Free Trial by Fire by BA Tortuga Page A

Dez hated him.

Chapter Ten
     
     
    HOLDEN made his way straight back off the property and down the farm to market road. The house was up to the front, the barns to the east. The hands lived in the row of houses due west, the bullfighters and the junior campers were lodging just north of that. All the cowboys were in the big campground up on the hill.
    That meant the motherfucker came from the south and blew in with the storm.
    He didn’t believe for a second this was rodeo people.
    Not for a fucking second.
    These people were his folks, his kith and kin.
    No. This was something else, but they knew where the baby slept, where the room was, so they knew the land, and that meant they knew where his house was, where Landon stayed, and he was gonna start there.
    He rode about five minutes before five cowboys joined up to ride with him, spread out and watching. By the time he hit the fence line to his own acreage, there were twenty of them, including the deputies and the world’s top-ranked barrel racer.
    “We’re gonna get you, you motherfucker. We’ll get you and make you pay.” Holden bit the words out, desperate for anything, any clue. “I need someone to check the horse trailers, someone to Landon’s barns. Someone else to start with mine. There’s a shitload of outbuildings.”
    “Yessir.” Two of his best hands peeled off, making their way toward Holden’s piece of land. Brandy and Gareth wheeled up toward the trailers. He rode around the house, looking for broken windows, anything. Dammit.
    Nothing. Okay, so if it wasn’t rodeo or ranch hands, then he had to be methodical. Maybe he needed to start with the dayworkers. People who came to the ranch to do plumbing or something. They would have to come in on the main roads, but there’d been a hundred trucks coming and going in the last day.
    Christ, it had been damn near twenty hours. On a truck… they could be anywhere. Fucking anywhere. They could have her on a plane and… anywhere.
    Australia.
    Holden stopped, jerking hard enough that Pepper danced underneath him. He slid to the ground, his balance gone.
    No.
    No way. He’d seen Lachlan work. The man was a cowboy, and the cowboy code was law, no matter what.
    Right?
    The man would just as soon punch him in the teeth and take Chloe right then and there. Now, that wasn’t to say someone on Lachlan’s end wouldn’t take her for ransom. He’d have to see who knew what. Wait, Lachlan’s people had all the money, all the land. Right.
    So, he’d talk to Ryan.
    In the meantime, he’d clear as much of the ranch as he could. He needed to be busy.
    He needed to find that baby.
    “I swear, Bubba. I swear, I’ll find her. Please, just help me. Guide me to her. I know you’ve got your hand on her. Please.” He dropped to his knees, his chest burning, squeezing and denying him air. “Please, Jesus. Lead me to her. Please. You got the good brother, Addie. Don’t let some stranger hurt our baby girl.”
    From his lips to God’s ear. He had to believe. The people in the know swore God protected the innocent.
    Chloe was the only one of all of them who could be called that.

Chapter Eleven
     
     
    “ SHUT it up! Between that fucking baby and the goddamn dogs around here there’s never a friggin’ second to think!” Christ on a crutch, Norman had a headache that wouldn’t quit, and that fucking thing just kept screaming.
    “We have to feed it. There wasn’t but one bottle deal in here.” Kade looked at him from under his heavy bangs, shook his head. “One of us has to go into town and get baby food.”
    “Because three of the ropers from the Sheffield Company buying baby food won’t look weird? We can’t.” No way. The damn thing could drink plain old milk like the rest of them.
    They were holed up in a no-tell motel about twenty miles south of the ranch, right off the lake. Shiloh had gotten the room while him and Kade stayed in the truck with the baby. Now they were all getting a little cabin