Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Ace
Song- Holdin’ On- Skrillex & Nero Remix
I count to ten before I leave the bar. She’s got sixty full seconds before I start the hunt.
That's the rule. Always has been. She runs, I count, I hunt. Sixty seconds is generous. It don’t get you far in cowboy boots on desert gravel.
But that's the point. The game isn't about distance.
It's about the fear of being found. The thrill of knowing I'm coming and not knowing when I'll get there.
I reach behind me and pull the bandana from my back pocket as I head outside. I fold it once, tie it over my nose and mouth, and pull it tight. Something about the ritual of it settles the noise in my head. It sharpens everything down to instinct.
I glance at the wall beside the back door. A coil of rope hanging from a rusted nail, left there by whoever ties down the kegs on delivery day. I lift it off and push through the back door.
The parking lot is half empty. A single light buzzes and flickers above the back entrance, throwing a weak circle of amber that dies after twenty feet. Beyond that, nothing but open desert. The bar sits on the edge of town where the buildings thin out and the land takes over. But it’s our land.
She could go anywhere.
But Harper doesn't think like prey. She thinks like someone who's watched enough crime documentaries to believe she's smarter than the person chasing her. She won't just run straight. She'll double back. Find cover. Try to outplay me.
I step off the porch and stand still. Listening. The music from the bar is muffled now. The tick of a cooling engine to my left.
I turn my head. There. A boot print in the dirt at the edge of the light. Pointed toward the row of trucks along the fence line.
I start walking.
Not fast. The chase isn't about speed. It's about patience. It's about letting her hear my footsteps and not knowing how close they are. The silence between each step is worse than the step itself.
I pass a beat-up Chevy with a cracked windshield. I run my hand along the tailgate as I go. Let my fingers drag across the metal so she can hear it.
"Harper," I shout, like I'm calling her in from the kitchen, not hunting her through the desert in the dark.
No answer. Just the wind.
I smile behind the bandana.
The fence line ends at a gate that opens onto a dirt trail. Beyond that, the land breaks into scattered boulders, mesquite trees, clusters of prickly pear, and dried-out creosote. Just enough cover to make a person feel hidden without actually being hidden.
I stop at the gate. Another boot print, pressed deep. She was running hard here.
I step through.
The desert opens up around me. Moonlight washes everything silver. Shadows pool under the rocks like dark water. It's the kind of quiet that turns every sound into a signal. Every breath into a location.
Thirty yards down the trail. I stop. Tilt my head.
Nothing.
She's gone still. Found somewhere to hide and she's holding her breath, pressing herself flat against whatever shadow she can find, trying to disappear.
I know her. I know the way her mind works.
She'll have picked a spot where she can watch the trail.
Somewhere she can see me pass and slip behind me.
She thinks she's the smart one in this scenario.
"I can smell your perfume, Goldie."
I let the words carry. I want her to hear the calm in my voice. I want her to know I'm not rushing. That I could do this all night. That the longer she hides, the worse it gets when I find her.
Or better. Depending on how you look at it. I’m fighting a hard-on already.
I leave the trail and cut left toward a cluster of boulders about forty feet off the path. Big ones. Stacked against each other, creating pockets of shadow underneath. Good hiding spots. The kind she'd pick.
I round the first boulder. Nothing. Circle the second. Nothing. I stop at the third and press my hand flat against the rock.
A tiny sound from my right catches my attention. A breath. A sharp little inhale, she caught too late.
I turn my head.
"There you are," I murmur.
Silence. But I can feel her. I take a step toward the sound.
Gravel crunches behind me.
“Fuck.” I hiss.
She bolts.
She used herself as bait. She let me hear the breath on purpose, waited for me to commit, and broke from a second position I never even clocked. She moved behind me without making a sound.
A laugh tears out of me, muffled by the bandana.
"Oh, that was good, pretty girl. That was real good."
I turn and follow. She's pulling away from me now, boots hammering the hardpack, heading further from the bar and deeper into the open desert.
Time to change the rules.
I build the loop as I walk. Working the rope by feel, the way I've done ten thousand times on the ranch. Let the coil hang wide and loose. I don't need accuracy. I need the sound.
I swing it once above my head. Let the rope whistle through the air.
She hears it.
The shriek that comes out of her is something between terror and delight, a sound so loud it probably carries back to the parking lot. Her silhouette veers hard to the left, stumbling, and I let the loop fly wide on purpose. It sails past her by a good three feet and hits the dirt with a soft thud.
"You did NOT just try to lasso me!" she screams into the dark.
"Missed on purpose, Goldie. Next one won't."
"You're INSANE."
"You knew that when you started running."
She takes off again. Faster now. The near-miss with the rope must have kicked her adrenaline into gear, and I can hear it in the way her breathing has changed. She's sprinting flat out, and the sound of it sends something primal surging through my blood.
I stop walking.
I start running.
My boots pound the dirt, and the gap between us closes fast. She hears me coming and cuts right, dodging between two mesquite trees. I follow, ducking under a low branch, gaining ground with every stride. The desert blurs past.
I'm close enough to hear the ragged edge of each breath she takes. Close enough to see her glance over her shoulder, eyes wide, mouth open. She sees how close I am, and something between a laugh and a scream rips out of her.
She cuts a hard left without warning. Planting her boot and changing direction like she's shaking a tackle. I reach for her and my fingers close around her wrist.
Got her.
Except I don't.
She twists. Drops her weight. Yanks her arm down and through my grip with a move that's either self-defense training or pure survival instinct, and my fingers slide off her skin.
My momentum carries me forward, and my boot catches a rock.
I stumble. One knee hits the dirt. My free hand slams down to catch myself, and I'm eating dust while she tears away from me, cackling into the night.
"Oh, you're going to pay for that," I call after her, pushing myself up.
She's fast. She's always been fast. I brush off my knee and roll my shoulders. Settle my breathing. Pick up the rope from where I dropped it.
She's heading toward the dry creek bed that runs along the base of the mesa. It looks like open ground from a distance. But about two hundred yards out, the banks narrow and the brush thickens, and there's only one way through.
She's funneling herself into a dead end, and she doesn't even know it.
I adjust my pace. Not sprinting now. Long, easy strides that eat up the ground without burning me out. Just fast enough to keep the sound of my boots in her ears. Just close enough to keep the pressure building.
"You're heading the wrong way, baby," I call out. "But I'm guessing you already know that."
Her menacing laugh echoes around me.
My girl is getting tired, and she wants me to catch her.
The creek bed opens up ahead. A dark seam cut through the silver landscape, banks lined with salt cedar and dried brush that rattles in the wind. She drops over the edge and vanishes.
I stop at the rim. Look down.
The creek bed is maybe eight feet deep and twenty wide, with a sandy bottom and boulders scattered like stepping stones. The brush is thick enough to hide in but thin enough to hear through.
I build a fresh loop with a grin.
"I love what you've done with the place," I say, stepping down into the creek bed. My boots hit the sand with a soft thud. "Real romantic. Should've brought candles."
Silence. But she's here. The air is different when she's close. It’s charged. Fuckin’ electric.
I walk the center of the creek bed. The sand muffles my steps now. Good for her. Bad for me. But I don't need to hear her.
I need her to hear me.
"You know what I've been thinking about all night, Harper? That moment on the dance floor. When you told me you were soaked for me. In public. In those little shorts. Looking at me like you wanted me to take you apart right there on the floor."
A branch snaps somewhere to my left.
I stop and turn toward it.
"And I've been thinking about exactly what I'm going to do about that."
I take a step toward the sound. Another. A flash of blonde. Twenty feet ahead, darting between two boulders.
I run.
Full sprint down the creek bed, boots kicking up sand, closing ground fast. She breaks from behind the boulder and takes off. I'm right on her. I can see the swing of her hair, hear each ragged breath like it's being torn out of her.
I swing the rope. Let it whistle over my head once, twice. She hears it and screams.
"Ace, don't you DARE!"
I let it fly. The loop sails over her head, drops past her shoulders, and I pull it loose before it draws tight.
It falls away and hits the sand. Never meant to catch.
Just meant to make her feel it. Just meant to hear that sound she makes when the fear and the want blur together into something that drives me out of my mind.
She's slowing. The sand is deeper here, the banks narrowing, the brush closing in on both sides. The dead end I knew was coming. She realizes it a second too late and skids to a stop, spinning to face me.
I'm five feet behind her. My chest heaving, blocking the only way out.
Her back hits the sandy bank. Nowhere to go. She's panting, flushed, trembling, her hands flat against the dirt behind her. Her eyes find mine in the dark, and they're wild. Scared and burning and so full of want it nearly drops me to my knees for the second time tonight.
I close the distance. My arm hooks around her waist, and I pull her off the bank and toward me so hard the air leaves both of us.
She gasps. Her hands come up to my chest. Fingers twisting in my shirt, pulling me in even as her whole body shakes against mine.
I reach up with one finger and pull the bandana down so she can see my face. So she can see exactly what's in my eyes right now. Every ounce of hunger that's been building since she stumbled back into my life. Since she ran out the back door and made me earn this.
Her breath stutters. Her lips part.
"Caught you," I murmur.