Chapter 27
Taz
The honey house gleams in the afternoon light like a dream I didn't know I was still allowed to have.
Three hundred people, maybe more, spread across the meadow between the main barn and the restored building.
Food trucks line the fence. Kids chase each other through the wildflower rows behind them.
The whole damn town showed up, and half of them are wearing those stupid bee antennae headbands Miguel's been handing out at the entrance.
I'm standing by the extractor display, watching my wife explain crystallization patterns to a group of elementary schoolers like she's teaching a graduate seminar, and I can't stop smiling.
She's wearing a yellow sundress, her reopening dress, she called it this morning, like it was a category of clothing I should've known about, and she's got Clem's schedule written on her palm in blue ink because she keeps forgetting her phone.
Her phone that's sitting right there on the extractor housing.
"Take this before I drink both," Az says, appearing at my elbow with two cups of lemonade. "Your wife just convinced a child that a jar of crystals is more exciting than the face-painting station. You married a dangerous woman."
"He asked if the honey was broken," I tell her.
"And she didn't laugh at him," Az says. "That's why she gets to teach children and I get to carry beverages."
Molly holds a sample jar toward the little boy. "Perfectly good honey. Sometimes it forms crystals. That doesn't mean you throw it out."
"My mom throws things out when they're weird," he says.
"Then I'm fortunate she doesn't own me," Molly tells him. "Here. Try a little on your spoon."
He tastes it. His face changes.
"See?" Molly says. "Nobody died. Very successful lesson."
"That's going on the school brochure," Az murmurs.
I take my lemonade. "She used to worry she couldn't make a living from this."
"She knew she could," Az says. "She worried nobody would give her room to try."
I look at Az. She raises her cup without apologizing. Fair enough.
"Where's Eli?" I ask.
"Signing autographs by the lavender field.
I told him to wear the hat, but does anyone listen to me?
No. Now there's a line of teenage girls crying into their phones.
" She takes a long sip. "June's asleep in the carrier.
Maggie's got Clem. Everything's perfect, so naturally I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. "
I don't answer, because I've been waiting for that shoe since six this morning when I walked the perimeter with Rudy and the two guards from the agency Molly chose.
The delivery entrance has been my only real concern: there's a gap in the sightlines when the crowd clusters around the food trucks, but we've got someone posted there now, and we reported the threats to the sheriff.
Still.
"You keep checking that entrance," Az says. "Is somebody covering it?"
"Yes," I tell her. "One of the agency guards has the gate."
"Then drink your lemonade before you turn into a monument to dehydration," Az says. "Molly gets to enjoy this. So do you."
"I know what it cost her to get here," I say.
"Good. Help with the jars when she asks. Don't turn her opening into a hostage negotiation with your own nerves." Az tips her cup toward the display. "Look at her. She looks happy."
She does. God, she does. Six nights ago she moved back into our bedroom, and I lay there for an hour after she fell asleep just listening to her breathe. It wasn't creepy. It was terror, the I-can't-believe-I-almost-lost-this-forever kind.
"She's not there yet," I say quietly. "But she's—we're getting there."
"She told me about the winery," Az says.
"Which part?" I ask.
"The part where you called the manager when Kendall threatened her," she says.
I shrug, uncomfortable with the credit. "The staff walked her out."
"Without Molly having to argue her case first," Az says. "That's the part she told me."
I look down at the ice in my cup. "Shouldn't have been worth mentioning."
"No," Az says. "But it was. Keep giving her less to complain about. At this rate she'll run out of Taz complaints and go back to talking my ear off about honey, and I'll call that a fair trade."
Az laughs, and the sound is so normal, so easy, that I almost relax. Almost let myself believe that today is just a good day. A celebration. A beginning.
Molly finishes her crystallization lecture and the kids scatter toward the face-painting station.
She catches my eye across the crowd and does this little wave, just her fingers wiggling, like we're sharing a secret, and my chest gets tight in the good way.
The way it used to, before I ruined everything.
She heads toward the honey house, probably for more sample jars. We've gone through three cases already, and it's only two o'clock.
I watch her disappear through the side door.
I keep watching.
Az makes a crack about the music selection, and I nod without hearing her, because Molly should be coming back out by now. The sample jars are right inside the entrance, stacked on the folding table we set up this morning. Thirty seconds, maybe forty-five if she stops to check a frame.
It's been two minutes.
"Hold on," I say, and I'm moving before Az can respond.
The crowd parts around me, or maybe I'm just pushing through, I can't tell anymore, and I hit the honey house door at a near-jog. The sample jars are still stacked on the table. The lights are on. The back door, the one that leads to the loading area behind the building, is hanging open.
Molly's phone is still outside on the extractor display.
My blood goes cold.
"Rudy." I'm already running, already pulling out my own phone. "Rudy, the back entrance—Molly's gone, her phone's here, the back door's open—"
"I know," Rudy says, and his voice is wrong.
Tight. Scared. "Vendor truck blocked the delivery entrance, emergency access lane.
Eddie, the guard on that gate, stepped away to move it without waiting for his relief, and someone grabbed her.
One of the hands saw it happen, saw her get forced into a white pickup.
Jolene Pike's truck. They took off through the delivery gate before anyone could react. "
My vision narrows.
"Calling 911 now," Rudy says, and I hear him doing it, hear the words abduction and white Ford pickup and headed toward the canyon road. "Dispatch says patrol's already close, maybe five minutes out. I'm sending everyone to the entrance, we'll—"
"The switchback," I cut him off. "Takes fifteen minutes by road. Longer if they slow for the curves."
"Boss—" Rudy starts.
"I can cut through the north pasture," I tell him. "Horse trail to the cattle guard puts me there in eight."
"Taz, wait for the—" he says.
"I'm getting the horse," I tell him.
I don't wait for his response. I'm already sprinting toward the barn, already calculating the angles.
There's only one road off the ranch: the long winding switchback that drops from the ridge to the valley floor.
If someone took her by car, they have to go that way.
And if I take Anthem straight down the pasture, over the fence line, through the creek bed—
I hit the barn and Anthem's already restless in his stall, ears pricked forward like he knows. I don't bother with a saddle. Bridle, rope, and I'm up in seconds, the way my father taught me when I was too young to know I was learning a skill that would matter.
"Come on," I tell him, and we're moving.
The pasture blurs beneath us. I can see the switchback road from up here, cutting back and forth down the hillside, and there: a white truck, moving fast, too fast for the curves. It isn't ranch staff or a delivery.
Jolene's white pickup.
I lean forward and Anthem responds like he's reading my mind, stretching into a full gallop across the open field. The fence line is coming up fast, and I shift my weight and he clears it clean, landing on the other side without breaking stride.
The truck is two switchbacks down. I'm cutting across the diagonal, eating up the distance they have to cover in curves. The cattle guard at the bottom is the pinch point: they'll have to slow down to cross it, and if I can get there first—
I can get there first.
Anthem's breathing hard but steady as we tear down the final slope, and I can see the cattle guard now, the metal bars gleaming in the sunlight. The truck is one curve away.
I take Anthem through the open stock gate beside the cattle guard, then pull him up beyond it, blocking the road, and I've got my rope in my hand before the truck even rounds the bend.
It comes around the curve too fast, and the driver sees me, sees the horse, and slams the brakes. The truck fishtails, skidding on the gravel, and spins out into the shallow ditch beside the road.
For a second, nothing moves.
Then the passenger door opens and Boone Keller climbs out, dragging Molly with him.
She's fighting. God, she's fighting: kicking, biting, twisting against his grip, and there's blood on her side, a dark stain spreading across the yellow of her dress, and I stop thinking entirely.
I'm off the horse. The rope's in my hand. Boone sees me coming and shoves Molly aside, reaching for the knife in his belt, and I throw.
The loop catches him around the ankles and I yank, hard, the way I've done a thousand times with actual steers, and he goes down like a sack of feed. His head cracks against the road and he stops moving.
Molly's already on her feet, stumbling toward the truck. Jolene's climbing out the driver's side, screaming words I can't hear over the blood pounding in my ears, and Molly—
Molly punches her in the face.
One hit. Clean, direct, with her whole body behind it. Jolene drops like her strings got cut.
For a moment we just stand there, breathing hard, staring at each other across the wreckage. Molly's holding her side, and her dress is ruined, and her hair's come loose from its braid, and she's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi," I say.
"Your timing's getting better," she says, breathless.
I close the distance between us in three steps and pull her into my arms, careful of her side, careful of everything.
She's shaking, or I'm shaking, or we both are.
Sirens are starting up somewhere in the distance, Rudy's call going through, and I can hear voices on the road above us, ranch hands coming down to help.
"I need to tell you something," Molly says into my chest.
"Can it wait until you're not bleeding?" I ask.
"No." She pulls back just enough to look at me. "I'm really glad you came."
"I will always come," I tell her.
"I believe you." Her voice breaks a little. "I believed you before today. Keep showing up when we get home."
The sirens are getting closer. I can see flashing lights at the top of the switchback, and another car, a black sedan, parked at the bottom of the road. Deputies are swarming it, pulling someone out of the driver's seat.
Kendall. Waiting at the bottom like a spider at the center of her web.
"Stay here," I tell Molly. "Let me—"
"No." Her hand tightens on my arm. "Together."
We stay together, Molly leaning on me, my arm around her waist. The deputies finish cuffing Kendall and bring her up the road past us. She's wearing white, always wearing white, like she thinks it makes her look innocent, and her face is twisted past anger, past hatred.
"You think this changes anything?" she spits when she sees us. "I will destroy you both. I will take everything you—"
"Kendall." My voice comes out flat and quiet, quiet enough that the deputies take a step back. "You stay away from my family."
She stares at me.
I stare back.
The deputy clears his throat. "Sir, the paramedics are coming. Give them room."
"I'm aware." I don't look away from Kendall. "Get her out of my sight."
They load her into the back of the cruiser. She's still screaming, but I've stopped listening. Molly's weight is heavier against my side now, and when I look down, her face has gone pale.
"Hey." I tighten my grip on her. "Hey, stay with me."
"I'm fine. I'm just—" She looks down at her side, at the blood soaking through her dress. "Oh. That's more than I thought."
"Medic!" I'm yelling now, waving at the ambulance that's pulling up behind the cruisers. "I need a medic here!"
A paramedic kneels beside Molly. "I'm going to help you lie down. What's your name?"
"Molly," she says. "Please don't ruin the dress any more than you have to. It was supposed to make it through one party."
"We'll take care of you first," the paramedic says. "Sir, give us room to move her."
I step back because she needs his hands more than mine, even though every part of me wants to hold on.
"I'm right here, Mol," I tell her.
"Clem?" she asks.
"With Mom," I say. "Az is there too."
"Tell your mother—don't let her hear it from somebody wandering past," she says, gripping my sleeve. "Call her. Tell her where we're going."
"I will," I promise.
They lift the stretcher. I follow, close enough that Molly can see me.
"Can he come?" she asks.
"He can sit there," the paramedic says. "Sir, buckle in."
The instruction is simple: a seat and a belt. Stay where my wife can find me. For once I don't make it complicated.
Her eyes find mine.
"Don't you dare leave this time," she whispers.
I take her hand. Squeeze.
"Not ever again," I tell her.