Page 45 of Savage Ranger Daddy

She looks at me. "Okay."

"When we get home. When the cabin is quiet and the fire is lit and it's just us."

"I'll be there." She leans her head against my shoulder. "I'll be right there."

I put my arm around her and we sit on the tailgate while the sun drops toward the western ridge and the clearing empties one vehicle at a time. Dale Weathers is gone, transported in a federal vehicle to a holding facility he'll never leave. Alice Dermott is en route to county processing. The women are on their way to Haven 7 where Harper and Rafe's team will give them the first safe night they've had in weeks.

Hazel's notebook is at the Marshals office. Her phone is dead. She has nothing to write with and nothing to write on. But when I look at her eyes I can see the story assembling itself behind them, every detail falling into place, every connection locking tight.

The story of how a journalist who hit publish ended up in the mountains with a marshal who couldn't stop falling for her. How they cracked a case from opposite ends and met in the middle. How a woman with a bobby pin and a drainage grate refused to be cargo.

It's a good story.

I'm going to spend the rest of my life making sure it has a happy ending.

Epilogue

HAZEL

Six weeks later

I type the last sentence, read it twice, and sit back in the chair.

The article fills twenty-three pages on my screen. It's the longest piece I've ever written and the only one that took me six weeks instead of six days. Not because the words were hard to find. Because every time I sat down to write about the shipping container, about the drainage grate in my hands and the sound of the lock dropping, my fingers would stop and I'd have to stand up and walk to the window and look at the mountains until my breathing settled.

The mountains are still there. They're always there. That's the thing about the Steel Mountains that I didn't understand when I first drove into Timber Creek with a duffel bag and a death wish. They don't change. Everything else does, the people, the stories, the snow that comes and goes, but the mountains just stand there, holding the weight of it all without complaint. I've started to find that comforting.

The article is titled "The Spine: Inside the Steel Mountain Trafficking Network." It traces the operation from its origins to its collapse, connecting shipping manifests to shipping containers, front companies to county commissioners, a retired game warden's GPS coordinates to a clearing where six women walked out of a metal box into daylight because one of them had a bobby pin and the rest had the courage to swing when the door opened. I wrote it the way I write everything: facts first, people second, truth always. But this time the journalist was also a character in the story, and separating the two has been the hardest part.

I dedicated it to Cal Hutchins. He was found three weeks ago, alive, in a long-term care facility in Billings where he'd been admitted under a false name after a "hiking accident" that turned out to be an assault. He can't speak yet. The doctors say he might not fully recover. But his daughter brought him a copy of my original article and his nurse says he held it in both hands and wouldn't let go. His coordinates led us to the camp. His complaint, buried by Jeffrey Pruitt, was the thread that unraveled everything. He deserves to know his name is in the story.

I save the file one more time, close the laptop, and push back from the desk Brock built me in the corner of the loft. It's a simple thing, pine planks sanded smooth, wide enough for my laptop and my notebooks, with a shelf above it for the stack of reporter's notebooks I've filled since I moved in. He built it without being asked, the same week I carried my boxes up the cabin stairs. I came home from the general store with groceries and it was just there, tucked into the corner with the best window view, a reading lamp already plugged in. He didn't say anything about it. He just set my coffee on it the next morning and went to chop wood.

That's how he tells me things. Not with words. With desks and coffee and a reading lamp that's always on when I come upstairs.

The cabin is different now. Still the same log walls and stone fireplace, still the same big bed and worn leather couch. But my things have crept into every corner of it the way I've crept into his life, without asking permission and without apology. My books on the shelf beside his field manuals. My ridiculous pineapple underwear in the dresser drawer next to his thermal socks. A photo of my parents on the nightstand beside the sat phone. The case files are gone, boxed and shipped to Mason's office as evidence, but my investigation notebooks still sit in a neat stack on the kitchen shelf because I can't bring myself to put them away. They're the record. The proof that the story existed before anyone believed it.

Downstairs I can hear Brock moving around the kitchen. He's been down there for an hour, longer than it takes him to make dinner, which means he's either attempting something ambitious or he's stalling. Both are equally likely and equally endearing.

I come down the loft ladder in my socks, his flannel, and the sleep shorts that have become my permanent off-duty uniform. The main room smells like garlic and something roasting. The fire is lit. The table is set, not the usual two plates shoved to one end, but actually set, with the good plates from the top shelf and a candle I've never seen before.

I stop at the bottom of the ladder. "What's happening here?"

Brock is standing at the stove with a dishtowel over his shoulder, turning something in a pan. He looks up at me and the expression on his face is one I've only seen a handful of times: unguarded, a little nervous, completely present. It's the look hehad the first time he kissed me. The look he had when he said "I'm done running from this."

"Dinner," he says.

"You set the table with candles. You don't own candles. Where did you get a candle?"

"Harper."

"You asked Harper for a candle."

"I asked Rafe. Rafe asked Harper. Harper sent three candles, a tablecloth, and a note that said, and I'm quoting, 'If you mess this up I'm sending Poppi to bite your ankles.'"

I laugh. It comes out surprised and bright and fills the cabin. Brock's mouth twitches the way it does when he's fighting a smile and losing.

"Come here," he says.