“Good to see you again, Masters,” Ziegler snarled, as he yanked her to her feet. She groaned again, stumbling as her body screamed in protest. She wanted to rip her arm from his grasp, but she didn’t have the strength. All she could do was hang there like a rag doll and pray he finished her off quickly. Her body was utterly wrung out from everything she had endured. She couldn’t even find the words to tell him what she thought of him and his cronies and what they’d done.
He leaned in close, a grin on his face that didn’t reach his eyes.
“Thanks for making this so easy for us,” he said, sneering.
With that, he shoved her toward the other men as everything faded to black, the headlights still burning the back of her vision.
Chapter Twenty
“Take the last of the buckets around to the other corner!” Xavier called to the group, and a few men hurried to take a couple more buckets full of water to the far edge of the paddock. Aaron breathed a sigh of relief as soon as he saw them douse out the last of the flames. It was over, thank God.
Everyone was shaken, but nobody was actually hurt, which had to count for something. The horses were okay, too, though it would take a while for them to fully settle again. The fire hadn’t reached the main lodge, and the county fire services had finally arrived and managed to put it out at the edge of the forest. Everything was under control for the time being.
Aaron sank down to the grass for a moment to catch his breath, and unwrapped the sleeve he had tied around his mouth. Tilting his head back, he drew in a deep lungful of air. Not exactly clear yet, but the smoke was at least starting to fade now.
Everyone had backed off to a safe distance now that the fire was actually contained, and he scanned the group, searching for Bailey. He hadn’t seen her since that brief moment when the fire first started, but she must have been out there helping, right? It was all such a blur.
But, as he looked around, his heart started to hammer in his chest again. Where was she? He couldn’t see her anywhere. He hurried toward the crowd that had formed near the front entrance to the main lodge, hoping she was just buried somewhere toward the back—she couldn’t be missing. Not on the night of this fire. It would have been too much of acoincidence, and he knew she wouldn’t have walked away from them right now unless she had a really good reason.
Or, unless someone forced her to.
“River, Hannah,” he called to the women when he spotted them together.
They both turned to greet him.
“Hey, what’s up?” Hannah called back. Her face looked drawn and worried, and he wondered if she had noticed that Bailey was missing, too.
“Have you seen Bailey?” he asked them.
They exchanged a look, and then shook their heads.
“Haven’t seen her,” River replied. “Why? Is something wrong?”
He shook his head, panic starting to rise. He needed to find her, right the hell now. He could feel it in his chest, how bad it would be if he didn’t locate her. He couldn’t let anything happen to her. Not after he had given up so much to keep her safe in the first place.
“You’re looking for Bailey, right?” one of the guys asked. He was a relatively new arrival at the lodge, and Aaron didn’t know much about him, but if he had some information about Bailey, he was going to hear it.
“Yeah, yeah, I am,” he replied. “Have you seen her?”
“I saw her driving off a few minutes after the fire started,” he replied, pointing down toward the road that led away from Warrior Peak. “In that direction.”
Damn. Aaron’s mind was racing. Why would she leave? Had she done it willingly, or had she been forced? The last conversation they’d had was an argument, and he hated the thought of her fleeing so soon after their disagreement. He thought it was something they could work through, but maybe she felt differently.
“I noticed her truck still here. You sure she took off?” Xavier asked, cutting into the conversation. His brow was furrowed, and he looked concerned.
“Seems like it. I saw her a moment at the start of the fire, but haven’t been able to find her since,” Aaron replied. “She must have snagged a lodge truck so we wouldn’t know she was gone.” His eyes darkened. Looks like she was running away this time. That thought made his chest ache.
“Then you need to find out where she’s headed,” he replied. “It’s not safe for her to be on her own right now. This fire starting out of nowhere can’t be a coincidence, either. And so soon after you fill us in on your past and finding out dirty cops know of your location. We can only assume they know Bailey was here, too. It’s got to have something to do with why she left. Maybe they contacted her in some way?”
Aaron nodded in agreement. That made sense. If Ziegler or one of the others had found a way to contact Bailey and made threats against Warrior Peak or even him, she would have left to protect everyone here.
Xavier tossed him a set of keys. “Here, take my car,” he told him. “We’ll be waiting. And call if you need backup.”
“Thanks. I will,” Aaron replied.
With that, he made his way toward the car, his mind running so fast he didn’t know how to control it. As he climbed in and drove off, his thoughts were frantic, his entire system consumed with the fear of what might have happened to her.
He stared at the road ahead of him as he drove, willing himself not to screw this up—not to make more of a mess of this than he already had. He should have checked on her after what had happened the night before. He knew she was upset about the guys at the sanctuary wanting her to stand down and let them handle it. She thought they all saw her as lesser than, incapable.But she wasn’t thinking clearly, letting her emotions override reason. They knew she could handle herself—that wasn’t it at all.
