The gun twitches in his hand. I keep talking anyway. “You got four years in minimum security. A country club with a fence. You want to talk about hell? Try burying your father, try rebuilding your life while the man who was supposed to love you was busy destroying everything he could reach.”
His face goes red. “You ungrateful bitch.”
There it is, the real him.
“My father warned me about you,” he spits. “Said you’d never be satisfied. Said you were the kind of woman who’d ruin a man the second she got too big for her britches. I should’ve listened.”
I look at the door. Just a glance, a half a second, but he catches it.
His eyes narrow, sharp and ugly. “Waiting for someone to walk in and save you?”
I swallow and stay silent. He smiles. Mean. “Let’s go.”
“Over my dead body.”
He cocks the gun, metal clicking loud enough to slice through bone. “That can be arranged. Move.”
He grabs my arm tight and yanks me toward the back door.
I fight him every step, just slowing him down and forcing him to work for every inch. He gets angrier, which is good, angry men make mistakes. Inside the kitchen I rip the earring from my left ear and let it fall, small sound, but I hear it.
He shoves me forward. “Stop dragging your feet, Delta!”
“Fuck you,” I spit, twisting free just enough to make him lose balance for a second.
He recovers, jerks me outside, storm wind slapping both of us. Before he pulls me off the porch I rip the other earring free and let it drop right on the bottom step. Thunder shakes the air but he barely notices.
He yanks me again and we run—if you can call it that when I’m dragging my weight and slowing him down on purpose. He curses the whole way; high, frantic, unraveling. The lightning rips the sky open making my heart beat so fast it hurts. Preston digs his nails into my arm and pulls harder, storm swallowing his voice and the ranch and everything familiar, but I don’t stop fighting. Because Trace is coming. He will come for me. He will find me. And God help the man who put his hands on me when Trace finds him. We are almost to the access road and I knowit’s now or never if Preston gets me off the ranch I may not be found alive. I rip my arm from him pull back and punch him dead in the mouth he stumbles back dropping the gun and then punching me back so hard I fall to the ground. “Fuck, that hurt,” I think as I notice the gun right next to me. I grab it aim and fire. I hear another shot and watch my bullet hit him in his chest and another takes half of his head off, his body drops instantly. The tears threaten to clog my throat when I see Trace coming over the ridge on Ranger. I stand just as he reaches me, hopping off Ranger and pulls me in his arms. “I thought I lost you,” he breaths in my hair.
“You’re not getting rid of me that easy,” I tell him.
“Well this storm might get rid of all of us if we don’t get back to the house.”
“I don’t think Ranger can carry us both in this storm.”
“Then you take him, I’ll get home.”
Before I can argue, a frantic whinny cuts through the wind. Coop comes barreling down the ridge through rain and thunder like the devil himself is chasing him.
I hitch in a breath. “Problem solved.”
The second he reaches me, I swing onto his back. Trace gets on Ranger and we push both horses as fast as the storm will allow. The wind is a war drum at our backs, rain hitting so hard it feels like pellets. There is no time to talk, no time to think, just the drive to get home alive.
We hit the ranch grounds soaked, freezing, and running on adrenaline. We shove Coop and Ranger into their stalls, bolt the latches, drop feed and water, pat their necks fast, and sprint back into the storm. The sky cracks open behind us and Trace grabs my wrist and pulls me into the house, slams the door, locks it, then pulls me against him like he needs confirmation I’m really here and breathing.
I barely have time to exhale before he pulls out his phone and calls Cash.
“She’s safe,” Trace says immediately. “Yeah. Home and safe. We’re in for the night.”
I hear Cash yelling relief through the speaker.
He hangs up and calls Romeo.
“She’s home. I’ve got her.”
When he hangs up, his eyes come back to me like gravity.
He touches my cheek, gentle, hesitant like I might vanish. “What did he do? What happened?”
