Page 38 of Savage Ranger Daddy

I almost ignore it. We're deep in the logistics of securing the logging camp evidence chain and coordinating with the ATF team that's en route for the weapons inventory. The raid was clean. The cache is secured. Tate and three others are in custody. The women from Storage Building Three are safe at Haven 7. By every operational measure, this morning was a success.

My phone buzzes again. Then a third time in rapid succession.

I pick it up.

Three messages. The first, from Hazel, timestamped twelve minutes ago: Alice is here.

The second, from an automated emergency system: Emergency SOS activated by Hazel Lowe. Location broadcasting.

The third is a GPS coordinate updating in real time.

The room narrows to the size of that screen. Twelve minutes. She sent the text twelve minutes ago and I was sitting in this room with my phone face down on the desk while Alice Dermott walked into this building and took her.

"Hazel's been taken." I'm already moving. Chair back, phone in hand, weapon check. "Alice Dermott is in this building. She's got Hazel. Emergency SOS is broadcasting a moving location heading south toward the mountains."

Mason doesn't waste a second. He's at his computer, pulling up the building's security camera system. "Hallway feeds. Conference room corridor. Parking lot. Give me a timestamp."

"Twelve minutes ago."

The hallway feed loads first. I watch Hazel step out of the restroom and stop. Alice is at the water fountain. Even on the grainy footage I can see the performance: shaking shoulders, wiped tears, the body language of a woman in crisis. Hazel approaches. They talk. I watch Hazel's posture and I can see her reading the situation, the careful distance she keeps, the way she doesn't close the gap the way she would with someone she trusts.

"She's not buying it," Mason says, watching the same thing. "Look at her feet. She's angled toward our office, not toward the exit."

He's right. On the footage Hazel keeps positioning herself between Alice and the direction of Mason's office. She's trying to steer Alice toward us. At one point she turns away from Alice and takes two steps toward our door. That's when Alice grabs her wrist.

The emergency exit. Alice drags Hazel through the push-bar door at the end of the hall. The camera angle catches the door swinging shut behind them.

"Parking lot. Side alley." Mason switches feeds. The exterior camera covers the alley between the building and the adjacent lot. A dark sedan is idling against the wall. Dale Weathers is leaning against the driver's side door.

"That's him," I say. "Dale Weathers. Also known as Voss. Hazel's photograph from yesterday just came back with a full ID. He's the one running the entire ring."

Hazel comes through the emergency exit fighting. She breaks Alice's grip and hits the door, trying to get back inside. It's locked from the outside. Dale grabs her from behind. I watch her execute the escape I taught her: drop weight, stomp, elbow. She gets one arm free. Bites his hand. Screams once, my name, before the second man reaches her and they force her into the back seat.

The sedan pulls out of the alley. Timestamp: eleven minutes ago.

I'm watching the woman I trained fight exactly the way I trained her and lose because two men and a locked door were more than one person can overcome. She did everything right. The text. The photographs she must have taken. The attempt to bring Alice to us instead of going to Alice. The SOS. She ran every contingency she had and they still got her through the door.

I close the video. The GPS location on my phone is still updating. They're heading south, climbing into the foothills. Moving fast but not erratically, which means they have a destination, not a panic route.

"The logging camp is secured," I say, thinking out loud, forcing myself into operational mode. "They can't go back there. Tate's in custody. The site is crawling with our people. Dale knows that if he was anywhere near a radio this morning."

Mason is already on the phone. "Which means he's got a secondary location. Somewhere we haven't identified." He dials Silas. "Silas. Dale Weathers has taken Hazel Lowe from the Marshals office. Alice Dermott assisted. They're in a dark sedan heading south from Timber Creek. Emergency SOS is broadcasting a live GPS location. I need every available unit redirected now."

I pull up the GPS track on the conference room's wall-mounted screen. The blue dot is moving steadily south on a county road that leads toward the lower mountain passes. I overlay it against the topographic map Silas gave us at Haven 7.

"South fork." I trace the route with my finger. "They're heading toward the south fork access road. Same route Jeffrey Pruitt mentioned in City Hall. Past the Miller Creek bridge."

Mason relays this to Silas. Silas's voice comes through the speaker, flat and hard. "I've got two units that can intercept on the south fork road within twenty minutes. Harlan's team from Haven 7 can come in from the north and cut off the back route. But if Dale turns off before the fork we'll need a visual."

"The SOS is still broadcasting," I say. "As long as her phone has power and signal, we have her location. But signal gets spotty past the fork. If they go deep into the passes we could lose it."

"Then we move now." Mason grabs his jacket. "Brock, you're lead vehicle. I'll coordinate from the second unit. Silas, have your teams stage at the south fork junction and hold until wearrive. Nobody moves on the target vehicle until we have a confirmed visual on Hazel. I will not risk her life on a rolling takedown."

"Copy," Silas says. "One more thing. Jeffrey Pruitt hasn't been located since the raid. He wasn't at the camp. He wasn't at his home. His department vehicle is missing. If he's with Dale, you could be driving into a armed escort, not just a sedan."

I absorb that. A corrupt deputy with a service weapon, a tactical radio, and knowledge of every law enforcement frequency in the county. If Pruitt is running security for Dale's escape route, he'll hear our communications and reroute before we can close the net.

"Switch to the backup frequency," I tell Mason. "The one we used for the raid this morning. Pruitt doesn't have access to that channel. Silas, have your teams do the same. All communication on backup freq only. Radio silence on primary."