The phone flipped closed as Graham raced from the back door, filled with panic, fear, and a man’s knowledge that something too precious to be lost had just escaped his life.

Poor dumb fucker, Tracker thought. He should have taken better care of her.

A second later Tracker was flying backward, to land on his ass with a surprised curse and a thud. Jumping to his feet, he faced Graham’s furious wrath coolly.

“Bad move, Brock,” he growled. “I don’t take kindly to that shit.”

“Fuck you!” Graham snarled in his face. “Why the fuck didn’t you stop her?”

—

Rage was like a living, burning entity searing his insides as he faced the mercenary, using every ounce of self-control he possessed to keep from killing the bastard.

“It’s not my place to stop her.” Tracker stood still, his stance one of precaution as he watched Graham carefully now. “It’s my job to keep her alive.”

“And you think—” Snapping his lips closed, he turned and hit the garage remote, bending and moving beneath the door when it was no more than halfway raised to rush to the Viper.

He’d catch up with her quickly enough.

Dawg’s place was just up the road and she would head there first. Elijah had just gotten off the phone with him and her brother knew to be waiting for her.

As the garage door lifted enough for the Viper to clear it, Graham hit the gas, throwing the vehicle into gear and racing from the interior with a scream of the tires. He rounded the curve that led to the front of the house even as he shifted gears, pushing for more speed.

Seeing his pickup race from its parking space had sent his mind exploding. Everything inside him was screaming about the danger she was facing by leaving the house. Every second she’d been with him, his body had clenched at the thought of her so much as sticking her head out the door and giving anyone a chance even to glimpse her.

It was imperative that no one see her. To keep her alive, he had to keep her hidden.

And now, she wasn’t hidden.

Taking the turn onto the main road, he was racing toward Dawg’s in less than a minute. The Viper ate up the miles, taking the curves with a smooth, easy performance he didn’t even pay attention to.

All he could think about was the danger Lyrica would face if she reached the inn. All he could consider was life without Lyrica in it, and the knowledge that if he weren’t such a stubborn bastard, she would have never slipped away on him.

The turn to Dawg’s farm was just ahead, and still he hadn’t caught up with her.

That fucking pickup wasn’t that fast, he thought, a premonition suddenly racing up his spine.

No, she wouldn’t have gone to the inn, he tried to tell himself. She wouldn’t have considered something so foolhardy without him or her brother at her side.

As he reached the turn, the sight of Natches’s modified ruby red Charger coming at him, moving so fast it was nearly on two wheels, had him stomping the brakes as he swung the Viper into a turn the second the car passed; the sight of both Dawg and Natches in the front had that premonition cementing to stark knowledge.

“Incoming call. Secured. Encrypted.” The computer announced the call.

“Accept.” The growl was torn from his throat, fear filling his senses, sharp and acrid on his tongue.

“What the fuck did you do?” Dawg yelled into the connection. “Lyrica wasn’t on her way here. She’s on her way to the inn. She passed Rowdy less than five minutes ago, tearing the roads up in that fucking truck of yours.”

He was sweating.

As he shifted gears quickly, the Viper tore around the Charger, taking the lead as Graham cursed furiously.

“Graham, I’ll take your head off if she gets hurt.” Natches wasn’t screaming. He was icy cold, calm.

“You have that friend of yours with you?” Graham bit out, referring to the sniper rifle Natches always kept close at hand.

“Why?” the other man asked with cool, biting fury.

“Don’t bother with the house; get in place with it once you arrive,” he ordered, the Charger still in his rearview mirror despite the pure power Graham was pouring into the modified engine beneath the hood of the Viper.

Dawg was cursing furiously.

“There’s an angel in the trees,” Natches informed him. “Why me?”

“Fuck if I know,” Graham snarled. “Just do it.”

Flicking the disconnect button on the steering wheel, he pushed the Viper harder, hearing the tires scream as he took the curves now. Rather than risk the more heavily traveled route to the inn, Graham took the dirt road ahead instead.

Turning onto it with a spray of dirt and gravel, he was forced to fight the steering wheel for a precious second before the Viper was racing toward its location once more.

The direct route to the inn would alert Davis and his fiancée, if she was involved, that he was coming. The back road that ended just behind the tree line behind the house would hide his arrival. Something warned him that slipping into the house might be all that saved Lyrica.

Some inborn sense of danger, a warning he didn’t dare ignore, tightened in his gut. This was why a move hadn’t been made. Someone had known she would make her own move.

Davis couldn’t have known her that well. But the fiancée had been at the inn for months. Long enough to have gotten to know Lyrica. Long enough to know how close each girl was to her mother.

Damn, he should have seen this coming. Lyrica had called her mother just after leaving her apartment that night. She’d told Mercedes she was coming, that she’d just left. Carmina would have known Lyrica was on her way. If Davis was just waiting for a chance to get to her, then he could have easily been in place to force the Jeep off the road.

If Lyrica’s vehicle hadn’t been so well reinforced, she would have been dead. Whoever had driven that van—Davis, he was guessing—hadn’t been expecting the steel reinforcements Dawg had welded into the frame just in case something like that had happened during the years he’d driven it.

It would have taken far more than a van ramming the passenger side to hurt the driver. If he’d rammed the driver’s side, then he’d have accomplished his goal. The sheer force of the blow would have killed her.

But he’d hit the passenger side, expecting the Jeep to crumple and fly over the edge into the depths of the ravine.

He hadn’t been wrong about Lyrica making an appearance on her own sooner or later, though. But was he expecting it this soon?

He couldn’t know Graham knew he was alive. He was suspected to be dead, and there was no way anyone could know Graham had even tied this to Betts Laren.

Unless Carmina Lucient’s presence at the inn had enabled her to learn far more than even Graham feared.

TWENTY-ONE

Lyrica remembered the years in Texas, before Timothy had found them and saved them. Before he had brought them to Kentucky and given Dawg the chance to show them what family really meant. She remembered the fear whenever Chandler had arrived, his strict, icy presence filling the house with a heavy, fearful tension.

And she remembered those few times she and her sisters had been separated from their mother.

Mercedes hadn’t sat at home worrying or pacing. She had searched for her children while they were in foster care. She had fought Chandler. She had even risked her own safety by threatening to report her daughters as missing. She had put her own life, her security, and her need to provide her daughters with a better life on the back burner to ensure their safety.