Page 5 of Lone Star Wanted
“And now he’s vanished,” Kincade said, “and the man who shut down that evidence just turned up dead with Travis’s name on the warrant.”
Cassidy didn’t respond. She couldn’t. The knot in her throat was too tight.
They crested the ridge overlooking town, and Blanco Pass came into view. Quiet, sun-bleached. A single main street split the heart of it, lined with faded brick buildings, rusted metal awnings, and decades-old storefronts that had more dust than business. The courthouse clock had stopped years ago. The diner still had a flickering neon sign out front that readOpen,even when it wasn’t.
It was home. But right now, it felt like a place filled with people she wasn’t sure she could trust.
She turned onto the road leading toward the east side, where the town’s only hospital sat wedged between a water tower and an overgrown field of sunflowers that had long since wilted. Blanco Pass Hospital wasn’t much, just a squat, two-story building with stained stucco. But it was the closest thing they had to trauma care for forty miles.
Cassidy pulled into the nearly empty parking lot and slid into a space near the entrance. She turned off the engine and rested her hands on the wheel for a beat longer than necessary.
Out of nowhere, the image flashed. Kincade in her bed, bare skin tangled in sheets, heat in his eyes, his hand skimming along her thigh like he knew exactly what she needed and wasn’t afraid to give it. Her breath had caught then, just like it did now.
She shoved the memory away like it hadn’t curled around her spine for the past year and a half.
Now wasn’t the time. Hell, it had never been the right time.
“Maybe the doctor can help fix that head of yours,” she said, her voice low, trying for light but not quite making it. “And your memory while they’re at it.”
Beside her, Kincade let out a dry breath that might’ve been a laugh. Except there was nothing funny about any of this.
“Good luck with that,” he muttered. “Feels like someone took a sledgehammer to my skull and scrubbed the inside clean.”
She didn’t say it out loud, but she hoped the doctor here could fix whatever damage had been done. Because if the answers they needed were locked inside Kincade’s head—they didn’t have time to wait for them to come back.
Kincade pushed the truck door open with a grunt, boots hitting the pavement as he moved stiffly toward the entrance. She followed, her heart thudding faster than she’d admit.
Inside, the air was blessedly cool, smelling faintly of antiseptic and old coffee. The lobby was quiet. Just a couple of older patients sitting under the muted drone of a mounted TV playing local news. A gray-haired nurse behind the check-in counter looked up from her keyboard, startled for a beat before recognition set in.
“Deputy Prescott,” she greeted.
“Ina May,” Cassidy greeted back.
Cassidy had known the woman her entire life, and Ina May had stitched up Travis and her a time or two. The woman smiled, then did a double-take when her attention landed on Kincade.
“Obviously, he needs to be examined, maybe even admitted,” Ina May concluded.
Kincade didn’t argue. But the lines around his mouth were deeper now, the fire in his eyes dulled by pain he was doing a bad job of hiding.
With the nurse leading the way, they moved past the desk and down a narrow hallway with scuffed tile floors and faded blue walls. Everything smelled tired. Lived-in. Rural hospitals like this one weren’t built for emergencies. They were built to hold people together until someone better equipped could take over.
When they reached the exam room, Ina May opened the door and motioned for them to go in. “Have a seat. Doctor will be in shortly,” she said. “I’ll grab the intake nurse and let her know you’re here.”
Kincade stopped walking, eyes on the floor for a second before lifting to meet Cassidy’s. “Don’t let them knock me out or ask too many questions,” he insisted. “I need to be back on my feet fast.”
She wanted the same thing, but Cassidy wasn’t sure that was possible. “You’re bleeding from the head and probably concussed,” she reminded him.
“I can be concussedanduseful,” he growled. “But I can’t do a damn thing from a hospital bed.”
She stared at him for a long beat, jaw tightening. Then she nodded. “Fine. They patch you up, you stay upright, and you poke those blank memories so we know where to find Travis.”
“Deal,” he muttered.
Maybe it was the exhaustion in his voice, or the raw edge under all that steel, but something inside her softened. Travis was still out there. Maybe hunted. Maybe framed. Maybe worse.
And like it or not, Kincade was her best shot at finding him.
Cassidy’s phone buzzed with an incoming call, and she glanced at the screen “It’s Ruby,” she relayed to him.
