Page 28 of Savage Ranger Daddy

I step backward fast, grab a menu off the nearest table, and slide into a booth like I've been sitting there the whole time. My heart is hammering so hard I can feel it in my temples. The Employees Only door opens. The man I followed walks out first, phone already to his ear, and heads for the front without glancing my direction. Behind him, a woman steps out and moves to the bar. She's mid-thirties, dark hair, sharp features, wearing an apron. She picks up the rag and starts wiping down the counter like she's been doing it all day.

The bartender. The woman who runs this place.

Alice Dermott.

She hasn't noticed me yet. I sit in the booth with the menu up, thinking fast. I have photographs of the man on my phone. I have the Lucky Moon's connection to Ridgeline Outfitters. I heard a woman's voice say "she's still with the marshal" and "I need a reason to get close." And I just watched Alice Dermott walk out of a back room meeting with the man who might be Voss.

I need to leave. Now. Before she sees my face and remembers it later.

I'm sliding out of the booth when she looks up. Our eyes meet across the bar.

She smiles. It's warm and easy and completely disarming. "Hey there, hon. Can I help you with something? You look a little lost."

My training kicks in. Not marshal training. Journalist training. The kind you develop after years of walking into places you don't belong and talking your way back out.

"Just looking for the restroom, actually. Walked in from the cold and couldn't hold it." I laugh, self-deprecating, the flustered-tourist act I've used a dozen times on stakeouts. "Didn't mean to take up a booth. Do you mind?"

"Down the hall on the left. No worries." She goes back to wiping the counter.

I walk to the restroom, lock the door, and lean against the sink. My hands are shaking. I pull out my phone and scroll through the photographs I took. The man's profile on Main Street. His back entering the Lucky Moon. The bar's exterior. Two of the three street shots are blurry, but the third one caught his face at a quarter angle, enough to see a strong jaw, a heavy brow, and a scar or crease running along his left cheek. It's not a mugshot, but it's the clearest image anyone has ever gotten of this person. If I can match it against the dock surveillance photo and the trail camera frame, we'll have a confirmed visual ID on the man Cal called Voss.

I text the photos to myself as a backup, flush the toilet for cover, and walk out.

Alice doesn't look up as I pass the bar. I push through the front door into the cold, the air hitting my face like a reset button. I walk north, fast, back toward City Hall and the truck.

Brock is standing on the sidewalk beside the truck. The second he sees me his whole body goes rigid, then releases. He crosses the distance in four strides and catches me by both arms.

"Where were you?" His voice is controlled but the tension underneath it is sharp enough to cut. "I came off the call and the truck was empty."

"I know. I'm sorry. But you need to hear this before you get angry." I pull out my phone and hold it up, the quarter-profile photograph filling the screen. "A man came out of City Hall right after Jeffrey. Same side door. He walked to the Lucky Moon, the bar connected to Ridgeline Outfitters, and went straight into a back room meeting. I followed him inside and overheard three voices through the wall. Two men and a woman."

His jaw is tight but he's listening.

"The men confirmed south fork, tomorrow night. Standard operational talk. But the woman said something specific." I take a breath. "'She's still with the marshal. I can get close but I need a reason to.' And the man told her to make sure I trust her. That's all she needs."

Brock goes very still.

"There's a woman inside the operation who's been tasked with getting close to me. Not finding me. Getting close. Building trust. That's not a search team. That's an infiltration."

He takes the phone from my hand and studies the photograph. "The woman in the bar. Did you get a look at her?"

"Dark hair. Mid-thirties. Runs the bar. I think it's Alice Dermott. The name on the Ridgeline registration and the Lucky Moon liquor license."

He hands the phone back. His expression has gone completely flat, the way it does when he's processing something thatchanges the shape of the operation. "You should have stayed in the truck."

"I know."

"If that man is Voss and he'd seen your face, this would be a very different conversation."

"I know that too."

"But you got a photograph no one else has. And you identified a woman inside the ring who's planning to approach you directly." He pauses. "That changes everything."

"Does that mean you're not angry?"

"It means I'm angry and grateful at the same time, and I don't enjoy the combination." He opens my door. "Get in. We need to move."

I climb in. He circles to the driver's side and starts the engine. As we pull away from City Hall I glance in the side mirror. The Lucky Moon is a dark shape receding on the side street, unremarkable, forgettable, exactly the kind of place where a criminal empire hides in plain sight.