Chapter 15 Obscured #3
"They look like people who made a choice." I watched Mateo laugh at something Ghost said—an actual laugh, open and sudden, the sound carrying across the kitchen. "Some choices change you faster than time does."
Hawk appeared in the kitchen doorway. The shotgun was absent—the first time I'd seen him without it since we'd returned. His eyes found mine across the room.
"Church. Storage room. Nolan might've found Whitfield."
The kitchen went quiet. Forks stopped. Conversations cut off. Irish's spatula paused mid-flip.
Nolan had the projector running before the last man sat down.
The map on the concrete wall showed three properties highlighted in red. The room smelled like leather and the coffee Irish had brought in a thermos the size of his forearm.
"Three properties connected to Whitfield's financial trail.
" Nolan's glasses reflected the projector's glow.
His voice was the precise, data-driven instrument it always was—except for the tightness that surfaced when the numbers led somewhere personal.
"Two are older purchases. A cabin outside Missoula, Montana—paid through a trust we've already flagged.
And a house in Boise, Idaho, purchased under a shell company that shares a registered agent with High Basin. "
He clicked. The map zoomed. A third dot, further south.
"Then there's this one. Southern California, about forty minutes from the Nevada border.
Almost off-grid—desert property, set back from the main road, no neighbors for miles.
The purchase was buried deep. Three layers of corporate obfuscation that the other properties didn't have.
" He looked up from the laptop. "If you're Whitfield and you're running, you'd run to the one you spent the most effort hiding. "
"How close to us?" Hawk's voice from the head of the table.
"One and a half hours by road. Maximum two."
Tyler leaned forward. "I can contact my prosecutor. Give her the addresses. She can have federal agents at all three within—"
"And if Whitfield still has people inside the Bureau?
" Logan's voice came from beside me, steady.
Measured. The rancher's practical thinking cutting through logic.
"She ran an operation for seven years with institutional protection.
And she doesn't have someone who'd tip her off the very second agents start moving onto her hiding spots? "
The room went quiet. The type of quiet where people are thinking the same thing but waiting for someone to say it.
"Small team." My voice. "We recon the California property ourselves.
If she's there and it's lightly guarded, we handle it.
Keep her there until agents arrive. If it's heavily fortified, we pull back and give Tyler's contact the location with enough detail to plan a proper raid.
" I looked around the room. "No point risking men on a full assault if a phone call can do the job.
But the phone call needs eyes on the ground first."
"I'm going." Ghost. Immediate. Those pale blue eyes fixed on the projected dot on the wall—the eyes that had earned him half his name, icy pale blue, unsettling. The stare of something that wasn't quite there.
"So am I." Axel, from the side wall. Arms crossed.
"I'm going." Tyler didn't frame it as a question. "If there's movement at the property, I can have my contact briefed on the situation."
"If Tyler goes, I go." Tank's voice came out firm from beside Tyler.
He wasn't asking either. His massive hand found Tyler's shoulder—the automatic, possessive contact that had become as much a part of Tank as the grease under his fingernails.
Tyler leaned into it. A fraction of an inch.
A subtle movement that showed he stopped pretending a long time ago he didn't need the anchor.
"Someone should be able to handle injuries on the field." Kai spoke from beside Axel. The medic's authority didn't ask for permission. "I'm coming."
Tyler nodded slowly toward his foster brother. "I'll have my contact on speed dial. If we confirm Whitfield's there, I can have a response team mobilized within hours."
I'd been counting. Ghost, Axel, Tank, Tyler, Kai. Plus me. Six. A strong team. Enough for reconnaissance. Enough for contingency.
Hawk stood up. The chair scraped against the concrete. The room shifted—the automatic recalibration that happened whenever Hawk rose to his full height and the gravity in the room redistributed.
"I'm going."
The words landed differently than the others. Hawk didn't volunteer for field operations. Hawk held the compound, held the table, held the decisions that kept thirty men alive and operational. His place was the chair at the head of the table and everyone in the room knew it.
"Whitfield isn't coming back here." His eyes moved around the room.
"She's running. The compound is secure. The rest of the Phoenixes and prospects can hold it while we're gone for a few hours.
" His gaze settled on some point past the far wall.
"If she's there, I'd like the opportunity to have a word with Ms. Whitfield about what she did to the people sleeping under our roof. "
The room didn't argue. You didn't argue with Hawk when his voice hit that tone—the man who'd been sitting behind a desk while his men fought and who needed, just once, to ride.
"I'm coming too." Logan. His voice quiet. "I need to see this through. Those workers ended up on my property. I paid the ones that enslaved them. I can't go back to the ranch and pretend that's behind me until I know the woman responsible is in a cell... or six feet under."
I looked at him, at his steady blue eyes, at the stitched shoulder, at the bruises fading on his throat. The man who'd shielded twenty people with his body in the back of a van, and who was sitting at this table asking to ride into one more fight because walking away wasn't in him.
Something warm moved through me that had nothing to do with the sex from this morning.
"That's the team." Hawk's palms hit the table. The sound was final. "It's morning. The property is barely two hours away. We ride in one hour. Gear up. Travel light, but armed."
The room emptied with purpose. Tank and Tyler toward the armory. Ghost already at the door, all of him channeled into action. Axel followed Kai toward the medical bay, where emergency kits would be waiting.
Logan and I walked out together. Side by side in the corridor, shoulders close.
"One more time," he said.
"One more."
"Then what?"
I looked at him. The morning light from the corridor window caught the side of his face—the line of his jaw, the damp hair drying in uneven light brown waves, the fading bruises on his throat that made him look like a man who'd walked through something brutal and come out the other side still standing.
He'd never looked better.
"Then you take me to Montana and show me what a normal morning looks like."
Logan's mouth curved into a half-smile. "You wouldn't know what to do with a normal morning."
"Try me."