Page 55 of Untamed Hunter Daddy

In practice it takes a few tries. The first fails because I don’t commit hard enough. The second fails because my wrists twist instead of pulling cleanly. The third works.

The ratchet snaps with a sound like a small bone breaking. The zip tie falls away. I sit on the concrete and look at my free hands.

Sara stares.

“Show me,” she says.

I do. It takes her two tries. The same small crack fills the enclosure.

We free the other four women in the next ten minutes. Some need help because their hands have been bound so long the motion doesn’t come naturally. One of them cries when the tie breaks, a single choked sound. Another laughs, which is somehow worse.

The gate is still locked. The padlock is still steel. We’re still inside the enclosure and the vans load at eleven tomorrow. Free hands don’t change that fact.

But they change something else. It’s in their faces. They’re looking around now. Assessing the gap under the fence. The distance to the loading dock door. The space between the enclosure and the exit.

They’re paying attention.

“When they get here,” I say, keeping my voice low, “there’ll be a breach. It’ll be loud and fast. The men who come through the door will be armed and wearing vests and shouting commands. Do not run toward them. Do not stand up. Stay on the ground with your hands visible and wait for someone to identify themselves as law enforcement. If a man in a tactical vest says ‘federal marshals,’ that’s the signal. Those are the good ones.”

“How do you know they’re coming?” the woman with the accent asks.

“Because one of them is mine,” I say. The word is deliberate. Not ownership. Belonging. “And he doesn’t stop coming. He tracked me through eight days of mountains and blizzard the first time. He’ll find me again.”

Sara looks at me. Something shifts in her face. Not hope exactly. Something harder. The decision to believe the next thing that happens might be good, even though every recent precedent says otherwise.

“What do we do until they get here?” she asks.

“We wait. We stay quiet. We keep our hands free and our eyes open and we don’t let anyone put ties back on us. And if the guards come before the team does, we’re six women with free hands and a three-inch nail and the element of surprise.”

Sara picks up the nail. Holds it point out between her thumb and forefinger. She looks at the other women. They look back. Something passes between them that doesn’t need language.

I sit with my back against the chain-link. The concrete is cold under me. The warehouse makes its small metal sounds. Wind presses against the walls. The floodlights hum outside.

I close my eyes and count.

Not seconds. Not the old tally marks of pure survival.

I count what I have.

Five women with free hands. A message scratched into concrete. A route memorized in turns and minutes. Information about guards and shifts and a shipment at eleven PM. A three-inch nail. And the bone-deep certainty that somewhere on the dark roads between Bridger and Alpha Range, a man with a broken arm and a badge and extremely strong feelings about anyone who comes through the wrong door is driving toward me.

The warehouse holds us. The dark holds us.

And we hold ourselves. Six women in a chain-link box, hands free, eyes open, waiting for the sound that means the door is coming down and the world is coming in.

28

Ryker

We reach the warehouse complex at 01:47 AM.

Kane kills the headlights a quarter mile out and we idle down the access road in low gear. The SUV’s tires whisper on frozen gravel. The complex sits against a hillside at the end of a dead-end road. Four buildings. The main warehouse is a hundred-foot rectangle of corrugated metal with a loading dock on the south face and floodlights at the corners. Three smaller outbuildings form a loose semicircle. One access road. No second exit.

The geography favors us. It’s the first real break we’ve caught since two men in stolen scrubs took her from a hospital waiting room.

Mason’s voice comes through Kane’s comm unit, steady and precise.

“Team, listen up. Satellite thermal shows six heat signatures in the main warehouse, clustered in the northeast corner. Two more in the southwest matching the office location. Two outside—one at the loading dock, one on the north perimeter. Ten total. Six hostages, four hostiles. Warrant is hot. Rules of engagement: protect the hostages, secure the suspects. Lethal force authorized if lives are at immediate risk.”