Trial by Fire (10 page)

He looked over at Jack Hardiger and let his lip curl. “Chloe’s soul is safe, whether or not you pray. They want me down at the barns. Ryan. Now.”

Ryan hopped up like his pants were full of fire ants. “You bet. Lachlan and Dez walked down already. That Lachlan feller said to grab a sandwich. They’re right on the counter.”

“Good deal.” He grabbed two, scarfing one down before he got to the door even. He felt it go all the way down, like he was a hungry boa constrictor with a tiny mouse.

Ryan took three, and they munched on the way down to the outbuildings that hadn’t burned. Thank God the kidnapper hadn’t gone for the tack rooms and shit.

A cry rose up from the far barns, the ones that held the cutting horses and the racing mares, all the roping horses.

“What now?” Holden snapped.

They started running across the pasture, dozens of horses galloping toward them like they were his mustangs.

“Shit! Crazy, are the gates closed?” Holden knew Crazy well enough to know he’d be right there, helping round everyone up.

Cowboys were flying, whistling and calling.

“On it.” Crazy and a couple of the kids scrambled to the fences.

Missy Brown grabbed hold of a pinto’s mane and swung her ass up on its back, hooting and hollering and waving her arms. Jesus fuck.

“Come on, y’all! Get them headed away from the fucking road!” Those horses made it to the main road, there could be a huge clusterfuck. Who in hell was doing this? Holden was going to kill something.

Ryan hooted and waved his arms, turning horses back into the pasture, proving he was country born and bred.

He saw Addie’s Sunshine in the mix, and he hollered loud, “Oi! Sunshine! Aussie Aussie Aussie!”

Sunshine turned on a dime and headed for him, barreling down on him like… well, like one of the finest quarter horses in history.
Please, buddy
, he thought,
don’t just trample my happy ass.
Thank God Sunshine slid to a stop three feet from him, bobbing his head like he was telling Holden all about it.

“I know, yeah?” He climbed the fence and hopped on board. “Come on, now.”

Least he had his damn boots on this time. His nuts weren’t going to thank him, though.

There were a half dozen of the cowboys on horseback now, circling the wagons and slowing the panicked herd.

There. That was it. Spot, their old Appaloosa mare, finally did her job, pulling up at the head of the herd, leading the rest of the horses back toward their paddock.

“What the hell, Boss?” Missy glared over at him. “Who does shit like this?”

“Assholes who take babies, Missy.”

She stared over, and then her eyes went wide. “Y’all! Don’t nobody touch the barn doors!”

Smart idea. He searched the scene for Ryan or Dez. “Someone get the feds too.”

“Holden! Holden! What the hell?” Daddy stormed over the fence like a thirty-year-old, rage making him agile.

“Someone let them out! Get me one of them cops out here!” Holden pushed down with his heels and loosened his knees, because Sunshine was fixing to lose it.

Daddy nodded and headed toward the mass of feds who were already coming, now that the horses were rounded up.

“What’s the situation?” The biggest guy in a gray suit barked, and Ryan stepped in before Daddy got to him.

“The animals were released. The gates and the stalls we still have might show you something, but God knows there’s a lot of people to eliminate,” Ryan said.

“It’s got to be a whole group of folks, Lefty. It’s gotta be. This takes work, people, and they have to know us,” Holden said, working through the process.

“That’s our assessment as well—” The fed’s radio squawked, and he went on high alert. “Abruzzo,” he barked.

“Where’s Lachlan?” The big guy wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

Ryan rolled his eyes. “His folks are here.”

“The call is coming in,” the Abruzzo guy snapped, then turned and ran for the tack barn.

“The….”
Wait, what?

“Holden!” Ryan snapped. “Now! Move!”

Oh, Jesus. Okay. Okay.
He slid off Sunshine and handed him off to one of the cowboys.

They all hit the barn door in a rush—him, Ryan, Daddy.

The sound of a tinny, distorted voice was on speakerphone. “I want to speak to Sheffield.”

“I’m right here, you motherfucker.” Him and Daddy—they spoke as one, and he swore that he could hear Landon there too, in the echo of their joined together voices.

“Sheffield. I’ve sent you a picture of the kid. She’s alive and well and will stay that way as long as we get ten million dollars by tonight by 10:00 p.m.”

We. He’d known there was more than one. He opened his mouth, one of the FBI agents made a slashing motion across her throat, then held up a scribbled sign that said, “Too soon. Tomorrow.”

“Like I can pull that kind of money out of my ass. Y’all know full well I cain’t.” He shook his head at the woman. Tomorrow was another day that they had Chloe, dammit.

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared. That might scare some fellers, but not him.

“But you… you’re rich, and so is Miss Addie’s big brother. I can give you until 9:00 a.m.” The hesitation at the beginning told him Ryan and Dez were so right. This was an amateur.

He looked at Ryan, panic filling him. What next? What the fuck was he supposed to do?

“Where? Where do I meet y’all?” Holden asked.
Miss Addie.
It was one of them. It was one of their own. “You traitorous piece of shit motherfuckers, where do I meet y’all?”

“We’ll call you back with the location.” The asshole hung up, and a beep came over his cell, which was hooked up to all manner of cables and shit.

As soon as the line went dead, the woman agent slapped her hand down on the table they’d set up. “Damn it, this is why we wanted to meet with you, so we could coach you. We could have gotten so much more—”

“Don’t you fucking snarl at me. I’m not your bitch.”

The head guy held up his hand. “I’m John Abruzzo, Holden. We need to come up with a strategy for the next call.”

Ryan touched his arm, settling him. “Let’s plan this. What do we know? Did you trace the call?”

One of the dudes looked up. “Burner phone. There are only so many cell towers here, but that makes it harder not easier. So many signals bouncing.”

“Sit, please. You, too, Mr. Brandon.” At least the Abruzzo guy had some manners.

“It’s our people, Daddy. It’s one of ours. They called her Miss Addie. They knew that McCoughey was here. Somebody’s gone missing, and they’re the ones.”

Daddy nodded, face almost gray. “I know it. We just have to be smarter than them.”

“Okay.” The lady agent sat down and got a new page on her legal pad. “What do we know? There’s more than one, just as we profiled. Disorganized. Local and familiar with the family.”

“None of that is new,” Ryan snapped. “How about we threw him for a loop not wanting to meet after dark. They have to find a new place and call back.”

“Which is another chance for them to screw up,” Abruzzo said. “This is progress.”

Him and Daddy stared at each other, and it was looking into a mirror that was cracking at the edges.

One of theirs. One of the people they’d fed, talked to. Cared for. A ranch hand or a rodeo man. Someone who should live by the fucking code.

Lachlan burst into the room. “They called?”

“They want ten million dollars by the morning,” he said, but that was all.

Lachlan looked at the feds. “How long do I have to get the cash?”

“Oi! What the hell are you blokes doing? Jacques, you’re supposed to be a damn professional! What the bloody hell is going on?” Dez sounded like he was going to bust a gut.

“What, pissed that you missed the call after riding my ass for hours?” Ryan snapped right back, and Holden stared at Lachlan.

“I want my phone,” Holden said, holding out his hand.

The lady agent gaped at him like a bigmouthed bass that hadn’t ever been hooked before. “You can’t just—”

“Stop. Everyone just shut the fuck up,” Abruzzo said, pretty mildly, really. “Jacques. Holmes. I’m allowing you to liaise with the families on the grounds that you’re both supposed to be pros, which I have yet to see. Allen, give Mr. Sheffield his phone so he can see proof of life. Mr. Sheffield, Mr. McCoughey, I must respectfully ask that you remain here with my team until the next call comes in. We have procedures in place because they work, even if this particular site has created the biggest clusterfuck of my career. Are we all clear?”

“Clear.”

Okay. Clear.

Right.

Someone handed him his phone, and Holden had to force himself not to shake as he looked at his texts. There were dozens from locals, sending prayers and help, then there was one from a number he didn’t know.

He opened it and there she was. His Chloe, red-faced and screaming, furious, wearing nothing but a diaper. Goddamn it.

“Is it her, Son?”

“Yeah, Daddy. She looks pissed off.”

“Well, she is one of ours, huh?” His daddy chuckled, the sound dry as rustling leaves.

“She looks like her mum when she’d get ropeable and give a gobful,” Lachlan murmured.

He glanced up at Lachlan. “They know you’re here.”

“Then it’s someone who was here when I showed up.”

He nodded. “So, what do we do now?”

“Now we know that they’ll call again,” Abruzzo said. “We need your help choosing the most advantageous place to arrange the meet, and we need you to listen to when we coach you on what to say.”

“What do you want on the place? There’s not a single spot on this land I don’t know.” Daddy’s voice was strong, sure, and Holden nodded in agreement. If they could do it here, that would be best.

“You think they’ll go for that?” Ryan asked.

“What else is their option? Mark and Brenda are to the west, and they run buffalo. Bakers is to the north, and he ain’t got road access. You go south of the boys’ land and there’s nothing but lake, and you’d be hard-pressed to get through the Harring’s land. I swear, those crazy motherfuckers got the place booby trapped, pardon my language.”

Holden looked at Daddy. “They’ll want to do it by the highway. Somewhere they can run. They ain’t hiding up here. I guarantee they’re down at the lake somewhere.” He felt sure of it. That was the closest place, with dozens of places to rent or break into, to hole up.

“Well, how about that old loading chute we used to use for shipping cattle to the rail yard? It’s right out there by the road and has its own pull off.”

He nodded. “We’ll be able to see them no matter what. There’s nothing to kill the line of sight on the way up to the chute, but they won’t know that.”

“Not unless they’ve been with us more than fifteen years.” Daddy looked pretty grim at the idea.

Abruzzo nodded. “Okay, but it doesn’t go farther than this room. No one else knows, got it? Anyone you tell might pass it on to the inside man.”

“No one else needs to know dick.”

“Brandon! Brandon, boss, we need you!”

“Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. What now?”

Holden got it. They’d had enough. All of them.

They couldn’t handle no more.

“Miss Margery was talking with them foreigners of Miss Addie’s…. I called 911.”

“
NO
, I’m sure she’ll be fine.” Lachlan patted his dad on the shoulder, and the old man looked as though he’d aged ten years just today. “Mum will shape her up just right and you know it.”

To Lachlan’s surprise, his mum had gone to the hospital with Margery.

“I swear, Son. Her and your mum, it was like they knew each other already. They were laughing when she grabbed her chest and went down.”

“Doc says it was minor.” Holden was pale as chalk as he passed through the sunroom that Lachlan was beginning to think of as his room somehow. “Mainly stress. They’re keeping her sedated right now, but she’ll pull through. I’m fixin’ to take a quick shower. I got time before they say they’ll call back.”

“Rightyo.” He watched Holden walk away, his heart aching for the man. This was too much, all of it. Fuck, Holden was gonna end up in hospital if he wasn’t careful.

“That the one that’s supposed to be taking care of Chloe?”

“He is. He’s great at it, Dad. This….” Lachlan sighed. “This mess is as much my fault as it is anyone’s. I came in spouting off about how she’d be better off with us, how we had more.”

“They think someone heard you?”

“I don’t know, Dad. I just know they were good to Ades. They loved her.”

“They can’t make tea, though.” His dad grinned. “Can I lie down, Lad? I’m pooped.”

“Sure. This room is always quiet, or they have a goodly number of guest rooms.”

“Did she live here? Adelaide?”

“Not in this house.” God, Dad was gonna freak out when he saw Ades’s house. “As soon as things calm down, I’ll show you.”

“Yeah.”

He led his dad down to one of the made-up rooms with a towel folded on the end of the bed. “You can sleep here. No one should bother you.”

“Thanks, Lachy.” Dad gave him a one-armed hug. “Wake me if we hear anything.”

“Will do.” Lachlan left his dad and found himself at the bathroom door, listening to Holden’s shower.

He didn’t have any business in there. They weren’t lovers. Shit, they weren’t even friends; they were men thrown together by a series of shite events. Lachlan worried, though. Holden had looked like death. He knocked lightly, needing to mother hen.

When he didn’t get an answer, he opened the door, because he had to open it up, just make sure the cowboy was okay.

Holden was curled up nude in the bottom of the tub, shoulders shaking with his sobs.

Shit. He could just leave, but Lachlan knew he wouldn’t feel right doing it. Instead, he stepped inside and locked the door. He didn’t say a word; he just sat on the commode and reached out, hand on Holden’s back.

He didn’t even have any words about how all this nonsense was going to end well, because he wasn’t sure he believed it. The best-case scenario was that Landon and Ades were dead, and Mrs. Sheffield was in hospital, and Holden was going to be a single dad to an infant.