Chapter Five
The fish camp put Muddy back on the water, and the water steadied him the way it always had.
He spent the afternoon checking the riverbank, reading the current, running the perimeter with the patient certainty of a man who knew this stretch of Mississippi the way he knew his own heartbeat.
Three generations of Walsh men had worked these waters.
Every sandbar, every eddy, every approach route through the brush—it was all mapped in his bones.
Hebert's crew wouldn't find them easily. But they'd find them eventually. A man like Frank Hebert didn't take a beating and walk away. He'd be searching every river road, every access point, every forgotten corner of the Delta until he found where his target had gone.
Muddy needed to be ready when he did.
From the dock, he could see Tessa in the paddock, running barrel-pattern drills with oil drums she'd found in the camp's storage shed.
She'd arranged them in a cloverleaf and was pushing the horse through the turns at speed, her body low and tight, moving with the animal like they shared the same spine.
She was good. Better than good.
Even on unfamiliar ground with improvised equipment, she moved through the pattern with the kind of precision that separated champions from also-rans. Her timing was exact. Her lines were clean. And the horse responded to her like it could read her mind.
Muddy watched her the way he watched the river—reading what was moving, what was shifting, what was building toward something he couldn't quite name.
She finished a run and pulled up, chest heaving, sweat darkening her shirt. Her eyes found him across the camp.
"Enjoying the show?"
"Timing your runs." He held up his watch. "You're faster than yesterday."
"Yesterday I was running on gravel with three men trying to kill my horse." She walked the animal toward the paddock fence. "Today I'm just running."
"Makes a difference."
"Everything makes a difference." She dismounted and led the horse to the water trough. "Footing, temperature, how much sleep I got, whether some construction asshole is trying to throw me out of the saddle. It all shows up in the times."
Muddy stepped off the dock and crossed to the paddock. Up close, he could see the flush in her cheeks, the fire in her eyes, the particular energy that came from pushing herself to the edge of what her body could do.
She was beautiful like this. Alive in a way that made the world around her seem dim by comparison.
"Tell me about the construction sites," he said.
Tessa raised an eyebrow. "Now?"
"You've been running that river road at dawn for two years. You've seen things nobody else has." He leaned against the fence. "I need to know what you know."
She considered him for a moment, then nodded.
"There are three main sites in the corridor Tatum's developing." She grabbed a stick and started sketching in the dirt. "Here, here, and here. The first two are active—heavy equipment, crews working, materials staged. The third one's dormant. Equipment parked but no activity."
"Which properties?"
"The active sites are where owners sold or got pushed out. The dormant one..." She paused. "That's the Hendricks place. Old farm, been in the family for generations. The owner died about six months ago, and there's been some kind of legal fight about the estate."
"So Tatum can't develop it yet."
"Right. But he's got equipment staged there anyway. Dozers, excavators, dump trucks. Like he's just waiting for the green light."
Muddy studied her crude map. The three sites formed a rough triangle along the river road, with the fish camp sitting outside it to the south.
If Tatum was staging equipment at the Hendricks place, that meant he expected the legal fight to end in his favor.
Which meant he had someone on the inside—a lawyer, a judge, someone who could make the estate transfer happen.
"What else have you seen?"
"His crews start early. Before dawn, most days.
They move materials at night sometimes—I've seen truck headlights on the road when I'm driving out to train.
" Tessa's jaw tightened. "And they watch the road.
I didn't realize it until after Thursday, but there's always someone there.
Parked on a side track, sitting in a truck, keeping an eye on who comes and goes. "
"Watching for witnesses."
"Watching for people like me." She met his eyes. "I thought I was just some barrel racer who happened to use their road. But I was a problem from the first day I showed up, wasn't I?"
"You were a problem the moment you refused to change your route." Muddy's voice was quiet. "Men like Tatum don't understand people who won't bend. It makes them dangerous."
"Makes them stupid, too." Tessa kicked dirt over her map. "If he'd just left me alone, I never would have noticed what his crews were doing at dawn. I was too focused on the horse, the times, the qualifying math. He created his own witness by trying to eliminate me."
"That's his flaw. He sees everyone as an obstacle to clear. Doesn't occur to him that some obstacles fight back."
Tessa's smile was sharp. "Some obstacles come up swinging."
"That they do."
They stood at the fence as the afternoon light shifted, the sun moving toward the tree line, the river gleaming copper in the distance. Muddy found himself watching her profile—the strong jaw, the determined set of her mouth, the way she held herself like she was always ready to move.
"You ever think about quitting?" he asked.
"Every day." She didn't look at him. "Every time the truck breaks down.
Every time I can't afford entry fees. Every time I sleep in the cab because there's no money for a motel.
" She shrugged. "But quitting means going back to the cattle operation.
Means admitting that the only thing I was ever good at wasn't good enough. "
"What's wrong with the cattle operation?"
"Nothing, if you're my brothers. They're happy there—working the land, running the herd, doing exactly what our father did and his father before him." Her voice went flat. "But I was never going to be happy staying in one place my whole life. I needed to move. Needed to run."
"So you run barrels."
"Fastest sport on four legs." She finally turned to look at him. "What about you? You ever think about quitting?"
"Quit what?"
"The club. The river. Whatever this life is."
Muddy considered the question. The honest answer was complicated—more complicated than he usually put into words.
"After the flood took my boat, I thought about quitting everything," he said finally. "Just... stopping. Letting the current carry me wherever it wanted and not fighting anymore."
"What changed?"
"The Destroyers." He looked out at the river, at the water his family had fished for three generations. "Cottonmouth found me drifting and gave me a place to stand. A purpose. Brothers who'd die for me and expect me to die for them."
"Is that enough?"
"It was." He turned to face her fully. "Until four days ago."
The words hung between them, heavy with meaning he wasn't sure he was ready to unpack.
Tessa's eyes searched his face. "What happened four days ago?"
"I pulled a woman out of a ditch and watched her come up swinging against three men who'd just thrown her off her horse." Muddy's voice dropped lower. "And I thought—that's the first thing in three years that made me want to reach for something again."
She went very still.
"Muddy—"
His phone buzzed. He held up a hand, checked the screen.
Hollow. Two words: He's coming.
The warmth between them vanished, replaced by cold focus.
"What is it?" Tessa asked.
"Hebert found the fish-camp road." Muddy was already moving toward the cabin. "He's bringing his crew."
"How many?"
"Doesn't matter. They're not getting in." He pulled his phone back out, started typing. "I'm calling for brothers. We hold here until they arrive."
Tessa followed him into the cabin. "What do you need me to do?"
"Stay with the horse. Keep him calm. If this goes wrong—"
"It's not going to go wrong."
He stopped, turned to face her. The fire was back in her eyes, that compressed fury that she carried like a weapon.
"Tessa—"
"You've been watching my back for four days. You pulled me out of that mess this morning. You brought me to your family's camp, your safe place, because you didn't want Tatum's men to hurt me or my horse." She stepped closer. "I'm not hiding in a corner while you fight for me."
"This isn't your fight."
"The hell it isn't." Her jaw set. "They came for me. They threatened my horse. They want to take away the only thing I've ever been good at." She held his gaze. "This became my fight the moment I came up swinging."
Muddy read her the way he read the river—watching the current, the pressure, the inevitability of what was coming.
She wasn't going to back down. Wasn't going to hide. Wasn't going to be anything other than exactly what she was: a woman who'd rather fight than run.
"Stay close to me," he said finally. "Do what I tell you. If I say get to the river, you get to the river without looking back."
"And if you need help?"
"Then you help." He grabbed a rifle from the cabin's gun rack. "But we're not dying today. Not here. Not on my family's water."
The phone buzzed again. Crossroad this time: En route. Twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes. Hebert would be here in ten, maybe less.
Muddy moved to the window and looked out at the river road.
The sun was setting, painting the water in shades of orange and red, and somewhere up that road, Frank Hebert was coming with his crew and his construction-site violence and his absolute certainty that he could clear any obstacle in his path.
He was wrong.
The fish camp had been Walsh territory for eighty years. The riverbank, the mud flats, the brush lines and water access—Muddy knew every inch of it. Knew where the ground would hold and where it would trap a man. Knew where the water ran shallow and where it would drown you.
Hebert was coming to a construction site.
He was going to find a killing ground.
"Get the horse under cover," Muddy said. "Then stay low and stay quiet."
Tessa nodded and moved toward the door. At the threshold, she paused.
"Muddy?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't die."
The corner of his mouth twitched. "Wasn't planning on it."
She disappeared into the fading light, and Muddy turned his attention to the defense. He moved through the camp with the slow, deliberate certainty that defined everything he did, positioning himself using the terrain his family had fished for three generations.
The mud flats would suck boots. The brush lines would channel approach. The riverbank would give no footing to men who didn't know where to step.
Hebert thought he was coming to clear an obstacle.
He was walking into the river.
And the river didn't forgive.