Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 43512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
“He would,” I say, stepping closer to the receiver. My voice drops into something steel. “He already did.”
Silence on the line. Then Clay’s voice comes back, quieter. “Who is this?”
“Nash Hawthorne,” I say.
A beat.
“I heard you were dating Delaney,” Clay says, and there’s something wary there now. “This is— this is serious.”
“It’s past serious,” I tell him. “If you’re behind this, you’re done in this town. If you’re not behind this, you’d better start talking.”
Clay exhales, shaky and angry. “I’m not behind it. I made an offer. A legal offer. I don’t kidnap girls.” His voice hardens. “Kyle has been… unstable lately. He’s been drinking. Acting out. I’ve been trying to rein him in.”
Mr. Coleman’s hands shake so badly the phone rattles. “Where would he take her?”
“I don’t know,” Clay says, and the fear in his voice sounds real now. “But— there’s a place. One of our hunting leases outside of town. A little house on the edge of the quarry road. Kyle used to sneak out there in high school. Parties. Stupid crap. I can give you the address.”
Gray’s text pings my phone at the same time: TEAM EN ROUTE. ETA 5.
I meet Mrs. Coleman’s eyes.
She’s crying silently now, but her gaze is fierce.
We’re all thinking the same thing. We don’t have time to waste.
“Send it,” I tell Clay. “Now.”
Clay rattles off the location. I type it with hands that want to break something. I send it to Gray along with the photos from the scene.
“You’re going to find her,” Clay says, voice hoarse. “You have to. Kyle— he’s not thinking straight.”
“If she’s hurt,” Mr. Coleman growls into the phone, “I will burn your entire legacy to the ground.”
Clay makes a sound like he believes him. “I understand.”
Mr. Coleman hangs up.
The kitchen is thick with fear and fury.
Mrs. Coleman wipes her face with the heel of her palm. “Bring my baby home,” she whispers.
I step in front of both of them, letting them see the part of me that is not joking, not soft, not pretending. “I will,” I say. “I swear it.”
Outside, engines roll up the drive like thunder.
I move to the window.
Two trucks. Dark. Purposeful. Lone Star.
Gray steps out first, all sharp lines and calm control. His daughter Josie isn’t with him—thank God—but his eyes are brutal as they meet mine through the glass.
Behind him: men.
The kind of men who don’t ask twice.
Lone Star Security. Jack steps up, shaking my hand. “We’ll find her, brother.”
Aaron, Maverick, and Cade step up behind him. “We’ve got this.”
I feel better knowing my team’s got my back. These men are more than a team. More than Lone Star Security. These men are my brothers. Not blood. But just as important.
A found family.
My chest tightens with relief and rage in equal measure.
I step out onto the porch.
Gray meets me at the steps, voice low. “Address received. We roll in sixty seconds.”
I nod once. “He took her because they wouldn’t sell.”
Gray’s jaw flexes. “Then we make him regret ever learning her name.”
The men gather behind him, checking radios, loading equipment, faces set.
I look at them and feel something in my blood shift into certainty.
Kyle Stroud thinks he just took leverage.
He has no idea what he just started.
And as the team finishes assembling in the drive—boots on gravel, radios crackling, engines idling like restrained violence—I make myself one promise, clear as a shot: we’re bringing Delaney home.
And when we do… someone is going to pay.
SIXTEEN
DELANEY
The little house on Quarry Road smells like cold grease and old beer. And loneliness.
I’m tied to a chair in the living room—wrists bound behind me, ankles cinched to the legs—my boots planted on scuffed linoleum that’s seen too many bad decisions. There’s a sagging couch, a mounted deer head with dusty glass eyes, and a coffee table littered with empty bottles and fast-food wrappers like Kyle Stroud’s version of “setting the scene.”
Kyle paces in front of me like a man trying to outrun his own thoughts.
His nice clothes are rumpled now. His perfect hair is messed up. There’s a dark smear on his knuckle from where I bit him earlier, and he keeps flexing that hand like he can’t decide whether he’s angry at me or impressed.
Behind him, his buddy—big guy, cap pulled low—leans against the kitchen counter, arms folded, watching like this is a movie he paid to see. He hasn’t said much. He doesn’t need to. His silence is the worst kind of intimidation.
Kyle points at me like I’m the problem in an equation.
“You could’ve made this easy,” he says, voice too loud for the size of the room. “You could’ve just come with me.”
I swallow and force my breathing to stay steady. Panic helps no one. My daddy taught me that when I was ten and a bull got loose at branding: breathe first, think second, move third.