Page 135 of Wild Sanctuary

“Last I checked.”

“So how’s the house?”

“Standin’.”

“How’s the coffee?”

“Mm.”

“How’s Daisy?”

I glance over to find her smiling angelically.

“She’s good, June.”

“Good,” she echoes, all innocence. “That’s all I was asking.”

“Mm.”

“Just checking in on my brother’s general well-being. Making small talk. Bein’ a thoughtful passenger.”

“Uh-huh.”

She grins at the windshield and goes quiet for a while, which is how I know she’s not done. June’s quiet is never the end of anything.

Before she can pick up where she left off, my phone vibrates on the console between us.

It’s a number I don’t recognize, but a local code, and I’d do a lot worse to avoid the conversation June seems itching to have, so I pick it up on the third ring.

“Hartley speakin’.”

“Mr. Hartley.” A woman’s voice, too high and running much too fast. “It’s Alma. Alma Cutter. Daisy’s in trouble. Marcus Donnelly was behind the break-in. You need to go home right⁠—”

June’s head comes up, but I don’t hear another word.

Marcus?

He came to the house yesterday morning and told us all June had called him. I’ve been replaying that for hours, trying to remember when June would have had the chance, and I never asked her because the world was on fire and it didn’t matter.

“June. Yesterday. Did you call Marcus and ask him to come out?”

She goes deathly still. “No.”

I called Marcus myself this morning and asked him to keep her company till I got home.

Fuck!

My hands have moved, and my foot is already on the brake. The truck’s tires chew gravel on the shoulder and I’m swinging the wheel through the hardest U-turn I’ve done in my life, the back end fishtailing before the tires catch the asphalt going the other direction.

June’s phone hits the floor of the cab.

“Wyatt—”

“Keep her on the line.” I toss my phone into her lap. “Get every detail. Every damn one.”

She doesn’t ask a single question, just scoops the phone up and puts it to her ear as I push the truck through seventy-five and up toward eighty.

I know the drive back to the ranch is eighteen minutes, the way I normally take it, but I need to do it in less. The speedometer needle climbs past eighty and keeps climbing.