“What have you got?” Colt swallowed a deep lungful of air as he pulled his chair next to Wes. Mason, whose expression was tight with apprehension, came around the table to stand behind him.
“Got something on the drone,” Levi said, his voice tight.
He pulled an SD card from his shirt pocket and stuck it in the slot on the side of Wes’s laptop. Wes called up the file and hit Play.
The tension in the air surrounding Colt was suffocating as the video footage began. The drone zoomed over the trees and more remote sections of the property as the sun came up and painted the treetops and surrounding mountains in a peachy-pink hue. There was an incredibly long minute of not seeing much before something glinted just right in the light. The camera angle turned and zoomed in closer. There was a small clearing in the forest and what looked like a small firepit and a tent.
“Is that a—”
“Hunting camp,” Mason ground out over top of him. To Levi, he said, “Where is this exac—”
Before he finished, there was movement in the corner of the frame, and then a man walked into the camp. He paused, looked around, and then looked up. His face was clear as day in the viewfinder. Wes paused the feed.
“That son of a bitch!” Mason rocked back, fury burning in his eyes when they briefly met Colt’s. “I told you Jack-fucking-Wilks was behind this.”
“This doesn’t prove he was behind anything,” Colt said carefully, not wanting Mason to get his hopes up. He’d seen it too many times in his line of work to know nothing was as cut-and-dried as it seemed at first glance. “Only that, at the very least, he’s illegally hunting on private property.”
“Yeah, my fucking property,” Mason snapped. He tapped the video screen. “Where is this, Levi?”
“Northwest corner, where the forest gets denser,” Levi said, his gaze pinging from Mason to Colt and back.
Mason’s complexion paled. “That’s the section of the ranch I license for wilderness camps. If he’s hunting out there . . .”
Colt didn’t need Mason to finish that sentence. If Jack was out there hunting, where people—kids, even—were camping, he was putting them all in danger.
Levi leaned over Wes and tapped Play again and then pointed to the screen. In the video, Jack’s expression changed from curious to panicked realization. He turned and hastily started grabbing things and shoving them into a canvas bag, and then bolted north, out of the frame. The image pulled back to increase the aerial view and revealed flashes of Jack running through the forest.
“He’s headed toward a fire service road,” Mason said, his voice cold and hard. He turned away without a word, stomped over to the foyer, and shoved his feet into his boots.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Colt demanded. He rose from his chair and followed.
Mason looked over his shoulder and threw a look at Colt that would have melted a lesser man to the floor. His voice was icy but determined when he said, “I’m going out there.”
Colt rushed forward and blocked the front door just as Mason put his hat on his head. No way was he letting Mason run off half-cocked. “Not so fast.”
“Get out of my way,” Mason growled, his voice deep and threatening, and Colt’s body responded with anoh hell, yes, let’s.
“No,” Colt snapped, his voice sharper than intended, but being turned on by a fiery Mason right now was the last thing he needed. “You are not going out there. Especially not alone.”
“Mason,” Wes said. He was standing now. “He knows he’s been caught. We’ve already called Nick. He’s issued a BOLO for Jack, and his deputies are headed out there to head him off. We need to let his team examine the area. Otherwise, we risk contaminating any evidence and any potential case being tossed on a technicality.”
“But what if Jack gets away while we’re sitting here with our thumbs up our asses?” Mason argued. The growl was gone from his voice, but it wasn’t far below the surface.
“It’s been twenty minutes since I got this footage,” Levi offered. “And we called Nick the second we saw Jack. He’s only got two routes for escape, and Nick is making sure both options are blocked.”
Mason turned his glare on Colt. His fists were clenched and his mouth a hard, flat line, but Colt stood his ground, fighting his own conflicting desire to move into Mason’s space and feel how hot that fire was to touch. He’d had a taste last night and wanted more.
He put a hand on Mason’s biceps, and instead of fire, electricity zapped through him from the point of contact.
“Hey,” Colt said, his voice low and soothing. “We’ve got this, okay? Wes and I will go out there and see what we can do to help. You stay here with Levi.”
Mason stared at him for a long few seconds while Colt fought every desire to drag him down the hall and back to the bedroom.
“Fine, but I can’t sit here twiddling my thumbs.” Mason broke his standoff and looked over his shoulder. “Levi, let’s go check on the horses.”
Levi exchanged a curious look with Wes and then looked to Colt with the question in his eyes. Colt shrugged. He didn’t want to let Mason out of his sight, but being alone with Mason wasn’t a good idea right now either. His emotions were too close to the surface, and he shouldn’t want a repeat of last night when his focus needed to be on Mason’s safety and protection, not how many times he could make him come.
Colt moved aside so Mason could exit with his brother. Mason leveled another fierce glare at him, green-gold fire snapping in his eyes as he passed. As though once again everything was Colt’s fault. The heat of Mason’s body washed over Colt like a wave, and it took all he had in him not to react.
