Page 1 of Stone Cold Savage

1

Coy closed the door behind him and flipped on the light to his old room where he was staying in the main house on the ranch while home in Coyote Creek. He sat at the edge of the bed and took in the space like it was his first night home. In some ways, it was. It was the first night they were all under the same roof since his return, and he couldn’t help but sense some form of nostalgia when he thought about it.

There was comfort in being home and having his family so near, especially in light of all that was happening around him –– or crumbling around him –– depending on how you look at it. It had been a whirlwind of events, and even Coy, who was used to chaos and conflict, was having a hard time wrapping his mind around the events of late. Between the danger, imminent threats, and the secrets of his mother, it was almost more than Coy could process. Hunting and chasing bad guys was easy, but when they were in your own backyard and coming for your own family… you couldn’t help but feel little bits of fear trickle in. Something Coy wasn’t familiar with.

The only time he’d ever felt those tingles of fear before was when Emery went missing, and he knew who had taken her. Time worked against him then, and he worried that history was repeating its brutal ways and toying with him, threatening to take all he had left.

The worst part is he didn’t even know where to begin. At first, it seemed logical to begin with the small marijuana plot Nash had planted. He’d been working with criminals, growing for them, and if they were capable of one illegal activity, they were certainly capable of more. Villains with no moral code tended to evolve and escalate in their crimes, so finding human remains under the plants that had been plowed up almost made sense. It was a logical and reasonable conclusion to leap to, anyway. Until the attack on Devyn while driving home.

It wasn’t just a random attack, either. It was targeted –– happened on the road that led to the ranch. Nobody else drove that private road, so the hit was clearly for a Stone. Which Stone was still yet to be determined, but it wasn’t looking good. Sure, he could rationalize why the activity was unrelated. After all, the sitting President of the United States was often a target of heinous acts and assassination attempts. This very well could have been that… except timing and the fact that it was Devyn behind the wheel suggested otherwise.

Coy began to pace the room. He was uneasy. Restless. And couldn’t stop the wheels from turning in his mind long enough to feel tired or anything but on edge. Rest didn’t come easy most nights. It wasn’t coming at all this night, and morning would be cresting the horizon before he knew it. The anticipation, the anxiety, it was all billowing and taunting him as a distraction he didn’t need. Coy needed clarity and solace if he was going to solve anything before it escalated to a point of no return full of death and destruction… destruction of his family.

Despite not having a single clue, Coy couldn’t help but tap into his instincts and that all-knowing intuition and realize the attack on Devyn was nothing personal against her. It was simply a means to send a message. But to who? The President? Nash because of the fucking plants? Coy or Dillon, whose past never stayed dead? The Stone family as a whole? Or maybe the answer lay somewhere across the board, and it had more to do with whatever Delilah Stone had been up to in her final days.

Their mother was a good woman, a tremendous mother, and the strongest person any of them knew. She was well respected and a pillar of the community. Everybody liked and respected Delilah Stone. But what had she done? The information they found in the paperwork around the evening fire told a story of a woman they didn’t recognize. They’d uncovered a tale that was a long time in the making –– the kinds of things they’d discovered, like random corporations –– likely fake –– didn’t get tossed together overnight. The web they had to unweave was intricately designed and ironclad. Hard to decipher. All things above and beyond what their mother was known to do. She was a simple woman, and this was complicated.

Coy sat back at the edge of the bed and looked at the clock docked on a nearby bedside table. He should have been asleep hours ago. Long days seemed to be making for longer nights, and he was twitchy and full of unease. Something had to give. A break in the looming mystery? A break from his constant self-loathing and punishment? Hell, even a brief nap at this point would be something.

He stared out the glass French doors at the inky sky, peppered with twinkling stars and the light of an opal moon. Out there, under the same sky, he was staring back at, sat an adversary, an enemy, a foe… waiting to assail that which meant the most to Coy: his family. He’d failed his wife and would forever live in anguish for it. He couldn’t let it happen again. Coy wouldn’t survive losing another loved one. Not even close.

With a low, frustrated growl, Coy took to his feet, flipped off his light, and made his way through French doors to the balcony outside his second-story room that spanned across the back of the house, accessible by each of the bedrooms on that floor. As a child, he spent many nights out on the balcony, reconciling his thoughts and planning his adventures. There was comfort in sitting outside on a warm night, where the crickets sang, and the fireflies danced, and your thoughts could safely wander and sometimes drift off into a restful sleep under the stars.

He plopped in the same lounger he’d spent many nights figuring out life and relaxed into the familiar comfort of days of past, worn fabric, bumpy springs, and all.

“Couldn’t sleep either, huh?” Kenzie said from the lounger next to him.

Coy jumped, “Jesus, Kenz. You scared the shit out of me.”

“To be fair, I was here first.” She shrugged. “I heard you grumbling and pacing across those squeaky wood floors in there. You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound fine.” She prodded.

“Well, I am. Sorry to disappoint.”

“The only thing I’m disappointed in is the fact that you think it’s okay to lie to me.” She scolded. “I know you, Coy Stone, and you are not fine.”

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because you’re worried about your family. You haven’t fixed all the things that are wrong yet, and it frustrates the shit out of you.”

“Okay. So maybe you do still know me.” He grumbled.

“Some things never change –– neither do some people, and you’re one of the most consistent people I’ve ever known. Complicated as you are, it makes you easy to read. At least for me.”

“Consistent? Why do I feel like that’s a nice way of saying boring?”

“You are anything but boring. You’ve never been that.” She extended her arm, offering a glass bottle of something amber in color that promised to be a drink of bliss, “Thirsty?”

“Wow. Some things really don’t change.” He chuckled, accepting the bottle and taking a pull from the bottle. “If you tell me this is the same bottle you and Dill used to sneak out here back in the day, I’m going to be equally disgusted and impressed.”

“Same label, different bottle.” She snickered. “Good memory, though. I think about those days every now and again. Sleepovers with Dillon, where we’d all end up out here on the shared balcony until the wee hours of the night, passing around a bag of corn chips and a bottle of the good stuff.”

“The corn chips.” He shook his head, “Booze and corn chips.”

“Teenagers.”

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