Fearless: Complicated Creatures Part Three (16 page)

Carey’s words cut like a knife. Because he was right. A part of her remained trapped in the past, unable to heal, unable to let go. She gripped his hand, holding on tight, not speaking for the lump in her throat.

“You’ve always controlled your own fate, but what is it that you want?” he continued, “Because it can’t be this. It can’t be just anger and bitterness and hate. This can’t be what you want for yourself.”

“I want revenge,” she whispered, almost reflexively.

“Ah, Sammy,
Christ
,” Carey shook his head. “What does that buy you really? After we get Lightner, after you find out whatever happened to Uncle Rob and Ry—then what?”

The bile of grief mixed with a healthy dose of the anger she couldn’t relinquish had her pushing away from him and standing shakily. He immediately tried to help her, but Sam shook him off.

“What do you expect me to do?” she ground out. “Just forget it ever happened?”

“ ’Course not,” Carey denied hotly. “But I’m looking at you now, and I can’t help but remember all those years Uncle Rob was drunk or gone or lost to his demons, and I’m seeing you headed there, Sammy. I know you don’t want to hear me say that, but it’s the truth. I love you too much to lie to you. You’re making the same mistakes he made. You’re losing your future because you can’t let go of the past. Can’t you see that, baby girl? You’re following right in his footsteps.”

Sam closed her eyes, the sting of tears pushing against them, threatening to fall. But she refused to succumb to the grief. She’d never felt any sympathy for anyone who wallowed in the hard shit that life gave them. God knew, no one bitched and moaned when all the good stuff was happening. She’d be damned if she became a hypocrite now.

“I want revenge,” she insisted. It would be a salve, or at the very least, something to show for after all the hell she’d survived. Someone would pay for this. She couldn’t let it stand. Lightner would pay. Whoever had killed her family would pay.

“Is that all you want, Sammy?” Carey asked her gently.

She forced herself around, turning to meet him square in the eye. “Carey, I love you, and I know you’re trying to help, but I mean to see this through—I
have
to. There isn’t another option here. The rest of the things I want? Those are luxuries that will have to wait. Right now I have to focus on what’s in front of me. You get that, right?”

Carey sighed, pushing a hand through his tousled hair. “Alright. What can I do to help?”

“I’ve asked Mack McDevitt to come out to the ranch this week.”

He looked at her in askance. “You going to tell him about that file?”

“I don’t want to plant ideas into his head,” Sam replied. “Mack was Dad’s closest friend and ally, next to Uncle Grant. I want him to tell me about Dad’s enemies as impartially as possible. If I tell him what we know, he’s going to make this
his
mission, and I can’t have that.”

And he would. Mack had been Robert Wyatt’s number two in the petroleum industry for as long as Sam could remember, just as Grant Nelson had been her father’s number two at the ranch running the cattle business. Thick as thieves, closest confidantes, Mack had helped teach Sam everything there was to learn about oil and gas. He’d taken over the company when her father passed, and Sam, too grief-stricken and numb to consider staying in Texas, had gone to war. By the time she’d completed her second tour eight years later, it had been Mack who’d convinced her to take her rightful place as chairwoman of the board at Wyatt Petroleum. It had been Mack who had made sure that the empire her father built had flourished and expanded under his keen and watchful eye.

“Mack loved your daddy and Ry as much as we all did,” Carey reminded her. “He could be a real ally. Just like mine could, if you’d just let me tell him what the hell is going on.”

Sam shook her head, resolute. “I don’t want to involve them. Not yet.”

If Mack McDevitt or Grant Nelson found out that Rob and Ry had been murdered that long ago night, they’d take on retribution with a vengeance. They’d do it because they loved her, and they came from the old guard of protecting their own at all costs, but she couldn’t have that. It wasn’t their fight. It was
hers
, and the closer she kept the truth to her vest, the better it would be in the end. Even if Carey didn’t agree with her.

Besides, Carey had enough to worry about running their businesses in her absence, and with Lightner still on the lam, she didn’t want her family
or
her team’s attention divided.

“I know you want to tell your dad, but this isn’t your secret to tell, Bear. This is my burden and it’s
my
revenge,” she reiterated firmly. “I won’t share it with anyone—not even you.”

“But they would
want
to help—”

“I need time to figure this out,” she looked up at him. “And you made a promise to me.”

“You know I wouldn’t break it,” Carey assured her, squeezing her shoulder.

“Then give me time, Bear.” Sam leaned heavily on her cane, her back throbbing. “Respect my wishes, and give me time to sort this out on my own, okay?”

Carey heaved a sigh. “You’re the most stubborn woman I know.”

“Yeah, well, you
love me anyway.”

She heard the squeak of the porch door as Aunt Hannah poked her head out, the delicious scent of home cooking and the comforting sound of Delta blues on the radio wafting out into the night.

“Y’all were taking so long, I was just about to send a search party,” she teased, her cornflower-blue eyes twinkling.

“Wild horses couldn’t keep me from your enchiladas, Mama,” Carey declared, patting his flat belly.

“It’s my fault, Aunt Hannah,” Sam told her as Carey helped her up the steps onto the porch. “I’m still slow as molasses.”

“You’re trying to do too much, too fast, missy.” Aunt Hannah wagged her finger as they passed. “Alejandro told me you did three times the allotted exercises today after the physical therapist left.”

“That asshat needs to stop talking out of school,” Sam replied dryly as Carey helped her into the kitchen.

“You talking shit about me, Wyatt?” Alejo asked, his damp black hair slicked back as he stepped into the kitchen wearing freshly washed jeans and a plaid shirt, casual as can be.

“Language, all of you,” Aunt Hannah scolded lightly.

“Sorry, Hannah,” Alejo replied, not a bit regretful.

“Thought you had the night off,” Sam remarked.

“And miss a home-cooked meal? I haven’t eaten this well in years.” Alejo replied, slipping on a couple oven mitts to help Hannah lift the heavy stoneware cooking pot from the oven.

“Thank you, Alejandro,” Hannah told him. “He’s a good cook, this one,” she bragged to Sam and Carey. “Been helping me make dinner while you were in the stables.”

“Seriously?” Carey asked, glancing at Alejo in surprise.

“Years of indentured servitude to my own mama in the kitchen,” Alejo replied lightly as he placed the piping hot dish onto the counter. “I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed it though, and Hannah doesn’t hit me with a wooden spoon, so that helps.”

“I’ll hit you with a wooden spoon,” Sam volunteered, pouring herself a glass of iced tea.

Carey smothered a laugh.

“Your nerve endings are on fire right about now, aren’t they?” Alejo commented knowingly. “You always get extra bitchy by this time of day.”

Sam’s mouth thinned to a flat line at the accuracy of his statement.

“Where are your painkillers?” Carey asked, standing. “I’ll go get ’em for you.”

“Don’t bother,” Alejo responded, pulling off the oven mitts. “She’s not taking them.”

Sam was just about to retort when Uncle Grant stepped into the kitchen.

“Well look what the cat dragged in!” He smiled, greeting his son. “Heard mom was cooking enchiladas, didn’t ya?”

“You know it.” Carey grinned as his father squeezed his shoulder.

“How’s the back, sugar bean?” Uncle Grant asked her as he dropped a quick kiss on her head.

Sam shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

“I’m going to get those painkillers and mash them up into your food,” Carey chided. “No reason for you to be in pain if you don’t need to be.”

“I will whack you with my cane. Just try me.”

“I didn’t know you were doing Aikido.” Carey shot her an alert look. “Have you been cleared to practice?”

“One guess,” Alejo muttered.

Her cheeks pinked at the implied reprimand.

“Alright, everybody lay off Sammy,” Aunt Hannah declared as she carried the salad bowl to the table. “You’re just gonna make her more contrary and cross than she already is, and everybody knows you don’t tell a Wyatt what to do or how to do it.”

“Except you, Mama,” Carey pointed out.

“Only when used sparingly,” Hannah added before taking her seat next to Sam. “Now you eat up, missy, and I’ll pour you a bath with some of those Epsom salts you like. I’ll even give you a dram of your favorite bourbon. That should help you sleep a little,” she finished with a wink.

Samantha smiled wearily. She knew she’d been difficult and hard as hell to live with, but God help her, she loved her family for putting up with her the past couple months. Every day felt like a new ordeal—a fresh struggle as she waited impatiently for her body to heal. But as her family crowded around the table, and Carey reached out to grasp her hand just as her Uncle Grant led the short grace, Sam knew they had her back, no matter what.

While the family broke bread and shared news of the day, Sam’s mind kept returning to the question Carey had asked her, pulling at it like a loose thread.

What is it that you want?

She wanted revenge. She wanted the truth.

But was that enough?

In that moment, she wished she had Carey’s uncanny ability to live fully and unequivocally in the moment, but Sam seemed perpetually condemned to the purgatory of the past. Was it self-inflicted penance, or had she really taught herself how to live without happiness?

Was that why she couldn’t forgive Wes? Why she couldn’t get over her anger at Jack?

Sam thought about the letter Jack had sent her, sitting folded in her bedside table. She thought about the calls Wes made to the house nearly every night, checking in on her.

I want to be free of all this hurt and anger.

I want to be okay again
—

“You alright, Sammy?” Hannah asked gently. “You’ve hardly eaten.”

“I’m fine,” she lied.

Because she wasn’t—not yet.

But she would be.

*

March—Late Night

Wyatt Ranch, Texas

S A M A N T H A

A few hours
later, Sam sat at the edge of her bed near midnight, frustrated beyond belief that she couldn’t do something as simple as walk across the room without her goddamn cane, her back was seizing so bad. This wasn’t her first rodeo when it came to getting hurt. She’d suffered many injuries in her life, especially in the military. But even after numerous surgeries, not only did her back still hurt like hell, but her ability to move independently was still woefully limited. She could barely get out of bed on her own steam when her back cramped up like this.

It was just part of the process, doctors assured her—nerve endings growing back, the musculature still recovering. It could take a year or longer to get back to normal. She’d heard it all before. But that common sense didn’t mean shit to her when each painstaking step felt like walking on glass shards. She’d gotten halfway across the room before she’d tripped over the chaise and her back locked up.

“Shit,” she hissed, dropping her cane. It clattered across the wooden floor, making a racket. She cringed in frustration, trying and failing to reach the cane as she clung to the chaise like a life raft, her muscles seizing and locking as she tried to breathe through the worst of it.

Her bedroom door swung open, the overhead light flicking on as Alejandro loomed in the doorway, holding a Beretta in one hand. He was wearing an old Army t-shirt and pajama pants, his dog tags glinting as he quickly surveilled the room, alert and ready though he’d obviously been asleep.

“Why the hell are you up?” he asked, reaching down and nimbly scooping up her cane.

“Am I not allowed to get out of my own bed now?” Sam snapped, angry at herself for not being able to do something as simple as walking on her own and angry at him for witnessing it.

“Depends on where you’re trying to go. You need the bathroom?” he asked unceremoniously.

Sam pushed herself up, gritting her teeth. “I can make it on my own.”

Alejo crossed his arms. “That so?”

“Stop giving me side-eye,” Sam huffed. “I can do it.” Easy to say, hard to do—especially when those twenty feet looked like the longest walk of her life right about now. Hell, if Alejo wasn’t looming over her, she’d have crawled it.

“You can barely stand,” he pointed out. “Your back is cramping, isn’t it?”

Sam flipped him the bird. He ignored her, picking up the walker that the hospital in Germany had sent with her when she’d checked out after her last surgery. He unceremoniously plopped it down in front of her.