25. Evie
Evie
The truck stops beside the plane.
For one second, nobody moves.
The engine idles beneath us. The small runway lights glow weakly in the morning haze. Beyond them, the white aircraft sits sleek and immaculate on the scraped strip of earth.
Falcon keeps both hands on the wheel. The gun rests against his thigh.
I look at him. “Chance trusted you.”
His jaw tightens. He doesn’t turn. “I know.”
At least he doesn’t insult me by pretending.
“You stood beside her while she learned that stall was safe.”
“I know.”
A long silence.
“But I have to protect my son,” Falcon says, like he needs me to understand, even if it changes nothing.
I look at him for a long moment. My hand moves to my stomach without thinking. “Then we both know what this is about.”
Before either of us can say more, a man in a dark coat approaches the passenger side. One of Alexander’s men.
He opens the door. “Ms. Voss.”
“Gale,” I say. “My name is Evie Gale.”
His expression doesn’t change.
Falcon finally looks at me. His face is closed now. Whatever humanity I caught in the truck has retreated behind something harder.
“Please,” he says.
The word nearly undoes me. Not because I pity him, but because he wants me to make this easier for him.
The man outside reaches in.
“No!” I kick him, driving the heel of my boot into his knee and twisting away when he swears. For half a second, I am almost out the other door.
Falcon catches my wrist. He doesn’t hurt me, which somehow makes it worse.
“Don’t,” he says.
“Let go.”
“I can’t.”
The other man recovers and grabs my arm, yanking me from the cab. Then Falcon is beside me, securing my other arm.
I fight them every step. Twenty-three weeks pregnant, off-balance, and outnumbered, and I make them earn every yard between the truck and the plane.
I drag my heels. I throw my weight. I wrench one arm free long enough to drive my elbow into the man beside me. He curses and tightens his grip.
Falcon doesn’t touch my stomach. Neither of them does. Orders, apparently. My father wants his property returned undamaged.
Then I see him. Alexander descends the aircraft stairs and moves several paces away from the plane. He’s dressed for a board meeting. Dark coat. Polished shoes already gathering dust. Silver at his temples, precise enough to look intentional.
He watches them bring me across the field with the calm patience of a man waiting for luggage.
In twenty-six years, I’ve seen him fewer times than I can count. Always arriving. Always leaving. Never staying long enough for the silence after the occasion.
Now he’s carved a runway into another man’s land and crossed half the country to take me from the first home I’ve ever chosen.
The first thing he does is look me over from head to toe. “You’re all right.”
Not hello, Evangeline. A damage assessment.
He glances toward the plane. “We’ll get you aboard as soon as they’ve turned her around.”
It’s a small runway. Not enough room to simply taxi and go. They need time.
I file that away.
“I have a doctor on board who will examine you.”
I stare at him. “A doctor.”
“You’ve clearly been under considerable strain.”
“Your men dragged me out of a truck.”
His gaze shifts briefly to the man gripping my right arm. The man loosens his hold by half an inch.
Beyond him, the plane is still facing the wrong way. A crew member watches the wingtip as it swings slowly around, checking the clearance.
Not ready yet.
Alexander looks back at me. “No one needs to hurt you.”
“Then tell them to let go.”
He pauses. “This behavior is exactly why I came.”
My laugh comes out sharp and breathless. “My behavior.”
“You’re not thinking clearly.”
“I’m thinking more clearly than I ever have.”
“These people have isolated you. The Suttons have used your resentment toward me to draw you into a conflict you do not understand.”
“They didn’t even know who you were to me until I told them. They didn’t know I existed until I drove onto the ranch.”
Alexander’s expression does not change. He’s always been good at treating facts as temporary inconveniences.
“You arrived vulnerable,” he says. “Alone. Pregnant.”
My hand moves instinctively to my stomach.
The nose is pointing east now. The turn almost complete. They’re getting closer.
“How did you find out?” I hold up a hand. “No, don’t answer that. A private investigator? A clinic record bought through the right contact? Someone paid to watch me walk into an appointment and report back? Privacy is a right you’ve never respected.”
“I made certain you were safe. I had professionals gathering the information I needed.”
“About my pregnancy.”
“About my daughter.”
“Your daughter cut you off years ago.”
His eyes harden. “And yet here you are, carrying my granddaughter.”
“She is not yours either.” My words are steady. My hands are not.
Not because I’m frightened, but because he says my granddaughter with the same calm certainty he uses for companies, properties, and anything else he believes belongs to him.
As though blood is ownership. As though he can reach through me and put his name on my daughter before she’s even drawn breath.
His eyes return to mine. “The Suttons. How much have they given the FBI?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t be foolish, Evangeline. Vance talked. I’d like to know how much.”
“Then you should have thought about that before you poisoned someone’s water supply.”
His expression doesn't change. “What have they told the FBI about me specifically?”
“Everything,” I say. “Absolutely everything.”
That isn’t true. I don’t know what’s true. But I watch his jaw tighten by one degree, and I keep going.
“Names. Accounts. Shell companies. The runway you’re standing on.” I nod toward the aircraft. “How long does it take to turn a plane on a strip this short? Because I’d imagine that’s not the only thing the FBI is moving quickly on this morning.”
He says nothing. Which tells me everything.
The plane is facing east. Engine note rising. Ready.
The men around us seem to disappear. It’s only him and me now. The father who could have had a daughter. The daughter who stopped waiting.
Behind him, one of the crew members calls out. A single word I don’t catch. Alexander’s chin lifts fractionally in acknowledgment.
“You’re coming with me,” he says.
“No,” I say, proud of how steady my voice is. “You don’t get to decide how this ends.”
His attention moves to the man beside me. “Put her on the plane.”
The man on my right tightens his grip. I let my body sag, enough to make him think my knees have gone weak. His arm shifts around my waist to catch me, and I drive my elbow backward into his ribs.
He grunts and folds.
At the same time, I wrench my other arm down instead of pulling away, twisting toward the thumb of the man gripping me. Mom taught me that when I was fourteen after a drunk owner cornered us in a barn. Fight the weakest part.
His grip breaks. I shove both hands into his chest and run.
I almost slam into Falcon as he steps into my path.
“Don’t,” I say. “Please.”
His eyes meet mine. He stops.
Chance trusted you. I trusted you.
He steps back and drops his hands.
I run. The field is open and I’m twenty-three weeks pregnant and there is no version of this where I outrun trained men for long. I know that.
I run anyway. Because every yard I put between myself and that aircraft is another yard they have to drag me back.
Every second is another second Gabriel has to wake.
To understand what’s happened. To see my phone, which I promised to keep with me at all times.
To speak to Maggie. To see Chance standing safe in her stall.
A hand catches the back of my cardigan, and the fabric jerks tight across my throat. I twist hard and throw myself forward. Buttons tear free. The cardigan stays in the man’s fist.
The ground is uneven. My sneakers slide in loose dirt. I keep going in my shirt, cold air cutting over my arms.
Another man comes at me from the side. I change direction at the last second, cutting across the soft edge of the graded strip instead of staying on the packed ground.
My sneakers sink into the churned dirt. I stumble, catch myself with both hands beneath my stomach, and keep moving.
“Do not hurt her!” Alexander calls behind me.
What he means is do not damage the asset.
Still, the order helps because they can’t tackle me cleanly. Can’t fire. Can’t risk knocking me onto my stomach. For once, the life inside me is something my father cannot control without protecting it.
I use it.
I veer toward the rough pasture where the ground dips and rises. Harder for me. Harder for them too. My lungs burn. My muscles scream.
More footsteps close behind me, too close. I glance back to see three men in pursuit. Falcon is behind them, not running as fast as he could.
Then the ground rises ahead of me. A low ridge. If I can reach the top, I might see Stoneridge. Or somebody might see me.
I climb. My legs feel heavy. My balance is wrong. Every instinct tells me to protect my baby by slowing down.
The plane engine note rises behind me, urgent now. My father is done waiting.
A man catches my wrist. I spin instead of pulling, and his momentum carries him past me. I drive my knee into the outside of his thigh and wrench free.
It buys me two steps. Three.
Then another hand closes around my upper arm. This one holds. I turn and claw at his face. He swears, jerking back.
“Enough,” he snarls, reaching for me again.
Then another sound rolls over the pasture. Still running, I throw a glance over my shoulder. Dust rises beyond the ridge. Trucks. Stoneridge trucks.
The man hears them too. His head turns.
Gabriel. I know it. I know that the man I love is somewhere inside that cloud of dust, coming for me with every person who sat around the table last night.
The grip on my arm loosens.
I tear free.
A man to my left raises his weapon.
Alexander’s voice cracks across the field. “Do not shoot!”
The man hesitates.
That is all I need. I run toward the ridge.
Toward the engines.
Toward home.