Waking up next to Emma was what heaven must feel like. I swept my hand across the pillow, looking for her naked body, thinking about sliding between her wet folds to ease the ache of my morning wood, but only found a piece of paper on her pillow.

Good morning Cowboy,

You looked so peaceful that I couldn’t bear to wake you. Please forgive me. I got a lead on Huntz and called Hunter. He’s going with me. By the time you’ll read this message, I’ll probably be on his trail already. Please trust me and don’t worry. I may be a few minutes late for dinner, but I’ll see you at Julian’s house. Please apologize for me. I need to turn my phone to silent for the next little while. Love you so much.

Em

“Shit, Emma!” I jumped out of bed and hit the shower, worrying about my girl. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to live like this, with her going on dangerous missions, and now I completely sympathized with her brothers. Once I got dressed I ran downstairs to see Harold, the security guard at Emma’s condo.

“Hi, I’m a friend of Emma’s and need to reach a friend of hers who lives in this building. Grace. Can you ring her for me?”

“Of course, sir.”

Fortunately Grace was home, and I was at her threshold within minutes.

“Did he say where they were going?”

“No, nothing.”

“Grace, I’m worried about Emma. If you hear anything at all, please let me know.”

“Of course. But there’s something you need to know about her, Eric. She’s kick-ass. I mean, this girl can break an arm and pinch a nerve to immobilize a body in one move.”

I didn’t doubt she could, yet that dreadful feeling in my stomach wouldn’t go away. But as much as I wanted to be her knight in shining armor, I had to let it go and trust her.

By the time I arrived at the Cross residence and was greeted by Jack, my worries had quadrupled. I hadn’t heard from Emma or Hunter since I’d woken up six hours ago. Although she’d mentioned being late, I knew she’d still need time to get ready and would have called me if she was back. So, I came a little earlier to Julian’s, hoping that maybe he could settle my nerves. Derek was already picking my parents up to drive them to the airport, and they’d be here within a few hours as well.

“Hi, Jack.” I ruffled the top of his blond hair when he opened the door. His lips were covered in what I assumed was chocolate, and when I crouched to the floor his sweet breath confirmed it.

“Hi, Ewik.”

“Piggyback ride?”

“Yay!” he hopped on my back, holding on with his little hands.

“Where to?”

“Kitchen! Mama’s making chocolate cake and she let me lick the bowl.”

“Did you swim in the bowl too?”

“No seewee,” he laughed, as I hopped around like a horse, the giggles vibrating from his chest onto my back.

Under Jack’s direction, I headed for the kitchen. The smell of baking and other delicious food being prepared by a chef took me aback.

“Hi, Eric.” Kendra came to my side. “This is Olivier, our caterer. He’s a family friend. Jack, get off. You’ll hurt Eric’s back, and I’m pretty sure he’s sore today.” She gave me a knowing look.

Did I have some sort of a sign on my face that said I’ve gotten lucky half a dozen times in the past twenty-four hours? But yeah, Kendra was right, my ass had never felt tighter than this morning and my arms were feeling the effects of holding Emma against that shower door, the wall in her bedroom, flipping her on her bed and on the kitchen counter. I had to stop thinking about all that, because my blood was already rushing south.

At his mom’s request, I set Jack down and gave him a high five.

“Is he as sore as you and daddy when you exercise at night?” Jack asked.

She laughed, “Yeah, I think so. Go wash your face. You’re a bit early, Eric. Where’s Emma?”

“She’s on a job.” Why did I feel like such a dick at that moment? My woman was out there, doing God knew what, and I was here waiting for her, completely helpless.

“What job?” Julian entered the kitchen, the white sleeves of his shirt rolled up.

“She left this morning. I was still sleeping. This is the note she left.”

I pulled the paper out of my pocket, barely able to control the shaking in my hand. Julian read the note and bit into an apple. His nerves were definitely made of steel.

“Okay, so Hunter went with her. She’s got her gun. They’re fine. No worries.”

“She has a gun? Listen, you may not be worried, but I can’t help it.”

“It comes with the job, Eric. You’ll get used to it,” Kendra chimed in.

“I just wish she’d call. She knows the dinner’s in an hour.”

“That’s our Emma.” Julian pulled out his laptop. “Look, if it makes you feel any better, I can check where she is. But if she finds out we snooped, she won’t like it. I’m blaming this on you.”

“Do it. I’ll take the blame.” As I wondered how he could track her, my gut jumped at the chance to get some information – any kind of news would be better than no news at all.

Julian began clicking on his laptop, and after a few moments he froze.

“What is it?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he grabbed his phone and dialed a number. “Meet me at the airport as soon as you can.” And without saying anything else, he hung up.

“Julian, what is it?”

“Emma’s in Ogden. Her phone has been in the same spot for the past three hours. I don’t have a ping on Hunter. If that fucker set a trap, she may be in trouble.”

“So her being in one spot isn’t normal?” I asked.

“What is your gut telling you?”

“No, it’s not. Shit!”

“K, I gotta go. I’m sorry to ruin the party, but if Emma’s still in Ogden, then there’s no way she’ll make it anyway.”

“I’m coming with you.” I nearly jumped into my shoes.

“Hell, no.”

“Look, you’re going to need someone who knows his way around. And there’s no way I’ll just sit here while my girl is out there looking for a bastard I should never have told her about.”

Julian took a deep breath in before saying, “Fine. You better pray she’s all right.”

Afraid to freak him out even more, I didn’t want to tell him that I’d been praying since this morning.

Before I knew it we were on another jet, flying back to Ogden while my parents were on their way to New York. While both brothers clicked on the laptops and made phone calls, I listened, wondering whether there was anything I could do to help.

“Let’s hope this is all for nothing.” Tristan’s scarred lip twitched as he leaned back in his seat. “So, what’s gonna happen when all this settles, Eric? With you and Emma, I mean.”

“I want her to stay on my ranch.”

“She’s a city girl.”

“So I’ve heard. But I think she needs the country.”

“Or is it just you who needs her?”

“Of course I do. Listen, I’m not gonna push her to do anything she doesn’t want, but when she was here – it was the best few weeks of my life. She looked so carefree and in such high spirits, so excited to help the Sheriff when he needed a different look at running the town’s safety and forming neighborhood dispute resolution hearings. If it came down to it and she didn’t want to move, I’d sell the ranch and come to New York.”

“You’d do that for her? What would you do?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but if I sold my farm to the right investor, neither I nor Emma would ever have to work again.”

“The oil?”

“She told you about it?”

“No, we did some research as well. Your grandfather was a very smart man the way he hid his wealth to keep the hyenas off track. You’ve been doing the same and would have been successful if not for Huntz.”

“I should have never involved Emma in this.”

“You know where this place is?” Tristan pointed to a house on a map on his laptop.

“Yeah, that’s Missy’s house. She’s Huntz’s daughter, but has been staying with my parents ever since he showed up in town over a week ago. Emma said he owns that property.”

The brothers remained silent for the rest of the flight, which seemed to me like the longest trip of my life. If somebody told me that this plane was flying all the way around the world, twice, to get to Ogden, I’d believe them. Just before we landed, I called Derek.

“Hey, buddy. What’s up?”

“Just wanted to thank you for taking care of my parents’ farm for me.”

“No need to thank me yet. Your parents haven’t left.”

“What?”

“I went over to drive them and they said they were waiting for Emma, but she never showed up. They were supposed to fly back together just after noon.”

“Shit. Have you been to their house?”

“Yeah.”

“And everything is good?”

“Yes, they’re fine. A bit concerned that she didn’t call. They were gonna call you later to apologize for missing the dinner. Anything I can do?”

“I may need to borrow your truck.”

Derek had just purchased a new set of wheels I knew I could rely on. Once this hunt was over, I promised myself to do the same.

“Of course.”

“Thanks, buddy.”

I hung up and told the brothers about my conversation.

“Fuck! She’s definitely in trouble,” Julian said. “Why his truck?”

“What vehicle do you have at the airport?”

The brothers looked from one to the other and both said at the same time, “A Bentley.”

“I thought so. I noticed one in your driveway. Derek’s truck is all-terrain. Mine is getting repaired. Believe me, you want a truck to where we’re driving.”

“I don’t think you’ve seen us drive.”

“I can imagine. But there are holes in the road big enough to swallow an elephant. You need the truck.”

I lowered my head into my hands, pulling on my hair, looking back up after a few moments. “I swear if I get her out of this, I will not have her do another job like this again.”

Julian put his arm around my shoulder. “Welcome to our world. But if you do that, you’ll lose Emma the way we lost her for a while.”

I knew they were right, and I knew there was no way I could make that kind of a stipulation for my girl. Whatever we decided, it had to be mutual and not forced.

When we landed, Derek’s car was already waiting for us on the tarmac. He’d left with his brother Blake. Tristan insisted on driving the black RAM on wheels suitable for a tractor.

The sun was sinking lower. Tristan didn’t obey the town’s imposed speed limit and flew through it like a hurricane. I was afraid Derek would have some explaining to do to the sheriff, as without a doubt the complaints would pile up. As we passed Ogden and neared Huntz’s house, the smell of burning wood, plastic and rubber hit me and my gut twisted into knots.

As soon as we pulled up, I couldn’t wait. Covering my face with my arm, I jumped out of the car and rushed toward the flames, even while thinking how surviving the blaze in front of me was impossible. There was no way to enter from the front. I jumped over the fence and ran from the yard to where the back door was still untouched by the fire. The smell of gasoline permeated the air. Unsure where my adrenaline came from, I kicked it open. If Emma was inside and I was too late, I’d let myself die along her side. The brothers were right behind me, shouting something I couldn’t make out, but it didn’t matter. I had to get to Emma. My eyes stung from the smoke, and I could barely see. A muffled sound echoed over the roaring flames,

In the middle of the room, tied to a chair was Hunter, bleeding from his face, bruised and gagged. I untied his arms while Julian pulled out the cloth from his mouth.

“Where’s Emma?” he coughed.

“Not here. Huntz took her.”

We lifted Hunter under his arms. The guy yelped in pain and I was sure he had more than one broken bone.

“Her tracking brought us here,” Julian explained.

“She dropped her phone.”

We pulled Hunter out just in time – the gas explosion inside the house rattled the ground underneath us. Sounds of an oncoming siren echoed in the distance, but if I knew our fire department, this place would be burnt down to nothing before they got here. That was a setback in our town. The medical and first-aid facilities were close to non-existent, hence my sister’s reasoning to go to San Francisco to become a nurse. This town’s infrastructure was only years ahead of the Stone Age.

“We need to organize a search team. Fuck! This will take too long!” Tristan paced back and forth beside the truck.

Where the hell could Huntz have taken her? He couldn’t have gotten far, and with the team of experts I’d heard the Cross brothers had already mobilized, Huntz would need to hide. Whoever got here within the next hour would be on the bastard’s trail in no time – but would it be fast enough? I knew too well what men like him were capable of, and vowed that if Emma even lost a hair, I’d kill the son of a bitch. There was only one place he could have gone to – a secret hideaway that had never been found by the police or anyone else.

“I know where she is,” I said, the memory of my abduction finally clear for the first time in a decade. “Follow me.”

“Sorry, buddy, you need to take a bit more of this pain,” I said to Hunter.

“I’ve been through worse. This is nothing.”

We seated him in the back of the truck, and I made a mental note to clean the blood off later on. I tightened my grip on the wheel and drove back toward the fork in the road that led out of town, towards my parents’ house, and out to the forest the other way. A forest I’d run through as a kid but never remembered where it was until now.

An oncoming car was honking at us. I stopped when Missy’s old truck pulled over beside me.

“Eric, it’s him. Your parents’ house is on fire,” Missy cried. “I tried to warn them. I really did. I’m so sorry.”

I looked down the road toward my parents’ house and towards the entrance to the woods. My heart stopped as I turned toward the Cross brothers. Julian’s and Tristan’s faces paled, because they knew I was the only key they had now to find their sister; but if I chose that road, I ran the chance of never seeing my parents again.