Page 49 of Montana Mystery
Noah
I watched Kate disappear up the stairs with the kittens and scrubbed my hands over my face. There was nothing about this that was ideal. I wanted to follow her up the stairs and show her exactly how terrified I’d been for her, and how much I wanted to make sure she was okay.
And continue to make things okay.
Being on this side of things? I couldn’t give the other guys shit anymore. I finally understood what it was like to want nothing so badly as to protect one person. One woman.
I leaned my face into my hands for a few more seconds before I dug out my phone. Lucas answered right away. “You okay?”
“Yeah. We’re back. Did you track down Jude?”
“I did.”
I sighed. “Can you come over to the house for a few minutes?”
“We’re on our way.”
Plenty of people would say we were too paranoid about things like talking on the phone. But with our collective history, we all preferred to talk about things in person when we could. There was far less chance anyone was listening. And with this group—the Riders—I was taking zero chances.
It didn’t take the guys long to make it here and step inside. “We have to stay a little quieter.”
“What’s up?” Lucas asked.
“Kate is upstairs sleeping. She was pretty shaken up by everything.”
Jude nodded. “Tell us what happened.”
I did, running through what I knew. There was some stuff missing that could only be told from Kate’s point of view, but I’d heard and seen enough.
“This is bigger than we thought. Max having to ask permission is a clear sign. And it’s obviously not just down in Missoula—it’s here.”
“Yeah, no kidding. Glad you were able to get Kate out without too much trouble.”
I was leaning forward, elbows on my knees, still staring into the fire. Looking at the fire was easier than looking at them and knowing they were wondering about me and my past. How I was handling it. “As long as she’s in this, I’m in it. I need to help her and her brother, and I promised nothing would happen to her.”
Their looks were boring into me now, but I ignored them.
“We already know they have more than one location,” Jude said. “There’s probably more, and if they’re all rural, then it’s possible there’s one even closer to home. I don’t like the idea of that.”
“Especially with the animals,” said Lucas.
I nodded. “I thought I’d follow up on who’s adopted the animals that have come from the ranch and make sure none of them have ended up there. If any have...” I let myself drift off and not finish that sentence. Because all the things that I wanted to say seemed too brutal at the moment.
“Can’t say I disagree,” Lucas said.
“Same,” Jude added. “But at the moment, I’m more concerned about you, Noah.”
“I’m fine.”
Jude laughed once. “You don’t look fine.”
Of all the people on this ranch, Jude was the one who could look at me and tell. I was fine, and I wasn’t fine. The urge to fight back and strike and hurt the people who had done this to me—to us—was something I fought all the time. Most of the time, it was easy to ignore that bit of it. Especially in a life filled with caring for animals and people who cared about me.
Fighting brought all of it to the surface. I’d experienced it before when I’d had to fight. A switch would flip and suddenly I wouldn’t be in the here and now. I would be back there in those fucking wind-soaked caves, fighting for consciousness and barely able to hold on through the pain.
But that hadn’t happened tonight. I’d stayed on top of the memories and hadn’t lost myself. Even as I felt it pushing up from the place I kept them, I felt solid. “I’m okay,” I finally said. “It was good to have that kind of outlet for those few minutes. Just kind of let it happen. But I don’t need or want that regularly. Just glad that I got through it.”
“Glad to hear it,” Jude said. “If that changes—”