Chapter 93
JAKE
We’re in the kitchen, sitting around the table, going over the information Harper gave us one more time, debating where the best place to intercept Turner is, when Mason pushes back from the table. "We need to eat. Can't run an op on empty."
I don’t want to stop, but Emma hasn’t eaten all day. I stretch to standing. "I'll grab Emma."
Luke balances on the back two legs of his chair. “Are we telling her our plan?”
“She’s part of the team, right?” Mason says as he takes out some steaks from the fridge.
That makes me pause a second, appreciating them.
As I head upstairs to get my woman, I run through the details I need to brief her on. Harper's intel. When we think the window is to strike at Turner. I’m not a hundred percent on the plan, but it’s a good start.
I open the bedroom door. It’s dark inside. I don’t want to shock her, so I move quietly to flip the switch on the small lamp by the bedside.
She’s not here.
The bed is untouched. No impression on her pillow. No sign she's slept here at all.
My chest tightens.
I rush to check the bathroom. Empty.
The closet—her jacket is gone.
I move downstairs fast.
I find her camera bag by the front door. Her camera is missing.
"Emma’s gone," I call out as I run to the kitchen.
Luke frowns. “Gone?”
"For at least an hour." I move to the window. Her car is still in the driveway, parked exactly where she left it.
"The horses," Mason says, turning off the stove. “If we didn’t hear her, she maybe took a horse from the pasture.”
I pull out my phone and open the tracker app. The map loads. The bottom drops out of my stomach. “It shows her on the north ridge.”
“Fuck,” Luke says succinctly. “She went for Turner herself.”
The fury is white-hot and immediate. She lied. She snuck out of my bed, is fuck knows where out there on the ridge alone, and riding toward a criminal operation without backup, a weapon, or telling me.
But underneath the rage is something colder, sharper.
Turner's crew could be anywhere. They could be moving product, moving people. They’d have lookouts hidden. If Emma rides up on that ridge with her camera—
I don't finish the thought.
Mason puts his hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go bring her back.”
I'm already heading to the truck, calculating approach angles and timing. Understanding that Emma tried to protect me by putting herself in danger.
But that's unacceptable.