12. Hazel
Hazel
Brock is on the sat phone with Mason when I see them.
We've pulled off the main road onto a fire access lane that winds up toward a ridge overlooking the area where we found the truck.
Brock parked in a stand of pines thick enough to hide us from below and got out to call in the crate discovery and coordinates.
I'm in the passenger seat with my notebook open, sketching the layout of the access road from memory, when movement catches my eye through the trees.
Two men. They're coming up a trail from the direction of the parked truck, maybe three hundred yards below and to the east. I can't hear them from this distance, but I can see them clearly through gaps in the tree cover.
One is tall and balding, wearing what looks like a sheriff's department jacket, the tan and brown visible even from here.
The other is shorter, heavier, in a dark windbreaker.
They stop at a clearing where the trail splits and stand facing each other, talking.
I tap the window. Brock looks up from the phone, follows my gesture, and goes still. He murmurs something to Mason and pockets the sat phone, then moves to the truck and leans through the driver's side window.
"The tall one. Sheriff's jacket." His voice is barely above a breath. "That's Deputy Jeffrey Pruitt. Senior deputy, Timber Creek district. The same Jeffrey who signed those reclassification orders."
My blood runs hotter. "And the other one?"
"Don't recognize him from here." He reaches behind the seat and pulls out a compact pair of binoculars as he studies the shorter man for a few seconds. "County windbreaker. Could be administrative. Could be someone from the commissioner's office. I can't read the name badge at this range."
I squint through the trees. They're still talking, but the wind is blowing the wrong direction, carrying their voices away from us toward the valley.
All I can catch are fragments. Syllables without shape.
The shorter man gestures with one hand toward something behind him, back down the trail where the truck and the crates are. The deputy nods and pulls out a phone.
"I need to get closer," I say.
Brock shakes his head. "Too exposed. The tree cover thins out about fifty yards down this slope. If either of them looks up we're made."
"There's a rock outcrop about halfway down. See it? The dark ledge with the snow shelf." I point. "If I can get behind that I'll be close enough to hear without breaking the tree line."
He studies the outcrop through the binoculars. I can see him running the calculation. Sight lines. Cover. Risk.
"I go," he says. "You stay."
"You're six-three and built like a truck. I'm five-four and wearing a dark jacket. Which one of us is harder to spot moving through trees?"
His jaw flexes. He doesn't answer because the answer is obvious.
"Two minutes," I say. "I get behind the outcrop, I listen, I come back. You watch through the binoculars and cover me. If anything goes wrong, I retreat uphill toward you."
The silence stretches. Then he hands me the binoculars and pulls his sidearm. "Ninety seconds. Not two minutes. You hear me whistle, you stop and come back regardless. Don't write anything down there. Just listen. Memorize. You can write it all when you're back."
I nod, leave the binoculars on the seat, and move.
The slope is steep but the snow is deep enough to muffle my steps.
I move tree to tree the way Brock showed me during the self-defense training, keeping my profile low, using the trunks as cover between advances.
The cold air burns in my lungs. Every footfall sounds enormous to me but rationally I know the wind and the distance are swallowing the noise.
I reach the rock outcrop in about forty seconds and press my back against the cold stone.
I can hear them now. Not clearly. Not every word. But enough.
The shorter man's voice reaches me first, mid-sentence. "...moved up. He doesn't want it sitting. Says three days was already pushing it."
Jeffrey's voice is flatter, harder to read. "...told him the roads aren't ready. Storm took out the bridge crossing at..."
Wind swallows the rest. I press harder against the rock, straining.
"...doesn't care about the bridge. He wants the cargo at the collection point by..." Something I can't catch. Then: "...using the old camp road. The one past the..."
A gust tears through the clearing and I lose them completely for ten seconds. When the wind settles the shorter man is talking again.
"...and the woman? She's still..."
"...handled. He's got someone on it. Said she's..." The rest dissolves into wind noise.
My stomach clenches. She. They're talking about me. "He's got someone on it" could mean anything but none of the options are comforting.
Jeffrey pulls out a folded paper and holds it up. I can't read it from here but it looks like a map. He traces something with his finger. The shorter man leans in, nods, and says something too quiet to catch. Then Jeffrey folds the paper and slides it back into his jacket.
They start walking back down the trail. I count to thirty, then move back uphill, fast and low, heart slamming against my ribs.
Brock is exactly where I left him, weapon still drawn, eyes locked on the clearing below. The second I reach the truck he holsters the gun and grabs my arm, pulling me around to the passenger side and out of the sight line.
"Talk," he says.
I close my eyes and replay the fragments.
"The timeline's been moved up again. The shorter one said 'he doesn't want it sitting' and that three days was already pushing it.
Jeffrey said the roads aren't ready and something about a bridge crossing being taken out by the storm.
The other one said he doesn't care about the bridge, wants the cargo at a collection point by a date or time I couldn't catch.
They mentioned using 'the old camp road,' then wind took the rest."
"Collection point," Brock repeats. "Not the camp itself. Somewhere else."
"That's what it sounded like. And there's more. They mentioned me. The shorter one asked about 'the woman.' Jeffrey said 'it's handled' and that 'he's got someone on it.' I couldn't hear the rest."
Brock's expression doesn't change but something tightens behind his eyes. "He's got someone on it. That could mean surveillance. Could mean they've put someone in position to find you."
"Or it could mean they've hired someone.
Or they've got someone inside the investigation feeding them information.
" I pull my notebook out and start writing everything down, exact fragments, with brackets around the gaps.
"Jeffrey also had a map. Folded paper, looked hand-drawn.
He traced a route on it and the other man agreed. Then he put it back in his jacket."
Brock leans against the truck. "So we've got a shortened timeline, a collection point that isn't the camp, a route we can't see, and an unidentified person tasked with finding you. That's a lot of unknowns."
"It's more than we had an hour ago."
"It's also less clear than I'd like." He's not dismissing what I heard.
He's parsing it. "Three days was the original window from the radio intercepts.
Now they're saying that was already pushing it.
Could mean the shipment's coming sooner.
Could mean it already arrived and they're talking about distribution, not delivery. "
I hadn't considered that. "You think the cargo might already be here?"
"The crates in that truck bed were fresh.
Warm hood. Recent activity at Saddleback Cut.
If the cargo's already in the mountains, then the 'collection point' is where they're consolidating it before it leaves the range.
Not where it's arriving." He pauses. "That changes the operational picture.
If it's distribution, not delivery, the window is shorter. Hours, not days."
"Or," I counter, "the crates in the truck are empties. Return containers. Which means the cargo already moved through and what we're seeing is the cleanup, not the main event."
He looks at me sharply. "Why do you say that?"
"The crates I saw in your photos. No shipping labels.
No packing materials visible. If they were full and in transit, they'd be sealed and labeled, even with internal codes.
Empty crates get stripped and returned. I've seen it in the Ridgeline manifests.
They cycle containers through the network on a loop. "
He's quiet for a long beat. Then: "That's a good read. If you're right, the main shipment moved during the storm, while we were pinned at the outpost. The 'collection point' is where it's being staged for sale."
"And RC North is the most likely location. It's the one site we haven't been able to reach, it's the one Cal's coordinates point to, and it's where the voices on the radio were operating from."
We stare at each other. Two interpretations of the same fragments, neither provable with what we have, both plausible.
The difference between them is critical: if the shipment is still coming, we have time to set up an intercept.
If it already arrived, the goods could be moving out of the mountains tonight.
"We call Mason," I say. "Present both scenarios. Let him deploy resources to cover RC North immediately while we try to confirm which one we're dealing with."
"Agreed." Brock pulls the sat phone out.
"But there's one more thing. Jeffrey had a map in his jacket.
If he's carrying a hand-drawn route to the collection point, that means the location isn't in any official system.
It's not in case files or GPS logs that I'd have access to.
It exists only on paper, in his pocket."
"Which means we can't find it by searching databases. We'd need the map itself."
"Or someone who's seen it."
That thought hangs between us. Someone who's seen it. Someone inside the operation. That's a source we don't have and can't easily get.
Brock dials Mason. I flip to a clean page and organize the fragments into two columns: what we heard and what it could mean. The pen moves fast. The gaps stare back at me, brackets and question marks where answers should be.
This is what real investigation feels like. Not the clean certainty of a finished article. The messy, partial, maddening middle where you have just enough to know you're close and not enough to know if you're right.
I keep writing. The answers are up there somewhere, in the mountains, on a folded piece of paper in a corrupt deputy's jacket pocket.
We just have to find them before the cargo disappears.