A Cowboy's Home (12 page)

He made it to the bed, slumping to sit on the
side. Gabe hovered by the door. He seemed to be in another world,
looking from Justin to Sam and back again.

“Justin.” Gabe’s voice was husky; he had
tears in his eyes and seemed in as much need of the wall as Justin
had been.

“Later, G,” Justin murmured. “Just don’t let
me… sleep. Not too long.” He rolled onto his side, his back to Sam,
and in stiff, awkward movements, he rolled more onto his side and
closed his eyes.

“Should we let him sleep at all?” Sam
asked.

Gabe slid down the wall to the ground, bent
up his knees, and rested his forehead on them. He mumbled
something.

Sam crouched next to him. “What?”

“I don’t know,” Gabe mumbled again, but that
time Sam heard him. “We should let Ethan know, and Marcus,
and—”

“He didn’t want us to,” Sam warned.
“Something about danger and shit. That if people found out he was
here, they would kill him. I don’t know. All I know is I told you
because you were the only one here, and I couldn’t do this on my
own.”

“That’s Ethan’s brother there. Hell, his dad
is less than a mile from here.” Gabe lifted his head and looked
right at Sam, and instead of shock in his eyes, Sam read
determination and a spark of temper.

How could he argue against that? Justin had
gone missing when he was just sixteen, alongside Adam, who had come
back with amnesia so bad he’d barely been able to remember his own
name when attempting to recall his past.

“What do you want to do?”

Gabe buried his face again. “I don’t know.”
His words were muffled in his damp jeans.

They sat that way for a few minutes. Then,
with tears in his eyes, Gabe held out a trembling hand. At first
Sam didn’t understand what was happening, or what Gabe meant. Then
he stood, went and found their phones, and gave Gabe’s to him.

“Just Ethan,” Gabe said, more to himself than
to Sam. “Please, we need to tell him. He can help.”

Sam was torn. Cops meant this shit was
real—but Ethan wasn’t just a cop. He was Justin’s brother. Sam
yielded. “We don’t have any choice.”

Gabe scrolled to a number and put the phone
to his ear. “Hey,” he said, clearly Ethan had answered. “When are
you home?”

Sam wished he could hear the other side of
the conversation. What was Ethan saying?

“No, there’s no problem. … Well, kind of a
problem, there’s this man. … No, it’s not Adam, he’s out with Nate,
where are you? … Come straight to the cabins, the one that was hit
by subsidence. … Yeah, Forest 6. … Don’t—fuck, please drive safely,
Ethan.” And then he ended the call.

“What did he say?” Sam asked, although he
guessed Ethan was likely confused as hell.

“He was worried something was wrong with
Adam. I had to tell him it wasn’t.”

“I heard.”

“He was about thirty minutes from home,
anyway.”

Sam nodded. Thirty minutes he could handle,
and Ethan wasn’t like the cops he’d dealt with before. Ethan was a
good man who would know what to do. “Wait, what if Ethan sees Adam
on his way through? What will he say?”

Gabe shook his head, and that pretty much
answered that. If Ethan saw Adam, he’d say that Gabe wanted him at
Forest 6. And if Nate was there? They’d think something was wrong
with the cabin, or…. How would they tell Ethan his brother wasn’t
just alive, but he was here sleeping, or unconscious, on a bed in
one of the cabins they didn’t use?

“This is freaking stupid.” Gabe’s tone was
sharp, his eyes wide with shock. “Justin is clearly ill. We should
be getting him to a hospital. We should tell Adam, Marcus,
everyone—Shit, Justin is alive.”

Sam didn’t know what to say. Justin was hot
to the touch, sick… that could be serious. But Justin had said he
was in witness protection. “He said they’d kill him. Put him, and
us, in danger.” Sam knew he was repeating himself, but he actually
had to keep saying the words to believe them.

He looked up at the bed, all he could see was
the white of a towel, and he considered whether they should strip
Justin and try to get some clothes on him. T-shirts, sweats,
something they could at least get him into. “What now?” he asked,
restless to get something going. He was agitated and needed answers
and something to do.

Gabe beat him to it. He scrubbed at his face.
“Okay, look, Ethan will know what to do. I’ll go down to the gate
and catch him as he comes in.”

“I can do that,” Sam said.

“No,” Gabe pushed himself to stand and stared
over at Justin. “I need to… I need time to process.”

Sam swallowed his instinctive response that
he need processing time himself, but he was only dealing with the
shock of finding Justin, not the long-held grief that Justin had
died, as Gabe was. “Are you okay?” he asked, and he knew the
question was lame even as he spoke.

“No. Shit, no.” Gabe stared down at Justin,
closed his eyes briefly, and then shook his head. “I need to
go.”

He stumbled out of the cabin like a man who’d
downed too much tequila, and Sam watched him stop dead on the path
outside and stare up at the sky. Sam almost went out to ask him if
he needed help. Then it appeared Gabe made a decision because he
mounted Lightning and trotted away down the path toward the ranch
buildings. Would he just bring Ethan here? Or would he tell Adam
and Marcus? All Sam knew was that they needed help.

Gabe’s leaving left Sam with nothing to do
except stare, so he grabbed some of the wood offcuts and went to
the broken window, wedging planks in the hole the best he could.
There were signs of other new wood along that side of the cabin,
probably to fix the damage from the subsidence. A quick glance at
his watch and Sam realized Justin had been asleep for twenty-five
minutes.

How often do you wake someone up when they
have a concussion? Every hour, I think. Should I wake him up even
if he isn’t concussed?

So Sam, restless with energy, forced himself
to sit next to the bed, on the side where he could look at Justin’s
face, and wonder what the hell had happened for Justin to get to
this point.

Justin’s hair was blond, fluffy from air
drying, neither long nor short, not
styled
, just kind of average. His eyes were gray,
although the color was hidden at that moment behind his closed
lids. He had a baby-faced look about him at rest, when the pain
wasn’t marking lines on his face, and his long lashes rested on
pale skin.

Did Justin look like his brother? Sam had
checked Ethan out more than once in the past—lately to tease
Adam—and Ethan had the same intriguing eye color: a clear gray.
Although from what Sam recalled Ethan’s were more of a
stormy
, darker gray when he was angry. Other
than that, Justin looked younger, but broken. Ethan always looked
so neat and groomed and in control.

There was nothing controlled in Justin at the
moment. He was just hot and all kinds of bad-boy sexy. And why the
hell did Sam think that when Justin was so ill?

The scarring on Justin’s back was visible as
he rolled to his side, ropes of raised skin and parts that were so
smooth, darker in color than the rest of him. He murmured something
in his sleep, moving restlessly under the towel, and on instinct
Sam pulled up a sheet and tucked it around him. That not only hid
the scars but seemed to soothe the restlessness in Justin’s
sleep.

The man had clearly known pain. And he didn’t
want anyone on the ranch to know he was here, so why had he come
here? Why risk his family knowing he was alive? Where had he been
for the last however many years it was he’d been gone? Could he
fill in any of Adam’s lost memories?

There was a faint scar on Justin’s face, but
nothing else marred the pale skin. Not only was he handsome, tall,
lightly muscled, he was likely a looker when he wasn’t unconscious
and beaten half to shit. He was unshaven, and the hair on his face
was the same blond as his head, his lips generous and soft. Mostly
the kind of man that Sam was attracted to. Apart from the fact he
looked like he’d been ridden hard and put away wet. All rough and
tired and near broken.

Oh, and shot.

Justin was only a few years younger than Sam,
but it looked to Sam like
he’d
seen a hell of lot in his life.

Not least of which was the fact he’d been
somewhere, doing something, for so long, and he hadn’t told his
family he was alive.

Sam woke him up when the hour passed, to
grumbles, curses, and a flailing hand that attempted to push him
away.

“Live with it, Tough Guy,” Sam said firmly,
which had Justin subsiding quietly. “Open your eyes. Come on, let’s
see ’em.”

Justin did open his eyes, and the pupils
shrank as they should.

“Who is the president? What is the capital of
Montana? What is your brother’s name? What is your name?”

He asked the questions and heard the replies,
including the hesitation over the brother question and that of his
own name, as if he had to dig really deep for both those
things.

But, at least he answered.

Justin fell back asleep quickly. Sam stayed
with him, sitting on the bed and leaning his head against the wall.
He closed his eyes and considered the catering for Gabe and
Ashley’s wedding.

If
there’s even going to be a wedding.

Because sure as eggs were eggs, having the
other missing man from all those years ago laid out on this bed was
going to cause so much shit Sam didn’t even want to think about
it.

Not least of which was seeing Ethan’s face
when he saw his brother.

Or Marcus when he realized his son was
alive.

Things could go to shit, families could tear
apart, and Sam would be left as the outsider.

Again.

Justin woke with a start, staring up at an
unfamiliar ceiling, with terror coursing through his veins. For a
second he couldn’t recall where he was, but his head was clearer,
he wasn’t in pain, and abruptly he knew
exactly
where and when he was.

Panic morphed into dread.

“You’re awake,” a voice informed him.

Like I don’t already know that.

He turned to look into familiar bright blue
eyes.
Sam
. The one with the food, the blankets and the need
to mother him. The good-looking man who’d looked right through him
and refused to let him give up and die in the middle of
nowhere.

Not nowhere. Crooked Tree. It’s what I
wanted.

“Shoulda left me,” he managed to say, his
throat tight.

Sam twisted his mouth in a parody of a smile,
and then shrugged a shoulder. “You’re not dying on my watch.”

“I told you—” What he’d wanted to say was
lost in a spasm of coughs. He scrambled to sit up, having to accept
help from Sam and the coughing stopped.

“Yeah, you told me and I didn’t listen,” Sam
said, patting his back as though it would help.

Justin twisted away and crawled off the bed
to stand. He felt like crap: his thigh ached—but at least it wasn’t
on fire—his head pounded, and his whole body was shaky. He was able
to stand, albeit it by leaning on the nearest object, which
happened to be a hard wooden chair, but at least that was one thing
he could do.

“Where are my clothes?” he asked, wobbling
dangerously.

Sam lifted an eyebrow. “In the kitchen. But
no way will you be wearing any of it again.”

Justin used the walls to get to the kitchen
door, stumbling to his clothes and yanking at the denim, all that
remained of his jeans. He dug fingers into pockets and cursed as he
fell back against the table and dropped the material.

The memory stick was gone. “Where is it?”

Every bit of research was on there, every
scrap of evidence that could be peeled apart to save his life—if he
even wanted it to.

Then he saw it, an innocuous rectangle of
green plastic, sitting there next to the water bottle he’d drunk
from. He picked up the stick and checked it for damage. Outwardly
it looked fine: no blood, no cracks, and he held it tight.

“I need to go,” he announced. Then maybe Sam
would stop hovering and throwing him concerned looks.

He couldn’t see Gabe anywhere; Gabe should be
there. Justin had seen his old friend go white with shock, calling
his name and falling to his knees.

Where has he gone? Or was I
hallucinating?

“I need to go,” he said again.

“No.” Sam was in the bedroom doorway, and
without making it too obvious, Justin glanced at the front door,
forcing his abused brain to think in angles and distances, about
whether he could get to the door before Sam stopped him.

Short, with not so many muscles, Sam was
slight, even. Against Justin he would be a lightweight, because
Justin had moves, a few inches on him, and probably a hell of a lot
more muscle and speed. Or rather, he usually had those things.
Right at that moment, though, he was boneless and dizzy.

Sam glanced at the door too, and
shrugged.

Justin winced. “I have to, okay?”

“I won’t stop you,” Sam said, “if you
have
to go.”

“Damn right you won’t.” Justin stepped away
from the chair experimentally, but grasped it again when pain shot
from his thigh into his groin, circling to his lower back.
Dizziness had the floor tipping up under him.

Concussion symptoms, maybe? Or infection in
his leg? Justin used his free hand to test the area at the back of
his head where a lump was sore to touch. He recalled hitting his
head in the shack, making the injury from where Saunders had
slammed him into a wall a hell of a lot worse.

“Where the hell is Gabe? I know he was here,”
Justin asked. Part of him, the dark, desperate part, knew exactly
where his old friend was. Gabe had gone to fetch the authorities,
or Ethan, or Adam, or hell, worst of all, Justin’s dad. But
whatever he’d done, wherever he’d gone, Justin was fucked.