by A. J. Pine
He’d have dealt with Delaney skipping town and leaving him in the dust after the way he treated her. But going for a walk without her phone or EpiPen? Something was wrong, and he’d never forgive himself if anything happened to her.
He pulled Delaney’s phone out of his back pocket. It had been unlocked, and he’d totally violated her privacy and checked her texts and messages. But it had all been in an effort to figure out if she was in danger.
“I knew she’d been in contact with him. She told me so herself, but listen to this,” he said to Ben and Colt, then played them a voicemail Wade had left for Delaney, one she hadn’t told Sam about. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence he checked up on her the first time she stepped foot back in Meadow Valley since they got divorced.”
“Isn’t it possible,” Ben started, “that she was simply so pissed at you that she skipped town?”
Sam brandished her phone in his face. “Without her phone? Or the cat? Without any of her things? And with my damned dog?”
Ben scratched the back of his neck. “I guess my theory doesn’t hold up.”
Sam pulled something else out of his other pocket, a yellow tube. “And she doesn’t have this.” He didn’t want to imagine what would happen if she needed the EpiPen and it wasn’t with her.
Colt gripped Sam’s shoulder and gave him a firm squeeze. “Tell us what Pearl said and what you need us to do.”
Sam blew out a shaky breath. “She said she never heard of him laying a hand on anyone who didn’t lay a hand on him first. But the people he consorts with…If he’s here, he might not be alone. You want to know why Delaney’s so good in the boxing ring? It’s because Wade scared her enough to make her think she needed to protect herself.”
“So where are we going?” Ben asked.
“I called the sheriff’s office. They’ve got a car on the streets, and Deputy Garcia is coming with me. We need to hit the trails.”
Both of the other men nodded.
“I’ll take the new one since I know it best,” Sam said. “You two take the others.”
He glanced through Colt’s open door. “Sun’s coming up, so I’m heading out.”
“We’re on it,” Colt said.
“I’ll—get dressed,” Ben added, but his face grew serious. “We’re gonna find them, okay?”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “We will.” He had to believe his own words because the alternative…There was no alternative.
He left his brother and Colt and strode toward the stairwell, his strides growing longer and his pace growing faster until he was somehow outside the building and breaking into a sprint, nearly trampling his police backup.
“Hey, hey, hey, Callahan!” Deputy Daniela Garcia called after him. “A little warning that the chase is on next time?”
In a black T-shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes—her shoulder-length dark hair pulled into a ponytail—she could have been a local or a ranch guest out for an early morning run. Only the holster at her hips, her radio clipped on one side and her gun on the other, gave her away.
She caught up to Sam in mere seconds. She was a trail marathon runner, and he was glad to have her on his side, but this was one trail she didn’t yet know.
“Sorry, Dani,” Sam said, only slowing when they made it to the trailhead. But he wasn’t wasting another second.
She nodded and held a finger to her lips, then motioned for him to lead the way.
Show me where you and Scout went, Vegas. And tell me we’re not too late.
Delaney limped on an ankle swollen not from any typical injury but from the immediate reaction to not one but two stings. She knew it was only a matter of minutes before the venom’s effect would be more than skin deep.
She called for Wade, but her voice cracked, and she couldn’t seem to get enough air to create the intended volume. Scout ran back and forth in front of her, as if she were guiding Delaney back to where Wade would be waiting with a smug grin, ready to say, I told you so. But then the dog stopped and whimpered, pawing at her snout.
“Oh no,” Delaney said softly, noticing the red welts on Scout’s face. Everything had happened so fast, yet it had felt like slow motion—Delaney stepping on the hive or nest or whatever it was, the first sting and the one after that as she tried not to panic while slowly moving away, and then Scout sensing her distress, nipping at the angry insects who survived being trampled.
Scout got stung, too, and from the looks of things, she was possibly experiencing an allergic reaction as well.
“Wade,” she said again when he came into view. She heard the high-pitched whistle of air when she inhaled. So she’d already made it to wheezing.
“What took you two so long? I thought you’d circle back in a matter of seconds…” His words trailed off when he got a good look at her. “Delaney. What the heck happened?”
She could barely stand on her injured foot anymore, and she wavered, trying to keep her balance as her vision began to blur.
“Wasps. Please, stop messing around and call for help. If I don’t get a shot of epinephrine in the next few minutes—”
Scout howled and buried her snout in her paws.
Wade looked from her to the dog and back to Delaney, wide-eyed, but he didn’t move.
“Snap out of it,” she said. “I know you didn’t mean for this to happen, but this isn’t about the deed or money anymore, so just make the right choice for once.”
She could see the swirl of thoughts going through his head—the realization that it was a losing battle whichever way he sliced it. If he called for help, he was as good as turning himself in. If he didn’t, she’d die. Come to think of it, maybe he was the one who was swirling, because Delaney could see two of him now.
She cried out as she took one laboring step to get close enough, and remembered how when she’d twisted her ankle in the boxing ring, Sam had laid down his defenses and put himself at risk to help her. Even now, though, Wade Harper was too much of a damned coward to do that.
“Give me your phone, Wade.”
He pulled his phone from his pocket, staring at the screen and then at her.
Then he swiped up, pressed a few buttons, and placed the phone to his ear.
“We’re lost on a trail on the outskirts of the Meadow Valley Ranch,” he said to whoever was on the other line. “I’m with a woman and a dog who’ve both been stung by wasps and are having allergic reactions. The woman will go into anaphylactic shock if she doesn’t get a shot of epinephrine soon.”
That was the last thing she heard before everything sounded like she was underwater. Then she felt the weight lifted off her injured foot, and she exhaled a shallow breath before closing her eyes. She was just going to take a tiny rest.
“Dispatch said a trail,” a female voice said. “Wait…I think I see them.” The voice was getting closer. “They’re over here!”
“She’s not breathing,” Wade said. “Oh my God, she’s not breathing.”
“Damn it, Vegas. You promised you’d never leave without this again.”
Sam? How did Sam learn to talk underwater?
A sharp sting pierced the skin of her thigh, and she guessed it was a final wasp who’d come to finish the job her friends had started.
“This is it,” she mumbled. “Bring on the white light.”
“It’s working. Get him out of here and call the firehouse. Have my brother run Scout over to Dr. Eli Murphy’s place. He’ll see her, even at this hour. She’s been stung before but not multiple times at once. I’d rather play it safe.”
“Nice work, Callahan. Glad I didn’t have to handle the injection. Needles scare the heck out of me,” the strange woman’s voice said.
“Says the badass who just cuffed the bad guy. I think we’re good here. I’ll carry her the rest of the way if I have to.” Someone stroked her hair. “Can you take another breath, Vegas?”
His voice was clearer now, and she guessed that maybe he wasn’t some sort of fish person who could speak underwater. She breath
ed in deeper this time, the whistling wheeze all but gone. Her fingers tingled, and she felt dirt beneath them. She blinked a few times, then looked straight up into Sam Callahan’s brown eyes.
“You found me,” she said softly. “And—not a bad guy. At least, not tonight. We went for a walk and got lost. Wade just wanted to stay lost until I did what he wanted. Couldn’t sweet-talk,” she mumbled. “And then wasps.”
His brows drew together. At least, she thought they had. But that might have also been her double vision still righting itself.
Delaney realized she was lying with her head in Sam’s lap, and she pushed herself up to a sitting position.
She glanced around frantically, but there was no sign of Wade. No sign of Scout.
“Scout,” she said. “She got stung. Because of me. I should have walked her straight back to your place when she followed me, but—”
“Scout’s fine. Ben will get her checked out. I know there’s a lot I need to say right now, but from the looks of the swelling on that ankle, we need to get you to a doctor. Can you stand?”
She nodded. Her foot still hurt, but the swelling was already half of what it was before.
She limped her way back to the semicleared path. An ambulance sat waiting at the edge of the property. She smiled when she saw the familiar face of Carter Bowen where he stood by the vehicle’s open back doors.
“Good morning, Delaney,” he said. “Can I give you a lift?”
She laughed nervously. “Haven’t been in one of these since I was a kid, the first time I got stung.”
“You riding with her?” Carter asked Sam.
She opened her mouth to tell him it wasn’t necessary, that he should go to the vet and check on Scout, but she never got the chance.
“Of course I am,” he said.
Carter helped her into the vehicle and onto the stretcher, where he checked her vitals before strapping her in for the ride.
Sam climbed in after and sat on the bench facing her.
He came for her. And was staying. Despite the horrible things she overheard him saying to Ben and Colt, she knew the past week hadn’t been a lie, even if something had changed irrevocably for Sam last night. He cared about her as much as she cared about him. She was sure of that now. But she was just as sure that if he couldn’t believe in a future where he deserved more than going it alone until the other shoe dropped, then his future would never include her, and she would have to live with that. The good news was that she would live. She’d just be doing it with a lot more heartache than when she’d arrived here a week ago.
“Thanks for saving my life again,” she said with a soft smile.
“Thanks for not dying, Vegas.”
He rested a hand over hers, and even though it wasn’t a bone-melting kiss, it was somehow everything she’d ever wanted, even though she knew they were still on their way to good-bye. Delaney understood now why Sam did what he did the night before.
She couldn’t be in a place where she’d likely see him every day yet not be able to be with him. It would be the worst kind of pain, for both of them.
No wasp sting or near-death experience could measure up to how much it would hurt when she left Meadow Valley for good.
Chapter Twenty-One
Once at the hospital, Sam waited in a plastic chair outside the curtain of Delaney’s exam room while Delaney gave her statement to Deputy Garcia. He was more than exhausted. The past several hours drained his last reserves of physical and emotional resolve. He was simply spent—every last part of him.
“She gonna be okay?”
He glanced up to see his brother standing there, his hair still rumpled from sleep or lack thereof, and dark circles under his eyes that matched his own.
Sam nodded and stood. “They gave her another dose of epinephrine after listening to her lungs. Finally gave her her walking papers a few minutes ago.” He scratched his stubbled jaw. “How’s Scout? Did you drop her back at home? How long have we been here?” He’d been in and out of the room with Delaney all morning, but she’d insisted on giving her statement to Deputy Garcia alone.
“Scout’s fine. The vet gave her some Benadryl for the itching, and she’s home passed out on your bed. As for question number three? Two hours,” Ben said.
“Feels like a week.” It was only nine in the morning, but he’d been going full throttle since four.
“You look like hell,” Ben said with a laugh.
“You take a look in the mirror lately?” Sam raised a brow.
Both men had been hiding from an uncertain future—Sam in his way, and Ben in his.
“I lost it last night,” Sam said. “Dad hurt her, and I couldn’t protect her. What if that’s me someday?” He cleared his throat. “I was going to get tested. I know we decided not to and to just live our lives, which is why I wanted to tell you. Now I don’t know if I could handle the truth if it’s not the truth I want.” He shrugged, even though the weight of that implication threatened to pummel him to the ground.
Ben nodded soberly. “I had my blood drawn six months ago.”
Sam’s eyes widened.
“I was afraid to tell you because you were so hell-bent on this pact we made and on not burdening ourselves with something we can’t control, but I can’t do what you do. I can’t tuck it all away. I know you think all I do is avoid the tough stuff, and maybe I do with Dad, but that’s only because it hits too close to home.”
In that moment, everything fell into place—Ben shirking his ranch duties more and more and visiting their father less and less. Okay, fine, he’d always been the guy to choose fun over responsibility, but lately, since they’d opened the ranch’s doors for business, something had shifted in Ben’s behavior.
“Your test came back positive,” Sam said. It wasn’t a question.
Ben nodded. “It’s still a goddamn crapshoot. The doc said that even with the gene mutation, some people go on to live long, healthy lives with no symptoms. More do end up exhibiting signs, though. Some in their late forties like Dad. Some not for decades more. So I’m changing my diet, taking a lot of supplements—and maybe blowing off a little too much steam every now and then.”
Sam’s throat tightened. He had no words of encouragement. There was nothing he could say that would change what the doctor had already told Ben. So he did the only thing he could think of, something he hadn’t done in years.
He pulled his brother into a hug. And Ben surprised the hell out of him by hugging him back.
“We’re going to figure this out,” Sam said, not that he had any clue how. “But in the meantime, you gotta keep it in your pants around Pearl’s granddaughter. That woman loves you like her own, but she’ll kill you with her bare hands if you hurt her flesh and blood.”
Ben laughed and pulled away. “She’s heading back east. I know you find this hard to believe, but I’m pretty sure she only wanted me for a fling anyway. Love me and leave me. Use me and abuse me. Can’t blame her, what with my dashing good looks and huge—”
“All right, all right,” Sam said. “Enough stroking your own—ego.”
Ben grinned. “Just calling it like it is, bro.”
All this time he’d thought he was protecting his little brother by shielding him from whatever the truth about his future was. But Ben had actually been protecting him—from the burden of knowing what was too painful to know, from not being able to solve a problem that had no solution.
The examining room curtain opened, and Deputy Garcia stepped out first.
“Callahan,” she said, nodding at Sam. “Callahan.” She did the same for Ben. “Wade told us a lot about a deed, the sale of the land to you all. I don’t think this was a kidnapping, just a couple of people getting lost. But this Wade Harper thing goes deeper than tonight.”
Both men nodded.
“Sam, I’m going to need a quick statement from you, but you can come by the station later today or tomorrow if that works okay.”
He nodded and shook the deputy’s
hand. “Thank you for all your help today.”
“Anytime, Sam. Let me know when you and your crew clear out that trail. I’d love to give it a run when it’s open for business.”
Sam smiled. “You’ll be the first one I call.”
She looked both men up and down, then shook her head. “Get some sleep, boys.”
She pushed through the double doors that led to the lobby, and Ben let out a low whistle.
“I think I want to take up trail running,” he said.
Sam backhanded him on the shoulder. “I can see this diagnosis of yours has been very sobering.”
Ben shrugged. “Who knows how many good years I have left? Might as well make the most of them.”
A throat cleared, and both men’s attention turned back toward the exam room curtain.
Delaney waved. “Sorry to interrupt. But it, um, looks like I’m free to go. You really didn’t have to wait.”
“This is my cue to exit,” Ben said, bowing dramatically and backing toward the door.
Delaney laughed, and her cheeks flushed. Sam looked her up and down. Her hair was a mess, and he was pretty sure he could still see a leaf or two buried in her matted strawberry-blond waves. Dried mud caked her shoes and was splattered up her legs. Circles rimmed her eyes to rival Ben’s and possibly Sam’s own.
“What?” she asked, patting a hand over her hair. “I’m a disaster. I know.”
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
“Sam. We aren’t—I mean, we can’t…” She crossed her arms. “Besides, I’m supposed to be mad at you.” She didn’t sound mad at all. “You aren’t allowed to compliment me when I’m angry, especially when I know I look like some woodland creature who may or may not have smaller woodland creatures living in her hair.”
He understood. That she would even speak to him after last night was a miracle in and of itself. Still, no matter what happened next, he needed her to know it was real, that they were real.
“About that,” he said. “Can I—kiss you? Will that mess with your plans to throttle me?”
