Chapter 1 Calder #2
Creighton was a character of extremes. A disorganized disaster in some lights, a savant of specifics in others. One of his extremes was his obsession with exotic teas. Some he grew. Some he imported. And none he shared. Especially with a duck.
“What’s up?” I asked, and went over to the large boulder where I’d set my cell before attempting the climb.
“New case,” he grunted, staring expectantly at me as I opened my phone and scanned the details.
A $20,000 reward for an Alabama State college student who’d gone missing on vacation with friends in Florida. “How long has she been gone?”
“Four days.”
We hadn’t grown up thinking our unusual upbringing would equip us for anything more than being experts at survival.
Cassius certainly hadn’t anticipated we’d someday monetize our abilities to track people or prey in the wilderness, hunt as well as the most expert marksmen, or survive for days in the harshest of elements.
However, just as my interest in law school had waned, Creed was injured overseas.
When he came back, circumstance and happenstance collided, and I’d realized there was a market for our shared, specialized skill set.
And so, Stone Tracking Services was born.
Over the course of the last decade, our other three brothers joined our business venture for one reason or another.
We were retrievalists—a term Creighton hated because it wasn’t a real word, but since Creighton hated most things except for tea and tattoos, we kept it in spite of his protests.
As retrievalists, we found what was missing for those who offered a reward and, in special circumstances, for those who didn’t offer one.
Our cases were usually missing persons. Sometimes missing valuables: Jewelry.
Paintings. A relative’s missing will. Rarely missing pets, but never fugitive criminals.
An important distinction between what we did and bounty hunting, albeit one people generally struggled to understand.
“I know you just got back from California, so if you want me to take it, I can—or if you want to go. It doesn’t matter.”
Where Colby was the Dynamo, Creed was the Drifter, always needing to be on the move. I usually gave him preference when a new reward came through, especially one that was across the country.
The distinct rumble of an approaching quad paused our conversation. Within seconds, a four-wheeler appeared from the path to the house with Cassius at its helm.
Cassius Stone was a hard man. A wild man.
All muscle and grit. Exactly the kind of man one would expect to find living off-grid on a thousand acres of wilderness.
Once upon a time, he’d been a secret service agent at the very heart of technology and world events.
It was because he knew that world that he’d moved here, not just to escape it but to also hide himself and his family from it.
Cassius stopped beside us but left the engine running as he said, “Calder, I need you to come back to the house. There’s someone here to see you.” His voice had the quality of worn leather, abraded from prolonged wear and tear but still supple from its lasting strength.
If it weren’t for the gray hair and beard, one would be hard-pressed to believe the fifty-eight-year-old was a father of six rather than the eldest of seven. And a single father, no less, for the last eighteen years.
“At the house?” Whoever this visitor was wasn’t my first concern.
Few people ventured onto Stonewall Ranch, and even fewer did so without an invitation. The ranch was family only. Though it wasn’t one of Cassius’s written rules, it was an unspoken one.
I could count on one hand the number of people who’d been invited to our home.
Uninvited guests, on the other hand, were usually hunters or hikers who’d missed the posted private property and no trespassing signs; they were welcomed by Cassius’s stiff warning and the even stiffer shotgun strapped to his back as he patrolled the perimeter.
“Yes.” Cassius jerked his chin, the salt-and-pepper gray of his beard framing the harsh slash of his mouth as he ordered, “Get on.”
I shot Creed an apologetic glance. “If you want to wait—”
“No, I’ll go,” he said without a single inflection of emotion. But that was Creed. He just did. Went. Lived off the back of his massive Harley like staying in one place too long—even here—put him in peril.
I climbed behind Cassius, who hit the gas before I was fully seated.
“Who is it?” I called over the howling wind at my ears.
Cassius didn’t answer me, and it was on purpose. Whoever was here, it was my fault they’d invaded our sanctuary. Just like it was my fault my mother had been killed.
The house appeared ahead to the squawking of a fleeing, furious duck.
Donnie flapped out of the open attic window belonging to Creighton’s room, landed in the grass behind the house, and waddled his way toward the blow-up pool Colby had fashioned into Donnie’s own personal pond. I was fairly certain there was a small bag of tea leaves clutched in his beak.
Well, that answered that.
The home I’d grown up in was large by any account.
With six children, Cassius Stone had spared no expense in building the appreciable stone-faced, large-windowed, two-storied compound to comfortably house our wild brood.
The footprint then expanded to accommodate Cassius’s expansive library, from which we were all required to read, and Mom’s spacious kitchen and attached greenhouse, which Cassius now religiously maintained.
Cassius rounded the front of the house, and my attention went to the unfamiliar dark-red sedan parked next to Creed’s modified F-250. It had Wyoming plates. Numerous dents on the bumper. And as we pulled up next to it, I saw a barcode sticker in the front window. A rental.
Was it someone from a recent case? I’d been to Colorado, Nevada, and Texas in the last three months, but no contacts from there seemed likely. We never gave out the ranch address. Ever. A rule. Maybe someone local who’d moved away? Someone who’d worked with Mom?
I climbed off the four-wheeler, running through the possibilities the same way I’d scanned Free Fall’s rock face for my next hold. What were my options? What made the most sense? What had the highest probability of being correct?
I entered through the front door to Creighton’s taut warning aimed at our sister down the hall: “This brings a whole new meaning to fowl play, Colby. That duck better watch out.”
Colby called back, “It’s not Donnie’s fault your room is a disaster and you keep losing your tea!”
It was, 100 percent, Donnie’s fault. However, it was equally true that Creighton’s domain was a complete disaster. It was the kind of thing people wrote off for a genius who must have a method to his mess and madness.
Driving a tattooed hand with ink-stained fingers through his shoulder-length hair, Creighton glowered at her and then at me, and then thundered back to his attic.
“Library,” Cassius said, and turned, heading to the kitchen. It was almost lunchtime, which meant he’d be making cold-cut sandwiches for whoever was home before taking his afternoon patrol through the property.
I walked in the opposite direction through the living room, past Colby’s photographs on the walls, the aged leather couches worn from six wild children, and the stone hearth that yawned for winter’s daily log fires, all the way to the pocket doors that sequestered the cerebral domain of the library at the end of the house.
Whoever it was, it wasn’t a friend; I’d determined that much. My friendships came in quality, not quantity, and also came at a distance. Most of those I would have considered close had been from college or my law-intern days, and all of them lived out of state.
I stepped over the threshold, scanning the bookcase-covered walls that had always made this my favorite room of the house, until my eyes landed on her.
Her.
Small frame. Slim jeans. Short boots. Loose blazer. Red hair. She turned, and I felt the unmistakable, unrepentant slam of my heart as it detonated in my chest.
Green eyes and full lips greeted me, along with a familiar smattering of freckles over her nose, more numerous now in the summer. But it was the hair . . . I would know that copper-drenched hair anywhere. Even after . . . Damn. Even after twelve years.
“Lara.” I broke the silence and took a step forward, noting the instant flicker of distrust that hardened her face and the slight downturn of her invitingly pink lips.
I couldn’t remember exactly the last time I’d seen Lara Crane, but whenever it had been, my body had responded in the same exact way. That had never changed. The undercurrent of heat. The hum of attraction in my veins. The ache for someone so wholly inappropriate, especially then but even now.
“Calder.”
All the pieces clicked into place. The rental car. A visitor who was from here but didn’t live here any longer. How she knew where to find me.
There was one time—one single time—in college when I’d brought my ex-girlfriend to the ranch. It wasn’t to see my home or meet my family, but to help her. Unfortunately, my attempt to help had only ended in disaster.
That ex-girlfriend was Rachel Crane. Lara’s older sister.
Judging from the sharp edge in Lara’s emerald gaze and the way she held it like a knife to mine, she didn’t want to be here. Didn’t want to see me. And I didn’t blame her.
“What happened?” I asked, cutting to the chase as I folded my arms over my chest.
She wouldn’t be here if she had any other choice, which meant she didn’t.
Pain seared her expression. “Rachel’s missing.”