Chapter 3
Church smelled like cigarette smoke and bad decisions.
Hatchet stood at the head of the scarred table, the note spread flat under his palm, and watched his brothers process what he'd just told them. Six faces, six different flavors of anger.
"Run it again," Tornado said from the president's chair. His voice was calm, but his knuckles were white on the gavel.
"Twenty-three ranches on her client list. Fourteen have either canceled or stopped returning calls in the last three weeks.
The note appeared in her mailbox two weeks ago—commercial paper stock, clean printer, no fingerprints.
" Hatchet tapped the list. "Someone's been tracking her schedule and using it to pressure her clients. "
"Pryce." Shadow leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, that easy grin nowhere in sight. "Has to be. He's been circling those ranches for months."
"It's not just circling anymore." Diesel pulled a folded map from his cut and spread it over the table.
Red circles marked properties—some clustered, some scattered along a rough line running east to west. "Three of the ranches that dropped her border land Pryce bought in the last two years. All of them sold below market value."
"How far below?" Rascal asked.
"Forty percent on one. Sixty on another." Diesel's jaw tightened. "Nobody sells that cheap unless they're scared or desperate."
"Or dead," Shadow added.
The room went quiet.
Hatchet thought about Caroline sitting in her truck bed, clutching feed receipts and talking about rescue horses she couldn't afford to lose. About the fire in her eyes when she'd cracked that rasp across a man's jaw.
She wasn't scared. She wasn't desperate.
But she would be, if Pryce got his way.
"There's more," Hatchet said. "Shadow, tell them about the stock tank."
Shadow straightened, his grin returning with an edge. "Got a rancher under our protection out near Claude. Last month he found three dead cattle near a stock tank on his east pasture. Figured it was bad water—maybe algae bloom or mineral contamination."
"It wasn't?"
"I had Striker pull a sample. Sent it to a lab in Amarillo." Shadow's eyes went cold. "Industrial solvents. The kind of shit you'd find in manufacturing runoff or hazardous waste."
Tornado's expression didn't change, but something shifted in the air. The temperature dropping before a storm.
"Pryce is dumping," Tornado said. Not a question.
"Has to be. That rancher's land is three miles from a property Pryce bought eighteen months ago. Contamination doesn't travel that far without help." Shadow shrugged. "Someone's burying barrels and the poison's leaching into the water table."
"That's our territory." Rascal's voice was low, dangerous. "Our people."
"Which is why we're going to take him apart." Tornado turned to Hatchet. "You brought this in. You run the operation."
Hatchet nodded. He'd expected as much.
"Methodically," Tornado continued. "I don't want cowboy shit. Pryce has been operating in this county for thirty years—he's got layers. Crew bosses, enforcers, a land manager who handles the paperwork. We go after him directly, we'll miss half the rot."
"So we work up the chain."
"Map his operation first. Identify the dumping sites, find out who's coordinating the intimidation, figure out where the money flows." Tornado leaned forward. "Then we dismantle the layers before we hit the top."
"What about the farrier?" Diesel asked.
Every eye in the room turned to Hatchet.
He kept his face neutral. "She's under our protection now. Agreed to come to the compound, share what she knows about the ranches Pryce has been pressuring."
"That all she agreed to?" Shadow's grin was back, sharper now.
"That's all."
"Uh-huh." Shadow exchanged a look with Rascal. "You rode thirty miles to help a woman you'd never met, shot out a truck radiator from fifty yards, and now you're bringing her home. But it's just business."
"It is business. She's got information we need."
"Sure." Shadow's grin widened. "And she's got nothing else you're interested in."
Hatchet didn't rise to the bait. "She's a witness and a target. Pryce's boys already grabbed her horses and slashed her tires. If they find out where she lives—"
The thought cut off, sharp as a blade.
Her property outside Canyon. The little rented place with the paddock and the run-in shed. Munn's crew had grabbed her horses that morning, which meant they knew where she kept them.
They knew where she lived.
"Shit." Hatchet was already moving toward the door. "I need to secure her place before Munn's crew gets there."
"Hold up." Tornado's voice stopped him at the threshold. "You're not going alone. Ridge—"
The tail gunner was on his feet before his name finished leaving Tornado's mouth. "On it."
"Secure the property, grab anything that looks important, and get back here by dawn." Tornado's eyes met Hatchet's. "Don't engage unless you have to. We're not ready to escalate yet."
"Understood."
"And Hatchet?" Tornado paused. "Keep her safe. Whatever else happens, she's ours now."
Ours.
The word landed somewhere in Hatchet's chest and stayed there.
"I will."
The ride to Canyon took forty minutes at speed.
Hatchet pushed his bike hard, eating up the empty highway with Ridge running close behind. The night was clear, stars scattered across the Panhandle sky like buckshot, the wind carrying the smell of sage and distant rain.
His mind kept circling back to Caroline.
The way she'd looked at him when he'd handed her that hoof knife—not grateful, not scared, just assessing. Like she was taking his measure the same way he was taking hers.
The way her voice had cracked when she'd talked about her horses. The fierce pride she'd wrapped around it like armor.
The way she'd said I don't belong to anyone with her chin lifted and her eyes blazing, like she was daring him to argue.
He hadn't argued. He'd filed it away instead, in the part of his brain that cataloged important information.
She didn't belong to anyone.
Not yet.
The turnoff for her property appeared in his headlight, a dirt road barely wider than a cattle path. Hatchet killed his speed and eased down the rutted track, Ridge following close.
The house was dark.
Small—more of a cottage than a house, with peeling paint and a sagging porch. The paddock stretched behind it, empty now, the gate hanging open where Munn's crew had cut the chain that morning.
Hatchet parked by the porch and killed his engine. The silence was immediate, pressing. No animal sounds, no wind through grass.
Just empty space where her horses should have been.
"Clear the house," he told Ridge. "I'll check the outbuildings."
They moved in practiced silence—Hatchet toward the run-in shed, Ridge toward the cottage's back door. The shed was empty except for hay bales and a stack of feed bags. No signs of disturbance beyond the expected.
He was heading back toward the house when Ridge's voice crackled through his earpiece.
"Hatchet. Front porch. You need to see this."
The tone made his gut clench.
He found Ridge standing on the porch, flashlight aimed at the front door. Someone had spray-painted words across the weathered wood in dripping red letters:
NEXT TIME WE TAKE MORE THAN HORSES
Hatchet stared at the message. Felt something cold settle in his chest.
They'd been here. Munn's crew—maybe Munn himself—had stood on this porch, spray can in hand, and left a promise of worse to come.
If Caroline had been home...
He didn't finish the thought.
"Photograph it," he said. "Then we clear the inside."
The cottage was small and spare. A bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen-living room combination that held a worn couch and a table covered in farrier magazines. Everything was neat, organized, the home of a woman who didn't have much but took care of what she had.
Hatchet found a duffel bag in the bedroom closet and started filling it. Clothes, toiletries, the framed photo on her nightstand—her and an older man, both of them smiling, standing in front of a truck with a forge in the bed.
Her father. Had to be.
"Anything useful?" Ridge asked from the doorway.
"Personal effects. Enough to get her through a few weeks at the compound." Hatchet zipped the bag. "Find anything?"
"No signs of forced entry. They didn't go inside—just left the message and cleared out." Ridge's voice was grim. "They wanted her scared, not robbed."
"They'll escalate. Munn's type always does."
"You know him?"
"I know his kind." Hatchet shouldered the duffel. "Former rodeo stock handler, fired for excessive force on animals. Transferred those skills to people. He likes hurting things that can't fight back."
"The farrier can fight back. Saw the report—she cracked one of his boys with a rasp."
"She can fight." Hatchet headed for the door. "But she's one woman against Pryce's whole operation. That's not a fair fight."
"So we make it fair."
"Yeah." Hatchet paused on the porch, looked at the spray-painted threat one more time. "We make it fair."
They photographed the message, secured the doors, and left a motion-sensor camera hidden in the porch overhang. If Munn's crew came back, the club would know about it.
The ride back to the compound was faster, the urgency sharper. Hatchet kept seeing that spray-painted message, kept imagining Caroline walking up to her own front door and finding it.
Next time we take more than horses.
She wouldn't have flinched. She would have lifted that stubborn chin and glared at the words like they were a personal insult.
But she would have been alone.
Not anymore.
The compound lights appeared on the horizon as the sky began to lighten. Hatchet pushed his bike faster, Ridge keeping pace beside him.
She was waiting at the gate when they rolled in—standing with her arms crossed and her tools stacked beside her, watching the bikes with those whiskey-gold eyes.
Hatchet parked and swung off his bike. Walked to her without speaking. Handed her the duffel bag he'd packed from her house.
She looked at the bag. At him. Back at the bag.
"You went to my place."
"Had to secure it before Munn's crew did."
"And?"
He thought about lying. Thought about softening the blow.
Then he remembered who he was talking to.
"They left a message on your door. Spray paint. Said next time they take more than horses."
Her jaw tightened. Her eyes flashed.
But she didn't flinch.
"Good thing I'm not planning to be there," she said.
"Good thing."
She took the duffel bag. Their fingers brushed—just a moment, just a spark.
"Thank you," she said quietly. "For getting my things."
"You're welcome."
She turned toward the compound, bag over her shoulder, spine straight as a rifle barrel.
Hatchet watched her go, and felt that word settle deeper in his chest.
Ours.
Maybe. Eventually. If she'd have them.
If she'd have him.