Over the wind, I hear the barn gate clang open and Romeo shout for Gabe to swing left. Luis whistles for the lead mare, trying to draw the herd toward the paddock. It’s chaos and through all of it, one thought anchors me: Delta is inside and safe and now it’s my job to make sure everything else is too.
We get it done fast, everybody moves like we’ve practiced it a hundred times. The cattle are pushed back into pasture, gates chained, horses in their stalls with grain thrown and doors locked before the wind really starts to scream. The second the last latch snaps shut, Cash, Gabe, Luis, and Romeo split off toward their assigned houses and I head straight for Delta’s.
By the time I reach Delta’s porch, the wind is loud enough to drown out my own thoughts, and I shove the screen door open and step inside fast, locking the door behind me out of habit before moving through the living room calling her name.
“Delta?” Nothing, so I keep going, “Delta,” again, but still nothing, and the house feels wrong because it’s too quiet, she talks to herself when she moves around, hums, clatters dishes when she’s thinking, and there’s none of that now.
I move faster through the kitchen, pantry, bathroom, bedroom, office, and guest room, all of them empty, and my stomach drops hard because something’s not right. My chest starts to tighten as I call Cash, and he picks up on the first ring saying, “Everybody’s inside here. You good?” and I answer, “No. I can’t find Delta,” which makes his voice go sharp when he says, “What do you mean you can’t find her?” and I tell him, “I’m checking the house now. I’ll update,” before hanging up and calling Romeo to ask, “You seen Delta?” and he says, “No. Last time I saw her she was with you,” so I tell him, “Stay inside until you hear from me,” and hang up and call Delta.
Her phone rings, and I follow the sound and find it on the floor next to the island, screen cracked and still ringing, and that is when I see it her earring on the tile right beside the phone,the set her father bought her, and she would not take it off, not tonight.
I look at the back door and pull it open it’s not locked, Delta would never leave it unlocked. I step out and the rain hits sideways, and on the ground right at the bottom step is her second earring, and my stomach drops fast and cold because she didn’t walk out here, someone took her out.
I shut the door and sprint upstairs to the bedroom and the nightstand and the top drawer where my 9mm is, the same one I’ve carried since overseas, and I grab two loaded mags and shove them in my pocket before I bolt downstairs and go straight to the side-by-side, the fastest way to track whoever dragged her off.
Key in, turn, nothing, and I hit it again, nothing, so I drop into the seat and rip open the access panel with muscle memory and see that the main fuse is gone, somebody planned this. Someone came on this ranch, in Delta’s house and took her and everything in me goes cold.
I run for the barn where the horses are losing it and Ranger is smashing the ground with his hooves and blowing hard and Coop kicks his stall like he’s trying to break it open, and the storm is coming in heavy and close, and I don’t have time to saddle anything. They know something is wrong. I grab the stall latch and Ranger nearly pushes the door into me trying to get out. I don’t blame him, I feel the same.
I don’t have a saddle and I don’t have time to grab one and no bridle either, just the halter, and Ranger is jittery and scared, but I get the halter on him anyway and he fights for one breath, then presses his forehead to my shoulder for half a second I grab the reins and swing up bareback, my thighs clamp down hard and Ranger is already moving before I’m fully on him.
Lightning flashes across the ridge as I lean forward, one hand on his neck, rain stinging my face, and I tell him, “Find her,” and he lunges forward like the command makes perfect sense.
The ranch disappears under water and wind, but there’s a clear direction broken branches, deep boot tracks, a dragged line across the mud and I don’t need trail skills because the land is showing me exactly where she went and every muscle in my body is locked in one direction: find her.
No name for what’s happening inside me and no time for it either because there’ll be time to fall apart later if I don’t reach her now, and Ranger surges faster, hooves pounding the soaked earth.
Someone touched her, someone took her out of her home, someone thought they could hide behind a storm, and they chose the wrong night and they chose the wrong woman and they chose the wrong man to leave standing.
I lower my body over Ranger and the wind hits like a wall, but we keep moving and I am going to get her back, no matter who I have to go through to do it. I shut every emotion off because I don’t have time for panic or fear or anything that could cloud my decision-making, but even with that switch flipped, I can’t stop thinking that Delta is a fighter and she will not go willingly and I just hope she doesn’t push whoever went to these lengths to get her over the edge.
Ranger and I surge forward, the rain hammering us, thunder ripping the sky open, lightning throwing jagged white light across the ridge, and then I hear her. Her voice cutting straight through the storm, sharp and furious. I push Ranger harder and he answers like he feels it too.
As soon as we crest the hill everything inside me narrows to one violent point, Delta and a man in the downpour. She’s doing exactly what I knew she’d be doing: fighting. She punches him, clean and solid, and for one half-second I’m proud of her in themiddle of a nightmare and then he hits her back and she goes down hard in the mud.
Everything inside me goes dark. I don’t think, I don’t plan, I just move, reaching behind me, I grab my gun, raise it, and aim.
Delta
The second I step into my house, I know something is wrong. I take a step and a voice comes from the shadows.
“Well. Look who finally came home.”
I freeze. Preston steps into view like he owns the place; hair overgrown, face gaunt, eyes crazed, and a gun in his hand like it belongs there.
My stomach drops, but my voice stays level. “What are you doing here?”
He laughs like he’s offended I even asked. “What am I doing here? That’s rich. Maybe start with ‘When did you get out?’ Or better yet ‘How did you find me?’”
“That too,” I say, because I’m not giving him anything.
He tilts his head, eyes wild and hungry for a reaction. “I walked out of prison months ago, Delta. And I spent every day of the last four years thinking about you. Thinking about what you did to me. How you blew up our company. How you humiliated me. How you divorced me, dragged my name through the mud, and left me to rot.”
“You embezzled,” I remind him. “You stole from the board. You stole from me.”
He steps closer, jaw ticking. “I built that business.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head once. “I built it, you funded it.”
