We don't waste time after that.
Riley is already reaching for her phone before I finish the sentence, pulling up her contacts with the kind of focused calm that tells me she's running on the same frequency I am now, threat assessed, priority identified, moving.
"She's with Piper," she says, the phone already at her ear. "They were by the main stands."
I nod, pushing past people, my body already angled toward the stands while she waits for the call to connect. The rodeo feelssmaller than it did an hour ago, tighter, like the walls moved in while we were putting pieces together.
The call goes to voicemail.
Riley's jaw tightens. She tries again.
Voicemail.
"She probably can't hear it over the noise," I say, keeping my voice even, because one of us needs to be. The look on Riley's face tells me she's two unanswered calls away from losing that composure she holds so well.
We hustle through the noise of the grounds together, the rodeo still running behind us like nothing happened, like the world didn't just shift on its axis. The lights are bright and the crowd is loud and everything looks exactly the way it's supposed to look from the outside.
I hate that.
My eyes move automatically, scanning the way they've been doing all night, checking sight lines, checking exits, checking the spaces between things where someone who doesn't want to be seen would stand.
The truck is gone from the outer lot, and my chest tightens because that’s worse, not better, gone means it moved. It meanstiming, it means whoever’s driving it is close enough to adjust when I do.
We cut through the crowd fast, weaving between bodies that don’t move fast enough, shoulders brushing, voices rising around us. The crush of noise and heat pressing in as people shift and block our path just long enough to slow us down. Riley a half step beside me, her phone still in her hand, trying Piper again.
The stands come into view and I'm already searching faces, already looking for that small dark-haired girl who somehow managed to rearrange everything inside me in the span of a week.
I spot Piper first, standing near the edge of the stands, her own phone out, her expression carrying that specific kind of tension that hits me like cold water before I even reach her. Hadley not far from her.
"She is right here," Piper says the second she sees Riley, her voice tight, controlled but barely. "She just walked over there to talk to him for a second."
"Where." My voice comes out harder than I intend it to.
Piper points toward the far end of the grounds, toward the narrow corridor between the stock pens and the equipment storage, the part of the arena that sits just outside the reach of the main lights.
I'm already moving before she finishes the sentence.
Riley is right behind me, and I can hear it in her breathing, the thing she's holding back, the fear she hasn't let herself give a name to yet because naming it makes it real.
We clear the edge of the stands and I see her.
Hadley.
She’s too still, shoulders tight, her eyes wide and locked on something in front of her.
Standing twenty yards away, completely still, her small hand held by a man crouched down to her level, his back to us, his voice low, saying something I can't hear from here.
She's not crying.
She's not running.
But her eyes find mine over his shoulder the second I come around the corner, wide and uncertain in a way that hits me somewhere primal.
The man starts to straighten.
And when he turns around…
It's Colt.
