The Ranchers Son (13 page)

The sound of
someone clearing their throat had them separating as if they’d had cold water
thrown over them.

“Okay, so that was
hot,” Nate said, “but guys, you’re going to have to take it somewhere more
private.”
He thumbed to the small group of people
dressed for riding waiting to pass them on the path
.

“They can keep
going,” one girl in the group said with a laugh, nudging her friend in a very
deliberate way.

Adam stepped back
off the path, Ethan following suit. If Adam wasn’t already lusting after him,
the way Ethan tipped an imaginary hat and nodded with a soft “Ma’am” to the
woman who was clearly the mother of the small family would have sent him over
the edge.

“Go on up. I’ll be
right there,” Nate said. As soon as the family was out of hearing range, he
rounded on Ethan. Not Adam—not once did he look at Adam. “Jesus, E, he’s not
well.”

Ethan went on the
defensive. “I know, I didn’t mean to—”

“Hang on,” Adam
interrupted them. “I’m right here, and I am sick of people talking over me and
around me and not
to
me.”

Nate opened his
mouth to say something, then closed it again, nodded, and turned to leave. Then
he spun on his heel to face them again. “Just… okay….” Whatever he was trying
to say was hidden between the lines, but whatever it was, it resonated with
Ethan, who tensed beside Adam.

“What the hell?”
Adam asked as he watched Nate walk up the hill toward the horses.

“He has a point,”
Ethan said. His cell rang and he fished it out of his pocket, looked at the
screen, and connected the call. “Jen?”

Adam looked down
at his feet and scuffed the grass, tracing a pattern with the toe of his boot.
He centered his breathing, just to see if he could connect with anything today—the
air that was spring-warm, the scent of the wood, the mud as it crumbled and
stuck to his boot, the noises around him—

Adam!
Seriously, you ate all the toffee ones!

Adam looked up,
startled. Who’d said that? He looked at Ethan a few feet away, a serious
expression on his face; it hadn’t been Ethan’s voice. A memory, then, a voice
from the past in his head. Was it Justin? Or Cole? Could it have been Ethan
back then? Frustration bubbled inside him and he turned sharply, striding up
the hill, past the horses, to his own place, and farther up beyond the last
house, which Ethan had said was the Todd place.

Beyond that was
the forest area, a wide band of trees that backed the ranch before the mountains
rose beyond.

I’ve got money.
We could go into town.

The words were
spinning in his head, a younger voice in the memory, and with each step up,
with his breathing hard and painful in his chest, he recalled more. No face, no
name, but words.

My brother?
Jesus, Adam, what the hell?

Justin. The words
were in Justin’s voice, and Adam’s steps quickened, his focus absolute on the
trees and the path that wound up and up, away from the center of Crooked Tree
and up into the shade. His chest hurt and he pressed a hand there as if he
could stop the pain.

Adam, I can’t
stay here. I have to go. You see that, right?

He stumbled as he
walked, as words slid into his head, and he had no idea where the hell he was
going.

Adam broke into a
run, but his muscles burned and he only made it a short distance before his
lungs screamed at him to stop, and he did. He came to a complete halt and fell
to his knees, tears in his eyes and his vision clouding.

“What the hell?” A
male voice, dripping with shock, burst into his thoughts. “Kirsten, get Ethan,
or Nate, or someone. Anyone.”

And with that last
shouted instruction from God knew who, Adam passed out.

Ethan listed to
Jen talk. “I got a lead on the tattoo place in Grover, Wyoming,” she said.

“You think it’s the
same studio?”

“The work on your
victim’s back looks very much like the portfolio that was online.”

Ethan hated that
she referred to Adam as the victim, knew it was cop talk, but still, Ethan
couldn’t think of Adam as a victim even though he was.

He was just Adam.

Jen continued. “I
have a call out to the locals there, about sending in someone to get
information.”

“Can you call them
direct?”

“I’ll do it,” she
said.

Ethan turned back
to look at Adam but was not immediately concerned when Adam wasn’t there. “Can
you loop me in, send me the intel? If this place knows Adam and can give us a
lead on what happened….”

“I hear you. Your leave
is nearly up. You coming in?”

“After the
weekend. This is some pretty heavy shit here I’m dealing with.”

Unspoken was the question
about how his absence would go down with the higher-ups. Chief Flynn was
supportive, but that didn’t mean any of his officers could fuck about on his
watch.

“You realize most
people have holidays, right? No one would care if you took three weeks.”

“I don’t need
that.”
I need to get back to finding Justin.

“Okay, I’ll pick
my battle with that one. Back to our loss-of-memory guy. How is he? Does he
recall anything yet?”

“Nothing. Well,
apart from some nightmares.” The threads of the case twisted and turned in his
head. “Did you narrow down anything with the fire angle?”

“Yeah, hang on.”
Papers rustled, and he could imagine Jen with her ever-present red notebook
filled with scribbles that not even he, her partner of five years, could
understand.

She came back
online. “Couple house fires within a hundred-mile radius, but Jesus, E, Montana
is all mountain and trees, not much in the way of population your way, so crime
near you is skewed away from murder and onto land disputes.”

He knew that. The
closest towns and cities were some distance away and he liked it that way. But
there was more around here than just arguments over land boundaries; they’d
broken a gunrunner hideout two years ago, set right back into the mountains.
He’d even been part of that team, although Jen had been out, pregnant with her
son.

“Should narrow
down your search,” he pointed out. “What else do we have?”

“One car accident:
one male driver, DOA, one burned car. Dental match has him as Eric Culver out
of Seattle. Nothing else on that front.”

“And the house
fires?”

“Families. No
evidence of two teenagers being involved. The only other thing you have is the
off-the-books stuff.”

“Like?”

Ethan glanced
around him. Where did Adam go? Concern prickled at the back of his neck. If
Adam hadn’t come back, something wasn’t right.

“Meth, two labs
closed down the week around your disappearance, not local jurisdiction—ATF. One
about twenty miles from you, the other maybe a day’s drive.”

“Send me what you
have. Thanks, Jen.”

“No worries.”

The call ended; he
pocketed his cell.

“Adam?” he shouted.
When Adam didn’t immediately step out from wherever he’d gone, the prickle of
worry turned into something more urgent. And when a young girl with long hair
sprinted down the hill past the top house, waving her hands and shouting, Ethan
knew something was wrong.

He ran up to meet
her. “
What’s wrong?”

“Some guy
collapsed up there.” She waved her hand toward the tree line behind the ranch.

Adam. Has to be
Adam.

“Call 911 and tell
Nate to get up there. He’s with the horses.”

“Or Uncle Jay, he
knows medical stuff—”

“Whatever,
whoever.”

They split, the
girl running into the barns and Ethan running uphill as fast as he could. He’d
passed the annual medical with flying colors, but fear was fucking with his
breathing and by the time he slid to a stop next to a young guy cradling Adam’s
head, he couldn’t catch his breath.

“What happened?
Adam, wake up!” He glanced up at the young man, aware it was Luke, Nate’s
youngest brother.

“I don’t know. He
just fell to the ground, so I moved him into recovery and supported his head in
case he was having a fit.”

“Luke, I have
him,” Ethan moved to where Luke sat and carefully took over supporting Adam’s
head.

Adam was groaning,
coming back to waking, his eyelids moving, and then his eyes opened. Ethan had
never seen anything more encouraging than Adam’s dark eyes looking up at him.

“W’happened,” he
managed.

“Shh,” Ethan said.

Adam closed his
eyes again and moved his hand from where it was on the ground, pressing it
against his chest. “Fuck,” he murmured.

The sounds of people
running and a commotion, and Nate appeared with the woman from the family on
his tail.

“Stand away,” the woman
said, crouching next to Adam, her fingers feeling for the pulse in his neck.

“She’s a surgeon,”
Nate explained when Ethan looked up at him.

“A veterinary
surgeon,” she corrected him. “What’s his name?”

“Adam, he’s… Adam.”

“Adam, open your
eyes. Adam….”

Adam did as he was
told; he opened his eyes and stared up at the woman poking at him. He looked
more awake and even began to move to sit up.

“Stay where you
are,” she instructed. “You may have hit your head.”

With added
cursing, Adam moved and curled up onto all fours. “I’m all right,” he said.

Ethan stood and
helped him until he supported Adam in a standing position. Adam wasn’t exactly
standing upright on his own, mostly leaning on Ethan, but the doctor looked
impressed. She checked him over and stepped back and away.

She indicated all
the bruises. “Tell me what happened to your face?”

“A mugging,” Adam explained
immediately.

“Well, you seem
okay. Did you trip?”

Adam glanced at
Ethan and telegraphed his thoughts in his expression. “I was running,” he began.
“Don’t think my lungs could handle it.”

“I want you to see
your doctor next chance you get.”

“I called 911,” the
young girl said, arriving with a slightly winded Jay.

“Fuck no,” Adam
swore. “Cancel the 911. I’m fine, just tired. The doc said so, right, doc?”

She looked him up
and down. “I’m more used to working with dogs, cats, and rabbits. You should call
your family doctor.”

“I will,” Adam
promised. “Thank you,” he added.

“You’re welcome,”
she said with a smile. “Horseback riding isn’t normally this exciting.”

Nate led her back
down the hill.

“I’m Kirsten,” the
young girl said. She moved to stand close to Luke and entwine their hands. Luke
had grown up. The last time Ethan had been at Crooked Tree, Luke had looked
more like a kid than the teenager on the cusp of being a man he was looking at
now.

“My niece,” Jay
explained.

Ethan nodded; he’d
made that connection from the “Uncle Jay” comment. “Thank you, guys. I’m going
to get him home now.”

“Here, I’ll help.”

Jay was on one
side, Ethan the other, but Adam mostly made it back to the house under his own
steam, albeit with a couple of stumbles here and there.

“It’s nice to meet
you, Adam,” Luke said as they reached the porch. “I don’t really remember you
so much, I was little when you… y’know.”

Adam smirked, his
expression morphing into a genuine smile. “I bet you remember more than I do,”
he deadpanned, and Luke grinned.

“Take care,”
Kirsten added.

The three of them
left and suddenly Ethan and Adam were alone. Ethan managed to get Adam inside
and over to the large, butter-soft leather sofa that was the only piece of
furniture in the living room area.

With Adam settled,
Ethan fetched a glass of water and handed it to him. “You okay?” he asked. A
moot question, really, given Adam was covered in mud and looked on the wrong
side of pale. “Why did you run off?”

“I didn’t want to
listen to your call. Meant to give you privacy.”

Adam wouldn’t meet
Ethan’s gaze, which was suspicious in itself. Add in the lowered tone of his
voice and Ethan knew there was more to this than met the eye. “And?”

Adam glanced
upward, then straight back down to his glass, which he’d propped on one leg. The
condensation darkened his jeans alongside the flecks of mud. “And what?”

“What actually happened?”

Adam sighed.
“Don’t tell me—the fact you knew me as a toddler means we have a weird-ass
connection whereby you know what I’m thinking at all times.”

Ethan sat down
next to him, turning to face him and drawing up one leg under himself. “Not
really, I’m just used to seeing a guilty man who won’t look at me.”

“It’s not guilt,”
he mumbled, then sipped the water.

“So what is it?
What made you run when at times you can barely stumble a walk without chest
pain?”

“Memories. I don’t
know… maybe memories. Thoughts. Justin’s voice, maybe. I was running to find
him.” He still didn’t look up, seeming happy to talk to his knees.

“Justin?”

“It must have been
Luke. I saw him and thought…”

“That it was
Justin? Ethan asked. “Luke doesn’t look anything like Justin.”

“I know. Shit, I
think I’m losing my grip.”

Ethan’s chest
tightened. No one at the hospital said he’d have to watch out for
hallucinations. “We should get you to a doctor.”

“I don’t need a
doctor.”

“If you’re seeing
things—”

“I don’t know what
I saw. Luke must have been there.”

Ethan placed a
hand on Adam’s thigh, letting it rest there for a second.

“Maybe this is a
breakthrough.”

Adam cast him a
doubtful look. “How can it be a breakthrough if all I see is something you tell
me I can’t see?” Frustration carved lines in his face; he looked at Ethan as if
he was demanding Ethan make some kind of sense. “And yes, I know that sounds
all kinds of fucked up.”

“Maybe it’s a
memory, Adam.”

“I hallucinated a
memory? What about Justin’s voice in my head?” Adam snapped the words, and then
his face fell as if he regretted saying anything.

“What voices? Talk
to me, Adam.”

“
His
voice,
Justin’s. Memories. Saying things like he couldn’t stay here and teasing me
about me and you.”

Adam looked so
broken and he closed his eyes. Ethan took the glass from him and gathered him
into a hug. They sat like that for the longest time, until night began to
gather around them and Adam fell asleep in Ethan’s arms.

When he woke,
Ethan encouraged him in for a shower, handed him his pain meds, and suggested
they go down to Branches and see about some dinner.

Adam acquiesced
all too quickly to every suggestion, but he at least smiled at the idea of dinner.
“Was Branches here when I was here?” he asked as he pulled on clean clothes
from the bag Gabriel had left.

Adam and Gabriel
were the same size; it must have been nice to have soft jeans and a cozy fleece
instead of the cheap shit they’d bought on the road. Ethan made a mental note
that they needed to go do some real shopping, and soon, before he left and went
back to work.

“It’s only five
years old. Started just serving breakfast to people staying in the cabins, and
picnics for those on treks. Sam expanded it, but I’ve never eaten there.”

“And I don’t know
Sam?”

“No, he’s new here.
Good guy, rides a motorbike, doesn’t like horses much, but is an awesome chef.”

“I’m hungry,” Adam
announced, pushing his feet into running shoes.

Ethan held open
the door. “Let’s go, then.”

Sam met them at
the door of Branches, his hands full of napkins and his face split with a wide
grin. He looked Ethan up and down. “Every time I see you, I get bad thoughts.” He
gave a lascivious wink.

He couldn’t have been
more than five nine, but he had a temper that outstripped his size and a flirty
nature that never failed to bring a smile to Ethan’s face. He was all dark hair
and stubble, wore leather jackets in his down time, and had a gorgeous Harley
that he kept out the back of Branches. They’d only met once, briefly, but it
was enough time for Sam to have flirted. Hell, Ethan might have even flirted
back, but flirting, and being on Crooked Tree, never failed to focus his
thoughts on how he felt about Adam. Another reason not to come home.