Page 35 of Savage Ranger Daddy

A beat. "They will be. Rafe's team is transporting them to Haven 7. Harper's setting up the lodge."

Of course she is. That's what Haven 7 was built for.

I set the radio down and sit in the quiet cabin with my notebook full of everything we've found and everything we've lost track of. The fire has burned low. Dawn light fills the windows. Outside the mountain is white and still, unchanged by anything that happened in the dark.

I turn to a fresh page and start writing the story. Not the article. The real story. The one that connects Cal Hutchins' GPS coordinates to a woman named Alice Dermott. The one that traces a shipping label from a logistics company in Helena to a crate in a mountain logging camp. The one that starts with a journalist who hit publish and ends with eight women walking out of a storage building into the first light they've seen in God knows how long.

The story isn't finished. The man at the top is still free. The corrupt deputy is still missing. And somewhere out there, a woman with a warm smile and a rag in her hand is waiting for her chance to get close to me.

But the story is alive. And as long as I keep writing, it stays that way.

18

Hazel

The Marshals office smells like burnt coffee and old carpet. I'm sitting in a conference room on the second floor while Brock and Mason debrief the raid two doors down. They've been at it for over an hour. I can hear the low murmur of their voices through the wall but not the words. Silas called in from Haven 7 twenty minutes ago with an update: the eight women recovered from Storage Building Three are being evaluated by Eli's medical team. All alive. All dehydrated and disoriented but stable. The youngest looks about nineteen.

I've been writing since we arrived. Everything from the radio transcripts, organized chronologically, cross-referenced with the evidence we've gathered over the past five days. My notebook is almost full. I'll need a new one soon, which is a problem I never expected to have during a federal protection assignment.

The conference room has a window overlooking the parking lot behind the building. It's mid-afternoon. The lot is mostly empty except for three government vehicles and a rusted Subaru that belongs to someone on the clerical staff. The sky is overcast,flat and gray, the kind of light that makes everything look like a photograph with the color drained out. I stand and stretch my neck, then walk to the window to watch the street for a minute. My eyes feel gritty from the early morning and the hours of close writing.

The door to the conference room opens and a young deputy I haven't met leans in. "Ms. Lowe? Marshal Savage asked me to check on you. He says they'll be another thirty minutes or so. Can I get you anything?"

"Coffee would be amazing. And a bathroom?"

"Restroom's down the hall, second left. I'll have coffee waiting when you get back."

I grab my phone but leave my notebook on the table. The hallway is quiet. Government-building quiet, the kind where the fluorescent lights hum louder than anything human. I pass two closed office doors, a bulletin board covered in interagency memos, and a water fountain that probably hasn't been serviced since the building was constructed.

The restroom is small and unremarkable. I wash my hands, splash water on my face, and stare at my reflection for a few seconds. Dark circles under my eyes. Hair that needs washing. The same flannel I've been wearing for two days because it's Brock's and it still smells like the outpost and I'm not ready to give it up. I look tired and wired at the same time, which is approximately how I feel.

I dry my hands and step back into the hallway.

She's standing by the water fountain.

My brain registers her before my body reacts. Dark hair, pulled back. Denim jacket. The face I saw behind the bar at the Lucky Moon, wiping the counter with a rag and smiling at me like I was just another lost tourist.

Alice Dermott.

Every nerve in my body fires at once. The conversation through the wall: She's still with the marshal. I can get close but I need a reason to. Make sure she trusts you.

She hasn't seen me yet. She's facing the water fountain, one hand braced against the wall, her shoulders hitching in small, uneven movements. Crying. Or doing a very convincing impression of it.

I have about three seconds to decide what to do.

Option one: turn around, walk back to the conference room, and tell the deputy. Safe. Smart. Exactly what Silas told me to do at Haven 7. Nobody approaches you without being vetted through this room first.

Option two: find out what she's doing inside a federal building.

Because that's the question that overrides everything else. Alice Dermott shouldn't be here. The Marshals office has a reception desk and a sign-in log. Visitors get badges. The building isn't high-security, but it's not a walk-in clinic either. If she's standing in this hallway, someone let her in or she talked her way past the front desk. Either way, I need to know how, because the answer tells me something about how far this network's reach extends.

I don't approach her. Not yet. I pull out my phone, open the camera, and take two photographs from the hallway. Alice Dermott, inside the US Marshals office in Timber Creek, on theday of the raid. Timestamped. Geotagged. Evidence that she was here, regardless of what happens next.

Then I text Brock. Three words: Alice is here.

I watch the screen. Delivered. Not read. He's in the briefing with Mason. His phone might be on the table, face down, the way he leaves it during operational discussions. He might not see this for twenty minutes.

Alice straightens up and wipes her face with the back of her hand. She turns.