He checked her pulse, his jaw tight, then rose and crossed to the window. The curtains shifted as he pulled them back just enough to scan the yard. Darkness pressed close on every side.
“I’m calling Noah,” he let her know. Noah Riggs, their boss and head of Crossfire Ops.
Garrett pulled out his phone again and punched in a number. “Noah. It’s McCall.” His voice was clipped, controlled. “We’ve got a situation. My foster mother, Trudy, has been shot. Intruder was on site, armed. Took off across the pasture, made it to a vehicle. Escaped before I could get a clean shot.” He paused, gaze sweeping the shadows beyond the glass. “I need you to relay everything to the county sheriff. Get deputies out here now.”
When he finished the call, Garrett came back toward the bed, dropping to his knees across from Isla.
“She’s losing too much blood,” Isla said, her voice tight. Her hands pressed harder against the wound, but it wasn’t enough.
Garrett met her eyes. “It’s a gunshot wound.”
His voice was tight as well, and Isla could feel the worry and anger coming off him in hot waves. Worry for Trudy but anger because he hadn’t been able to stop this.
Whatever this was.
It didn’t feel like a robbery though someone had clearly been after something in that office. But there weren’t many valuables at the ranch, and Trudy wasn’t a wealthy woman.
So, why had this happened?
“Trudy,” Garrett said, his voice low but firm.
Her eyelids fluttered, then opened, her gaze finding them. A weak smile tugged at her mouth before it dissolved into a groan. Pain rippled across her features.
“Someone… shot me,” she whispered, her voice raw.
Garrett leaned closer. “Who?”
Trudy’s head moved side to side in the smallest shake. “Didn’t… see.”
Her face pinched, and she winced again. Her hand lifted shakily, fingers brushing the back of her head. Isla caught the motion and her stomach twisted. Blood smeared Trudy’s fingertips. Not just a bullet. Hell. She had been clubbed, too.
Isla pressed her hand more firmly against the wound in Trudy’s side, fear biting at her. The older woman looked so fragile now, so far from the strong foster mom who had once kept a whole house of teenagers in line with nothing but her steady voice and unshakable will.
Trudy’s breath rattled as she forced the words out. “The baby… this is about the baby.”
Isla’s stomach knotted. “What baby?” The words scraped out of her throat.
“Harris,” Trudy whispered. Her gaze shifted between Isla and Garrett, still sharp despite the pain dragging her down. Her lips trembled as she forced the next words. “I think I know who took him.”
She opened her mouth to say more. But more didn’t come. Trudy’s eyes fluttered closed, her head lolling as consciousness slipped away.
Chapter Three
Garrett sat in the stiff plastic chair, elbows on his knees, his eyes fixed on the scuffed linoleum floor. The hum of fluorescent lights pressed down on him, mixing with the faint beeps and murmurs that drifted in from the rest of the hospital.
Trudy was out of surgery. The doctor had said the bullet was removed, but she was still in recovery. Still critical. They couldn’t see her yet. That waiting gnawed at him worse than the ache in his shoulder ever had.
Beside him, Isla leaned back in her chair, thumbs tapping rapidly on her phone. From the phone speaker came an odd honking noise, followed by a cartoonish squeal. Garrett frowned, glancing over to see a jumble of bright colors on her screen. She was stacking tiny digital clowns into teetering towers, the kind of ridiculous game he would never understand.
The sound clashed hard with the sterile silence of the waiting room, absurd against the faint hiss of the vending machine.
Yet it was so Isla. Quirky. Offbeat. She had always been able to find light in the middle of dark, a way to distract herself and everyone else from the shadows pressing in. Back when they were teenagers, that spark had pulled him in before he knew better. It had been what made him look twice, what made him want to be near her.
She was still that girl in some ways. Still his opposite. And it unsettled him, how much he felt the pull even now.
Isla caught him watching her screen and tilted the phone toward him. “Helps me settle,” she said. “Want to try? It has a zombie option.”
Garrett shook his head. “Hard pass.”
