“I’m not my mother,” I continue. “And Colter isn’t John. Colter loves me. Is obsessed with me. If you think that you took me and he didn’t have a way to find me…you’re delusional.”
Her smile falters for a fraction of a second.
I cling to that.
Laurel turns away, heels clicking toward the shadows.
“Keep her alive,” she orders one of the men standing in the shadows. “For now.”
The door slams shut.
I slump back in the chair, shaking, blood drying sticky against my skin, but my mind is on fire.
Now I understand what my father and Colter have been keeping from me.
And why.
They thought she caused the car accident. They believed that she alone drugged and raped my father to gain leverage. Running made her look guilty. The two of them have been trying to protect me from fracturing my memory of her.
My mother wasn’t weak.
She was used and abused. She ran because she was trying to protect me.
Laurel Masterson will not be winning this time around.
I refuse to be her victim.
Colter and my father will come for me.
And when they do, I know there will be hell to pay.
Because apparently, there is more to this ranch town than I thought.
45
Blue Skye ranchhas always felt wrong to me.
Too quiet. Too pristine. Like a house that knows it’s lying.
We crest the last rise as dusk bleed into night, the headlights cutting across the familiar sprawl of land—and my gut twists hard.
“That’s not right,” John mutters from the driver’s seat.
He’s right.
The main lights are on, bright and careless, but the front door hands wide open, yawning black against the porch like a mouth mid-scream. No trucks. No hands. No dogs. No movements anywhere on the property.
The Richard never leaves his door open. Ever.
John kills the engine without pulling all the way into the drive. Old habit. Old rules. We step together, guns drawn, boots crunching softly on the gravel that should be busy with evening ranch duties.
Silence presses in.
“Spread,” I murmur into my collar. “Check barns and outbuildings. Quiet.”
Men peel off into the dark, shadows moving like muscle memory. Ace, John, and I stay together as we move up the porchsteps, every instinct I have screaming that we’re already too late for something—I’m not sure what.
The door creaks when I push it.
