CHAPTER FOUR
The Quiet Mustang
STANDING JUST OUTSIDE the door to my truck, I fish my phone out of my back pocket to send a text.
Me: I’ve got her.
The reply is instant.
Unknown number: Proof?
I exit the app to go to the camera folder. I select the picture I want, the one I took while she was still out: tied up to the tree, her head slumped to the side, her blond hair framing her face, cheeks dirt-streaked. And I send it off.
Again, the reply is instant.
Unknown number: Stand by for time and place of delivery.
I clench my jaw as I type my reply.
Me: Your turn.
Unknown number: You know that’s not how this works.
Unknown number: Wait for the text.
I keep staring at the screen, even though I know it’s not going to light up again.
I’m not going to get the text I want. I also know if I call the number back, it’ll show as disconnected.
I almost crush the screen in anger. But I know that’s not going to give me what I want either.
The only thing that can give me what I want is her.
I look up and lock eyes with her through the window. Sitting inside my truck, she looks like a vision. The Turner Princess.
Seething blue eyes, the shade of which matches the sky over the ranch on a cloudless day; sunflower hair thick and long, strewn about her face haphazardly; fair skin flushed and those little tits jerking under her torn dress with every angry breath she takes.
Her wrists are bound behind her back—still with hemp and still with the knot only I know how to untie—and her pretty pink mouth is gagged with my bandanna because she doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up.
I’m not going to lie; it does something to me, seeing her like this. Roped and at my mercy.
It fucks with my head. It fucks with my body, makes me hard and hungry.
Harder and hungrier than I’ve ever been for anything in my godforsaken life.
The only thing missing from this picture is her tears.
Her genuine fear, the kind I saw in her eyes, making the blue in them even darker, only a few moments ago when I gagged her mouth.
Maybe it really makes me what people call me: a monster.
But then again, I never claimed to be a man, let alone a good one.
She isn’t for me, though. Never was; never will be. That’s not to say she isn’t useful.
In the coming days, she’s going to hear a lot about why she was taken, why I’m bringing her to a place her daddy probably taught her to think of as hell. But none of those things are going to be true. It’s not about her father like she thinks, or about some piece of land.
It’s about me. It’s about what I want, and she’s the key to me getting it.
Again, maybe I should be more regretful, feel remorse. That I’m dragging her into my shit when she doesn’t even know the half of it. But I’m a hunter. I’m the best goddamn hunter in these mountains, and now that I’ve got her, I’m not letting her go until I get what I want.