A Gambling Man // Ryan x OC

21

"Where's Mae?" 

"Last I saw she was giving Evie her bottle in the nursery, giving Charlie some more time to sleep," Beth replied and John nodded. It was odd that she wasn't here but they could just fill her in later. 

"What do we do?," Jamie asked. 

"Firstly I need you and Mae completely clean of this, Beth."

"No one's clean of this," Beth replied. 

"You can't know what we do, Honey. Tate's gotta come home to something. Give me this, please?," John couldn't protect his daughters before but he sure as well won't let anything else happen to them. 

"I guess I'll go to tell Mae then," Beth sighed as she gave into her father's request and left the room. 

"What he's doing is irrational, he's not considering consequences, maybe it's from arrogance?," Jamie tried to profile Malcolm Beck, trying to find a reason why he would kidnap an innocent child. 

"Why does it matter?," John asked, "This is going to be the end of us but we're going to do it anyway." 

"We can't find Mae!," Beth, Monica and Charlie carrying Evie ran into the office. 

"I thought you said she was feeding Evie?," Kayce asked confused. 

"That was an hour ago, she's not in the house and she's not answering her phone," Charlie explained. 

"Maybe she's with Ryan?," Monica offered and they all ran outside to check but what they saw was Ryan and Colby on their horses running towards the house with someone clinging to Ryan. 

"Mae's gone!," Ryan shouted at them as he brought his horse to a halt and helped a seriously injured Cowboy off of his horse.

"What happened?," John demanded from Colby and Cowboy. They all could see that Ryan was barely keeping it together. 

"Ryan and I thought it would be a good idea to run perimeter one more time, to make sure we didn't miss something last night that could help us find Tate. We heard a loud crash and went to see what happened only to find him shot in Mae's Jeep that had been run off the road but she wasn't there," Colby explained and everyone turned to Cowboy waiting for him to explain. 

"This morning I went to her to tell her goodbye but she insisted on driving me to the bus station, on the way there we were run off the road. I heard a lot of voices and then I was shot in the shoulder. I blacked out just as they took her, I'm sorry I couldn't save her, not this time." 

"You never should have agreed! You should have told one of us, she would still have been here!," Ryan shouted as he grabbed Cowboy by the shirt. 

Kayce and Colby grabbed Ryan off of Cowboy, they could all see the tears threatening to fall from the guy's eyes. 

"We're going to find her son, we're going to find both of them but we need all hands on deck here, do you hear me? She needs you to remain calm," John told Ryan and the guy took a couple of deep breaths as he tried to do what John said. 

They heard a truck pull up and John saw that it was the Sheriff. 

"Jamie, Colby go tell Rip what happened, the rest of you try to calm him down," John ordered. 

"Believe me now?," John asked as he approached Donnie. 

"Now what?," the sheriff asked. 

"Now you choose sides."

"They got me in a real fucking corner here, John," Donnie scoffed. 

"I understand, Donnie, but they have my grandson and my daughter!"