Chapter 33
WYATT
The couple of hundred yards between me and the yard feel like the longest distance I’ve ever crossed.
Rhett’s boots hit the ground behind me on my left, while Colt is a step back on my right, though I don’t turn to check.
The shots came from the yard. The scream came from the yard. There’s no way I’m following Rhett’s instructions now while she could be bleeding out in the dirt.
I cut around the right side of the house, rifle up, the barn doors lining up in my sights as I clear the corner.
And I slam to a stop when I find Marcus is standing there in his shirtsleeves with his hat in both hands.
He sees me and his face crumples.
“Wyatt, son—”
I don’t answer. I cross the porch in three strides and drive the butt of the rifle up under his jaw.
His head snaps back and his knees go from under him.
He hits the boards hard, face-first, his hat skidding sideways to stop against the rail.
I put my boot between his shoulder blades and bring the rifle to rest at the base of his skull.
“Where is she?”
My voice does not sound like my voice.
“Wyatt, I tried to stop—”
“Where is she, Marcus?”
Nothing.
“Where the fuck is she?”
He doesn’t answer. His shoulders are shaking under my boot. Not with grief, but with the kind of fear that finally catches up to a man who’s never had to live with his own consequences. And he does not give me one goddamn word.
Rhett comes around the left of the house with his rifle at low ready and a zip tie already in his free hand. Colt is a beat behind him, looking past us toward the yard.
“Dave.” The name is exhaled on a gasp as his face drops, and he takes off at a run.
Rhett takes in the scene in one look and drops a knee between Marcus’s shoulders.
I pull my boot off his back, step away, and the yard opens up to me. The F-250 sits broadside against the old pasture fence, the driver’s door hanging open, and the front-left tire shredded to the hub. There’s a long-gouged arc in the dirt behind it.
I cross the yard at a run, rifle up, sweeping every line of sight the place has to offer.
No Daisy. No Stan.
Colt’s got Dave, his belt cinched above a gunshot wound in his upper arm with the knot bit tight. Dave is face down with his head turned, his mouth open and his skin gray. The dirt under him has gone dark.
“Bullet went wide. Caught his arm.” Colt does not look up. “He’s lost a lot of blood, but he’ll hold if the paramedics get here quickly.” His gaze finds mine then, urgency pouring from those bright blue eyes. “Go, Wyatt. Find her. Go.”
I turn a full circle. The F-250 cab stands open and empty. Nothing moves in the drive or in the tree line.
“Marcus.” My voice carries across the yard to the porch. “Where in hell is she?”
There’s silence, then Rhett yells back, “He’s not talkin’, Boss.”
My head jerks toward the house.
“Daisy!”
Nothing back.
Uselessness claws at my damn guts as I dig my phone out of my back pocket, quickly scroll, and press her name.
It rings twice while I pace the yard, not toward anywhere in particular, just moving because my limbs don’t know what else to do.
My legs just about give out when she answers the call. I hear her breathing, stretched thin and held.
Then a man’s voice comes in through the speaker, gentle as a whisper.
“Come on down outta that loft, darlin’. No sense drawin’ this out.”
I stop dead in the yard. She’s opened the line, so I’ll hear where she is.
The loft. She’s in the loft. Run, you damn idiot.
I don’t waste another second, turn toward the hay barn, and sprint.
The hay barn doors are already open, so I slow at the threshold, going in quiet, with the phone between my shoulder and my ear and my rifle up.
It’s deceptively calm inside, with the sun cutting through the cracks in the west wall in long, hard slats. Dust hangs in the dim space, though my eyes adjust fast.
Stan’s voice carries through the air above me, a strange blend of gentle and taunting.
“I’m not lookin’ to hurt you, darlin’. Just come on down.”
I spot him, thirty feet ahead, and halfway up the loft ladder. His back is to me, and his gun is low and loose in his right hand, because he’s not expecting a problem behind him.
“Just gotta get this done. Then it’ll all be over. For both of us.”
My whole body wants to run at him but I clamp down on the urge.
Easing the phone out from under my jaw and sliding it into my shirt pocket, I keep the line open. Then I reach the base of the ladder and start up behind him.
I’ve been up and down this ladder my whole life. I know which rung complains and which one takes weight quiet, so my ascent is silent.
Stan’s boots clear the top and he swings up into the loft when I’m five rungs below him.
“Come now, Daisy.”
His voice comes down through the hay dust, close and encouraging.
“I know you’re up here, darlin’. It’s just us now.”
My fist closes hard on the rung, and I come up the last five rungs fast.
It’s the top rung that gives me away, a barely there creak in the wood, but Stan hears it and turns, the gun moving with him.
I drop my rifle in the hay and get my left hand on the barrel of his gun before he completes the pivot. Then I drive my right fist into his jaw.
His head snaps, but his knees don’t go. He stays up and brings his free hand across to grab the front of my shirt.
The gun is between us now. I twist it away from the bales where Daisy has to be hiding, get hold of his wrist, and wrench it back against the joint until I hear it go.
The bone goes with a crack that travels up my arms, and Stan roars in pain as the gun drops to the floor.
He swings at my face with his good hand, catching me across the cheekbone, and from somewhere behind the bales at the back wall, Daisy cries out.
Once I hear her, I lose the last piece keeping me in check and put him down.
The first punch takes his knees. The second shuts his swollen left eye. After that, I stop counting.
An animalistic sound fills my ears, and it might be him, or it might be me, but I don’t know, and I fucking don’t care.
My knuckles split on his teeth, but I keep going.
Vaguely, I register boots on the ladder.
I draw my arm back for another one when Rhett’s calm voice breaks through the haze. “He’s done, Wyatt.”
My fist stops half-cocked.
Stan is not moving, though he’s still breathing.
I push off him and stand. My hands and face are wet with sweat or blood—I don’t know which, because all I know is everything that matters is behind the stack of bales at the back wall.
“Daisy.”
My voice is wrong. It’s too damn rough, and I don’t know how to make it right.
“It’s over, baby.”
Nothing. My head is spinning and my lungs are on fire as I work to draw a breath when I go around the stack slowly, one hand open and visible.
And then I see her.
She’s wedged between the last bale and the outer wall, impossibly small, with her knees up to her chest. There’s a paring knife in her right hand, and her phone is cupped in her left, pressed against her chest. Her face is drained of all color, and her eyes are not quite focusing on me.
I go down to my knees in the hay in front of her, but I don’t touch her yet.
Instead, my hands come up slow and steady, palms open.
“Daisy-girl. You’re safe. It’s me.”
Something comes back into her eyes before she makes a sound that isn’t quite a word. Only then do both of my hands come to her face and I cup her jaw careful as anything I’ve ever held.
I don’t kiss her.
I don’t speak.
I barely dare to breathe as I look at her and run a check almost absentmindedly—thumbs along her cheekbones, down the sides of her neck, across her shoulders, her arms, her ribs through her shirt.
I reach for the paring knife and close my hand around her wrist to stop her from cutting herself, though my hand shakes worse than hers does.
Then I see her bare feet, all cut up and bruised, and my heart damn near breaks.
“Oh, baby.”
She blinks several times rapidly, and I can see when my features come into focus for her. She reaches out to brush the pad of her thumb across my cheekbone, making me wince slightly from Stan’s lucky shot.
“I’m okay, Wyatt. I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.”
She reaches for me, and the knife drops out of her hand, falling onto the hay-scattered floor. I pull her into my arms, and only then does she break wide open against my chest.
I hold her while she cries, my nose buried in her bedraggled hair. One of my hands cups the back of her head, while the other goes flat between her shoulder blades, and all the while, I’m shaking worse than she is.
After several minutes, Rhett’s voice comes up from the floor beneath us.
“Sheriff’s in the yard, Wyatt.”
I don’t answer him. I can’t.
Daisy is crying into my shirt with both her hands balled in the front of it, and I’m shaking against her, and the barn smells like hay and blood and her shampoo underneath all of it. And I’m sick to my motherfucking stomach that I could have lost her today.
“I’ve got you.” My voice is raw, torn wide open, and I don’t care. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
She says something into my chest that I don’t catch, so I ease her back just far enough to see her face.
My eyes flicker between hers as my thumb brushes over a tear-stained cheek. “Say that again, baby.”
“You came.”
Two words from her lips, and I’m on my knees for this woman.
“Course I came.”
My forehead goes to hers, and I close my eyes. Her breath on my mouth is the first clean air I’ve had in hours, and I breathe it deep into my lungs.
“I’d have come through that damn wall if I had to.”
She makes a sound, almost like a broken laugh. “I know.”
Then she reaches up, her fingers skimming along the edge of my stubbled jaw to find the old scar on my chin before resting her thumb against it.
Scars mean you survived.
I need to swallow roughly before I’m able to form words.
“You’re alright now. Hear me? It’s done.”
“Okay.” She nods under my forehead. “Okay.”