9. Brock
Brock
I wake up to gray light and silence.
The storm has stopped. Not eased. Stopped.
The wind that's been hammering the cabin for two days is just gone, replaced by a stillness so complete I can hear the fire ticking in the hearth and Hazel's breathing from across the room.
I lie on the couch for a minute and listen.
Snow settling. A branch creaking under its weight somewhere in the trees.
Nothing else. No engines. No voices. No radio traffic.
I sit up and check the sat phone. The frequency we've been monitoring is dead quiet. Either they've gone silent or the storm knocked out their equipment. I log the gap and set it aside.
Hazel is asleep in the bed, curled on her side with the quilts pulled up to her chin and her notebook still clutched in one hand.
She fell asleep mid-sentence last night after our final monitoring shift, pen trailing off the page in a drowsy line.
I eased the pen out of her fingers but left the notebook because taking it felt like taking her armor.
She worked harder than most field agents I've partnered with.
Four pages of exact transcription. Every word logged, timestamped, annotated with her own observations in the margins.
She caught a detail I missed: one of the voices used the phrase "the usual route" in a fragment I'd dismissed as too garbled.
She played it back three times and pulled the words out of the static like a signal from noise. That's not luck. That's training.
I make coffee and bring her a mug. She stirs when she smells it, blinking up at me with unfocused eyes and a crease from the pillow across one cheek.
"Storm's over," I tell her.
She sits up slowly, takes the mug, and wraps both hands around it. Her hair is a disaster. She looks exhausted and beautiful and entirely too comfortable in my bed.
"How long was I out?"
"About four hours. You needed it."
She nods into the coffee. Takes a long sip. Then she looks at me over the rim with those sharp eyes that miss nothing. "You didn't sleep."
"Slept enough."
"Liar." But she says it gently, with a small smile.
We eat breakfast at the table, side by side rather than across from each other because neither of us suggests the old arrangement and the new one happens without discussion.
Our elbows brush. She steals a piece of bacon off my plate and grins when I narrow my eyes.
Her knee presses against my thigh under the table and stays there.
Something has shifted between us since last night.
Not just the kissing. The monitoring shift.
Working through the dark together, passing the phone back and forth, her handwriting filling pages while I logged frequencies.
We fell into a rhythm that felt less like protection detail and more like partnership.
I'm not used to that. I've always worked alone or with men I trained with.
Having someone who thinks differently than I do, who sees connections in documents that I'd walk past, who listens to static with a journalist's ear instead of an operator's, is changing how I process this case.
After breakfast she pulls out her notebook and flips to a clean page. "Okay. What do we know after last night?"
I lean back in the chair. "Three confirmed voices on the frequency. They're working under someone called Voss. They know the Marshals Service is involved but not the specific marshal or location. They're backtracking your movements in Timber Creek. One reference to 'the deputy,' no name."
"And the timeline. Voss wants it wrapped before the roads clear.
That was last night. Storm's over now, which means whatever they're planning is imminent.
" She taps the pen against the page. "We also know from the first transmission that they moved the shipment timeline up.
Whatever they're moving, it's not waiting for spring anymore. "
"Which means the active sites might be hot right now. If we can get to RC North before they move the goods, we could catch them in the act."
Her eyes light up. "When can we move?"
"Roads won't be clear today. Tomorrow, maybe, if the temperature holds. I need to get the truck dug out and check the access road." I hold her gaze. "This is going to get more dangerous from here. You understand that."
"I've understood that since I hit publish." She doesn't flinch. "I'd rather be moving toward the story than sitting here waiting for them to find me."
I nod. She's right. Defensive positions only hold for so long. At some point you have to go on offense, and the best defense we have right now is knowing more than they think we know.
"I need to dig out the truck and check the generator housing. Couple of hours of outdoor work." I stand and reach for my jacket. "You good in here?"
"I'm going to finish the case files. There are about thirty pages left I haven't gotten through." She's already opening the folder. Then she pauses and looks up at me. "Brock. Last night. On the couch. Before the transmission."
My hand stops on the jacket zipper.
"I meant what I said. Postponed. Not cancelled." She holds my gaze steadily. "I want this. I want you. I've never wanted anything like this before and I'm not going to pretend otherwise just because the timing is terrible."
Everything in my chest tightens. Not with guilt this time. With something that feels a lot more like certainty. I cross back to the table, cup her face in both hands, and kiss her. Slow. Thorough. A kiss that says everything I'm not good enough with words to say.
When I pull back her eyes are closed and she's smiling.
"Go dig out your truck, Marshal."
"Yes ma'am."
I step outside into a world made new. The storm has buried everything under two feet of fresh powder.
The trees are weighted down with white. The sky is clear for the first time in days, pale blue and enormous above the peaks.
The silence is total. I stand on the porch for a minute and breathe it in, feeling the cold burn in my lungs and the quiet settle into my bones.
Then I get to work.
I dig the truck out first, clearing snow from the wheel wells and the exhaust and scraping the windshield.
The access road is buried but passable with chains.
I'll need to do a test drive tomorrow morning to check for drifts and downed trees.
The generator housing took a hit from a falling branch during the storm but the damage is cosmetic.
I clear the debris, check the fuel lines, and run a test cycle. Everything holds.
I'm stacking the last of the cleared wood when I hear the cabin door open behind me.
Hazel is standing on the porch in my flannel and her boots, notebook in hand, cheeks already pink from the cold air. Her expression is the one I've learned to recognize: the look she gets when she's found something.
"I need to show you something." She holds up the notebook.
"I finished the case files. There's an interagency memo from eighteen months ago, buried near the back of the folder.
It's a request from the Timber Creek sheriff's office to reclassify a series of suspicious activity reports as 'resolved, no further action.
' Five reports. All from different wildlife officers and forest service rangers.
All documenting unusual activity on trails connected to the Spine. "
I set down the wood and climb the porch steps. "Someone in the sheriff's office shut down five separate reports."
"Not someone. The memo has a signature." She turns the notebook to show me a name she's circled three times. "Deputy Jeffrey Pruitt. He signed off on every single reclassification."
Deputy. The same word from the radio transmission last night. "The deputy." No name given, but now we have one.
"Jeffrey Pruitt,” I say slowly. The name means something. I've seen it on jurisdictional paperwork, on interagency coordination forms. He's not a nobody. He's the senior deputy for the Timber Creek district, second in command of the county sheriff's office.
"Second in command," Hazel says, reading the same conclusion off my face. "Which means he has access to incident reports, case files, evidence logs, and interagency communications. If he's the one suppressing reports, he could have been protecting this network for years."
We stand on the porch in the cold clear air and look at each other. The case just cracked open. Not all the way. But enough to see what's underneath.
"We need to get this to Mason," I say. "Today. Before Pruitt has any idea we're looking at him."
"Already drafted the summary." She flips to a clean page covered in tight, organized notes. "Ready when you are."
I look at her standing there in the morning sun, notebook in hand, cheeks flushed, eyes fierce, wearing my shirt like she belongs in it. She's the best partner I've ever had on a case and she doesn't even carry a badge.
"Let's go make a call," I say.
We go inside. I lock the door. And for the first time since this assignment started, I feel like we're not just surviving.
We're winning.