Page 14 of Twilight Tactics

“It is. Five hundred acres. It’s all fenced. There won’t be any vehicles coming in without someone cutting the fence—and if we have regular patrols, someone will notice it pretty fast.”

“Unless they put it back after they cut it.”

“That would take time and tools for someone in a hurry.”

“What if they’re not in a hurry?”

He shot her a hard look. “You love playing devil’s advocate, don’t you?”

“I’m good at it, so why not?”

He rubbed his chin and shook his head. “No, a vehicle is too obvious. If they come, it’ll be on foot.”

“Or by air.”

“Drones? Maybe. Chopper? Possibly. But it would give us a good amount of warning.” Well, the choppers would. The drones maybe not so much.

“And if they don’t care? If they think they’re invincible and can take us out regardless?”

“You’re in rare form today.” He pursed his lips. “Then we’ll just have to be prepared for that.”

“How?”

He sighed. “I’ll talk to Gideon, David, and Maya, and we’ll come up with a plan.”

“I’ll be thinking while you’re talking to them, but you need to keep me in the loop, Sully.”

“Of course. You know I will.”

She studied him as though she wasn’t quite sure about that. Then nodded. “Good.”

“I’ll do a perimeter check around this cabin before I comeback in.” He hesitated. “Some of the ranch is only accessible by horseback. We’re going to need help patrolling that.”

“That’s a lot of land,” Ollie said, walking into the kitchen and rubbing her eyes.

“It is, but we’ll figure it out.”

“Five hundred acres? Patrolled by horseback?”

“Some of it. A lot of it is drivable. Golf carts would work.”

“Hmm. Well, one square mile is six hundred forty acres.”

“Yes.” He frowned. Where was she going with this?

“Five hundred acres is...” She scrunched her nose for a full two seconds then said, “about zero point seven eight square miles if it’s square shaped. That’s roughly zero point eight eight miles on each side. Multiply that by four ... about a three-and-a-half-mile perimeter.”

Her mind was pretty amazing. “It’s not square, more rectangular.”

“Then the perimeter could be somewhere between three and five miles.”

“True.” He paused, then narrowed his eyes. “Where are you going with this?”

“A horse moving three to four miles per hour would take forty-five minutes to a little over an hour to make one perimeter pass. At five miles per hour? Maybe forty minutes. But that’s not counting terrain, weather, trail conditions—stuff like that.”

Piper gaped. Sully managed not to, but barely. He cleared his throat. “And if we’re in a vehicle going a little faster, we could lower that time.”

“Or just assign people certain areas to check,” the teen said. “And the whole thing’s done in like five minutes.”