38. Blaze
BLAZE
The room felt ice-cold suddenly.
Rain hammered through the broken window behind us while Wolf stared at the photograph in silence.
Senator Mercer’s chief of security.
Standing beside Flick’s father three days before he died.
No wonder the old man panicked.
Trigger looked between all of us slowly.
“Well,” he muttered, “that feels extremely illegal.”
Nobody answered.
Because my mind was already moving through possibilities fast.
Too fast.
Flick stood beside me, gripping one of my old letters so tightly the paper crumpled in her shaking hand.
“He found us…”
Her voice barely existed.
I turned toward her immediately.
“What?”
Her eyes lifted slowly to mine.
Full of fear now.
Real fear.
“The senator found us years ago.”
Silence.
Wolf’s expression darkened instantly.
And the worst part?
She was probably right.
I looked back down at the surveillance photos scattered across the floor.
Years of them.
Not random.
Not temporary.
Organized.
Patient.
Like somebody had been waiting.
Watching.
Tracking.
And suddenly one ugly truth settled hard in my chest.
Mercer didn’t just want revenge anymore.
He wanted leverage.
Trigger said it out loud first.
“Oh hell.”
Wolf looked toward him sharply. “What?”
Trigger pointed at the photos.
“Hersh killed the senator’s son.”
Nobody spoke.
Trigger continued slowly.
“Then years later the senator realizes Hersh McDougal still has a weakness.”
My stomach dropped instantly.
Flick.
Jesus Christ.
Flick’s breathing turned uneven beside me.
“No…”
But I could already see it now.
The senator learns:
Hersh survived Juárez,
Hersh returned,
Hersh had a girl he loved,
and separating them didn’t stop him from watching her.
So Mercer waits.
Years.
Watching both of them.
Until finally?—
Flick witnesses a murder connected to cartel money laundering.
And suddenly she becomes useful.
Not just revenge.
Bait.
The thought alone nearly blacked out my vision with rage.
Wolf slowly exhaled.
“He wanted her alive.”
Trigger nodded grimly.
“Until Blaze showed back up.”
That’s why everything escalated.
The corrupt marshal.
The attack.
The hunting teams.
“If Mercer knew where she was for years, why wait?”
Because she was more valuable alive than dead.
Mercer thought he could control her.
Then I came back into the picture.
And everything became dangerous.
Flick looked sick now.
“My father knew.”
I turned toward her instantly.
“What?”
Tears filled her eyes again.
“He knew they were watching me because of you.”
Pain slammed straight through my chest.
“No.”
“Yes,” she whispered brokenly. “That’s why he kept us apart.”
God.
No wonder the old man became paranoid.
No wonder he panicked near the end.
He probably realized too late:
keeping me away didn’t stop the danger.
It only left her unprotected.
Wolf suddenly crouched beside the photographs again.
“Hold up.”
His flashlight moved across the floor carefully.
Then stopped.
“There’s dates written on the back.”
Trigger picked one up immediately.
His face changed.
“Oh that’s bad.”
“What?” I snapped.
Trigger flipped the photograph around slowly.
A date written in black marker.
Six years ago.
Below it?—
one sentence.
Still emotionally attached.
The room went dead silent.
Flick physically recoiled.
“What the hell…”
Wolf grabbed another photo.
Different date.
Different handwriting.
Subject continues surveillance behavior from a distance.
Every Ranger instinct inside me turned lethal instantly.
They weren’t just watching Flick.
They were profiling me.
Studying me.
Learning me.
Hunting me.
Trigger looked genuinely disturbed now.
“This wasn’t revenge.”
No.
It wasn’t.
This was an obsession.
Mercer spent years building a psychological file on me.
And Flick?—
God—
she’d been at the center of it the entire time.
Then my hand closed around one final photograph at the bottom.
And this one changed everything.
Because it wasn’t Flick.
Or her father.
Or me.
It was a picture of the Last Stand Tavern.
Taken over two years ago.
And standing outside beside Trigger and Wolf?—
was Deputy US Marshal Ava Moreno.