Katie nodded and then glared at Colt. “You find my brother and bring him home safe.”
“I promise my life on that,” Colt vowed and then turned back to Wes as Katie and Angela exited the barn. “Make the call to Nick. I’ll text Levi.”
Wes pulled his phone from his back pocket as Colt turned and headed back out into the yard. He sent Levi a message to grab whatever he needed to start the search and then waited for the hands to show up.
Colt’s skin itched under the surface, and his heart raced. He needed Mason back safe. Needed to hear his voice, feel the warmth of his skin, the steady beat of his heart. He could not lose him again, not after finally making amends, putting all their past hurts to rest, and rediscovering each other. His body vibrated with an impending sense of time running out. He needed to act, to run to Mason, but he had no idea which direction to start running.
Wes came up beside Colt. “We need to wait for Nick and his team.”
“No.” Colt shook his head vehemently, panic threatening to rise and cloud his judgment yet again. “The longer we wait, the less chance we have of finding Mason a-alive.”
“Colt,” Wes said carefully, “We don’t even know where to start.”
He pointed to where the dogs were slowly ambling into the yard beside Katie and Angela. “The main house.”
Consciousness came back to Mason in painful increments until he jerked awake. Icy spikes of agony froze the breath in his lungs at the sudden movement. He squeezed his eyelids shut, as if that would help ward off the pain, and tried to make sense of a creeping sense of wrongness, that he was in serious danger. His head pounded from a blow he’d taken, but from what, he couldn’t remember. His shoulders ached, pulled back at an uncomfortable angle. His hands tingled with pins and needles.
He knew he was outside because he smelled pine and underbrush and morning earth. Birds sang on the edge of his hearing—a merry sound at odds with the confusion clouding his mind. The ground under his butt and legs was cool and damp. Something hard and rough pressed against his back. He shifted carefully and hissed as his body screamed. He took a slow, deep breath and tried again, only to meet resistance. Was he . . .?
He tried again, but his hands were bound tightly at the wrists, his arms straining behind him because they were . . . stretched around a tree?
What the hell?
He opened his eyes and caught movement through blurry vision. It took a couple of seconds for his eyesight to clear and sharpen. He was deep in the woods, tied to a fucking tree—with Gus and Gentry Bristow. Anger and fear engulfed him in equal measure.
Gus was dropping something on the ground every few steps as he walked backward, toward Mason. There was a rifle over his shoulder and a handgun in a holster at his hip. Gentry was at the edge of the small clearing, bent over and digging through a backpack. He also wore a gun belt around his waist with the flat-black butt of a pistol sticking out.
Memory flashed through Mason’s mind. He’d woken up early to let the dogs outside, but instead of their usual morning zoomies, they’d caught the scent of something nearby, and he hadn’t been able to call them off. He followed them out in his bare feet to check and make sure whatever it was wouldn’t harm them. He’d heard a noise—a shuffle or a huffing breath—before something had slammed into him from behind. He remembered pain exploding in the back of his head and then nothing until he woke up here.
His lower lip hurt when he pressed his mouth into a flat line, and the copper-tainted taste of blood gathered on his tongue.
Gus and Gentry had snuck up and knocked him out, dragged him out here, wherever the hellherewas, and then tied him to a fucking tree. To what end? Did they seriously think they were going to get what they wanted now?
A chill prickled his skin when he realized what Gus was dropping on the ground. Raw meat. The man was making a bait trail, and Mason was the big cheese.
Gus looked over his shoulder.
“Ah, you’re awake. Good.” His tone was unnervingly casual.
“What the hell, Gus?” Mason ground out. Anger rose and shoved fear aside. “Whatever you’re planning here won’t work. Let me go right now.”
Gus shook his head andtsked. “No can do. The time for negotiation is over.”
“Negotiation for what?” Mason racked his muddled mind. There was only Gus demanding Mason sell him his land and Mason’s firmNot ever. Period.
“I tried to do this nicely,” Gus replied. “But you left me no choice.”
“So what? You think this is going to make me change my mind?” Mason’s head spun. The man was delusional.
“Of course not.” Gus dropped a chunk of moist red meat the size of a softball at his feet, and the metallic smell of it curled Mason’s stomach. “You’re going to meet an unfortunate end in the jaws of a mountain lion or a bear or maybe a pack of wolves once they pick up this trail. Then your ranch will hand down to Trina, and Brett will take over. He’ll give me what I want.”
Shit.Was Brett behind this too? No. Whether he was or wasn’t, Trina would never let that happen.
“This won’t look like an accident.” Mason stated the obvious with a tip of his head toward his tied hands. “It won’t be as simple as you seem to think.”
“Oh, it will be an accident,” Gus said with a confidence that brought the fear Mason had just managed to wrangle back to the forefront. “I’ll have a game camera set up to keep an eye on you.” He waved a hand toward Gentry, who was now climbing up a tree about fifteen feet across from Mason, with a bag flung over his shoulder, presumably containing said camera.
“As soon as the local wildlife have taken their fill,” Gus continued, “we’ll come back out to remove the ropes and camera and any signs that you weren’t out here all on your own.”
