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Hargrove Ranch.

By the time I rode through the narrow strip of woods that separated our two ranches and got to Hannah’s house, it was full dark. I galloped down the lane toward the road to intercept Savanna as she was driving in Hannah’s laneway. She parked her truck and handed me my guns.

“You’ll need help.”

“No. I don’t want you getting hurt, but stay close. Wait at the end of the lane in case Harlan is hurt and we need the truck for him.”

“Okay.”

I got off Outlaw and tied him to a tree branch and left him standing there at the side of the driveway while I ran up onto Hannah’s porch and barged right in.

“You’ve done it this time, Hannah. You touched my boy.”

“Get out of my house, Travis. You’ve lost it.”

I grabbed my cuffs off my belt and grabbed skinny Hannah’s arm. She screeched and clawed at me as I wrestled her around and eventually won out. I chained her wrist to the oven handle on the old Finlay woodstove in her kitchen. Left her yelling curses at me while I searched every inch of her house.

Harlan wasn’t in the house.

Bunkhouse was next.

With the flow of adrenaline pumping through me, I forgot all about how broken and sore my body was as I ran to the bunkhouse.

In a wild rage, I kicked the door off its hinges and ran in pointing my shotgun at the cowboys who were playing cards attheir kitchen table. Max and Sarge were by my side waiting for a hand signal to attack.

“What did y’all do with Harlan?” I shouted at them.

“Who?” Smart-ass red-haired guy laughed and baited me, and I shot him in the foot.

Bang.

“See what’s happening here? Y’all are way over your heads in this. Y’all don’t know me and I’m not the hick sheriff y’all think I am. I’ll kill every fuckin one of you and never think twice about it. Y’all are fucking with the wrong Sheriff. Understand? Where’s Harlan?”

Max and Sarge growled and snarled ready to give me backup.

Red-haired guy sat on the floor trying to get his boot off to see how bad he was bleeding. The shot into the side of his foot would be burning like hell on a Sunday. I had no sympathy for him.

None.

Stunned silence from the other cowboys. Nobody was saying a word.

“All of you are under arrest for kidnapping a minor and for attempted murder.”

“He ain’t no minor,” snapped one of the assholes.

“Fifteen years old for five more weeks. You guys are so fucked. You took my kid and all of you are never gonna see the light of fuckin day.”

Harlan woke up out of a drug-induced haze and it was so black where he was, he couldn’t see shit. Felt damp and his skin was wet. Dew.

Trees all around him and he was lying on hard boards. Waiting for his head to clear so he could think, he remembered checking the camera at the back of the ranch, and then the two guys on him with the needle.

“Where’s Windrider? Where’s my horse?” His words came out funny…like he was drunk.

There was rustling in the trees, and he thought somebody was coming through the woods towards him, but nobody showed up—probably an animal. Hope it’s not a bear. Better be a deer or an elk.

He got up onto his hands and knees and felt around to see where he was. A railing around a platform and it wasn’t big. Could be a lookout or a tree house.

“A blind. It’s a hunting blind way back behind Hannah’s house. Yep.”