“No one will ever believe I wandered all the way out here,” Mason countered.
“There won’t be any evidence to suggest otherwise.” Gus shrugged. “And even if the land I want gets tangled up in legalities for a while, all your grazing leases will revert back to the BLM for me to take over.”
“You’re going to commit murder just so you have more land?” Mason marveled. All of this for land? Bristow already had ten thousand acres of his own but was so blinded by greed he wouldliterallykill for more.
“It’s not like the history of the Wild West isn’t rife with just that very thing.” Gus tossed one last piece of meat near Mason. It landed with a splat next to his hip. “Besides, I’m not committing murder here. The mountain lion that dens nearby will make a tidy dinner of you. It’ll be the natural course of life. My hands are clean.”
“They’re far from clean. You won’t get away with this,” Mason vowed. “Colt and his brothers will find me. Sheriff Chambers will put you away for the rest of your miserable, selfish life.”
Gus laughed as though Mason had said the silliest thing he’d ever heard and turned away.
“How’s it coming, Gent?”
Gentry was a dozen feet up the tree, securing a small camera to a thick branch.
“Just about done,” he grunted and then adjusted the angle.
Satisfied, he shimmied back down the trunk. Gentry dusted his hands when he landed back on the ground and then came over to stand beside his dad.
Gentry sneered at him. “I’m going to enjoy watching this movie later.”
“It’s too bad it had to come to this, Mason,” Gus said. Either he was an amazing actor, or the regret in his voice was genuine. “Even though you’re a little light in the boots, I always did like you.”
“Are you fucking serious right now?” Mason couldn’t believe his ears. He struggled against the ropes and kicked his legs out, but all he accomplished was increasing the blinding pain in his joints and muscles.
Unmoved by Mason’s attempt to free himself, Gus scanned the area, picked up a couple of things, and placed them in a small canvas backpack that had been sitting out of Mason’s line of sight.
“One more thing before we go.” He removed a roll of duct tape from the backpack and tossed it to Gentry. “Can’t have you trying to scare off the wildlife or attract any attention. Not that you could. Even if they are looking for you, they’ll never find you in time. I suppose that’s one drawback of having so much wild land. It’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
With a joyous smile, Gentry taped Mason’s mouth shut, and then with a salute to Mason and a nod to Gus, the two of them turned and walked away without so much as a glance back.
Mason roared into the tape, unable to move his mouth enough to form words, and fought against his constraints again. It was futile. There was no getting out of his bounds. He stopped, and his whole body slumped, his mind growing numb to the pain that refused to abate. He dropped his head forward so his chin hit his chest, and he closed his eyes. Was this really the way he was going to go out? Violently ripped apart by wild animals or a slow starvation if the carnivores didn’t find him appetizing enough?
Surely, Colt would find him before it was too late? Levi was a highly skilled tracker, and Mason knew they had to be looking. Sudden panic seized his mind. Did they even know he was missing yet? He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious or where he was, but he gauged it was probably midmorning by now. Theyhadto know by now. They had to be looking. He knew Colt would be frantic—and angry—and would have called in the entire National Guard if he could to search for him.
With nothing to do but wait and hope, Mason replayed his life and the time lost with Colt. Two decades of love and firsts and dreams ruined by his father’s lies. And now, after only having found their way back to each other again, they might never get to forge a future together.
Mason imagined the rest of his life with Colt. Of riding together to the overlook and making love on the lush spring grasses. Of skinny-dipping in the river on a hot summer night. Of Colt by his side on the front porch with white hair and face lined with stories of a life well-lived. A life shared.
Was that too much to ask?
The blood in Colt’s veins vibrated with agitation while he waited with his brothers for Nick and his team to arrive. Levi placed a thermal-imaging camera on his drone and sent it up into the air. Even though he could track Mason without it, the drone would be much faster—and speed was of the essence. The camera could pick up heat signatures and help them pinpoint the direction they needed to go. But with so much wild land surrounding them, even with the drone, it was a painstakingly slow process.
Colt paced. Took his hat off—that Katie had retrieved from the house for him—to run his hands through his hair, put it back on, and seconds later, took it off to repeat the process. Anxiety threatened to eclipse his thoughts. He couldn’t stand still, and the waiting was killing him. Every second felt like one less that Mason would still be breathing. The only thing that kept him from running off blindly was his brothers—that, and he didn’t know which way to go.
He startled when a hand landed on his shoulder.
“Easy, Colt,” Wes said too calmly for Colt’s liking. “We’ll find him.”
Colt met Wes’s gaze in the midmorning light. A dark storm brewed in the depths of his eyes, and the conviction in his promise offered Colt enough comfort to keep from crawling out of his skin.
It felt like an eternity had passed by the time Nick and his team arrived, sirens silent, blue and red lights flashing, but a glance at his watch told him it had barely been twenty minutes. Nick had to have broken every speed limit between Havenridge and the ranch.
“Got ’em,” Levi shouted as Nick and his deputies approached. “They’re to the west.”
He angled the viewer on his drone controller to show them, green forest and blue rivers now varying degrees of red and magenta and cobalt. Amid the Andy Warhol–style pop art imagery were five golden-yellow heat signatures. Two stationary signatures were clearly horses. The other three were human. One of the human signatures was motionless, while the other two were moving around. He had no doubt the immobile heat signature was Mason. He was alive, though likely injured. A wave of fury crashed through him. Whoever it was that had Mason was going to pay, and pay dearly, when Colt got his hands on them.
“Thad,” Colt shouted before he lifted his gaze from the viewfinder to look for the young hand.
