The Bequest

by Hope Anika

  “She’s okay,” Cheyenne told him. “She went after him, you know.”

  “Good girl,” Rafe murmured to the pup, who thumped him with her tail.

  Cheyenne reached out and rubbed her silky head. “She deserves a treat.”

  “Rafe.”

  They both turned at the sound of Will’s voice. He stood staring down at Rafe’s blanket.

  “What?” Rafe asked.

  “Come here.”

  Something in his tone made the hair at Cheyenne’s nape bristle. He stood motionless, fists clenched at his sides, his entire being so tense it made her spine ache. Dread blossomed, thorned and toxic in her belly. But Rafe didn’t hesitate, and she was forced to follow him, until they both stood beside Will, staring down at the blanket.

  “What?” Rafe asked again.

  Will’s gaze didn’t waver, and Cheyenne tried to figure out what he was looking at. The blanket was actually quite beautiful with neat rows of yellow and red squares. The border was a deeper red and along the bottom of one edge there was a tag sewn onto the blanket, a narrow ribbon of black satin with a line of golden embroidery—

  “Where did you get this?”

  The softness of Will’s voice made her stiffen. Rafe looked up at him, his eyes widening. “My…my ma sent it to me.”

  “When?”

  Cheyenne’s heart began to beat hard and strong, and an ominous feeling of portent washed over her. She knelt down next to the blanket to get a better look.

  “For my birthday,” Rafe whispered. “Last month. Why?”

  Because the glinting gold thread on the tag wasn’t the name of the weaver. Or the weave. Or even washing instructions.

  It was a set of GPS coordinates.

  “Holy shite,” she said.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Will’s brain knew immediately. It was his mind that needed a minute to make sense of what he was looking at. What he was seeing.

  And then—

  Here the whole fucking time. You stupid son of a bitch.

  Will knew those coordinates. He’s spent too many years in Afghanistan not to recognize the latitude and longitude instantly. Further east than Kabul, close to Pakistan.

  Jalalabad.

  “Are those what I think they are?” Cheyenne asked and looked up at him, her cheeks stained with dried tears, her eyes as dark as the forest behind them.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “They were here all along.”

  “Yes.”

  “I…I don’t understand,” Rafe said, his voice trembling.

  “We need to go,” Will said again. Adrenaline was surging through him; the blows he’d taken throbbed, and his nose was bleeding. The hair at his nape was doing its get the fuck outta here dance. He’d known when he’d awoken that something was coming. And his skin was still itching.

  This wasn’t over.

  He pulled out his knife and kneeled next to Cheyenne. Her scent washed over him, and the taste of her filled his mouth, and his heart threatened to pound its way out of his chest. Blood roared in his head.

  Gunfire and screams and sand scouring every pore.

  He fought viciously for control. Too much stimuli; memory bleeding over reality, every goddamn thing he felt swelling, a monstrous wave that would carry him from this place, this moment, and drown them all.

  Cheyenne took his knife from him, and he watched while she cut the tag from the blanket and held it out to him. His hand shook as he accepted it, and he didn’t argue when she leaned over and slid his knife back into the sheath he wore strapped to his belt.

  “I don’t understand,” Rafe said again, and Will could hear his anger and fear, the borderline hysteria that rode him.

  Almost getting kidnapped and being thrown into a trunk could do that to a kid.

  “There are GPS coordinates on the tag,” Cheyenne told him and stood. She reached out and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. The other she laid on Will’s shoulder, and the tensile comfort of that touch brought his pulse down a notch.

  “You mean….” Rafe looked at Will, and what little color he’d had, fled. He turned pale, and he swayed, and Cheyenne gripped him harder. “That’s…that’s where the bombs are?”

  “Maybe,” Will said, but that was bullshit, because he knew that’s where they were. Every instinct he had was singing out, a fucking four-alarm choir of certainty.

  “She put it on my blanket?” Rafe voice rose. He stared down at the bright coverlet and squeezed Lucky so tight, she whined softly. “Why would she do that?”

  “Easy,” Cheyenne told him.

  “I didn’t know.” His gaze flew to Will. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, and his voice grew panicked. “I swear, I didn’t know, Will. It came in the mail and…I didn’t know.”

  Will’s chest went tight, and he reached for the boy, pulling him into a fierce hug. “It’s okay. I know.”

  So damn fragile. Nothing more than skin and bones; so easily broken. His heart had stopped at the sound of Rafe’s scream, and the sight of that huge, ugly asshole swinging the boy into the trunk had sent terror shearing through him. The rage he held barely contained had surged to the surface and led the charge. If it hadn’t been for Rafe, Will would have killed him.

  “We should go,” Cheyenne echoed his words, her voice urgent. Her hand squeezed his shoulder, and Will stood, carrying both Rafe and the pup. Cheyenne grabbed the blanket, and as they strode toward their camp, Will kept a sharp eye and ear out. For a Ranger, for anyone watching, for another one of Malik’s people. The phone he’d taken from the asshole who’d tossed Rafe into his trunk was in his pocket, but it was a burner, and when he’d dialed the only recent number on the phone, a code had been required to connect. A code he didn’t have.

  He will send another, the man had warned. He wants his son. I am only the first.

  Which was great fucking news.

  The knowledge that he finally—finally—had the location of the cache was like a drumbeat in Will’s skull. Every nerve prickled; every muscle was tense, waiting, ready to act. He had a location. A motherfucking location. All he had to do was find it. Retrieve the cache. Get it somewhere safe.

  “I’m sorry,” Rafe whispered, his head tucked beneath Will’s chin.

  “Don’t be,” Will told him. “How could you know?”

  “I should have figured it out.”

  A harsh laugh caught in Will’s throat. “I didn’t figure it out. Cheyenne didn’t figure it out. Why would you?”

  “Because she was my ma. I should have known—” Rafe went tense in his arms and looked up at him so quickly, he nearly smacked Will in the jaw with his head. “Holy shit!”

  He began to wiggle in Will’s arms, and Lucky yipped, and Cheyenne said, “What?”

  “Ruby!” he yelled, pushing against Will’s hold. “Put me down. I gotta get something!”

  “Huh?” Cheyenne said.

  Will put him down, and Rafe raced toward the Jeep without responding. They quickly followed, and Will grabbed the bag with the tent in it and both sleeping bags as Cheyenne picked up the camp chairs, and they tossed everything in the back of the Jeep while Rafe dug through the backseat. Lucky looked on curiously.

  “Is that everything?” Cheyenne asked.

  She was pale and strained, her eyes dark in her face. Unlike that morning, when her cheeks had been flush with color every time she looked at him, her manner almost bashful, something which had surprised Will. But she hadn’t shied from him, hadn’t denied his touch, and when he’d pulled her behind the Jeep and put his mouth on hers, she’d wrapped herself around him and made him forget what day it was. There was nothing of that shared, secret pleasure left. Just reality.

  Fear.

  Will reached for her and pulled her into his arms. Her arms came around him and held on for dear life, and he realized she was shaking. He wanted to tell her it would all be okay, that nothing else bad would happen, but he knew it would be a lie. And she would know it, too. So he said
nothing and just held her, swaying a little, and pressed a kiss to her hair.

  “We have to go,” she muttered, rubbing her cheek against him, and his heart squeezed tight in his chest, because in that moment, he understood how important she and Rafe had become.

  Everything.

  “I found it!” Rafe cried, startling them both. He opened the Jeep door and spilled out. In his hand, he held a greeting card sized envelope. “When we went to Letitia’s, Ruby put this in my pack. She said it came for me, and she kept it because she didn’t want her ma to get it, and so she stuck it in the outside pocket of my backpack when she pulled me into the bathroom!” Rafe took a breath, his words falling over each other as he tore the envelope open. “But I forgot about it, and then I got a new pack, and I didn’t even remember she’d put it there and—it’s a key!”

  A key.

  Will’s hold on Cheyenne tightened.

  Here the whole goddamn time.

  Rafe held out the key, which was taped to a piece of plain white cardboard. There was nothing to go along with it: no hint of what it might unlock, no clues to where it fit, no words of any kind. Just a plain silver key taped to a piece of white board.

  Will took it and slid it into his pocket. He could hear a vehicle approaching.

  “Get in,” he told Rafe.

  “But—” Rafe said.

  “Now,” Cheyenne said and opened the door and pushed him in.

  They climbed in after him, and within a minute they were headed out of the monument, driving along the winding road that led back out to the freeway, the hills lit into deep red and orange by the rising sun. Silence permeated the Jeep.

  “The key…that’s important, right?” Rafe asked hesitantly. He sat forward, one hand on the back of Cheyenne’s seat, one on Will’s.

  “Definitely,” Will said.

  “The location and a key,” Cheyenne said. “My guess is you have what you need.”

  Everything within Will went still. “I’m not going anywhere,” he told her softly, furious she would think—

  “Will. You have to.”

  His hands gripped the steering wheel so tight, it groaned in protest. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “They’re bombs.”

  “I made you a fucking promise.”

  “Can’t you call somebody?” Rafe asked, his face solemn in the rearview mirror. “Have them do it?”

  “No one I trust,” Will replied grimly.

  Sad but true.

  “You have to go get them,” Cheyenne said quietly, her voice intense.

  “No,” he said shortly.

  “We’ll be okay—”

  “Were you paying attention back there?” he demanded. “Because that wasn’t about the cache. That was about Malik. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “But the cache—”

  “Fuck the cache.”

  Silence. The morning was golden, streams of light filtering through the pines as the sun continued to rise. The hills were covered in sage and pine and scrub brush, and high above, a hawk circled in search of breakfast. So calm and serene and beautiful; the antithesis of what he felt.

  “You gotta go,” Rafe said finally. “If those bombs go off and kill people…I don’t wanna live with that.”

  “Me either,” Cheyenne said.

  “You aren’t safe,” Will bit out. “That asshole is only the beginning.”

  Next to him, Cheyenne went still. “Is that what he told you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shit,” Rafe said.

  Cheyenne shook her head sharply. “It doesn’t matter. You still have to go.”

  “Christ,” Will snarled.

  “Seriously,” she said. “We’re almost home.”

  “And what then?” Will asked her. “Your army will defend you?”

  She reached over, curled her hand over his thigh and squeezed. “If necessary.”

  “Army?” Rafe repeated.

  “You have someone there?” Will asked, startled. Someone else. Something he hadn’t even considered; something they’d never spoken of. He looked at her, and the ground shifted beneath him. “Who?”

  “I can make some calls, if necessary,” she replied calmly.

  “Are they armed?”

  “It’s Wyoming. Everyone’s armed.”

  “Who?” he asked again, unsettled by the thought.

  “Angus has an entire crew of ranch hands. If I need them, they’ll come.”

  “Who’s Angus?” he wanted to know.

  “A friend.”

  “What kind of friend?”

  Cheyenne smiled at him, clearly amused. “An old one.”

  Will wondered what the hell that meant, but she only shook her head, her smile fading. “I mean it, Will. You need to deal with this. We can stop in Gillette and rent a car. You can take the Jeep to Denver—it’s probably five, five and a half hours—and Denver has an international airport. You could be on your way by tonight.”

  He should have leapt at the chance. Half of his goal was within reach. But he wanted Malik’s head on a pike, and everything within him rebelled at the thought of leaving them unguarded. He didn’t give a shit about some yahoo named Angus and his collection of cowboys—no one would protect Cheyenne and Rafe like he would. He didn’t trust anyone else to do the job. And his instincts were telling him that job was far from done.

  “No,” he repeated, his tone harsh with finality.

  “Goddamn it,” Cheyenne said and smacked him in the thigh. “Don’t be a jackass about this. This is more important that we are.”

  Will looked at her. “Nothing is more important than you are.”

  She stared at him for a long moment, color slowly filling her cheeks. “Thank you for that. But you know I’m right. We’ll go through Yellowstone. There will be people everywhere, and I know those roads like the back of my hand.”

  “Like there were people at the Badlands? At the Tower?”

  “It’s Yellowstone. There are always people. We’ll be okay. And once we get home, we have the advantage. I have weapons. And friends. You have to trust me.”

  Son of a bitch.

  She was right. That cache was bigger than all of them; no soldier would sacrifice an entire unit for the safety of a few. He knew better. But the thought of walking away from them—especially after what just happened—went against every cell of his being. It felt like betrayal, even though she was telling him to go. Another fucking failure.

  “It’s okay, Will,” Rafe said, his gaze grave in the mirror. The boy’s eyes always struck him anew, their difference in color, their seriousness. The old man who looked back at him. “You have to go. Just…come back.”

  For a long moment, Will didn’t say anything. It felt wrong, to leave them. Deep in his gut, wrenchingly wrong. But leaving that cache sitting anywhere unprotected was just as wrong. If it was even still there. Because there was no guarantee someone hadn’t found it. Georgia hadn’t been working alone. Malik, Ethan, Frank James…any one of the men in the book, in the video…just because the enemy was still faceless didn’t make them any less of an enemy. And while he had friends in Afghanistan, there was no one he could send the key to and have them search out the cache. No one he trusted that much. He would have to go, see for himself. And then—if the cache was there—get it someplace safe.

  “Fuck,” he said.

  And Cheyenne sighed, as if she’d heard his capitulation. “Stubborn man. Just like a mule.”

  “You have to go straight home,” he told her, his voice tight, his stomach heavy with dread. “No more side trips, no more sightseeing. You go home and stay there.”

  “Cross my heart,” she replied.

  “I mean it, baby. No fucking around.” His voice was harsh; fear for them filled his throat. “You get home, and you shoot at anything that moves until I get there.”

  “We’ll be okay,” she said again. “We’re not the ones going into a war zone.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  She
pinched his thigh, hard. “You’d better be.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Rafe stared at the shimmering mass of Yellowstone Lake and wondered if he would ever see Will again. When they’d parted in Gillette, Will had hugged Rafe hard and told him he’d be back soon. But Rafe wasn’t so sure. Because Will finally had what he’d been looking for all along: the location of the cache. So there wasn’t really any reason for him to come back. And he wanted revenge, too; maybe when he found the bombs, he would figure out who Rafe’s ma had been working with. Maybe he’d just go for blood and forget all about them.

  It could happen.

  Even though before Will left, he’d kissed Cheyenne—really kissed her—and told her to be careful, that he would see her in a few days. Even though he’d given her the wicked looking knife he carried and his gun.

  Big hairy deal, because even Rafe knew you couldn’t fly with weapons. It meant nothing that he’d left them with her. That he’d kissed her didn’t even mean anything: lots of people kissed each other. It didn’t tie them together. Will could have just as easily been kissing her goodbye.

  It wasn’t that Rafe didn’t trust Will, that he thought Will was lying…he just knew things could change. That those bombs were bigger than him and way more important. And who knew what might happen when Will went to get them? Because Cheyenne was right, Afghanistan was a war zone, and SEAL or not, war was dangerous. Anything could happen.

  So Rafe wasn’t going to count on seeing him again.

  On being rescued by him again.

  The kidnapping attempt had scared the shit out of him. He hadn’t had his taser or his knife—both of which were now in his pocket where they would live for the rest of his life—and hell, he hadn’t even been paying attention. He’d been folding that damn blanket, totally assuming he was safe, which was just about the dumbest thing he’d ever done. No one was ever safe. Life didn’t work like that. Shit, he knew he was a target; there was no excuse for his stupidity. Except that Cheyenne and Will made him feel safe. And in the end, they’d kept him that way. Still, he knew better.

  The memory of that guy grabbing him replayed again and again in his head. He could feel the man’s strength crushing him, smell the stink of his hand, remember how the carpet that lined the trunk felt pressed against his skin. And even though he now sat beside Cheyenne, Lucky in his lap, his heart still beat hard and fierce in his chest as the memory washed over him; his stomach still churned.