Rowan drove steadily toward the house, his eyes flicking to the mirrors, then the ridgelines, then back to the road. He hadn’t made a decision yet. All he’d done was let the man through the gate. That didn’t mean anything. Right?
Behind him, Gael sat still. Like him, his brother was watching and ready as always. If Moore so much as looked sideways at Rowan, his twin would have a forearm around his throat before the man could blink.
They cleared the last bend, and the main yard opened up in front of them. The barn sat off to the left. The round pen where Rowan had started the morning was quiet; he couldn’t see the mare over the high fence, but hopefully she was having her breakfast hay and learning that maybe this place wasn’t so bad after all. If she’d managed to jump the eight-foot fence, he was going to be so fucking pissed.
The main house, with its rocking chairs on the big porch and wide windows that watched out over the stunning views of Bell County, stood solid in the middle of the spread. Gravel popped under the tires as he threw the truck into park beside the house and shut off the engine. He glanced in the rearview mirror at his twin, but didn’t move until Gael gave him a nod.
All clear.
“Come on in the house.” He didn’t bother watching Moore climb out of the truck as he knew Gael would be behind their visitor, walking just close enough to remind him not to be a problem. Rowan led the way up the steps, and the screen door creaked ashe opened it and led the way into the kitchen. “Welcome back to the SHR, Mr. Moore. Have a seat.”
Rowan dropped his gloves on the counter beside the half-empty coffee pot and reached for the mugs. The only sound for a moment was the slow tick of the wall clock and the faint shuffle of boots on wood as Gael settled himself into a spot where he could fix a problem if it were needed. “Coffee?”
Moore hesitated, his eyes tracking the photographs on the wall that he and Gael had never gotten around to taking down when their parents retired to Europe, then he took the chair in the center of the table. He sat straight, hat in his hands, his fingers working the brim the way men do when either they were nervous about what was to come or had nothing left to hold onto.
If he’s here, he probably doesn’t. We are the last resort when nobody else will help.
Rowan poured three mugs of coffee, handed one to Moore, one to Gael, and carried the third to the table for himself. “We’re listening, Mr. Moore. I’m not promising you anything, but start from the top and tell us what’s going on.”
As if he needed a second to gather his thoughts, Moore took a sip of coffee, grimaced, and reached for the sugar bowl, then sipped again and nodded. His voice was rough, as if he’d gone days and miles without sleep.
“My daughter’s name is Enya. She’s twenty-four, and a barrel racer who has been chasing points all year. She ran in El Paso three days ago in the last show of the season.” He glanced at Rowan, pride warring with worry in his expression. “Her and Rain, the horse we bought from your folks, only went and won the damn Average with a fourteen-point-zero-two run.” Histhroat worked once, hard. “After the awards and dinner, she went to check on Rain and never made it back to our trailer. Rain was still in his stall, all the tack was still there, and nothing looked out of place. It’s like she just vanished into thin air. We didn’t think nothing of it when she didn’t come back; she often sleeps in the stall with Rain when he’s stalled at the fairgrounds where they’ve been competing. He can be a handful, but he’s a big old pussy cat when she’s with him.”
Gael leaned against the doorframe, sipping his coffee, saying nothing yet. Rowan listened to the sound of the man’s voice. He recognized the emotion, and his guts told him there was no way this was some kind of whacked setup. He even understood Enya wanting to sleep with her horse. When you were a horse person, you tended to be more comfortable with them than you were with most people.
“I called everybody I can think of,” Moore went on. “Local cops are insisting that she’s a grown woman who can walk away from everything if she wants to.” He met Rowan’s gaze. “My Enya had no reason to walk away, and even if she was mad at me and her mom over something, she’d have taken Rain with her. He’s an extension of herself; she’d never have left him behind. Ever.”
That I can understand.
“What about the FBI?”
“Feds said with no evidence of any crime and no indication anything happened across state lines, they have no jurisdiction. I hired private guys, even paid one of those recovery firms out of Houston. They managed to find a ping from her phone outside Nogales, right near the border, yesterday. But they think her phone went dead after that.”
That’s not good.
He was impressed that Moore was pushing hard and searching for all the resources he could. Most people would trust the police. This man knew his daughter and refused to be brushed off. That fact alone urged Rowan to help him. A glance at Gael told him he felt the same.
Damn.
Moore slid a folded paper across the table. “That’s every ounce of cash I can pull together. If you need more, I’ll sell everything I have to get it for you. My daughter matters. She’s more than another damn statistic.”
Rowan’s eyebrows flew upward. Stronghold didn’t take non-government jobs. Hell, they barely took government ones at this point, and even the ones they did were all plausible deniability ones where nobody knew they were involved at all. If someone was talking about them on the dark web, then he needed to send Theo down there to scrub that shit off before they drew attention they didn’t need.
He unfolded the check, his eyes widening at the amount, before he pushed the paper check back across the table. That amount of money would keep Stronghold afloat for five years. It was tempting, oh, so tempting, but when they’d rostered out of the Navy, both he and Gael had agreed not to do private work.
“You’re chasing ghosts. If she crossed the southern border, you don’t want to go digging in cartel country.Wedon’t dig into cartel country. That’s not what we do anymore.”
Moore’s gaze lifted. The man’s voice cracked as he pinned him with unflinching eyes. “You are the only one who is listening to me. You are her only hope. Your mama called you both heroes...”
“We’re not those men anymore.” The words his mom had told this man landed in his heart like a punch, and an old reflex stirred deep inside him. He knew Gael was the same; the Operators, who were still very much a part of their make-up, were already getting on board to measure distance, time, and extraction windows.
Fuck.
He took a slow breath, fighting down the urge to jump a bird and head off south of the border. Tracking the untraceable was what he was born, reared, and trained to do. Saying no to this man was harder than saying no to Uncle Sam had ever been. “It’s not our field of expertise anymore,” he almost bit back the words, but managed to force them out of his mouth. “You want help, you call feds or the cops, not a couple of retired Seamen running a horse ranch.”
“None of them will do anything to find one missing girl.” Moore’s hands tightened on his coffee cup. “I’ll give you everything I have and everything I can beg, borrow, or steal. Just please help me find her.” The older man’s voice cracked, and he sucked in a breath.
Silence stretched out between them, coffee cooled, and the clock kept on ticking, steady as a heartbeat, as Rowan gave the devastated father a moment to gather his wits. He knew what his guts told him to do. He also knew what they’d promised not to do for the next four freaking years. Hell, those promises were the reason his twin didn’t live in freaking Italy with the man who owned his heart.
