Chapter 5

five

. . .

Cross

I handed off Hades's reins to Tommy after finishing my ride, giving him a curt nod and a grunt for his efforts. I'd hoped to distract myself from the hell I was living in by getting outside, breathing fresh air, and centering myself on the back of my horse. It didn't fucking work. I was still the angry, bitter, frustrated man I'd always been.

Okay, that's not strictly true; I was way fucking worse. But recent circumstances hadn't exactly been easy. First my father's unexpected death, then River's reappearance in my life, then the marriage bombshell, Walker's attacks—plural—all of Volkov's bullshit, culminating in her kidnapping. I was one secret twin away from starring in my own soap opera. Jesus, knowing Dad, I just might have a secret sibling out there somewhere. Or he'd pop back into our lives six months down the road to tell us this was all some sort of fucked up test and he wasn't really dead. Goddammit. My chest was so tight I could barely breathe.

My phone rang almost as soon as I stepped into the house, McCreedy's name flashing on the screen.

"What?" I barked.

"You need to do something about the hellion who just stormed into my office."

"Excuse me? Since when is anything that happens at your office my fucking problem?"

"Since your wife is the reason this particular problem made an appearance."

I squeezed the bridge of my nose and released a strained breath. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Allow me to enlighten you. Ever hear of one Virginia Blake?"

"My name is Gigi, asshole."

"Excuse me, Gigi Blake, sister of one Jonah Blake."

"Bear!" she growled, though it came through loud and clear, as if she was standing at his shoulder shouting into the phone right alongside him.

Shit. No one told her. Bear's sister was here, and she didn't know he'd been killed.

My day just went from natural disaster to apocalypse on the shit trying to take me out scale.

"Jackson, you need to keep her occupied."

"What? No way. I'm due in court in an hour. I can't babysit her."

"Bullshit. It's already after five."

"She's been here hours already, wouldn't budge from the lobby. My assistant had to threaten to call the cops, and even then, this demon wasn't put off. You wouldn't know it to look at her, but she's got a temper that would rival your own."

"I'll show you a fucking temper, you trumped-up snake oil salesman." Gigi's voice was venom laced and held no hint of a bluff.

On any other day, it would have made me smile. She clearly took after her brother. I was starting to piece together how she and River became such fast friends. But it wasn't any other day, and this was one problem I did not have time to deal with.

"Sounds like you've got yourself a shadow for the foreseeable future. Sorry to say, my dance card is full."

"Where the fuck is River?" she shouted, clearly meaning the question for me.

"Tell her River's not here. Neither is her brother."

"When are they getting back?" she asked, not needing McCreedy to pass along the message. He must have put me on speaker, the coward.

A vein pulsed in my neck, and I had to fight to keep my voice even. "Not sure."

"The polite thing to do would be to give me your gate code and let me stay at the house. River's like a sister to me, and technically it's her house now, right? And Bear is a brother to me, and he'd want to know I was here and safe as soon as possible. Trust me, you don't want to pick a fight with him."

"See what I mean?" McCreedy added with an exasperated huff.

"I haven't seen him in weeks." Technically it had been ten days, but she didn't need that information.

"He wouldn't just abandon her."

"He didn't."

"So where is he?"

"Dunno. I'm not his keeper. He's a grown-ass man. For all I know, he could be on his way back home."

The lies burned in my throat. She deserved the truth, but not like this. Not over the phone, surrounded by strangers. We'd tell her once River was safe. Once my wife was back in my arms where she belonged. The last thing Gigi needed was to find out we'd buried her brother in an unmarked grave near the pond.

Bishop tried to put up a fight, said he should at least go to the morgue in case there was evidence that could be pulled and used in the case they were building against Volkov, but we vetoed that pretty quickly. A dead body raised too many questions we couldn't answer.

"I'm not leaving until I talk to them. River never ignores my calls. Do you have her chained up somewhere? She told me how much she hated you."

The accusation hit harder than she could have known, because while I wasn't the one who put her in chains, there was little doubt in my mind it was an accurate assessment of her current situation.

"Trust me, spitfire, if she was chained up anywhere on my land, she'd have begged for it."

"Spitfire. Oh, I like that," McCreedy mused.

"Don't even think about it, asshole," she shot back.

"Jackson, take me off speaker," I grumbled.

There was a soft rustle, muffled voices, and then he was back in my ear loud and clear. "Done."

"We've got a situation on our hands?—"

"Plausible deniability!" he all but shouted at me.

"—so you need to do whatever you have to do to keep her away from the ranch. Take some time off, go visit that lake house of yours. I don't give a shit how you do it, just stay the fuck away from here. I'll call you when it's safe to bring her back."

McCreedy groaned. "You don't pay me enough for this."

"I pay you plenty. You could wipe your ass with your Christmas bonus from last year and still have more money than you could ever hope to spend."

"Consider this my official notice. My retainer for Cross Industries just doubled."

"Done."

"Shit, you really need me to handle this, don't you?"

"I wouldn't ask if I didn't."

We both sighed, silence stretching between us until I softly added, "That woman means a lot to my wife. Take care of her."

"You say woman, I say banshee." He sighed again. "I'll try. Seems more likely one of us will kill the other. I expect you to back me up when I plead self-defense."

"Plausible deniability," I said with a snicker, a smile stretching despite my black mood. It was rare I got to see my lawyer so flustered.

He wisely hung up before he said anything else that might land him on my shitlist.

Glancing at the clock, I cursed under my breath. I needed to clean up before my stupid fucking business dinner. I didn't have time for normal things like dinners with potential clients, but outwardly Cross Industries needed to look like the well-oiled machine we were supposed to be. One show of weakness and it'd be over. I couldn't lose everything my family had begged, borrowed, and stolen to get.

I trudged up the stairs, the weight of the last week making every step feel like a thousand. All I wanted to do was fall face-first into my bed, sleep for about a year, and wake up with River wrapped around me.

Thirty minutes later, I stood in front of my mirror, adjusting the sterling silver bolo tie my grandfather had given me when I'd turned eighteen. A soft rap at the door was my only warning before Walker peeked his head inside. Seeing I was dressed, he pushed it the rest of the way open and joined me, leaning heavily on his cane.

"Sorry you have to take this one tonight. I just don't think I can get through a whole damn dinner with my leg like this." His lips twitched up in a lopsided grin. "Not to mention they'd expect me to drink with them, and I don't think I should be in public mixing alcohol with these meds, fun though it might be. I'm liable to give away the fucking farm."

I let out a derisive snort. "Never stopped you before. That's how we lost Petunia."

Petunia was our prized bull. Yes, Petunia was male. Walker named him when he was three. No one had the heart to correct him, so Petunia it was—up until he lost him in an impromptu poker match after six rounds of tequila and his new owner renamed him Pete.

"Always throwing that in my face. I could argue you lost us Riv—" his face fell as he stopped himself, but it hurt just the same.

It was fucking true. I'd lost her a decade ago, and I didn't save her this time.

"That wasn't fair. I'm sorry, Cross. If anyone got her into this mess, it was her father. And ours," he added with a heavy sigh.

"No, you got it right the first time. This is on me. I let him get away with her."

"Dammit, stop playing the martyr. I can't hate you when you're all angsty and conciliatory like this. Takes all the fun out of it."

"I should have stopped him."

"He would have killed you."

"He should have. She would still be here with you if I'd just been man enough to rush him."

"You and I both know that's a lie. There was no way they were gonna stop until they got what they came for. They would have taken each and every one of us out to do it too. Us still being here means there's still a fighting chance."

I blinked at my brother, turning away from the mirror to face him fully. "Do you really believe that?"

"I have to, man. It's the only thing helping me get out of bed in the morning."

Heaving a sigh, I straightened the cuffs of my shirt before reaching for the blazer I'd hung on the back of a chair. "I hate that we have to pretend like everything's normal. Like she just up and left me."

Walk and I had decided that for the sake of appearances, when people asked about my new wife, I'd say she was packing up her house in Alaska and would be rejoining me as soon as she could. It excused her absence without creating any red flags, and it gave us a reason to not have a definitive return date.

But it would only last for so long. And it required Volkov to play ball. At any point, he could choose to present evidence proving me wrong. He was the one puppeteering this fucking game. I was the one out here with my ass flapping in the wind.

"They won't think that."

"They will if she isn't here soon."

"If she isn't here soon, we'll have bigger fish to fry. In the meantime, we gotta hope that Bishop's lead pans out and it's a moot point by this time next week."

I studied my younger brother. "I never realized you were such a cock-eyed optimist."

"Then you haven't been paying attention, brother. I'm optimistic as fuck. About the right things."

"We can't all be you. Some of us have to focus on getting shit done."

Walker clapped me on the shoulder. "You need to eat. You're hangry."

"What I need is my wife back."

"Right, and in the meantime, you should eat. Don't think I haven't noticed you've been skipping meals. You gotta stay in fighting shape, especially now. Never know when you're gonna have to face off with that fucker who stole her. Can't have you fainting when you need to be murdering."

"Walker, do you even hear half the shit that comes out of your mouth?"

He smirked, those blue eyes of his twinkling. "I do. It's sage wisdom."

"It's bullshit."

"One man's bullshit is another man's?—"

"Bullshit."

"Even shit can be useful. Ever hear of fertilizer?"

"This conversation is over."

I slipped on the jacket, then grabbed my black Stetson and put it on, sighing as our father's face stared back at me. "I look like a fucking asshole."

"You are a fucking asshole."

I stared at him for a beat before a fleeting grin twisted at my lips. "Fair enough."

"If the Stetson fits, right?"

Huffing out a laugh, I nodded. "Suppose so."

"Next week, once the doc clears me, I'll be able to take these dinners off your plate. I'm almost ready to get out there again."

Given the state of his injuries, Walker really had recovered well. I'd thought it would take a lot longer to come back from the burns and broken leg, not to mention the rest of the damage, but due to his age and overall health, he'd made remarkable progress in only five weeks. It would be months before he was fully healed, but he'd be walking without pain any day now. Out of stubbornness, if nothing else. It didn't hurt that we had our own private doctor who gave him the best medical care money could buy.

The drugs helped too.

"Go secure this deal, get us some more beef, and then we'll keep looking for our wife."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "She's my wife. And I'm purchasing cattle, not beef."

"Same thing."

"Is not. You order beef at a restaurant."

"It's all beef in the end."

"You're a real philosopher, Walker."

My brother beamed at me. "Yes. Yes, I am. You know, that might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

"Don't get used to it."

We shared a smile that felt a lot less stilted than usual. In fact, ever since River came back—even with the discovery of our nuptials—Walker and I were closer than we'd ever been. Guess his almost dying twice had something to do with that. Or maybe it was just bonding over our feelings about the same woman. Either way, I wondered if this was how it'd be between us from now on. Camaraderie with him wasn't something I thought I'd ever have. I'd take it.

"See you when I get back," I said with a sharp nod.

"Call if you run into trouble."

"What are you gonna do, hobble to my rescue?"

"Ha ha. Very funny. Bishop's on standby. So's Tex."

"Let's hope I don't need them."