“Oh my God, when are you going to listen to me and get that badge out of your ass?” Weston groaned. “She’s not actually gonna kill them.” He looked at Delilah. “Right?” Delilah just stared at him, blinking. I had to bite back my smile; my girl had always been a little feral.
Weston swallowed. “Right?” he repeated, his voice cracking a little.
“They’re going after my reputation,” she said, voice clipped. “They’re dragging the ranch and Freedom Reins into this. And now, because of them, we might not be able to provide the carethese veterans deserve after they sacrificed so much. So yeah, I’m not above making those fuckers pay, and I’d do it with a smile on my face.”
The conviction in her voice was overwhelming. She wouldn’tactuallyhurt anyone, but her willingness to go to great lengths to help people—people like me—meant more than it should.
I cleared my throat. “I think it’s all connected. Ethan pulling the funding, the tack room, people checking Delilah’s past.”
“But the cameras didn’t show anyone unusual comin’ onto the property the day the tack room was trashed,” Beau said. “And the cameras weren’t hooked up in the tack room then.”
“What if they have someone working here?” Savannah said, glancing at all of us warily. “I know it’s a long shot?—”
“It’s not,” Levi interrupted, his voice grim. “I don’t know that there’s any length they won’t go to at this point.”
“I just don’t understand why,” Tess said, wringing her hands in her lap. “I thought they’d let it go when they lost the lawsuit with Savvy.”
“Bruised ego, sweetheart,” Levi said beside her. “It’s why they ruined the original merger in the first place.”
“Fucking ridiculous,” Claire snapped, arms crossed over her chest. “There has to be something we can do. Something permanent.” Delilah opened her mouth, but Claire stopped her. “That’snotillegal.”
Delilah rolled her eyes and slumped back against the couch, pouting. “You’re allsoboring.”
I laughed. Loudly. The room went silent. I froze mid-laugh, realizing what I’d done. Delilah stared at me like a deer in headlights.
I scrambled to come up with something to say. “Colt and I can keep trailing Ethan.” I scratched the back of my head, my heart in my throat over what I was about to offer. “And if we’re really serious about doing something, I have a buddy who’s—Colt, cover your innocent ears.” The goody-two-shoes actually did it. “He’s a hacker. I could reach out to him.”
I hadn’t called Jack Remington since I retired, but I would for this—for Delilah. I didn’t even know if he was still hacking, but I’d find out. After all her hard work, she deserved for Freedom Reins to be everything she envisioned. All the patients deserved this place to be the best it could be, too.
“Aren’t there other people we can talk to about a sponsorship?” Savannah asked. “This all feels a little extreme. Actually, it feelsa lotextreme. What if we get caught? What if the Hollises come back harder? Haven’t we all been through enough?”
Tess nodded enthusiastically, her brows knitted together with worry. “I agree.”
“Why don’t we try to find a new sponsor, and in the meantime, Emmett can call his friend just to be safe,” Claire suggested. My stomach dropped at the thought. What kind of asshole did that make me to call someone up for a favor after not speaking to them for years? A pretty fucking huge one.
“A bunch of smaller sponsors are just as good as one big one,” Weston added.
“Exactly,” Claire said with a curt nod.
“So it’s settled then. Look for new sponsors, keep tabs on Ethan, and Emmett’s gonna call his friend,” Beau recapped.
“Yep,” I confirmed, my voice tight. This was why I tended to keep my mouth shut at gatherings like these. I usually ended up agreeing to do something I didn’t want to.
Once the plan was set, and I got some information from Levi about Sterling and Preston to give to Jack, we all went our separate ways.
I stared at Jack’s name on my phone until the screen went dark. My stomach turned. I hadn’t spoken to him since I left themilitary, and the last thing I wanted was to crawl back asking for favors. Especially favors that weren’t exactly legal.
But for Delilah—for Freedom Reins—I’d eat that shame. If Sterling and Preston thought they could torch everything she’d built, they were about to find out differently.
I pressed call, praying he’d pick up and not hang up the second he heard my voice.
“Remington.” His voice came out clipped and low, and I was instantly ripped back into the past. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. The words were stuck behind my shame. “Hello?”
“Rem,” I rasped, bracing against the porch railing. “It’s Hayes. Emmett.”
“So you aren’t dead.” I winced. “Thought you might’ve gone off the grid.”
I peered over the ranch blanketed in shadows. “Kind of. I know I should’ve stayed in touch…”
