They hadn’t even picked up tracks.

“We’re getting far away, Chace,” Faye called, her voice tight.

Fear and concern.

“Keep lookin’, honey,” Chace replied.

“It’s getting late,” she told him.

“Keep lookin’.”

“And cold.”

He heard a sharp whistle and stopped dead, aiming his light toward Deck.

Deck was aiming his light to his fingers, two of which were moving in a motion of walking then he swung his light to the forest floor.

He’d found tracks.

Faye rushed up to his side.

“Quiet, Faye, as quiet as you can be. Follow, stay behind me. Let’s go,” Chace ordered, Faye nodded then he moved swiftly and as silently as he could to Deck.

When they reached him, Deck continued to move through the forest.

Chace and Faye followed and Chace saw the tracks. At hearing Faye’s quick intake of breath, he knew she saw them too.

Five minutes passed into ten and then Deck stopped abruptly, lifting up a hand.

Chace and Faye stopped behind him. Chace moved carefully to his side where he halted, using an arm to sweep Faye behind him and putting his hand to his gun at his belt.

There was movement.

“Lights,” Chace murmured and turned his flashlight off, Deck’s followed half a second later then Faye’s went out.

They listened to the sounds of approach and Chace trained his eyes through the dark at where it was coming from. From the noises, he couldn’t get a sense of what they were dealing with, child, adult or both. They didn’t talk, didn’t make anything but the noise of footfalls in the snow, mud and the brushing of branches.

Then they came clear. Chace knew Faye saw them the minute he did for she sucked in another audible breath.

Through the dark, Malachi in his new jeans and a sweater and he was holding the hand of a little girl, maybe five, six, in a thin, pale-colored nightgown, Malachi’s coat hanging on her, barefoot, hair a scraggly mess coming out from under Malachi’s hat, face dirty, thin as a fucking rail.

The children didn’t notice them until they were four feet away. When they did, they rocked to a halt, their heads tipped back sharply and the girl whimpered in alarm, ducking behind Malachi.

Chace braced to run after them if they took off but they didn’t.

Shocking the shit out of Chace, his eyes locked to him, Malachi shuffled forward two feet and stopped.

Then his face cracked in a huge smile and he whispered in a scratchy voice, “Finally got her. Rebecca. My sister.”

His sister. His fucking sister.

Chace was right. There was a sibling. All he’d done was for her.

Faye leaned heavily into the side of his back and whispered, “My sister.”

Then he felt her body buck and he knew she was fighting tears.

Chace had to hope she could hold it together as he leaned back a bit to give her the cue, she took her weight from him and he crouched low.

“Rebecca’s got no shoes on, Malachi. It’s cold, snowy and muddy. Can I carry her home?” he asked.

Malachi looked at Chace then twisted his neck to look at his sister then he looked back at Chace and nodded.

Chace carefully lifted one hand toward Rebecca, she cowered back behind Malachi and whimpered.

Malachi’s scratchy voice came back. “It’s okay, Becky.”

“Doan wanna,” she murmured.

More of Malachi’s rough, quiet whisper. “He got me a sleeping bag.”

“Doan wanna.”

“He’s nice.”

“Doan wanna!”

“Becky, honey, look at me.”

This came from Faye who had moved and was now crouching beside Chace.

She spoke again when Becky peered fearfully from around Malachi.

“I’m Faye. This is Chace,” she motioned to him then she tipped her head up to Deck so both kids tilted their heads way back to look at Deck. “That gentle giant is Jacob Decker. It’s cold, sweetheart, and you need some food in your belly.” At the mention of food, Becky’s eyes shot back to Faye and, at what this said, Chace’s gut twisted. “You can walk with us, of course, but we’d get you warmed up and food in you a lot faster if you let Chace carry you.”

There was nothing then, softly, “Gentle giant?”

“Yeah, he’s big but he’s sweet,” Faye told her.

“What’s he?” Becky asked, pressing into Malachi but jerking her chin to Chace.

“He’s a white knight on a fiery steed except his steed comes in the form of an SUV and it’s not fiery. It’s burgundy.”

Becky kept pressing into her brother then she whispered, “Did he buy Miah a sleeping bag?”

Miah?

Faye wisely didn’t question the name. She just answered, “Yes, honey, he got him a sleeping bag and camp cutlery and candy bars and energy drinks and lots of stuff. That’s what white knights do. They save damsels in distress but they also look after kids who don’t have it very good.”

Becky’s eyes moved over Chace in the moonlight.

Then slowly she shifted out from behind Malachi, took two steps toward him and lifted her hand his way. Moving carefully, Chace reached out toward her.

Her little, pale fingers curled around his.

He cautiously moved forward and slowly swung her up in his arms.

Then he whispered, “Let’s get them home,” and moved swiftly through the wood.

“Take my hand, sweetheart,” he heard from behind him and he knew Faye was looking after Malachi but Chace didn’t miss a step.

But when her little, trembling body caught his attention, he stopped, put her down gently, shrugged off his jacket, wrapped it low around her in an effort to cover her legs and feet and lifted her back up.

While he was doing that, he heard Deck ask Malachi, “Piggyback?” which meant if Deck carried Malachi, they could keep up.

The scratchy voice came back, a hint of excitement in it, “Yeah.”

Chace forged through the forest hearing them coming after him.

After five minutes he heard Deck’s, “Gentle giant?”

Then he heard Faye’s, “Shut up.”

He did not smile. The girl in his arms was freezing, dirty, underfed and her brother just saved her from some unknown “she” who was at the town meeting.

Five minutes later he heard Deck’s, “White knight on a fiery steed?”

Then he heard Faye’s, “Deck, shut… up.”

Then he heard Malachi’s laugh.

Only then did he smile.

But it was not a big one.

* * *

Chace forced himself to drive slower than the speed limit on his way to the hospital. He did this to give himself time to control his fury.

He’d just left the Station. They were processing Enid Eglund for homicide and kidnapping while her sister Mary blustered to the Cap in the reception area.

As she did, Tate, Ty, Deke, Bubba, Wood, Max and Deck as well as half the Carnal police officers looked on with varying expressions of disgust. Chace was angry, having difficulty controlling it but still he knew those men were there and not home with their women because they were worried they’d have to help him keep a hold on his shit.

He finally left when Ty broke into Mary’s harangue, clearly a woman with a little power who thought she had a lot more and it was backed by God, and he did it with, “Bitch, give it up. Your whackjob of a sister isn’t gonna fry even though she should, but she is gonna pay. You talkin’ yourself sick and borin’ everyone to death is not gonna stop it.”

Mary glared at him, visibly fighting the urge to lash out but wisely not doing it considering it would have no effect, not to mention the fact that Ty was a six foot seven powerhouse and there were very few who had the courage to give him lip and fewer still were women. Lexie was one of the only ones he knew who did it and did it with regularity. That and the way she looked, Chace reckoned, were the reasons she warmed his bed with his baby inside her.

At this point, however, Chace decided he was done and mumbled to Frank that he was out of there.

Then he got the fuck out of there.

After getting the kids out of the wood, they’d taken Rebecca to the hospital first. While they checked on her, with Deck and Silas close (Faye was in with Becky), he’d spoken to Malachi, or, as they’d learned, Jeremiah and got the story as Jeremiah told it haltingly in his scratchy voice.

Jeremiah and his sister had been kept by a woman called Enid in her basement. They rarely saw the light of day and only when she forced them to do chores in her garden. They had little to eat. They were lectured often and for long-ass periods of time about God, the Bible and how they were both heathens for reasons Chace didn’t get because Jeremiah was too young to understand and explain. Nevertheless, whatever they were was clearly jacked. And whatever they were, she told the children, they needed to be punished for it.

But Jeremiah had been cast out some months ago after Enid had, for some reason, declared him even more unholy than he already was and therefore unfit to be around his sister.

He was cast out but he went back in order to try and free his sister. Upon his returns, he was caught, beaten, sometimes bound and then beaten and cast out again.

He kept going back.

For his sister.

The last time, the worst time, when he was determined to get her because he knew Chace and Faye would take care of her as well as him, she’d broken his arm and on his return to the shed, he’d been caught in the trap.

When he saw Enid at the town meeting, Enid being, Chace reckoned, the person Mary thought would back her play about the library, he’d seen this as his opportunity to get his sister free and he took it.