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For a moment, he hangs his head. What we don’t need is him feeling defeated and guilty all day. That’d be a good way to get killed. I walk over to him and place a hand on his bicep. He lifts his gaze to look at me, and I do my best to explain that we need him to be strong right now with just my expression.
It seems to perk him up enough to lead us all back into the kitchen where he opens the laptop. The guys all huddle around and spit jargon about position, ammo, and signals. I’d rather not hear the gory details. At this moment, I wish I was the type of girl to jump in on the action, but I just don’t have the energy. I find the blanket that Gage brought, wrapping it around myself.
“So here’s the house they’re at,” Gage points to a spot on the screen. “It’s a mostly straight shot from the ranch on this road here.”
“We staked out until daylight. There was no movement on their end,” I hear Bash say.
“Maybe we should send a team back over there. Make sure they haven’t moved,” Warren suggests.
“No. That’s what they’d want us to do,” Heston counters.
“Do they even know Bash and his guys are here?” Tripp asks.
While they argue over protocol and bark opinions at each other, I slip out the front door and snuggle up on the bed swing I noticed when we walked in. It sways lazily from the momentum of my weight. I lay on my back, staring up at the hazy late morning sky scattered with thin wispy white clouds.
The sounds of nature and the gentle rocking lull my eyes closed, and I soak in the floating feeling that I know won’t last as soon as Gage or Warren find that I’m no longer inside the house.
A branch snaps not far away, and my eyes shoot open. It could be an animal. Or maybe not. Another branch breaks and I start to sit up, a little spooked.
I don’t even make it to a full sitting position before a white-hot pain sears through me. The liquid heat starts at the base of my neck and immediately bleeds to the rest of my body. It feels like I drank a boiling cup of water and it’s burning down my throat, making its way to my stomach.
My hand goes instinctively to the source of the feverish pain, and I feel a small metal tube sticking out from above my collarbone. I gasp in a breath and open my mouth to scream.
But no sound comes out before my limbs turn to water and the world around me fades to black.
Chapter 32
Gage
“The longer we wait, the more likely it becomes that they realize we’re on to them,” Warren says. “I say we ambush their little safe house before they know what’s coming.”
“We don’t know what we’d be walking into, though. At least here we have security cameras,” Tripp argues.
“Fuckno. Blythe is here. The last thing we’ll be doing is letting them know exactly where we are and bringing them right to her,” I bark.
Warren cocks an eyebrow but tilts his head like I made a good point. There’s an undertone of reverence between us. I know he’s not happy with what’s come to light today. Or rather, not happy with how I lied to him about it all for years. But we’re on the same page trying to make sure that Blythe is safe.
I hope he knows that nothing else matters to me at the moment. It’s a punch to the gut to realize that my carelessness has put her right in the middle of this dumpster fire.
If what Bash is saying is accurate—that they’re hell-bent on picking off our entire family until our father gives in to their demands—then by default, Blythe is looped in on it. They have the pictures to prove it. And there’s no better way to hit your target than to hurt someone that he loves. If they were smart, they’d use her against me. I’d do anything they asked if it meant keeping her out of harm’s way. Including forcing my father to help a dirty crook like Eddie Reynolds stay out of prison.
I look around to check and make sure that Blythe is doing alright. I know this has all been a shock to her, and if we weren’t pressed to make a quick game plan, I’d be talking through it with her right now. Begging her to forgive me. On my knees asking her to let me explain the best that I could. Every detail. Every motivation. Every reason. Every regret.
When she stood up for me at the bunkhouse, I swear my heart soared right out of my chest. She deserves every bit of my insistent apologies, no matter how much she thinks she doesn’t need them. She chose to not only believe what I was saying but to stand by my side after I said it. And I’ll keep trying to prove to her that she’s worth a million years of groveling.
But I don’t see her in the kitchen or the living room. There are several rooms upstairs, but there’s nothing in them. Other than a few boxes, they’re completely empty. And I would have heard her climb the steps to get there.
“Where the fuck is Blythe?” I growl.
“She was right there a minute ago,” Bash says.
I lock eyes with Warren, and he takes off in a sprint down the hallway. The vein in the middle of my forehead starts to throb as we all begin tearing through every room in the house. The pantry. Under the table. Behind doors and in closets.
She’s not here.
Tripp comes bounding up the stairs out of breath. “She’s not in the basement.”
Mirroring the rapid beat of my heart, the alarm sounds again in the house. The one that only turns on if the perimeter boundary has been set off. I rip my phone from my back pocket and click on the security app, but it’s taking too long to load.
