Page 23 of Savage Ranger Daddy

She nods. No argument. No hesitation. She reaches for the sat phone and holds it ready. "I'll give you ten minutes. If you're not back or I don't hear from you, I'm calling Mason and driving."

"Make it eight."

I step out into the cold, draw my weapon, and move toward the parked truck in a low approach, using the tree line for cover. The snow is deep enough to muffle my boots. I clear the cab first. Empty. Fast food wrappers. A pack of cigarettes. No registration visible. I circle to the bed and lift the corner of the tarp.

Crates. Four of them. Heavy-gauge plastic with reinforced corners, the kind designed for military transport. No shipping labels, but the packing materials inside match what I found atSaddleback Cut five weeks ago. I photograph the crates, the tarp, the tire tracks, and the tree line. Then I check the access road on foot, moving thirty yards deeper to where it bends out of sight.

Voices.

Two men, maybe three. They're somewhere past the bend, deeper in the trees. I can't make out words from this distance, just the low murmur of conversation and the sound of something heavy being moved. I hold position for sixty seconds, listening, then pull back. I've got what I need. Photographs. Location. Confirmation of active transport. Pushing further solo with Hazel in the truck is a risk I'm not taking.

I'm back at the truck in under seven minutes. Hazel unlocks the door the second she sees me and I slide into the driver's seat.

"Crates," I tell her, starting the engine and pulling out quiet and smooth. "Military transport cases. Same type I found at Saddleback. Fresh. Whoever dropped them is still on-site, past the bend. At least two voices."

She's writing before I finish the sentence. "Location?"

I read off the coordinates from the GPS. She logs them next to the ones from Cal's notes and draws a connecting line.

"Brock. Look." She holds up the notebook. The line she drew connects the parked truck's location to one of Cal's GPS coordinates. They're less than a mile apart. "Cal's coordinates aren't pointing to the storage site. They're pointing to whatever is up that road past the bend. The place those men are working right now."

RC North. The site I couldn't reach before the snow closed the trail.

"We need to get closer," she says.

"Not today. Not with personnel on-site and no backup. But now we know exactly where it is, and Mason can put surveillance assets on it within twenty-four hours." I check the mirrors. No one following. The road behind us is empty. "You just connected the last dot, Hazel. That's the hub."

She closes the notebook and sits back, breathing hard, her eyes bright with the look I've come to recognize as the moment the story clicks into focus.

"We need to call Mason," she says.

"Already dialing." I reach for the sat phone. The road unwinds ahead of us, clean and empty, and for the first time in this case I can feel the net closing. Not on us. On them.

12

Hazel

Brock is on the sat phone with Mason when I see them.

We've pulled off the main road onto a fire access lane that winds up toward a ridge overlooking the area where we found the truck. Brock parked in a stand of pines thick enough to hide us from below and got out to call in the crate discovery and coordinates. I'm in the passenger seat with my notebook open, sketching the layout of the access road from memory, when movement catches my eye through the trees.

Two men. They're coming up a trail from the direction of the parked truck, maybe three hundred yards below and to the east. I can't hear them from this distance, but I can see them clearly through gaps in the tree cover. One is tall and balding, wearing what looks like a sheriff's department jacket, the tan and brown visible even from here. The other is shorter, heavier, in a dark windbreaker. They stop at a clearing where the trail splits and stand facing each other, talking.

I tap the window. Brock looks up from the phone, follows my gesture, and goes still. He murmurs something to Masonand pockets the sat phone, then moves to the truck and leans through the driver's side window.

"The tall one. Sheriff's jacket." His voice is barely above a breath. "That's Deputy Jeffrey Pruitt. Senior deputy, Timber Creek district. The same Jeffrey who signed those reclassification orders."

My blood runs hotter. "And the other one?"

"Don't recognize him from here." He reaches behind the seat and pulls out a compact pair of binoculars as he studies the shorter man for a few seconds. "County windbreaker. Could be administrative. Could be someone from the commissioner's office. I can't read the name badge at this range."

I squint through the trees. They're still talking, but the wind is blowing the wrong direction, carrying their voices away from us toward the valley. All I can catch are fragments. Syllables without shape. The shorter man gestures with one hand toward something behind him, back down the trail where the truck and the crates are. The deputy nods and pulls out a phone.

"I need to get closer," I say.

Brock shakes his head. "Too exposed. The tree cover thins out about fifty yards down this slope. If either of them looks up we're made."

"There's a rock outcrop about halfway down. See it? The dark ledge with the snow shelf." I point. "If I can get behind that I'll be close enough to hear without breaking the tree line."