Chapter 14
Fourteen
No.
No.
Sierra did not die today.
Huck’s scream shook Rowan free of watching the front of his house collapse, the woman he loved inside.
“Hammer—you can’t go back in there.”
He rounded on Saxon with such a look that Saxon held up his hands. “It’s a death trap!” Blood gushed down his leg, but Saxon had wound a belt around the wound and was even finding his feet.
So, maybe not life-threatening.
Rowan had set Huck down on solid ground fifty feet or so from the burning house, his hands trembling as he released his son. The boy had felt weightless during the sprint through the front door, but now Rowan’s arms shook.
Huck clung to his shirt, fists twisted in the fabric. “Don’t go back in there!”
“I have to.” Rowan pried his son’s fingers loose. “Stay with Saxon.”
“Daddy, please!”
The word punched through him. Hollowed him out and shook through his body.
Daddy.
Behind him, the fire raged.
He didn’t have time, but he turned, took a breath, and put his hand on Huck’s shoulder. “I’m getting your mom. Stay here and be brave.”
Then he turned toward the house.
Saxon stood between him and the house. “Front entry’s blocked. Whole roof section came down.”
“Kitchen door?” His voice came out steady now.
“Fully engulfed. You’d never make it through.”
Rowan turned back toward the house, his mind cataloging options. The structure was nearly engulfed, walls of flame, and inside—collapsing supports, air so superheated it would sear his lungs.
But Sierra was in there. His Sierra.
“East bedroom window.” He was already moving, stripping off his jacket as he ran. “Same way I used to sneak in and out as a kid.”
Paint bubbled and peeled from the siding in long strips that curled away from the boards. The smell hit him—burning wood, melting plastic, and underneath it all, the sharp chemical tang of accelerant.
Someone had wanted this place to burn fast and hot.
The bedroom window sat six feet off the ground, its glass already spider-webbed from the heat. Rowan wrapped his jacket around his fist and punched through, clearing the shards before hauling himself up and through the opening.
The interior stole his breath. Flames raced across the ceiling in waves, fed by decades of dry wood and whatever accelerant the arsonists had used.
Smoke cut visibility to almost nothing. Rowan dropped to his hands and knees, where the air was cleaner, and crawled toward where he hoped the living room would be.
“Sierra!” The shout came out as a croak, his throat already raw.
A crash echoed through the house as something heavy collapsed in the kitchen. The whole structure shuddered, and Rowan felt the floor vibrate under his palms. They had minutes, maybe less, before the entire place came down.
“Here!” Sierra’s voice, muffled but strong, came from his right.
The bathroom. The woman had made it to the bathroom, had climbed into the tub.
He shut the door behind him, muffling the fire.
“Huck!”
“Already out. Safe with Saxon.” He reached for the window. It didn’t move, too many layers of paint sealing it shut.
And frankly, it was too small for his shoulders anyway.
She was struggling to stand.
He turned to her. “Can you walk?”
“I think so.” But she stood with one leg favored.
A support beam groaned overhead.
And that was just it. He swooped her up into his arms, pulled her tight against him.
“Close your eyes. Put your head against my chest.” Somehow, he’d put away his emotion, found the part of him who’d extracted civilians from war zones. “Don’t look up, don’t breathe deep, and trust me.”
Sierra pressed her face into his shirt. “Let’s get out of here.” Her body trembled against him.
The hallway to the bedroom had become a tunnel of fire. Flames licked down from the ceiling and reached up from the floor, leaving a narrow corridor of furnace air in between. Rowan kicked aside burning debris and plunged through.
The fire licked across the ceiling, and the walls had begun to char.
But the window was clear.
Rowan boosted Sierra through the opening first, lowering her as far as he could before letting her drop to the ground outside. She landed hard, with a cry, but crawled away from the house, putting distance between herself and the flames.
A thunderous crack split the air as the main support beam started to give way. The entire back half of the house groaned.
Rowan dove through the window as the bedroom ceiling started to sag.
He hit the ground and rolled.
By the time he came up, the rest of the house had folded. Where the structure had stood moments before, nothing remained but a pile of burning timber reaching toward the darkening sky.
“Mom!” Huck’s voice cut through the roar of flames. The boy was running toward them, Saxon limping hard close behind, both their faces streaked with soot.
Even Saxon’s face twisted, as if he might cry.
Sierra struggled to sit up, favoring her injured ankle. “I’m okay, baby. I’m okay.”
Huck threw himself into her arms. She rocked him as he sobbed.
And over their son’s head, her eyes found Rowan’s.
“Thank you,” she rasped.
Rowan nodded, not trusting his voice. The tactical calm was cracking, and his hands started to shake even as he moved everyone far from the fire—enough to breathe clean air and not feel the heat.
Then he simply collapsed in the dirt and grass beside them, breathing hard.
Saxon disappeared, hobbling away, and then, after a bit, reappeared with a first aid kit. He handed it over to Rowan. “Emergency services are en route. Should be here in a minute.”
“How’d you find us?” Sierra had turned to Saxon, who now loosened the belt over his wound. Tore open his pants leg.
“We tracked your phone,” Saxon said. “We have a friend.”
Rowan stood now, staring at the house. “Who were they, Sierra?”
She leaned back, stared at him, her eyes wide.
Something about the way she looked at him…“What?”
“It was Alden.”
A beat, then…wait. “What?”
“Alden Jenkins took us. Got me to sign over the ranch to him.”
He sat in the grass, the house behind him an inferno. “What are you—”
Saxon’s phone rang. He dug it out of his leg pocket. “Martinelli.” He put him on speaker.
“We heard the sirens,” Martinelli said without preamble. “What’s your status?”
“Everyone’s alive.”
Sierra leaned over to the phone. “We’re at the old Wallace place. It’s on fire.”
Seemed like a too simple thing to say, really. Rowan’s hand clenched.
“Who took you, Sierra—did you see them?”
“Yeah,” Rowan growled, cutting her off. “Alden Jenkins. My stepfather.”
“You sure?”
Rowan grabbed the phone. “Yeah, we’re sure, Mike. So put out a BOLO for the guy—”
“Rowan, don’t—”
“Do not tell me don’t.” He hung up. Handed the phone to Saxon, his entire body shaking. He met Sierra’s eyes.
Sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder as fire trucks and ambulances raced toward the scene. Red and blue lights flickered through the smoke, promising help that was still minutes away.
“Rowan.” Sierra’s voice was soft but steady. “Look at me.”
He knelt beside her, noting the way she held her ankle and the bruises forming on her wrists from the zip ties. But her eyes were clear, focused, alive.
“He wanted me to sign papers,” she said. “Land transfer documents. Said they’d kill Huck if I didn’t.”
“Did you sign?”
“Yes.” Her voice cracked. “Of course I did. I signed everything.”
Of course she did. Rowan’s hand found hers, their fingers intertwining. Then he leaned forward, pressed his forehead to hers. “I would have too. You are the bravest person I know.”
She huffed out a breath. Looked at Huck. “I was terrified.”
Emergency vehicles were already arriving—fire trucks with their lights strobing red and blue against the smoke, ambulances with EMTs moving toward them with equipment.
Fire personnel got out, started unwinding hoses, probably to keep the fire from catching on the dry grass and starting a wildfire.
“Sierra!” Jackson Stewart jogged over with an oxygen mask and medical kit. “You okay?”
“She could use air,” Rowan said and got up. Huck refused to move from where he sat beside his mom.
Jackson fitted the mask over her face, then began checking her vitals. Sierra leaned into the oxygen, her color already improving as the clean air replaced the smoke in her lungs.
“Rowan!” Detective Martinelli’s voice cut through the noise as he approached at a near run, his face grim. “I put out the BOLO.” He stopped, crouched in front of Sierra, and Rowan would forgive him for the look of tenderness. “You okay?”
She nodded.
Martinelli turned to Rowan. “I don’t understand. Why would—”
“Because this land belongs to Rowan,” Sierra said. “All of it. But with Rowan dead, Alden grabbed it. Or thought he had hold of it, and then, of course, Rowan came back, and it got complicated.”
“But what about the lithium and the land rights?”
“He’s the mayor. Of course he knows how valuable the mineral rights are,” Saxon said. “My guess is that when Sierra and the others didn’t give in, well, this was his last best hope.”
Rowan stood there, and all of it just boiled inside him. The man who’d terrorized his childhood, who’d broken his mother’s spirit, who’d driven him from his home. The man who’d been playing the reformed mayor while orchestrating a campaign of terror against his own community.
The man who’d just tried to burn his family alive.
“We’ll find him,” Saxon said quietly, lethally.
A black pickup pulled up, past the fire trucks.
Mack got out, running hard toward Rowan, his face pale as he took in the burning ruins and emergency vehicles. “I saw the smoke from the house and—” He stopped, his gaze on Sierra and Huck. “What happened?”
“Your father just tried to kill my family,” Rowan said, and tried, oh, he tried, not to add blame to his tone.
It wasn’t Mack’s fault his father was a monster.
Mack’s face went white. “That’s impossible. He was home all morning. We had breakfast together, talked about ranch business—”
“When did you last see him?” Saxon interrupted.