Page 25 of Savage Ranger Daddy

"The crates in that truck bed were fresh. Warm hood. Recent activity at Saddleback Cut. If the cargo's already in the mountains, then the 'collection point' is where they're consolidating it before it leaves the range. Not where it's arriving." He pauses. "That changes the operational picture. If it's distribution, not delivery, the window is shorter. Hours, not days."

"Or," I counter, "the crates in the truck are empties. Return containers. Which means the cargo already moved through and what we're seeing is the cleanup, not the main event."

He looks at me sharply. "Why do you say that?"

"The crates I saw in your photos. No shipping labels. No packing materials visible. If they were full and in transit, they'd be sealed and labeled, even with internal codes. Empty crates get stripped and returned. I've seen it in the Ridgeline manifests. They cycle containers through the network on a loop."

He's quiet for a long beat. Then: "That's a good read. If you're right, the main shipment moved during the storm, while we were pinned at the outpost. The 'collection point' is where it's being staged for sale."

"And RC North is the most likely location. It's the one site we haven't been able to reach, it's the one Cal's coordinates point to, and it's where the voices on the radio were operating from."

We stare at each other. Two interpretations of the same fragments, neither provable with what we have, both plausible. The difference between them is critical: if the shipment is still coming, we have time to set up an intercept. If it already arrived, the goods could be moving out of the mountains tonight.

"We call Mason," I say. "Present both scenarios. Let him deploy resources to cover RC North immediately while we try to confirm which one we're dealing with."

"Agreed." Brock pulls the sat phone out. "But there's one more thing. Jeffrey had a map in his jacket. If he's carrying a hand-drawn route to the collection point, that means the location isn't in any official system. It's not in case files or GPS logs that I'd have access to. It exists only on paper, in his pocket."

"Which means we can't find it by searching databases. We'd need the map itself."

"Or someone who's seen it."

That thought hangs between us. Someone who's seen it. Someone inside the operation. That's a source we don't have and can't easily get.

Brock dials Mason. I flip to a clean page and organize the fragments into two columns: what we heard and what it could mean. The pen moves fast. The gaps stare back at me, brackets and question marks where answers should be.

This is what real investigation feels like. Not the clean certainty of a finished article. The messy, partial, maddening middlewhere you have just enough to know you're close and not enough to know if you're right.

I keep writing. The answers are up there somewhere, in the mountains, on a folded piece of paper in a corrupt deputy's jacket pocket.

We just have to find them before the cargo disappears.

13

Brock

I follow Jeffrey Pruitt's truck down the mountain at a quarter-mile distance, keeping two curves between us at all times.

The landscape drops from alpine to foothill to town in twenty minutes of careful driving. Hazel tracks the truck through the binoculars, calling out turns and speed changes without being asked. "He's slowing. Right turn ahead. Looks like he's heading for Main Street."

Timber Creek appears below us, tucked into the valley like a model town under glass. Snow-covered rooftops. String lights still up from some holiday nobody took down. A few locals shoveling sidewalks. The kind of place that looks harmless from a distance.

Jeffrey's truck pulls up in front of City Hall, a squat stone building with wide steps and double doors. He gets out alone. The shorter man from the clearing isn't with him. Jeffrey adjusts his jacket, the same one with the folded map in the pocket, and climbs the steps without looking back.

I park half a block down, angled so I can see the entrance. "I'm going in."

Hazel nods. No argument this time. "I'll monitor the frequency and watch the entrance. If anyone else shows up or Jeffrey comes out, I'll hit the horn twice."

"Good. If I'm not back in fifteen, call Mason and drive."

I step out, cross the street, and push through the front doors like I have business here. The inside is what you'd expect from a small-town government building: fluorescent lights, polished linoleum, a directory on the wall listing offices I don't care about. A receptionist sits behind a desk near the entrance, a woman in her fifties with reading glasses on a chain. She looks up.

"Help you?"

"Looking for the road commission office. Need an update on the higher access roads after the storm." I keep my voice easy, casual. The kind of question a ranger would ask.

"Second floor, end of the hall. But I think they're closed for the day. Storm backed everything up."

"Appreciate it." I head for the stairs, passing the receptionist's line of sight and turning left at the landing instead of right. Jeffrey went down the ground-floor corridor toward the back of the building. I spotted the tail of his jacket before the stairwell door closed.