Page 98 of Promised to the Cowboy

“Don’t.”

“He owns you?” I ask.

Falcon’s jaw clenches. “No one owns me.”

“That’s what he wants you to believe.”

He closes his eyes for half a second. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then stop the truck.”

“I can’t.” The barrel lifts slightly. Not aimed at me, but at the door beside me. A warning. “Sit back.”

I don’t. I look through the rear window. Stoneridge is gone behind the rise. No truck following. No Gabriel running across the yard. Not yet.

But he’ll wake. He’ll reach across the bed. He’ll find my phone. And he’ll know I’m gone.

The thought hurts, knowing how terrified he’ll be.

“What did he use?” I ask.

Falcon’s face remains blank.

“Money? A threat? Someone you love?”

His grip tightens.

There.

“Who?”

“Stop talking.”

“He found someone you couldn’t afford to lose.”

“Stop.”

“And he told you this was the only way to keep them safe.”

Falcon swings the gun toward me.

His hand is steady. His eyes are not. “I said stop.”

I sit back slowly. Not because of the weapon, but because I’ve found the wound.

The truck reaches the eastern boundary. A section of fence lies open ahead, the wire cut cleanly and pulled aside. Tire tracks have turned the ground to mud around it.

Falcon drives through without slowing, onto land I don’t recognize. The pasture stretches wide and empty, the house nowhere in sight. A low ridge blocks Stoneridge behind us. Beyond it, the field has been torn open.

At first, I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing. The grass has been scraped away in a long, straight strip. The ground beneath it is graded and compacted, pale against the green pasture.

Small lights run along both edges, dim in the morning haze.

I stare at them. Survey markers? Except survey markers don’t need lights. A service road? But it doesn’t lead anywhere. No barn, gate, or equipment shed. Just an unnaturally straight stretch of cleared ground pointing east across open country.

Then I look toward the far end. The trees have been cut back. The approach is open.

My gaze travels the length of it again—the compacted earth, the measured width, the lights marking both sides.