21. Brock #3
"The latch, not the padlock. They had to open it themselves.
But we were ready when they did." She pulls back enough to look at me.
Her forehead has a cut that's still seeping.
Her wrists are bruised. Her eyes are the fiercest thing I've ever seen.
"There's a woman named Katya. Taken from a rest stop near Billings.
She says there are more victims. More locations.
This is bigger than the logging camp, Brock. Dale had multiple sites."
Even now. Even shaking and bruised and thirty seconds out of a shipping container. She's reporting. She's giving me intel. She's doing her job.
"We'll get all of it," I tell her. "Every name. Every location. But right now you're sitting down and letting the medic look at you."
"I'm fine."
"You have a cut on your forehead and bruised wrists. You're not fine. You're tough. There's a difference."
She almost smiles. "Okay."
I guide her to the back of my truck where the medic from Silas's team is setting up.
Katya, the woman Hazel mentioned, is nearby giving a statement to a deputy, a blanket around her shoulders.
She catches Hazel's eye and nods. A small, fierce nod between two women who survived something together that no one else in this clearing fully understands.
I stand beside the truck while the medic works on the cut.
My hand rests on Hazel's shoulder. She leans into the contact without looking up.
Around us the clearing settles into the controlled aftermath of an operation.
Dale face down in gravel. Alice in the back of a vehicle.
The guard on a stretcher. Crates documented.
Containers photographed. The machinery of justice grinding forward the way it's supposed to.
Silas approaches. "Jeffrey Pruitt. Still unaccounted for. His department vehicle was found abandoned on a fire road eight miles west. No sign of him. I've got an APB out with every agency in three counties."
"He'll surface," I say. "A man with that much knowledge of law enforcement systems can't stay invisible long once every system is looking for him."
Silas nods. His expression carries the weight of a sheriff who just arrested the man his community trusted to run a smuggling empire, and who still has a deputy in the wind.
"Mason's coordinating the federal side. ATF wants the full inventory from both sites.
FBI is opening a trafficking investigation based on what the victims are reporting. This is going to be a long unwind."
"Good." I look at the women being wrapped in blankets and guided toward Haven 7 vehicles.
Harper arrived twenty minutes ago with supplies and that quiet competence that makes people feel safe without anyone having to explain why.
"Rafe's compound can handle the immediate shelter.
Beyond that, we'll need victim services coordination. "
"Already in motion." Silas pauses. "Your journalist did something in that container that I've never seen in thirty years of law enforcement. She armed trafficking victims with drainage grates and organized a breakout with a bobby pin. The man she hit still can't straighten his leg."
"She's resourceful."
"She's more than that." He looks at me directly. "She's the reason this case exists. From the article to the evidence to the escape. Make sure she knows that."
"She knows."
Silas walks back to his team. The medic finishes with the cut and moves on to the next patient.
Hazel is sitting on the tailgate with her legs dangling, her hands wrapped around a thermos of coffee someone gave her.
She's watching the clearing with the expression I've come to know better than any other: the journalist taking in the scene, filing details, already composing the story she'll write when the adrenaline fades.
I sit beside her on the tailgate. Our shoulders touch. The mountain is quiet around us. The engines have been shut off. The only sounds are low voices, radio static, and the wind through the pines.
"I have something I need to say to you," I tell her. "But not here. Not at a crime scene with zip-tied suspects and medics and evidence teams."
She looks at me. "Okay."
"When we get home. When the cabin is quiet and the fire is lit and it's just us."
"I'll be there." She leans her head against my shoulder. "I'll be right there."
I put my arm around her and we sit on the tailgate while the sun drops toward the western ridge and the clearing empties one vehicle at a time.
Dale Weathers is gone, transported in a federal vehicle to a holding facility he'll never leave.
Alice Dermott is en route to county processing.
The women are on their way to Haven 7 where Harper and Rafe's team will give them the first safe night they've had in weeks.
Hazel's notebook is at the Marshals office. Her phone is dead. She has nothing to write with and nothing to write on. But when I look at her eyes I can see the story assembling itself behind them, every detail falling into place, every connection locking tight.
The story of how a journalist who hit publish ended up in the mountains with a marshal who couldn't stop falling for her. How they cracked a case from opposite ends and met in the middle. How a woman with a bobby pin and a drainage grate refused to be cargo.
It's a good story.
I'm going to spend the rest of my life making sure it has a happy ending.