by Cara Carnes
She’d been in one of the other two.
Rage consumed him.
“We’ll find her,” Mary said.
“I shouldn’t have let her stay there. I knew it wasn’t the right call,” Dallas said.
“You did it for her. For me,” Dani said. “That’s why you’re the right man for her.”
He looked over the woman who’d set aside her aversion to all things Mason because her best friend was now missing. Kidnapped from right under Dallas’s nose.
“Shouldn’t have let her run off like that,” Marcus said.
“That’s not on you,” Vi said. “Or Dallas. Or anybody. Someone was clearly watching the situation, recognized the opportunity, and took it. Now let’s get busy finding her. Henry Mills is our most likely suspect. He’s got several properties in this area. We just have to find the right one.”
“You think he’d take her to somewhere tied to him?” Marshall asked. “Not very smart.”
“No, but arrogant as fuck, which he is,” Jud said. “List the properties out. We’ll split up, hit them all. We can roll out in twenty, be there in ten.”
Dallas was down with that idea.
“I swear once we get her back, I’m strapping you all down and Lo-Jacking your asses,” Bree said. “Seriously. No one else is ever getting taken. Not on my watch.”
The blonde stormed out, tears in her eyes. Everyone watched her slam the door leading to where her lab was.
“I’ll go,” Rhea offered.
“No, let me.” Addy headed that direction. “Though Lo-Jacking us is a good idea.”
It was. Dallas looked at Mary and Vi, who were already looking at one another in that contemplative way. Yeah, they’d be chipping everyone soon enough. Never again would one of theirs get taken.
“This wasn’t very smart, Henry,” Kamren said. She glared at the man sitting across the small shack. In his expensive three-piece suit and fancy tie, he looked out of place in the old Canales supply shed. “Let me go, and I’ll pretend I got lost.”
“You’ve cost me a great deal of money.” Rage filled the man’s words.
“What’s wrong? Did your investors pull out when all the authorities started asking questions?”
“You bitch, you have no idea what you and your stupid old man stepped into.”
“No, but I wanna know. Why did you kill him?”
“Stupid, stupid bitch. I didn’t. I didn’t give a damn what he did or didn’t see because I knew as long as the money was flowing his mouth would stay shut. Who do you think was telling me which plots of land would be the smartest to get? And which Marville resident was hurting the most?”
No. Her dad may have been a bastard in many ways, but he wouldn’t have betrayed his neighbors like that. Then again, had he really been close to any of them? She squeezed her eyes shut and forced the skepticism away.
Ha. First use of the new word of the day.
Thoughts of Bree brought on the realization that The Arsenal was going to be mighty pissed. Dallas. Oh God, he’d been right there. Chasing after her.
Anger rolled in. Her man had been through enough. The kids had been through way, way too much. No more. She assessed her surroundings as she shifted awkwardly, raising herself to her knees.
The knife she’d tucked away at the small of her back was still there in its sheath. So were the twins. It’d become a secret ritual, one only Dallas noticed. She always, always kept them on her. A reminder.
She was strong.
She was fierce.
The thoughts bolstered her confidence. All she needed was patience. Let him spew his hate and rage. She’d take whatever he dished, then she’d strike when she got a chance. Get the hell out. Away.
Dallas would find her.
He just needed time.
Henry Mills had bought up lots of properties in the area, but there were lots of Arsenal teams and they were a short fifteen miles away and armed to take on third-world militaries. The stupid, arrogant ass spewing his bullshit wasn’t a match for them. She almost pitied the asshole.
“Heard you’re quite the tracker,” Mills commented. “Some of my clients enjoy some rather daring activities. I think you’d make an excellent game, wouldn’t you agree?”
Rage fired within her veins as the bastard nodded. Two large hooligans hauled her up, dragged her out of the small shack, and untied her hands.
What the hell?
“You want to go back to your man?” Henry grinned. “Go. You have two minutes. Then my clients give chase. You don’t want to get caught by them, Ms. Garrett. They aren’t very nice.”
God. God. God.
“Time’s wasting. Tick tock, Ms. Garrett. Tick tock.” He looked around at one of the other goons. “Start the timer. Two minutes. Then phone them, let them know their prey is on the run.”
Kamren fled. Mesquite bushes scraped her skin, leaving a trail of fabric, skin, and blood in her wake. Didn’t matter. Not yet. Distance was what she needed now.
It’d been years since she’d been at the Canales farm, but she’d once known this stretch of land well and had helped her father with its maintenance for a long time. They wanted to turn this into a playground? Damn bastards.
They’d never find her.
She retracted the knives from their sheaths along the curvature of her back. Idiots hadn’t even made sure she didn’t have weapons. She was sorely tempted to circle back and kill the bastards. Embrace her inner Jud. Or her inner Dallas. Yeah, that sounded pretty good.
But she wasn’t Jud or Dallas.
So she ran like hell, making sure she left as little a trail as possible. The extra seconds she took covering her progression could save her life. She didn’t know what his clients had in mind. Was it a giant mind fuck? Was anyone even giving chase?
That’s when she heard them. Catcalling. Screaming her name.
Terror rolled through her, then she remembered Mary’s lethal calm. Vi’s confidence.
Addy’s deadly stealth.
Those three wouldn’t ever run in terror. No, they’d plan. Fight.
Kill.
“We’ve got another one,” Jud shouted from a few feet away.
Dallas sprinted that direction. His gut twisted as he eyed the prone body. The man squirmed. Blood coated his pants from the savage knife wounds along the backs of his knees.
“Help me. The bitch is crazy,” the man said.
They’d caught Henry Mills on his way out of town, but the game had already been set in motion. Game. Disgust filled him as he remembered what the man’s bodyguard had shared. Seven hunters were looking for her.
“That’s three down,” Addy said, her pride evident. “I’m thinking she could teach us a few things. She’s got a natural instinct.”
“Thinking I’d rather not have my woman running for her life in a fucking pasture,” Dallas spat angrily as he sought another clue.
Jesse had been the one to notice the first one, back with the first man she’d taken down. A small heart with an arrow carved into the ground. Dallas spotted another and vaulted toward where the arrow pointed.
“This was fresh. We’re close,” Nolan said. “Jesse and Marshall took one of them down, that leaves three in play.”
“Make that two. Marcus and I just got another,” Cord said. “Pretty fucking impressed they’re all still breathing. Your girl’s good with traps. And knives.”
“Starting to really appreciate those knives you gave her,” Dallas admitted to Jud.
“Me, too.”
Together they continued in the direction of the arrow. Drones whirred past them.
“She’s circling back around toward…” Vi’s voice halted. “I think she’s going to her farm.”
“She’d know the land,” Zoey said.
“Justice, where it all started,” Dylan said into the com. “She’s going to stand her ground where the bastard killed her father. That’s what I’d do. Bleed him out where she found her father.”
“Country justice,” J
esse offered.
Fuck. Dallas sprinted toward where her farmland started. They weren’t far if they cut through brush country. The headset displayed their target location: where her father died. Dallas’s beautiful, brilliant woman was biding her time, hoping they’d show up in time.
“Erm, just a friendly reminder our girl is damn good at the whole escape and evade thing. So, traps,” Zoey said.
“Understood,” Gage said. “Fallon and I are coming up on the target zone from the west. Dispensing more drones.”
“Roger,” Mary said. Moments later, the woman’s voice returned to the com. “Final two targets have been spotted, in pursuit of our package.”
Son of a bitch.
“Drones have target in range. Firing,” Vi said. “One target down.”
The video feed spewed into his headgear as Dallas pressed on. Close. His lungs heaved air into them, expended it. Labored breaths entered and exited. Weapon drawn, he shoved through overgrown shrubbery, not mindful of the thorny thickets. Nothing mattered except getting to Kamren.
He pushed through the final patch of brush and entered the edge of the clearing where her father had died. The bastard was fighting with her. Drones buzzed and whirred, preparing to fire at him, but Dallas didn’t wait.
He knelt.
Aimed.
Fired.
He didn’t wait to confirm the kill. He never missed, especially not when it mattered.
Kamren rose from the ground where the bastard had punched her until she fell. Blood seeped from her mouth and nose. She looked at the dead man, then tracked the bullet’s trajectory. Her gaze narrowed, then she ran.
She powered into him in a crush of trembling limbs. “I knew you’d find me.”
“The swath of bodies was hard to miss,” Jud commented dryly as he and the others converged on their location. “Great job, Kam.”
“The man was a loon. He…they…” She forced a few deep breaths. “They were hunting me. Like an animal. They were nuts.”
“Looks like there’s another facet to the Henry Mills investigation,” Mary commented. “Get our girl home. We’ll take it from here, Dallas. Nolan, Sanderson, you’re point. Texas Rangers are inbound, along with the FBI. A couple of our girl’s captures are wanted in Louisiana.”
Three days later…
Things calmed after Henry Mills and his crazy clients were arrested. According to the FBI, the crew had been hunting people a while, mostly in the Louisiana bayou country where they were from. As far as the investigators could tell, Kamren had been their first hunt with Mills, which meant that hadn’t been the reason her father was murdered.
Though the why was still an unknown circling around Kamren, she’d reconciled herself to the fact that she’d done enough to get answers. She’d taken down Mills. Soon enough authorities would be picking over the rest of the Marville assholes, like Haskell.
She’d spent the couple days following her ordeal with Dallas and the kids.
Living.
Loving.
Being loved.
By the morning of the third day, she was restless. The women had convinced the men to let them have a girls’ adventure. This hadn’t gone over well, but the guys had grudgingly agreed since there were drones in place and since Jud would go with them.
Yikes.
Kamren rode her high of fantastic morning sex with Dallas all the way into Resino and straight into Bubba’s. To hell what anyone thought. The women around her laughed and chattered amongst themselves on the way over. There’d been a lot of talk about Mary’s and Vi’s upcoming nuptials. With Dallas’s sons home where they belonged, they both had ring bearers. That was Momma Mason’s latest declaration.
They were two drinks into their merry excursion when conversation shifted to Kamren. And Dallas.
“You and Dallas were hot and heavy last night,” Zoey commented. “Cord and I saw you two sneaking into the mess hall for a late-night snack. Must’ve worked up one hell of an appetite.”
Riley choked on her beer. Kamren wasn’t sure whether it was a good idea to divulge details about her late-night romp with Dallas, especially since he was Riley’s big brother. That. Ventured into TMI and downright weird territory. Since the woman’s eyes were bugged out and Rachelle looked like she was about to puke at the thought, Kamren opted to keep her reply short. “We had a good time.”
“Pfft,” Bree replied. “A good time is a nice steak dinner, maybe a walk in a park or something dull. What a good time isn’t is me and Cord having to take sound down on cameras in the cafeteria when you two decide you’d…”
“Woah!” Riley held up her hand. “Thrilled my brother has a good woman that brought him back to who he used to be, but I do not need details about how she’s doing that.”
“You want them together?” Rachelle asked, sputtering as she set the beer down.
“Well, first, I learned a long time ago that I will not ever get a say in who my brothers bed. Second, yeah. I was skeptical, but after hearing all the shit she did to get my nephews home, she’s earned my respect and my vote.”
“TJ isn’t even your nephew,” Rachelle retorted angrily.
“You shouldn’t mention what you see on feeds, Z,” Vi said. “We respect people’s privacy. Otherwise, Mary and I could ask you what’s up with you and Sanderson, seeing how he’s had you pressed against…”
“Okay, point made,” Zoey replied quickly. “And there’s nothing going on with me and Gage. He thinks I’m up to something, and he’s determined to keep you two protected from little me and my bad self.”
“Are you?” Mary asked.
“Nothing bad. You know where I used to work. I have secrets I can’t divulge, things I’ve done I can’t ever talk about.”
“We get that,” the two women answered simultaneously.
Everyone laughed.
It was well into the third drink when the atmosphere within Bubba’s shifted. Everyone around them silenced, as if prepping for an apocalyptic event. Hailey Suthers and her cronies walked in. Addy chuckled. Bree and Rhea shared wide-eyed stares at one another while Mary and Vi growled. Riley and Rachelle looked at Kamren, but her focus was on the parasitic bitch who’d date-raped her man.
She’d drugged him in this very fucking joint, gotten him into her bed, and raped him.
Since the high of her pleasure with Dallas was still humming within her veins, the rage hit fast. She didn’t want the bitch in the same air space as her man. Or Dylan. Neither of them deserved having to handle her existence within their world. The thought surged her forward as her focus tunneled on Hailey.
She was across the small room and had the woman pinned against the corner wall before anyone could stop her, not that she’d thought anyone would. The two women Hailey had entered with were already a good four feet away and looking over at Addy, who’d followed the flow of Kamren’s wake. The redhead was shaking her head and her finger in a don’t-even-think-about-interfering kind of way.
“She’s crazy!” Hailey shouted. “Someone call the sheriff.”
“You know me,” Kamren said, her voice low as the knife she’d drawn scraped against the woman’s cheek.
“Yeah, you’re the crazy Garrett, the one who can’t read, right?”
“Suppose that’s true. What I can do, though, is carve you up, gut you like a deer. I’d probably get it mostly done before you bled out.” She looked down as if assessing the possibility, then grunted. “Yeah, think I’d figure it out.”
“Let me go.”
“Why? You scared? You don’t want to be here? You don’t want my blade scraping your pretty face? You don’t want my filthy, uneducated hands on you?”
“Oh boy,” someone muttered.
“About damn time,” someone else replied.
Kamren didn’t know the patrons commenting, but their statements didn’t surprise her. The Mason were respected, especially in Resino. She was a bit surprised someone hadn’t already set Hailey straight about what she’d done to Dallas. The
n again, Mary had at some point when she and Dylan got together.
Hailey’s eyes widened as realization settled into her pea-sized brain. Kamren was pissed and no one in Bubba’s was gonna stop her from doing whatever she wanted to do.
“Yeah, I’m thinking I’m not the slow one in this conversation, so I’m gonna break it down for you real easy so you can keep up.”
The woman trembled as Kamren pressed the tip of the blade into her cheek.
“Rule one, you do not ever come in here again. You see a Mason truck in this lot, you keep going. For that matter, you see a Mason truck at the post office, at the grocery in Nomad, anywhere in the tri-county, you keep riding past. You don’t and I hear word you breathed the same air as my man, I’ll scrape the skin clear off you. I even know someone who’ll teach me how.” She motioned to Jud, who’d moved to stand nearby.
Arms crossed, he smirked as he quirked his eyebrows, leaned back against the wall, and watched.
“Make no mistake, Hailey, you breathe the same air as my man or any of his brothers, I will find out. There’s not an inch of the tri-county you can hide in because I know it all. If I can find a little boy in millions of forested acreage, I can damn sure track your worthless, man-raping filth down.” She paused for effect. “Nod so I know you understand.”
Hailey glared. Kamren pushed the blade just a bit harder, enough to prick the skin. Hailey nodded.
“Good. Now, rule two’s gonna be a bit harder for you to follow along with, but we’ll go slow. You do not ever speak about my man or his brothers or anyone out at The Arsenal. I’ve heard the shit you’ve been saying about Dylan. And I know the shit you’ve said about the woman he’s marrying. You spew that filth all over the tri-county. If I even get a whiff of that shit coming from your mouth again, getting skinned will be the least of your worries. I can shoot a grape from a thousand yards. You’re way bigger than a grape.”
She gulped.
“Now, should you or anyone else feel the need to share this conversation with someone or should anyone ask about your past experience with my man and his brother, you had better set the record straight so that everyone knows you’re a man-raping scumbag bitch who does not ever deserve good men like them.” She released her grip. “Now get the fuck out of my space before I get pissed.”