He was the definition of lovesick. He had taken something that was supposed to be special and wonderful and turned it into something harmful and wicked. There was no rhyme or reason to his love and it was dangerous the way he was using his feelings to hurt others.
“I know she’s not coming back. I’m never going to get the opportunity to make her happy.” He sounded bitter and all kinds of crazy.
I sighed, eyes locked on Emrys, when I asked, “What do you want? What do I have to do to get Daye back, because I will do anything. You want me to drink a whole bottle of spiked whiskey? I’ll do it. If you want me to walk into traffic, I won’t even blink. If you want me to stand up in front of the entire town and tell them I killed Alexa and Cyndi, I’ll do it. If you want me to break things off with the brunette, I will.” Emrys rocked back and all the color leached out of her face, but I could see understanding shining clear and vibrant in her eyes. I didn’t want to break her heart, but I would if it meant my daughter was safe. If anything happened to Daye, there wouldn’t be anything left of me for her to love anyway. “Anything, Burke. I will do anything if you agree to give me Daye back unharmed.” My voice broke and I felt a single, scalding tear slide down my cheek.
“Yes, you will. You will do anything because you don’t have a choice.” That ragged, unhinged laugh echoed in my ear and made my skin crawl. “Come to the bar. I’ll trade you your daughter for your new girlfriend. Come alone, Warner. If I see your brothers or the sheriff, you’re only getting pieces of this pretty little girl back. As you so kindly pointed out, I really don’t have anything to lose at this point, but you, you have everything on the line.”
The phone went dead and I let it drop from my numb fingers. Cyrus was demanding to know what was going on and Ten was hovering over Lane as she barked orders into her phone. I vaguely heard her demanding to know when the chopper was going to be overhead, but all of it was happening in a fog. I was breathing like I’d run a marathon and I couldn’t focus on any of the eyes that were watching me. I shoved both of my hands into my hair and pulled until it hurt. My heart was being ripped in two and I swore the tearing sound could be heard by every single person within a hundred-mile radius.
I felt Emrys’s hands land on either side of my neck, her fingers firm as she held onto me. Her tawny eyes were shiny with unshed tears and determination. Vaguely, I could hear talking, voices raised as my brother erupted behind me demanding information and answers. I locked my fingers around Emrys’s wrists and felt her pulse flutter like a trapped bird underneath her skin. How could I risk her? Her heartbeat was the sound that pulled me back from the brink. It was the rhythm that taught mine how to dance again. How could I ask her to risk so much when she’d already had so much taken from her and given up so much to come after me?
“Em . . .” I her name got stuck but I managed to force out, “He wants me to hand you over and he’ll give Daye back.” He wouldn’t. We both knew that.
She nodded at the exact same time I shook my head. Her mouth formed into a resolute line and her shoulders squared in determination. She pulled my head down so our foreheads were touching, and quietly, so only I could hear, she whispered, “That’s what you do when you love someone, Sutton. You take a bullet for them.”
I didn’t want her anywhere near this particular bullet; it felt far more dangerous than the one I’d taken for her. But, I needed her to get Daye back. I could only hope our miraculous luck held and neither one of us ended up bleeding out, filled with holes from trying to protect one another.
We’ve Been Here Before
Emrys
Burke had done a bang-up job of shredding the Warners into a million conflicted pieces. Lane was the only one with obvious life-threatening wounds, but both Cyrus and Sutton looked like they were teetering on the brink of something tragic.
When Sutton let it be known he was going after Daye without backup and without waiting for Rodie, Cy lost his mind. He lunged for his younger brother, taking him to the ground in his haste with the sheer force of unchecked emotion. He wasn’t going to budge, using his heavier bulk to keep Sutton pinned to the ground as the whoomp-whoomp of helicopter blades sounded from too far away.
Surprisingly, instead of throwing down and letting his temper rile up, Sutton wrapped his fingers around his older brother’s wrists and simply stated, “He has my daughter, Cyrus. There is no choice. I have to go after her.”
Cyrus was obviously at war with himself. There was no way he was leaving Lane, and he couldn’t stay with one brother while keeping the other out of trouble. He was going to have to let Sutton go after Daye . . . alone. The knowledge had the older man looking feral. He gave Sutton a shake where he was holding him up by his shirt so that Sutton’s shoulders were barely off the ground, and lifted his molten-silver eyes to where I was hovering nervously next to their tangled bodies. The shake was hard enough that I heard Sutton’s teeth click together and his fingers went white around Cy’s thick wrists. Logically, I knew there was no way I could ever muscle a pissed-off Cyrus away from Sutton, but I was prepared to interfere if fists started to fly. Not that I didn’t think Sutton couldn’t take care of himself or manage his brother. I was more worried about Daye, and Cy’s freak out was sucking up time we didn’t have.
When Cy finally released his death grip on Sutton, he’d done so with a sigh and sagging shoulders. Quietly, he said the words the rest of us gathered around Lane’s pliant body were too scared to say.
“You don’t even know if she’s alive. He wants you on his turf, playing by his rules, and you don’t even know if you have a reason to put yourself in danger. You need more information. You need help.”
With those dejected words, he got to his feet and made his way back to Lane. He dropped to his knees and gently lifted the youngest Warner’s head onto his lap. His big hands were unbelievably tender when he touched his brother’s face and whispered over and over again that help was on the way. Lane didn’t move and his swollen eyes no longer fluttered, but he was still breathing, and that gave us something to hold onto.
“It doesn’t matter. If there is any chance she’s alive, I have to give him what he wants. I have to go after her and you know it.” Cy’s glower indicated that he did indeed know there was no other choice for Sutton to make, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.
I helped Sutton to his feet and watched silently as he retrieved a shirt from Lane’s saddlebags since his was covered in his brother’s blood. I bent down and pressed a kiss to Lane’s clammy, black and blue forehead before Sutton grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the four-wheeler.
Cy looked up at me and I had no trouble making out the unshed tears shining in his light eyes. “Bring him back in one piece, Em.” The broken plea wrapped around my insides and squeezed so tightly I couldn’t catch my breath. “Bring them both back.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes, Cy.” My whispered assurance didn’t seem to help at all.
The ride back was even more precarious than before. He was no longer taking the turns with consideration to the fact that I was clinging helplessly to his back. There was so much tension in his long, lean body that I was almost worried to hold him too tightly. He felt like he was ready to snap in half. His shoulders were rigid and his spine was arrow straight. His jaw was locked so hard I honestly worried his teeth would crack with all the pressure he was exerting. He was very clearly a man on the edge and the slightest thing was going to send him over. Burke had known exactly what to do to put the Warners at his mercy. He went after the weakest, most vulnerable and innocent member of the family. He had Sutton firmly by the balls and he knew it. There wasn’t anything Sutton wouldn’t do to protect his child.
The quad hadn’t even rolled to a complete stop in front of the ranch house when Sutton jumped off and ran for his truck. He stopped at the back and I winced when he pulled a rifle and a wicked-looking pistol out of the locked toolbox in the truck bed. The weapons made all of this dangerously real. Once again, this man was in an imp
ossible situation where someone he was responsible for protecting had fallen into the wrong hands. No wonder he was so close to giving up all the time. The poor man couldn’t seem to catch any kind of break.
I turned as Leo came running out of the house. She took one look at my shell-shocked face and the guns in Sutton’s hands and came to a halt a few feet away from me. Without a word, she shook her head violently back and forth.
I reached out a hand to touch her but let it fall before it made contact. There was nothing I could say that would make any of this less scary.
“Lane is holding on. As long as help gets to him in the next few minutes, he’ll make it.” I didn’t know it for sure, but I refused to believe any differently. “Burke has Daye down at the bar. He told Sutton no police and no family. He’s supposed to bring me in alone.” My voice cracked and I started to shiver. I wrapped my arm around myself but it didn’t stop the quaking that had my knees knocking together. “He’s going to trade Daye for me.”
She shook her head again, red hair flying in every direction as she leaped forward and put her hands on my arms. “No! He’ll hurt you both if this is about hurting Sutton. He has no reason not to.” She gave me a little shake, one that was far gentler than the one Cyrus had inflicted on Sutton. “Why? Why put yourself in danger like this? Let the professionals handle it.”
I shook my head and pried her hands off my arms. “He said if he sees the police, then Daye is dead. You know we can’t take that risk.” I cast a look over my shoulder at where Sutton was climbing impatiently into his truck. Our eyes met through the passenger window and I could see that he was unraveling. His green eyes were practically glowing with repressed emotion and there were white lines of strain bracketing his mouth and his eyes. “You know he won’t make it if anything happens to his little girl. I have to do this. I want to do this.”
Her hands skimmed down my arms and grabbed my hands until our fingers were linked. She was terrified for me, worried I would get hurt, but resigned to the fact that I was doing this one way or another.
“He’s not going to survive watching you die either, Em.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “He barely made it through watching you get hurt. I won’t just lose you, I’ll lose him, too, and I’ll lose a piece of Cyrus when he realizes his brother has finally sunk so deep we can no longer reach him.”
The horn on the truck blasted, which made both of us jump. We could stand here all day debating the pros and cons of swimming with sharks while bleeding from self-inflicted wounds, but time wasn’t on our side. There weren’t any extra minutes to second-guess the tough choices that had to be made. I pulled away from my best friend and tried to give her a reassuring smile. “He’s already saved me once. I need you to believe he can do it again.”
She dropped her eyes to the ground as I moved to the running truck. “I can’t let you do this alone, Em. I just can’t.” I knew she was still dealing with the guilt of what happened to me the last time we’d been separated in a crisis.
“No family, Leo. If he sees you, if he sees Cy or Brynn, he’s going to go after Daye. Right now, she is the only one who matters. You need to think about her and not about what may or may not happen to me. I have to do this. You know you would do the same thing if you were in my position. You wouldn’t hesitate to risk it all for someone you love.” And love them I did, both father and daughter. They were whom I’d been searching for. They were the challenge that compelled me, intrigued me, motivated me, and fulfilled me. They were the promise of something more, the lure of something better. They were the pieces that filled up all the empty places that ached hollow and vacant inside of me.
She pulled me into a fierce hug, arms wrapped so tightly around me I worried I wouldn’t be able to escape. “You’re right. I will always risk it all for the people I love. Go get our girl. Keep Sutton safe, and I’ll trust him to keep you safe because that man loves you and he will do everything in his power to make sure nothing happens to either of you.”
I took a fortifying breath and nodded. I bolted to the truck and struggled to close the door. Sutton took off before I managed to pull it shut. He gave me a quick once-over to see how I was holding up. I was pale as a ghost and shaking uncontrollably, but my resolve was firm and my belief in him was unwavering.
“When we get to the bar, I go in first in case he just starts shooting as soon as he sees us. I doubt he will since he wants me to suffer and he’s drawn it out this long, but in case he does, you go in behind me and run at the first sign of trouble.” When I didn’t say anything, he reached out his hand and put it on my thigh. “Do you understand?”
I placed my hand over the top of his and let my head drop in a nod. “I get it. You know he’s not going to let you waltz in there with all those weapons.” I shot a look over my shoulder at the weapons on the backseat.
A muscle in his tanned cheek twitched and his mouth pulled down in a frown. “I know. But he has to know we mean business. I have a small twenty-two that I want you to stick in your boot just in case he doesn’t search you. I can’t send you in there unarmed.” His voice dropped into a lower tone and he closed his eyes briefly. “I don’t want to send you in there at all.”
I considered the guns silently. Even if every man, woman, and child in these parts weren’t already packing heat, Burke would know Sutton was going to show up for this confrontation armed to the teeth. He’d taken his child. He’d killed his first love, and then killed another innocent woman and put the blame on Sutton. He put a bullet in the man’s younger brother and demanded he hand over his lover as payment. Of course, Sutton was going to try and end him. What other choice did he have?
“Do you have a knife? Something long and skinny?” Something that I could hide that Burke wouldn’t be expecting if he got close enough to put his hands on me. No one knew how much damage a well-placed blade could do better than me.
Sutton gave me an odd look and then cocked his head to the side as he did a mental inventory of what he had in the truck. After a minute or so he told me to look in the glove box to see if there was something in there.
I dug through discarded napkins and old sauce packets. I shifted aside a spool of fishing line and gently moved a box of bullets. He had a picture with childish images drawn on it that obviously came from Daye tucked in there, as well as a bottle of cologne, a row of condoms and a crusty bottle of super glue. I gave him a lifted eyebrow when he saw what I was pulling out of the depths, and briefly that familiar smirk lifted the corners of his mouth. It gave us both a moment of reprieve from the serious situation that was desperately needed.
My fingers touched something heavy and metal. For a second, I was thrilled until I realized it was a pocket knife that was rusted shut and too heavy for what I had in mind. Sutton told me to keep digging, so I did, even though I was sure he was just trying to keep me occupied the closer we got to the outskirts of town and the bar.
At the very bottom of all the junk he had collected in the narrow space, hidden under a gross bandana, was exactly what I was looking for. A thin, wood-handled filet knife. It had seen better days, but the blade still had an edge to it and there was enough bend in the flexible metal that I could work it where I wanted. I could stash it in a place Burke shouldn’t think to look.
Once I had it hidden, I asked Sutton if he could see it, and when he assured me it was practically invisible, I felt slightly more confident that we would make it out of this mess intact.
The truck rumbled to a jerky stop in front of the bar. The parking lot was empty and there was a closed sign on the door that could be seen from the street. It reminded me of an old western. The desolate saloon that housed the belligerent and brutal. I could practically hear the theme song to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly whistling through the silence of the truck. All we needed was a lone tumbleweed to roll across the parking lot.
Sutton turned in his seat and I thought he was going for the guns in the back. I let out a little sound of surprise when one of his hands snaked
around the back of my neck. He used his hold to pull me across the seat. His lips touched mine and he whispered my name. I could taste his fear but there was something else there. Something sweeter and simply perfect.
“My entire life I’ve been given all the things I thought I wanted, Em. I got the girl who was never going to leave me or this town, no matter how shitty either of those things were for her. I got my piece of the Warner pie, a chunk of a legacy that I told myself I earned just as much as my brothers. I met a girl who turned my world upside down and she listened to me when I told her to go.” He kissed me again and used his thumb to tilt my head up so I had no choice but to look directly at him. “I felt entitled, but it wasn’t until I got the things I needed that I realized I’m not owed a goddamn thing; I should have to work for it. I needed that girl who walked away to come back for me. I needed my daughter to love me with conditions because she deserves to be loved the way that she wants and needs. I needed to know my brothers would never give up on me and I needed to know they would still be there for me even if I wasn’t physically there. I needed to know there was more than the fucking ranch that tied us together.” His eyes burned into mine as his lips touched mine one last time, the very tip of his tongue darting out to use the bow in my upper lip to trace a heart. “I need you to know that if we get the time, I will love you the way you need to be loved, Em. I will figure it out and I won’t ever forget to give you whatever it is you need to be happy.”
I hissed out a pained breath because I didn’t want him to tell me he loved me only because there was a very good chance he might lose me. I wanted him to love me because he wanted to keep me and never let me go. I didn’t want an emotional declaration because we were back in this place where we had both been before, having to choose between each other and the unknown, not knowing which would end up being more dangerous to our hearts.