Page 44 of Savage Ranger Daddy

I close the distance in three strides, kick the weapon clear, and take him to the ground. Zip ties on the wrists. Knee in the back. The same procedure I've executed hundreds of times, but this time my hands are shaking with everything I've held in check for the last thirty minutes.

"Dale Weathers, you're under arrest for kidnapping, human trafficking, weapons trafficking, and conspiracy. You have the right to remain silent." I haul him to his feet. His face is pressed with gravel marks and his eyes are empty. The empire builder reduced to a man in zip ties. "Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."

Alice collapses the second Dale releases her. Harlan's operator secures her, gentle but firm. She doesn't resist. She just sits on the gravel and shakes.

I hand Dale off to Mason, who's arrived with Silas's units behind him. The south fork junction blocking position rolled up the moment they heard my shots. The clearing fills with personnel. Weapons secured. Subjects detained. The guard with the shoulder wound is being treated by a medic.

I turn toward the tree line.

Hazel is standing thirty feet away with a woman I don't recognize beside her, both of them breathing hard, both of them shaking. Around them, other women are emerging from thetrees where they scattered. Some crying. Some silent. All of them standing.

I holster my weapon and walk toward her. Not running. Walking. Because if I run I'll pick her up and hold her so tight she can't breathe and I need to be steady right now. For her. For the women watching. For the operation that isn't finished until every subject is processed and every victim is safe.

She doesn't wait. She crosses the distance herself, walking first, then running, and hits my chest hard enough to rock me back a step. I catch her and hold on. Both arms. Full weight. She's shaking against me and I can feel the adrenaline still burning through her in waves.

"You're okay," I say. Not a question.

"I'm okay. Bobby pin. Drainage grate. Long story." She's talking into my chest, her voice muffled by my jacket.

"You got the door open." I saw the latch. I saw the man on the ground with the destroyed knee. I saw the drainage grates scattered on the gravel. She organized seven strangers in a dark container and broke them out with improvised tools before I fired my first shot.

"The latch, not the padlock. They had to open it themselves. But we were ready when they did." She pulls back enough to look at me. Her forehead has a cut that's still seeping. Her wrists are bruised. Her eyes are the fiercest thing I've ever seen. "There's a woman named Katya. Taken from a rest stop near Billings. She says there are more victims. More locations. This is bigger than the logging camp, Brock. Dale had multiple sites."

Even now. Even shaking and bruised and thirty seconds out of a shipping container. She's reporting. She's giving me intel. She's doing her job.

"We'll get all of it," I tell her. "Every name. Every location. But right now you're sitting down and letting the medic look at you."

"I'm fine."

"You have a cut on your forehead and bruised wrists. You're not fine. You're tough. There's a difference."

She almost smiles. "Okay."

I guide her to the back of my truck where the medic from Silas's team is setting up. Katya, the woman Hazel mentioned, is nearby giving a statement to a deputy, a blanket around her shoulders. She catches Hazel's eye and nods. A small, fierce nod between two women who survived something together that no one else in this clearing fully understands.

I stand beside the truck while the medic works on the cut. My hand rests on Hazel's shoulder. She leans into the contact without looking up. Around us the clearing settles into the controlled aftermath of an operation. Dale face down in gravel. Alice in the back of a vehicle. The guard on a stretcher. Crates documented. Containers photographed. The machinery of justice grinding forward the way it's supposed to.

Silas approaches. "Jeffrey Pruitt. Still unaccounted for. His department vehicle was found abandoned on a fire road eight miles west. No sign of him. I've got an APB out with every agency in three counties."

"He'll surface," I say. "A man with that much knowledge of law enforcement systems can't stay invisible long once every system is looking for him."

Silas nods. His expression carries the weight of a sheriff who just arrested the man his community trusted to run a smuggling empire, and who still has a deputy in the wind. "Mason's coordinating the federal side. ATF wants the full inventory from both sites. FBI is opening a trafficking investigation based on what the victims are reporting. This is going to be a long unwind."

"Good." I look at the women being wrapped in blankets and guided toward Haven 7 vehicles. Harper arrived twenty minutes ago with supplies and that quiet competence that makes people feel safe without anyone having to explain why. "Rafe's compound can handle the immediate shelter. Beyond that, we'll need victim services coordination."

"Already in motion." Silas pauses. "Your journalist did something in that container that I've never seen in thirty years of law enforcement. She armed trafficking victims with drainage grates and organized a breakout with a bobby pin. The man she hit still can't straighten his leg."

"She's resourceful."

"She's more than that." He looks at me directly. "She's the reason this case exists. From the article to the evidence to the escape. Make sure she knows that."

"She knows."

Silas walks back to his team. The medic finishes with the cut and moves on to the next patient. Hazel is sitting on the tailgate with her legs dangling, her hands wrapped around a thermosof coffee someone gave her. She's watching the clearing with the expression I've come to know better than any other: the journalist taking in the scene, filing details, already composing the story she'll write when the adrenaline fades.

I sit beside her on the tailgate. Our shoulders touch. The mountain is quiet around us. The engines have been shut off. The only sounds are low voices, radio static, and the wind through the pines.

"I have something I need to say to you," I tell her. "But not here. Not at a crime scene with zip-tied suspects and medics and evidence teams."