Chapter 31
WYATT
June’s got her feet up on my dash and her phone face-down in her lap, which means she’s watching me instead of scrolling, which is never a good sign.
“What?”
“Nothin’.”
I side-eye her. “June.”
“I was just thinkin’ it’s nice she’s at the house.”
I keep my eyes on the road.
“Mm.”
“You do remember how to have a conversation, don’t you, Wy?”
“Last I checked.”
“So how’s the house?”
“Standin’.”
“How’s the coffee?”
“Mm.”
“How’s Daisy?”
I glance over to find her smiling angelically.
“She’s good, June.”
“Good,” she echoes, all innocence. “That’s all I was asking.”
“Mm.”
“Just checking in on my brother’s general well-being. Making small talk. Bein’ a thoughtful passenger.”
“Uh-huh.”
She grins at the windshield and goes quiet for a while, which is how I know she’s not done. June’s quiet is never the end of anything.
Before she can pick up where she left off, my phone vibrates on the console between us.
It’s a number I don’t recognize, but a local code, and I’d do a lot worse to avoid the conversation June seems itching to have, so I pick it up on the third ring.
“Hartley speakin’.”
“Mr. Hartley.” A woman’s voice, too high and running much too fast. “It’s Alma. Alma Cutter. Daisy’s in trouble. Marcus Donnelly was behind the break-in. You need to go home right—”
June’s head comes up, but I don’t hear another word.
Marcus?
He came to the house yesterday morning and told us all June had called him. I’ve been replaying that for hours, trying to remember when June would have had the chance, and I never asked her because the world was on fire and it didn’t matter.
“June. Yesterday. Did you call Marcus and ask him to come out?”
She goes deathly still. “No.”
I called Marcus myself this morning and asked him to keep her company till I got home.
Fuck!
My hands have moved, and my foot is already on the brake. The truck’s tires chew gravel on the shoulder and I’m swinging the wheel through the hardest U-turn I’ve done in my life, the back end fishtailing before the tires catch the asphalt going the other direction.
June’s phone hits the floor of the cab.
“Wyatt—”
“Keep her on the line.” I toss my phone into her lap. “Get every detail. Every damn one.”
She doesn’t ask a single question, just scoops the phone up and puts it to her ear as I push the truck through seventy-five and up toward eighty.
I know the drive back to the ranch is eighteen minutes, the way I normally take it, but I need to do it in less. The speedometer needle climbs past eighty and keeps climbing.
The road out past Maggie’s runs straight for about four miles before it starts winding, and I’m going to take advantage of every inch of it. The engine complains. I don’t care. The tires are eating the road in a way I’ll pay for on my next oil change, and I don’t care about that either.
I called Marcus back to the ranch, and I’m going to live with that for the rest of my days.
Beside me, June’s hung up with Alma, one hand braced on the grab handle as the truck leans through a long curve.
“She’s gone to ring the sheriff.”
“Good.”
“Her boy Stan left the house this morning after they fought. Told her he was doin’ a job for his uncle. She thinks he’s with Marcus, or on his way to him.”
She pauses, then, “He’s in a black F-150. Older model, rusted out. And, if she’s right, he’s armed.”
The word armed goes through me like a shot.
My hands don’t shake on the wheel. They go completely still, because unsteady hands aren’t going to get her out of that house.
“Right.” I reach under the dash for the CB radio and key the mic. “Colt.”
A beat. Then his voice comes through, easy as the breeze.
“Big brother. You finished that paperwork already?”
“Colt. I need you to listen to me.”
He takes a breath on the other end and sobers instantly, “I’m listenin’.”
“Daisy’s in trouble at the house. Marcus Donnelly and that local boy, Stanley Cutter. He’s armed. I’m comin’ in hot.”
Silence on the line. Then—
“Where are you?”
“Highway out past Maggie’s.”
“Rhett and I are with the herd at the east ridge. Twelve minutes, maybe less. You want us at the house?”
“I want you at the house, parked off the drive, Moretti side, where they can’t see you. And I want you armed.”
“On it.”
“Quiet now, Colt. Do not announce. Do not turn up the drive. Bring some riders. I’ll meet you on the pasture side.”
“Copy that.”
The line goes quiet for a half-beat, and when Colt comes back on, his voice is different.
“Wyatt. She’s still alive, you hear me?”
“Yeah.” The word is rasped past the lump in my throat.
“Say it out loud.”
Inhale. In and out. “She’s still alive.”
He clicks off, and I put the radio back in its cradle.
The valley blurs past the windows, and the speedometer is sitting at eighty-seven, and what feels like a lifetime later—but is in fact seven minutes fifty-two seconds—I kill the engine a quarter-mile away from the ranch road.
We’re behind the stand of cottonwoods at the old Moretti fence line, where we know the truck can’t be seen from the main house.
June is out of the passenger side before I’ve killed the engine.
“Stay with the truck, June.”
She snorts, pulling her fair hair back into a messy knot at the nape of her neck. “I’ve been waiting six years for you two to stop being idiots. No chance in hell I’m sitting in a truck while someone tries to take it away from you.”
“June.”
“Daisy.”
It’s one word, but it says everything, so I don’t even try arguing with her, because every second I spend on it is a second I’m not closing the distance to Daisy.
I reach behind the seat and pull the rifle out of the rack.
The box of shells is under the driver’s seat, so I grab it, load the magazine, and chamber a round. Then I reach back under, coming out with my dad’s old Colt, and check the cylinder, nodding sharply when I find six in the wheel.
I hold it out to June, grip first, and she takes it without a word, smoothly tucking it into the back of her waistband under her shirt. Her hands are steady, her face is set.
The sound of an engine pulls my attention, and Colt’s truck rolls up quietly along the fence line, engine cut before he’s fully stopped. Colt swings out of the cab, and Rhett steps out of the passenger side as Miguel and Toby drop out of the bed with rifles already in their hands.
Rhett is across the grass to me before Colt makes it halfway. “Talk.”
“Marcus in the house. Stan with him, or on the way, driving an older model black F-150, rusted out. Dave was at the equipment barn this mornin’. Daisy inside, my bet’s on the kitchen. Pasture side’s our cleanest approach.”
He nods once before his eyes move across the five of us, the space between us, and the line of the house through the trees, and I can see him running a map internally.
“Colt and I take the back. Mud room door. Wyatt, take the east side. Porch.”
“Copy that.”
“Miguel, Toby. Wide west. Cover the drive. Either tries to run for it, stop them. Non-lethal if you can.”
“Understood.”
Rhett’s eyes land on June. “And if you’re gonna insist on comin’, you’re with me.”
June opens her mouth, closes it just as fast, then nods.
“We go quiet.” Rhett’s gaze shifts to each of us individually. “If shots fire before we’re there, we go loud and we go fast. Safeties off now, and stay on your line. Do not get ahead of your line, you hear me?”
A low murmur of assent filters through the group.
“And breathe,” he adds, looking at me when he says it.
Then we move.
The six of us cross the south pasture at a steady, low walk, angling for the cottonwood break that separates the main house from the hay barn. Colt and Rhett pull ahead on the left flank with June between them while Miguel and Toby peel right toward the drive.
I take the east side alone, my eyes returning repeatedly to the porch door, which is the fastest route to the kitchen.
The only sound I can hear is my own breathing and the pounding of my heartbeat.
I’m around a hundred and fifty yards from the house when the first gunshot rings out, a single crack, from somewhere behind the house near the equipment barn.
Every one of us freezes for the length of one heartbeat.
Then another gunshot, followed by Daisy’s scream. Every thought in my head disappears except one.
Get to her.
I break into a dead run. I hear Rhett behind me, and Colt behind him, and someone shouts something that I couldn’t give less of a fuck about because Daisy is screaming and she’s still alive, and as long as she’s still alive, I can get to her.
My boots eat the grass, and the cottonwoods blur past, and I cover a hundred yards in the time it takes to draw breath.
And although I’ve not prayed in thirty goddamn years, I find myself praying now.
Please, Daisy. Please, hold on.
I’m coming, baby.