Chapter 7
As disappointed as I was to return empty-handed, I knew that we couldn’t let ourselves get too tired, or we’d start making silly mistakes. We could overlook something or see clues where none were. The guilt gnawed at me, though, as I poured myself a glass of whiskey in the sitting room. I’d barely managed two hours of solid sleep.
I went to move to a more comfortable chair when my ankle popped again. That, coupled with the first two glasses of whiskey, propelled me nearly face-first into the antique vase that Dad had gotten as a gift from the local government in some legal battle. I kneeled to assess the damage, but it was as futile as trying to put anything else I’d broken back together.
I threw away the pieces of the vase and fell into a chair. How did everything get so complicated? I just wanted an update about Dad and for someone to find Crystal snuggled up in someone’s bunk with a dead phone battery. I was running out of time on all counts.
The only benefit was that the cops got more involved in Crystal’s case after they’d seen over a hundred of us scouring Bellfield to no avail. Remy had said 72 hours was the critical window. I’d promised him every single rancher we could spare, riders who knew the area and how to avoid falling into a gully themselves.
I wished, not just because it was Will, that Remy would put aside his pride and let Jessie’s ranchers help as well. They’d offered to lend a hand multiple times. There was only so much else we could do without the support of the reservation. When he first called earlier, Remy had said the cops advised us to try and get the tribe to help out. He told them it wasn’t likely.
If I ever gained control of this ranch, one of my first actions would be to repair this rift with our American Indian neighbors. They hated us, rightfully so, for failing to budge when they’d approached my grandfather about the official border of our property. It butted up against the reservation on the east side and apparently had once been part of a burial ground. Instead of just returning those few acres, my grandfather had started another quarrel to pass down through the generations.
The tribe hated the Blythes for a similar reason, and I didn’t blame them one bit. Our families had treated them like trash for so long. The only consolation was that I knew it would end with my father and Will’s. None of my brothers had inherited that hatred, either. I couldn’t be sure about Will’s siblings, though.
Will had a head start on mending bridges, from what I could tell. At a minimum, he worked out there with Jessie. If we just asked, I was positive that he could get the tribe to help us just this once.
I almost screamed as Beth appeared in the doorway. “Oh, jeez. I didn’t even hear you.”
“I just came home to get a change of clothes,” she sighed. “Your father is still out of it, but the doctors think he’s just about in the clear now. Don’t tell him about Crystal just yet. You know that he’ll be worried.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” I said as I typed out an update to Daniel, Zane, and Hailey. They’d been trying not to bother me with so much going on, but I wanted to keep them informed if they decided to fly out here. I knew that Daniel, in particular, was on the fence.
“Any news about Crystal?” Beth asked.
“Nothing yet.”
Her face crumpled. “This is so awful.” She looked up at the ceiling, tears shining in her eyes.
“I didn’t realize you two were close.”
“We’re friendly,” Beth said. “Your dad asked her to show me around when we were first getting serious about marrying. The cowboys didn’t think much of me. They always just acted as I’d never be able to replace Darlene—sorry. Your mother.”
Against my natural inclination to want to strangle Beth most of the time, I felt some pity for her. I knew what it was like to be locked out.
“I can understand that.” I turned my tattoo into the light and thought about what it meant to be a Wentworth. “I’m thinking about asking Will Blythe for help. He knows the reservation. He’s probably our best shot at convincing the tribe to let us search.”
Beth looked at me like I’d just suggested lighting the house on fire. “Your father would never agree to that. The Blythes murdered his uncle.” The prosecutors hadn’t seen it that way, but I was fairly sure the Blythes’ fortune had had something to do with that.
“This whole feud is ridiculous, especially when Crystal’s life could be at stake.”
“It doesn’t change anything. Your father would never forgive any of us if we let that happen while he was bedridden.”
“You’re right.” I set down my glass and grabbed the keys to the truck. The police might have said 72 hours was the most important window, but we all knew that estimate was generous if Crystal was out in the desert. We’d all heard of tourists’ bodies showing up weeks later in rivers and crevasses after they’d gotten cocky and gone out alone to hike.
Perhaps sensing where I was going, Beth put her hand on my arm as I tried to pass. “Your father won’t ever forget it.”
“I don’t care,” I protested, scoffing. “Listen. My father never forgave me for being born a girl, never mind any decisions I’ve made since. He always cared more about Zane and Daniel. My mom begged him for weeks to take me hunting for my 13th birthday, and he finally gave in. It was what I’d always wanted. But when we got out there, I couldn’t pull the trigger. I was so afraid of missing and Dad’s judgment that I never took the shot.”
Beth didn’t have anything to say to that.
“I’m not going to let him scare me into making the same mistake, not when my friend could be dying somewhere.” I patted her hand to let her know that I hadn’t entirely written off a relationship with her as hopeless. She didn’t try to stop me again as I walked out the front door, my mind already tracing the route to Will.
I called Stan from the road to ask where Will lived. “I was wondering when you might call,” he said. “If you’d waited much longer, I was going to drag you out of that damn mansion and make you see some sense.” Like the rest of us, he sounded worn out. “Because whether your family likes it or not, you’re either seeing Will Blythe at the search party or at the hospital. Or, God forbid, the funeral.”
I followed Stan’s directions as best as I could. A few minutes later, I arrived at a typical cowboy trailer park plopped randomly on the side of the road leading to the reservation. I looked at the gas station next door and wondered if Will and the others rented the land from them.
A lot of the smaller businesses had found it to be a mutually beneficial relationship. The cowboys could look after the place in the off hours to make sure no animals or troublemakers were around. Meanwhile, the cowboys got a cheap place to live.
The six trailers were arranged in a loose square with some common amenities in the center. There was an open-air pipe barn off to one side with room for horses and just enough roof to keep the rain away from any feed or straw. It wasn’t fancy, and judging by the empty stalls, it wasn’t meant to be used regularly either.
I was surprised to see Will awake so late. He was sitting out front in a metal folding chair with sun-bleached cushions, a beer in one hand, and an empty bottle by his left foot. He held out a hand to block the headlights as I approached. I cut them early and rolled to a stop about ten feet away from his battered old Chevy.
I hopped out and gestured to it. “I see you haven’t replaced your truck.”
“Too many good memories,” he replied, rising to his feet.
Heat flushed my cheeks and my belly, and I was suddenly grateful for the darkness.
“Any progress on the search?”
“Not yet.”
Will bent and reached into a cooler behind him. “Want a beer?”
I chuckled. “You have no idea.” I peeked at the small trailer and the immediate surrounding area. “So, this is what you traded living in a mansion for.”
Will nodded as I walked closer to accept the beer. “I stayed as long as I could to protect my brothers and sisters. But Bella is seventeen
now.” He cleared his throat. “There was a point where I would make my father so angry that I wasn’t helping by being around.”
“You did all you could.” Will wanted to wriggle out from under his father’s thumb and all of the greed and corruption that came with it. We were alike in that regard. But my father wasn’t violent, not like Will’s could be.
And of all of his siblings, I knew Bella the least but admired her the most. While I was out east, Crystal had kept me filled in on the local gossip. If the stories were true, Bella Blythe didn’t suffer fools.
While the rest of us had been taught to tiptoe around our relative fame, Bella weaponized hers. I remembered Crystal telling me about her standing threat to go to the press whenever their father was being horrible to the other Blythe siblings and even the ranch hands. She’d only been a child then, but old enough to understand that she’d been born to an unusual life of power and if the rest of us were any indication, misery.
Bella also had to grapple with the additional complication of being Will’s half-sister, the product of their father’s tryst with a mystery mistress who’d left Bella literally in a basket on her father’s front doorstep. In this conservative of a town, any cheating was a scandal. I couldn’t even imagine the fallout when that news had broken.
“I want to believe that Crystal is okay,” I said, sitting as Will returned with a second chair. “But I’ve wanted to believe that so many other times, too.”
“I know what you mean.”
“I’m sorry that I didn’t call when… when your mother…”
Will’s jaw tightened. “I knew that you wanted to. Hailey gave me your message. I’m sorry that I wasn’t there when your mom passed. She was a fine woman.”
“She was.” But at least I’d seen her death coming. With Will, I couldn’t imagine getting that phone call. From what I’d patched together, she’d swerved to avoid a loose steer in the road and died on impact. It was a terrible thread that bound so many of us together. Me. Sam. Will.
I looked at Will’s face in the moonlight, similar and yet so different after these thirteen years apart. He’d been my hopeless, stupid love before the hook of obligation pulled me away. It would bring me nothing but pain to keep thinking of it. “I came out here to ask if—”
“Yes,” Will interjected. “I’ll do whatever I can to help find Crystal. Jessie and Tim will, too.”
“You read my mind.”
“I always could,” he joked, though there was more truth in that than I think he knew.
I looked back towards the road that I’d taken to reach his trailer. “Please don’t tell me you were sitting out here in this chair waiting for me to show up.”
“Of course not.” He reached into his pocket and held up his cell phone. “I also thought you might call.”
Chapter 8
I felt like I stepped into an alternate dimension as I continued the search with Will, Tim, Jessie, and Sam beside me. Tim and Jessie were relative strangers to me, which only further added to the overall awkwardness of the situation.
Sam and Will were cordial, but the camaraderie of our younger years just wasn’t there anymore. Will stayed closer to Jessie instead. Their relationship was none of my business, but I couldn’t stop noticing how much Will talked to her. He’d always been quieter, even when we were alone together. But with Jessie, he was laughing and talking to her in that low monotone that I couldn’t make out over the noise of our horses.
We’d break off as needed to explore some high grass or gain a better vantage point. Tim laughed as we regrouped again. “Everybody just please be careful. The last thing we need is a Wentworth getting hurt around a Blythe or vice versa.”
Will huffed a laugh.
“Icing on the cake of this stupid family spat,” I said.
“Is the cake made of murder?” Tim asked, wincing. “Because I’m pretty sure that’s above and beyond a spat.”
“You make a good point.” I wagged a finger at Will, putting on my best John Wayne impersonation. “You and me, partner, down at the saloon at sundown.”
He patted his hip where an imaginary pistol might sit. “There ain’t ‘nough room in this town for the both of us.”
Sam ignored our antics entirely, used to this routine from our school days. Jessie looked a bit scandalized. “It’s our coping mechanism,” I told her. “You just have to laugh at it sometimes or you’ll start screaming.”
“If you say so,” she said, still sounding slightly appalled.
We stopped to water the horses at one of the pumps, and I was already itching for just a sip from the flask tucked in my saddlebag. I hated that I wanted it, that I felt fuzzy with it and fuzzier without it these days. But if there was a chance that cutting back would help me notice something, I had to resist. This was about Crystal, not my drinking.
And truthfully, I should probably have started reducing my consumption a long time ago. It just seemed so hard. Even if I poured the alcohol in the house down the drain, there would still be bars and liquor stores. I remembered how my coworkers would cheer me on at company celebrations after we’d closed a major deal or coordinated a takeover. They admired me for it that I could keep up with them.
Between the lack of alcohol and Will’s constant flirtatiousness with Jessie, I had almost reached my limit after only an hour of searching. I was bone-weary of this in every possible way. “Why are we going this way?” I snapped as my horse struggled up an incline. “The other way was flatter.”
“Sorry,” Will said. “Thought this would help us see better.”
By mid-day, Sam was hunched over the horn of his saddle, his forearms braced against the neck of his chestnut gelding. The sun was scorching with so little cover and wind to protect us. “Where’s the next pump?” he asked as he took a swig from his bottle of water. “If I’m this thirsty, the horses have got to be feeling it.”
Will looked to Jessie. “I’m not sure.” His voice dropped to a softer tone. “Do you know how far it is to the next one?”
She scowled. “I honestly didn’t think about it. I’m not usually moving this slow when I come out this way. On a normal day, we’d be at the red trailer by now.”
I didn’t know what the red trailer was, but I wasn’t in the mood for a sorry excuse. “So, let me get this straight. You’ve got five of us out here with five horses and no idea where we can get water for them? Come on, Will. You knew that we needed you as a guide out here.”
“I’m sorry. I should have checked.”
“Are you okay?” Sam asked. “You seem a little on edge.”
“I am on edge!” I shouted. “I’m out in the middle of strange territory with no plan to get water! It’s irresponsible.” I gripped my reins tighter and moved on ahead of the group. Much to my dismay, Will followed. “What do you want?”
“Is something the matter, Sky?”
I couldn’t stand to hear my name on his lips with Jessie riding right behind us. But there was no point in feeling this way either. I was just spending the whole afternoon picking at scabs, a convenient excuse to distract me from what could have happened to Crystal.
“I’m just a little irritable. I haven’t slept.” I sucked in a deep breath. “I’m sorry for biting your head off. My nerves are shot.”
“Understandable.”
What wasn’t understandable to that man? Will Blythe, who always seemed to know what everyone else was feeling. Will Blythe, who always wanted to hear both sides and make up his own mind. Will Blythe, who was always so worried about everyone else that he seemed oblivious to the turmoil in my heart.
At this point, thinking about him as anything more than old history felt like a betrayal to everything I was fighting for. I came here for a crown, and I wasn’t leaving without it. I’d promised my mother. But would she have wanted me to sacrifice love to save the ranch?
It didn’t matter anyway. Will was taken.
And if my overall discontent wasn’t enough to make me feel like a failure, learning
that the other search parties hadn’t found anything either solidified it. We’d kept in touch via text message when we could, but with five separate groups spread all over Bellfield and us on reservation, it was like the group chat from Hell.
Will, Tim, and Jessie hung back as we reached a common rendezvous point, knowing they weren’t quite welcome among our ranchers. On the way over, I’d tried to be gracious and effusive with my thanks to show that I truly did appreciate their assistance. Plus, I needed to make up for my sour mood. But if my bark had bothered anyone, they didn’t show it.
“We followed some tire tracks for a while, but they just led back to the main road,” Sam explained to Remy as soon as we arrived. Since we were coming all the way from the reservation, we were the last to get there with an update. “Probably kids out goofing off.”
Remy showed us a map on his phone and traced a line with his finger. “We went up and down the whole east side here as far as we could.”
I nodded. “We thought we spotted you early on.”
An uproar among the cowboys drew our attention. Sam went over to investigate and ended up in an argument with Gus, half-shoving him away as he backpedaled. “Just let it go, Gus. Chill out.”
Sam was tall but little match for someone of Gus’s size. Gus pushed him out of the way with ease and stormed up to me. “Your ol’ man ain’t even out of the hospital yet, and you already think you run this place. Workin’ with a Blythe, huh?”
“Don’t you think it’s kind of an all-hands-on-deck situation?” I retorted, my patience thin for this kind of posturing after such a draining few days. “Crystal and Will are friends.”
“If your father hadn' been so good to me and mine, I’d have left this place already rather’n work for you. Incompetent drunk.”
“What did you just call her?” Will asked, stepping forward.
Sam joined him, their shoulders nearly touching as they practically formed a wall in front of me. “That’s completely uncalled for.”
The Cowboy's Promise: Love Triangle Billionaire Romance (The Wentworth Cowboy Billionaire Series) Page 7
