The bunkhouse door swung open with a gust of cold air, cutting through the warmth of their bickering. Anson glanced up from his leatherwork to see Naomi stride in, her usual calm expression replaced by something tighter, more focused. The conversation died instantly as all eyes turned toward her.
Ghost was on his feet before she’d even shut the door behind her, abandoning his chess game without a word. “What’s wrong?”
She locked eyes with him, then swept her gaze across the room, landing finally on Anson. His stomach dropped. Anything that made Naomi look like that—and look at him specifically—couldn’t be good.
“I’ve been reviewing Maggie’s case,” she said, shrugging off her jacket and hanging it on the hook by the door. “Something’s been bothering me about the stalking incidents.”
“Like what?” Ghost’s voice was neutral, but his posture had shifted into that hyperalert stance Anson recognized from times when the ranch was under threat.
She crossed to the kitchen table and laid out a folder, flipping it open. “The behavioral patterns don’t match. There were two distinct profiles at work in the stalking. One overt, confrontational, violent—that’s Landry. But then there were the more... subtle incidents. The carved initials, the flowers left on her doorstep in Tampa, the photos taken from a distance.”
Two profiles? A cold, unsettling sensation slid down his spine. He set down his leather project and moved toward her. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying someone else might have been stalking Maggie, too. Or—” She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I thought maybe it was Landry playing two different roles. One when he was high, angry, and threatening. Another when he was trying to win her back.”
Everyone else joined them at the table, and the folder exchanged hands as each man read through Naomi’s findings.
Ghost scowled and crossed his arms over his chest. He hadn’t said it, but he was still pissed about Landry outsmarting him with the credit card and cell phone ruse. “Fits with what we know about addicts. Jekyll and Hyde behavior.”
Naomi shook her head, frustration tightening her mouth. “But the more I looked at it, the less I believed it. I really think it’s more than that. The timeline doesn’t work. Some of these incidents happened simultaneously, hundreds of miles apart. He couldn’t be in two places at once.”
“Unless he had help,” Boone said, setting his tablet down. “Could be that woman—what was her name?”
“Taryn,” Anson supplied, the name bitter on his tongue. He remembered the woman’s desperate, mascara-streaked face at the dinner table, begging Maggie to drop the charges. He’d wanted to haul her off the property by her perfectly highlighted hair and throw her in the snow. Still was a little annoyed he didn’t get the chance.
“Maybe.” Naomi traced a timeline she’d sketched in the margin of one page. “But her financials show she didn’t come to Montana until that morning she confronted Maggie. If she were helping Landry, wouldn’t she have been here sooner?”
Jonah leaned back against the kitchen counter. “Okay, but why bring this up now? Landry attacked Maggie. He’s locked up. Case closed, right?”
Before she could answer, Ghost’s phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket and glanced at the screen, his pale eyes narrowing.
“Brandt,” he said, before answering.
Anson watched Ghost’s face, his own heart rate climbing. He knew immediately something was wrong. The security expert’sexpression didn’t change much—it never did—but the slight tightening around his eyes spoke volumes.
And U.S. Marshal Corbin Brandt—Nessie’s former handler when she was in WITSEC—wasn’t the kind of guy who called for the hell of it.
“When?” Ghost asked. Then, “How?” A pause. “Understood.”
He hung up and looked directly at Anson. “Landry escaped custody during a prisoner transport twenty minutes ago.”
The room tilted. Anson’s lungs seized, his breath stuck somewhere between his chest and his throat. Twenty minutes. Landry had been free for twenty minutes and they were just finding out now.
Maggie.
Everything in him went cold and sharp at once, adrenaline flooding his system so fast his hands started to shake. Landry was out. Free. And Maggie?—
He ran for the door.
forty-two
The workshop door banged open so hard the tools on the pegboard rattled. Sarah staggered through the entrance, dragging something heavy behind her.
No, not something—someone.
A body.
Maggie’s stomach dropped to her feet, then lurched up into her throat.
