“Where, Shane? Where’d you see it?”
She finally turned her eyes to me, and what I saw inside them chilled me to the bone. “Your mother was wearing it the day she cornered me in the parking lot of the grocery store.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Jensen
“Fuck that shit,” Stone growled when he spotted the lockpick kit I’d just pulled from my back pocket. Don’t got time for that.” Lifting his booted foot, he slammed it into the middle of the solid wood door. He had to be the only man on the planet I knew who was big enough to kick in a door like that one. Goddamn man was a beast. The door flew open so hard it smashed into the wall, sending the expensive art crashing to the ground.
Whitman came rushing into the entryway with a spooked expression on his fucking face. “What the hell? Get out of my house! You have no right—”
His sentence was cut off when I slammed my fist into his face, sending him flying backward into one of the expensive pieces of ugly-ass antique furniture the house was full of.
Blood poured from his nose as he looked up at me in shock. “That’s it! I’m calling the police!”
Grabbing him by the collar, I jerked him off the ground and slammed him into the wall, wrapping a hand around his throat as I bellowed, “Where the fuck is she?”
He sputtered as his face started to turn purple.
“Calm, brother,” Laeth said from behind me.
I felt Scooter close in, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Fucker can’t talk if you’re chokin’ the life out of him.”
I loosened my grip enough for him to talk, but not enough that he could breathe comfortably. “I asked you a goddamn question,” I snarled. “You make me repeat it and I’m gonna start breaking your fingers one at a time.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he rasped.
“Your wife!” I drew my free arm back and punched a hole right through the wall two inches from his head. “The bitch who kidnapped my son today!”
His eyes bugged out, fear floating to the surface. “I-I-I had nothing to do with that!”
“Bullshit! You might be too smart to get your hands dirty with something like this, but that woman doesn’t fuckin’ sneeze without your say-so. You better start talking or so help me God, after I beat you an inch from death, every goddamn thing I have on you is going right to the cops.”
That did it. The threat to Whitman Rose’s reputation was all it took to make the man cave like the weak piece of shit he really was. “I didn’t think she’d really do it!” he gurgled. “I thought it was all talk!”
“You have three seconds.”
“Son—”
“I’m not your son, motherfucker,” I hissed. “One.”
“You don’t understand!”
“Two.”
“Nashville!” he shouted. “She’s at the ranch in Nashville! We agreed that’s where she’d go if things went wrong. She’ll have taken the boy there.”
Using my hold on his neck, I pulled him from the wall and slammed him back in, cracking his skull against the drywall. He crumpled to the ground when I released him, sucking in air frantically.
“You got all that?” I asked, looking back to Gage.
He held up the phone he’d been using to record the whole thing. “Every word. On top of everything else we already have on this piece of shit, we can add accessory to kidnapping to the list.”
“Make sure that gets to the sheriff’s department along with everything else.” I turned to Laeth and continued barking orders. “Call the department here and the police in Nashville. Give ’em the address and tell them we’re already en route. If they don’t get there first, I can’t promise that bitch’ll be alive by the time they do.”
Whitman’s arm shot out, his fingers grabbing the leg of my jeans. “Wait! You said if I told you where she was you wouldn’t leak that stuff!”
“What’s the point of having power if you don’t use it?” I asked with a sneer. I kicked my leg, shaking loose from his grip. Bending my knees so I could crouch down and get in his face, I hissed “You better fuckin’ pray she didn’t harm a hair on my son’s head, or I’ll make sure your boyfriend in prison is the biggest, meanest motherfucker in there.”
Rising to my full height, I spun on my boot and stormed out of that godforsaken house. Once and for all.
I could hear my mother screaming and crying over the sounds of chaos as I followed after the team of cops into the house on Rose Ranch.
“I wasn’t going to hurt him!” she cried. “I’d never hurt him! He’s my flesh and blood!”
I did spare her a passing glance as I ran from one room to another searching for my boy. The police detained Cordelia and were working to clear the rest of the first level as I ran up the stairs two at a time.
“Brantley!” I shouted, desperation clawing at my throat as a cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck. “Brantley! Buddy, where are you?” I threw the door to one room open, then another, and another. “Brant, bud, I’m here. Daddy’s here!”
A door at the end of the hall flew open, and my son came racing down the hall right at me. “Daddy!”
I dropped to my knees just before he hit me, wrapping my arms around him and holding on for dear life. “I’m here, bud. I’m here. I got you.” As much as it pained me, and the pain was damn near unbearable, I released him and took him by his little arms to push him back so I could examine him. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Did she do anything to you?”
“N-no,” he stuttered, breathing hard and a little pale, but for the most part, he looked okay. “Sh-she just scared me a little. But then she brought me here and let me have ice cream and watch TV. But I still don’t wanna be here, Daddy. I don’t like her. She threw me in a car and I bumped my shoulder. I don’t wanna stay with her. I wanna stay with you and Momma.”
“You’ll never have to see her again, buddy,” I promised, pulling him back into me and taking my first full breath since this whole thing started. “Never again. Your momma’s gonna be so happy to see you, bud. How about we go home?”
“Okay.” I stood up, lifting him with me and keeping him in my arms, unwilling to let him get more than a few inches away. He pulled his head back and looked down into my eyes with a seriousness beyond his years. “But can we get cheeseburgers on the way home? I’m real hungry.”
Just like that, I knew he’d be okay. Because Shane had raised him to be strong.
Shane
The relief I felt when Jensen walked through our front door with Brantley in his arms was something I’d never experienced before. Five hours of searching and worrying and praying had left me feeling like my soul had been ripped from my body. But seeing my baby in the arms of his dad, safe and sound and back where he belonged, pieced my soul back together.
Brantley had been checked out by the EMS on the scene at the ranch and given a clean bill of health before Jensen brought him home, and for the most part, my boy seemed no worse for the wear. But I was struggling. That night I’d made sure he slept in the bed with Jensen and me, tucked snuggly between us so no one could get to him.