Page 11 of Tracked
“Lara, please,” Calder inserted gruffly, a glint of gold catching my eyes. “Let’s just find Rachel first.”
I frowned. I was definitely going to pay him. I wouldn’t accept a handout as some kind of penance for how he’d treated my sister. That was between the two of them. This, between us, was business.And a little bit of anatomy.
“Okay,” I agreed with a brusque nod, playing by his rules for now.
“Lunch rush should be dying down right about now, so it should be easier to ask around.” He grabbed his notebook and pen from the table. “We’ll take your rental, if that’s all right?”
“Sure.”
I followed Calder out of the Airstream and into the quickly warming August day, focusing on anything that wasn’t him.
Maybe I needed my own set of Stone rules.
Rule #1: Don’t salivate over Calder Stone or his gluteus maximus.
Chapter 4
Calder
Rule #18: A weapon you can’t control is a weapon that controls you.
Cassius taught me that rule when I was twelve, just before placing a hunting rifle in my arms.
It was a good lesson to learn, especially when it came to guns, but as I got older, I realizedweaponwas a broad term and guns weren’t the only definition. Cell phones were a weapon. Technology was a weapon. Cars were a weapon. But even more than that, emotions were a weapon.
I’d watched Mom’s fear shape how we lived at the ranch, always afraid a shadow from Cassius’s past would catch up to us. Cassius had changed because he couldn’t control his grief over Mom’s death. I didn’t know which emotion Creed carried with him since he’d been discharged, but it made him distant and drift away. Colton was haunted by ghosts like he still had cuffs around his wrists. Callum was abraded by anger after the accident, and Creighton by bitterness. Anger, grief, fear, bitterness—I’d seen what each of thoseweaponshad done to my family over the years, and I refused to become another casualty.
Like hunting, rock climbing, and tracking, controlling my emotions was a skill I’d honed over the years. Perfected through diligence and the looming threat of destruction. But right now, I was unsettled by how little control I had over the desire soaking through my veins for the womanin the passenger seat. Desire that felt less like a weapon and more like a wildfire—a force of nature unable to be stopped.
And that was a problem. A big fucking problem.
“So, you haven’t been back to Wyoming since college?” I asked, deciding small talk was preferable to tense silence.
“No,” Lara answered, shaking her head. “I moved to Colorado for med school and then down to Phoenix for my residency. After my mom passed, I didn’t have a reason to leave Arizona. Rachel was kind of all over the place after you guys graduated, and we weren’t on the best of terms ...” She trailed off, obviously not wanting to elaborate or for me to probe.
To say my relationship with Rachel had been tumultuous was like calling the Tetons tall: true, but vastly understated. And the way it had ended ... Lara didn’t know the real reason why I’d broken things off with her sister or what had happened afterward. If she did, she never would’ve hugged me. No, if she knew the truth, she never would’ve come for my help in the first place.
I tightened my hold on the steering wheel, reminding myself that Lara’s personal opinion of me was immaterial, no matter how tainted it was. She hadn’t come to me to fix the past. She’d come to me to find her sister, and that was exactly what I was going to do.
“What kind of medicine?” I asked, pulling out of the ranch’s winding drive.
“Emergency.” Her hand twitched where it rested on her knee.
Interesting.I would’ve pegged Rachel as thriving in that kind of environment. Reactive. Fast paced. High stakes. Lara, on the other hand, had always seemed more reserved—like she’d been the one to curb her older sister’s enthusiasm even before I came into the picture.
“Do you enjoy it?”
“I did—do.” Lara stumbled over her answer and lowered her gaze for a split second. “And what about you? Weren’t you going to law school?”
The redirect of the conversation wasn’t subtle, just like her knee-jerk reaction to the teakettle; there was something there she wanted to avoidtalking about, but it wasn’t my business to pry. No part of her was any of my business—especially not the little slide of her tongue across her lips.
Wondering how my ex-girlfriend’s little sister tasted was the very opposite of my business.
My job was to find Rachel. To treat this like any other case. To be professional. And like any other case, as soon as we were finished at the diner, we’d go our separate ways and I’d contact Lara once I had answers. That was how this worked. That was howIworked.Alone.
“I was. Interned at a law firm for a little and decided it wasn’t for me.” I let my gaze slip over to her, knowing my aviators masked my attention.
“So you decided to become a reward hunter?” Lara pulled her hair from one shoulder over to the other and then absentmindedly felt her wrist for a tie, making me think she wasn’t used to wearing it down.
