“Y-you th-think it m-might be a tr-trap?”
He nodded. “I do. What I need you to do is mind Hank and stay where he can see you. I’m serious, little fox. If you so much as move an inch from him, Kip, I swear on everything I am?—”
She pressed cold fingers to his lips, stopping him. “I won’t.” Her voice cracked. “Just promise me you’ll come back.”
She was breaking his heart.
Even though he didn’t have much time, he kissed her like it might be the last time. He kissed her hard and deep, tasting vanilla, salt, and fear. Then, forcing himself to let her go, he walked out before the sight of her standing small and terrified in that empty bar broke him in half.
Outside, the snow had turned serious, with wind driving it sideways and piling drifts against the tires of the trucks lined upalong the street. He climbed into his cab, slammed the door, and sat there for a second, engine idling, wipers beating a frantic rhythm against the windshield.
If this was a trap, they’d picked the wrong bait. If it wasn’t, Wesley Zhou was about to find out exactly what happens when you threaten his babygirl. Either way, Trace was done waiting.
Dropping the truck into gear, he floored the gas and headed toward the sheriff’s office.
CHAPTER 15
Silas deserved a drink to celebrate. He drove through the gates of the Three Eagles Ranch and turned toward town. Nothing beat the feeling of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat or so they used to say in that Olympics commercial. That was exactly what he had done earlier that day. He had snatched himself one giant victory over Mr. “My Shit Don’t Stink” Daniels.
Trace thought his daddy’s money and that fancy vet degree made him untouchable. Silas had watched him parade around town like he owned the air everyone else breathed. But that degree hadn’t done him a damn bit of good today. Word was already crawling through the county that Wild River had lost a bison to brucellosis. Ha! That was only the beginning. More were dropping. No fancy college classroom in the country taught a cure for what was coming. By spring, Trace and his brothers would be selling off carcasses for pennies just to pay the bank.
And all because Rios had contacts with some secret society, an Illuminati-type group that had its fingers in lots of technology-driven pies. The drone they’d sent him made contaminating those two feed bins a piece of cake.
But, hey, Silas was a generous guy. When the payout for erasing Rios’s little redheaded problem finally hit his account… and it would hit, the second Kip stopped breathing… he would take a chunk of that money and buy the Wild River Ranch straight out from under Trace Daniels and his family at the forced sale. He could already see the auctioneer’s gavel falling, hear the stunned silence from the locals when Silas Holt signed the deed.
He could practically smell the fresh sawdust from the new branding on the gate that would read Holt Ranch instead of Wind River. The weight of the keys to the big house, the same keys Trace had carried since he was sixteen, was gonna feel mighty good in Silas’s palm.
The grin that stretched his own mouth inside the dark cab felt strange. Trace was gonna learn no amount of money or education could stop a man like Silas once the right levers got pulled. By the time the brucellosis finished its work, Trace would be bankrupt, broken, and begging for a job mucking stalls on the ranch that used to be his.
Yep. Today had been a great day, and the future looked to be even better.
As he searched the radio for a good Willie Nelson song, his phone buzzed on the seat beside him. The screen lit the cab blood-red, something he’d never seen before. Lifting the phone, all it said was “Unknown Caller.”
It was well past six in the evening. What unknown caller would call him at this time of day? Only one way to find out.
He pressed accept and put it on speaker, hoping it wasn’t Rios. The man was as rich as Midas, but he scared the shit out of Silas. He gathered all the confidence he could and greeted, “Um…hello?”
“Silas Holt.” The voice on the other end was low, flat, and carried no accent he could place. Every syllable landed like a boot on gravel. Was it modulated? He’d read about things like that on the internet. “You will listen carefully.”
“Who the hell is this?” Silas swallowed. Maybe a call from Rios wouldn’t have been so bad.
“You will call me Mr. Zeus.” A pause, deliberate. “Mr. Rios is no longer your point of contact. I will be your handler now.”
His handler? What the fuck?
The cab seemed to grow colder even though the heater rattled on full blast. Most of the time, Rios had contacted him via text, but he’d had two video calls. Both times, Rios had smiled with too many teeth and left bruises on Silas’s pride that still ached. Men didn’t get scarier than Rios.
Until now.
Zeus continued, voice unchanged. “Wesley Zhou is at the county jail in Wilder. He was being questioned about an incident he had no business being involved in. He will be leaving Wilder tonight. That is where you come in, Mr. Holt. You will pick Mr. Zhou up from the jail and drive him to the Kooskia Reserve, where we will have a private plane waiting for him. We’ve programmed the address into your phone. Do you understand your instructions?”
Silas’s laugh shattered the silence. Time to grow a pair and show this Zeus guy who he was dealing with. “I’m a ranch hand, not a damn chauffeur. I’ve got things to do.” Things like getting drunk while listening to the talk about what happened at the Wild River Ranch today, but this Zeus guy didn’t need to know that.
The call went silent for so long, Silas wondered if Zeus had hung up, but then the man said, “I was told you were working for Mr. Rios.”
“Well, yeah, but I had a deal with him. I don’t know you. My deal with Rios had nothing to do with this Zhou guy. And I haven’t heard you say anything about money. Because this kinda thing wasn’t covered.”
Zeus didn’t hesitate in his response. “Check your account.”
