the bathroom.
Downstairs, Maggie stands at the stove with a pan in one hand. She turns when she hears me.
“Where’s Evie?”
Maggie sets the pan down. “She went to the lower paddock. Falcon came in and said there was trouble with Chance.”
“What trouble?”
“Caught herself against the fence, he thought.” Maggie’s eyes sharpen as she looks at my face. “Evie was on the porch when Falcon came. Said the baby was keeping her awake.”
“How long?”
“Twenty minutes ago. Maybe less.”
Everything inside me stops. “She went alone?”
Maggie frowns. “No, Falcon went with her. Gabe, what is it?”
I’m already moving. I grab my boots from beside the door and shove my feet into them without tying the laces.
“Call Daniel. Ethan too. Tell them to get to the old barn.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
That is a lie. I know enough.
I know Chance was in the corner stall when I checked on her before bed. I know the mare does not go into the lower paddock without Evie. I know Falcon was supposed to start on the partition after breakfast, not move a frightened horse before sunrise.
And I know the phone Evie promised never to leave behind is still sitting beside our bed.
I hit the yard at a run. Cold air tears into my lungs. Gravel bites through my untied boots. The old barn doors stand open ahead of me, dark against the pale morning.
“Evie!”
No answer.
I reach the aisle. Chance lifts her head from the stall. Completely unharmed. No sweat. No blood. No torn fence wire dragging behind her. She watches me with wide eyes, startled by the way I came through the door.
My body goes cold from the inside.
“Evie?”
I know she isn’t here. I call anyway.
I check the tack room. The adjoining stalls. The small turnout behind the barn.
Nothing.
Maggie reaches the barn first, breathing hard, Daniel behind her pulling on a shirt as he comes. Ethan follows with his glasses in one hand and his phone in the other.
“What happened?” Daniel asks.
“Falcon told Evie Chance was down near the lower paddock,” I say. “She came out with him.”
Daniel looks past me into the stall. Chance has moved to the door, looking past me toward the yard. Waiting. Her halter is still on the peg. The lead rope is coiled beneath it.
Daniel’s expression changes. “Where’s Evie?”
“Gone.”
“What exactly did Falcon say?” Ethan asks Maggie.
“That Chance was down near the lower paddock. Said he needed Evie because the mare wouldn’t let anybody else close.”
“Did she take a truck?”
“I didn’t hear one start.”
“There was already one by the barn,” Maggie says. “Utility truck. I assumed he’d brought it.”
Daniel is out of the stall before she finishes.
“Which truck?”
“I don’t know. One of the dark-green ones.”
Daniel pulls out his radio. “Get me an inventory of the ranch vehicles. Find out which one Falcon signed out.”
I grip the stall door hard enough that the wood creaks.
Chance flinches. I let go immediately.
“Easy,” I tell her.
The word breaks.
I make myself lower my voice. “You’re all right.”
She is. But Evie isn’t.
Daniel comes back down the aisle. “Truck seven is missing.”
“Falcon?” Ethan asks.
“Not answering radio or phone.”
Ethan curses. “His cabin?”
Daniel nods toward two veterans, Wire and Viper, arriving at the barn. “Check it. Don’t touch anything you don’t have to.”
They turn and go without questions.
Maggie has both hands pressed to her mouth. “He’s been here for months,” she whispers. “He’s eaten at our table.”
A man we trusted came before sunrise and used a frightened horse to take Evie away from her family.
The barn blurs around me.
“Gabriel.”
Ethan’s voice.
I look at him.
“Breathe.”
“I am breathing.”
“Not properly.”
I drag air into my lungs. My heart beats once, hard and wrong, then settles into something fast but regular.
Ethan watches until he’s satisfied I’m not about to drop in the aisle, then turns his phone toward me. “Truck seven’s tracker went offline eleven minutes ago.”
“Where?”
“Last ping was east of the lower pasture.”
“Toward the boundary.”
Daniel and Ethan exchange a look.
I see it. “What?”
“That access track doesn’t go anywhere except the old fence line,” Daniel answers.
“Then that’s where we go.” I start toward the door.
Daniel catches my arm. “Not yet.”
I turn on him and snarl, “Yes, now!”
His grip tightens. “We do not run blind after a man who knows this ranch well enough to take her without raising an alarm.”
“He has Evie, dammit!”
Daniel’s eyes flash with raw emotion. Then it is gone. “Every second I waste arguing with you is another second before we find her. So listen once.”
The Ranger is in his voice now. Not my older brother, but the man who came home from places none of us asked him to describe.
“He chose Chance because he knew Evie would move without thinking,” Daniel says. “He chose the hour because the house was quiet and the ranch was changing shifts. He had a truck waiting.”
His eyes drop to the phone still in my hand. The phone that Ethan could already be using to track her.
“It was on the bedside table,” I say. “She was on the porch, for God’s sake.”
Twenty yards from the kitchen. Thirty from the barn. Close enough that she should have been safe. Daniel releases me. “We assume he has support. We assume the route is prepared. We find out where he’s taking her, then we go.”
I throw up my hands in frustration. “I already know who has her.”
Nobody says the name. We don’t need to. Alexander Voss.
“I trusted Falcon,” Maggie says, her words small.
Ethan looks toward the yard where the veterans are moving now, checking vehicles, gates, radios. “We all did.”
Viper returns from the cabins at a run. “Falcon’s gone. Duffel too. Locker’s empty except for work clothes.”
“Phone?” Ethan asks.
“Found it smashed behind the cabin.”
Daniel’s jaw clenches. “Anything else?”
Viper shakes his head. “Bed was made. Doesn’t look slept in.”
“He left last night,” I say.
“Or never intended to sleep,” Ethan replies.
“I was on the west perimeter until four,” Wire says, appearing behind Ethan. “Falcon took east.”
The betrayal deepens. Falcon didn’t merely wait for an opportunity. He arranged the ranch around one.
“He knew the east line would be clear,” Daniel says.
A truck engine roars outside.
We spill into the yard as Caleb Cutter’s pickup comes through the gate hard enough to throw gravel against the fence. He brakes beside the barn.
The driver’s door opens, and Caleb gets out with no hat and his bad leg barely holding him. “Which one of you is missing a utility truck?”
I’m already moving toward him. “Where did you see it?”
“On my western pasture. Came through the shared fence before dawn.”
“Who was driving?”
“Couldn’t see. Too dark.”
“Was there a woman with him?”
Caleb’s face changes. “Oh, shit. Evie?”
I grab the front of his coat. “Was she in the truck?”
“I don’t know.”
Daniel pulls me back. “Tell us everything.”
Caleb looks at my hand still fisted in his coat, then at my face. He doesn’t waste time being offended.
“I saw lights out the boundary. Went out to take a look. Fence lines were cut. Truck tracks going through onto my land. Machinery too, I think.” Caleb’s expression turns grim.
“Long strip of land with the grass scraped back. Ground packed down. Stakes along both sides. I was coming over to tell you when I saw one of your trucks heading east across my pasture.”
“How long ago?” Ethan asks.
“Twenty-five minutes. Maybe thirty.”
Ethan is already moving toward his vehicle. “Show me.”
“We’re all going,” I say.
Daniel doesn’t argue this time. He turns to the gathered men. “Lock the ranch down. Nobody leaves the house. Viper, take four and hold the east boundary. Wire, you’re with us.”
Daniel looks at Ethan. “Get the drone.” Then at Caleb. “You ride with us and point the way.”
Finally, he looks at me. One brother looking at another and understanding there is nothing on this earth that will keep me behind.
“We bring her home,” he says.
The pressure in my chest sharpens into purpose.
Daniel sends the others toward the equipment barn.
The secured cabinet is already open when we get there.
For one second, the room is all movement and metal.
Rifles come down from the racks. Sidearms are checked and holstered.
Daniel passes out radios while the men pull protective vests over work shirts and flannel.
Caleb accepts a rifle without comment, his face set hard as he checks the chamber.
Nobody looks like a rancher anymore. Or maybe they do. Maybe this is what these men have always been beneath the denim and dust—soldiers who came home, put their weapons away, and hoped they would never have to reach for them again.
Daniel hands me a vest. “You stay on me.”
I pull it over my head. “I’m not staying behind.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
Across the room, Ethan opens a hard case and begins loading it with drone controls, spare batteries, signal equipment, and tools.
Daniel looks over. “You can track the truck?”
“If its unit comes back online.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“I get the drone up and follow the tracks from the boundary.”
“Take what you need.”
Ethan closes the case, locks it, then lifts a rifle from the rack.
I catch Ethan by the arm as Daniel heads for the first truck. “One second.”
He looks at my hand, then at my face. Whatever he sees there makes him go still.
“If something happens to me—”
“No.” The word comes fast and hard.
“Ethan.”
“We are not doing this.” He pulls his arm free. “Nothing is happening to you.”
“Promise me.”
His jaw tightens.
Around us, doors slam. Engines turn over. Men call equipment checks across the yard.
I hold my brother’s eyes. “If this goes wrong, you get Evie and our daughter home. You keep them safe.”
“Gabriel—”
“And when she’s old enough, you tell my girl her father wanted her.” My voice roughens, but I force the words out. “Every second. Before I knew her. Before I ever felt her move.”
Ethan looks away.
“You tell her I wasn’t the problem.”
His eyes snap back to mine.
The words are out now. The oldest wound I have, standing bare between us.
“You tell her I was the answer. Just once, Ethan. Let me be the answer.”
For a long moment, he says nothing. Then he takes off his glasses. He holds them in one hand and looks at me with his naked eyes—my middle brother, the bomb technician, the man who understands better than anyone what a structural defect can do under pressure.
When he puts the glasses back on, the movement is slow and deliberate. “I promise.”
I clasp his shoulder. “Thank you.”
His fingers close hard around my wrist. “But you listen to me, Gabriel.” His voice drops. “I am not making that promise because I expect to keep it. I’m making it so you’ll stop wasting time saying goodbye.”
“I’m not saying goodbye.”
“Good.” He releases me. “Then get in the damn truck.”
We pile into the trucks. As I climb into Daniel’s passenger seat, I look once toward the old barn. Chance stands in the doorway of her stall, ears pricked toward the yard. The mare Falcon used to lure Evie away is safe. That’s the only mercy he left us.
Daniel starts the engine. We tear east across Stoneridge toward the place Caleb says someone has been cutting into his land.
Toward the missing truck.
Toward Evie.