Chapter 35-Sawyer
We swing into the drive like a freight train that never learned to slow down. Benji’s barking orders half to himself, half to the world, and Micah is hunched over his laptop like it’s a lifeline.
The ranch blurs past—fence posts, the feed shed, Angie’s Mazda where it belongs—and for a second, I let myself breathe because they’re all standing, whole, waiting on the porch.
Angie’s face when she sees me is a punch straight to the gut and the kind that steadies me.
She’s wrapped in a blanket, bruise already fading to angry purple, and she opens her arms like a harbor.
I step into them for one second, long enough to know I’m human and not a machine, then we’re moving again.
We already dropped the rig in the yard and locked it. Next, we check the doors, the cameras, the alarms—everything is accounted for.
I run to the gun cabinet, and I get everything—and I mean everything.
Guns, ammo, and hunting knives—the kind I used on special military ops.
I don’t slow because I can’t slow.
Not yet.
Not until she’s back where she belongs.
“Go bring her back,” Angie says.
“I will,” I say, then I nod, glancing at Diego and telling him without words I will avenge the hurt they delivered to his wife, too.
“I’m coming too. You might need help,” Alex says, and I don’t say no, because he’s right.
Micah slides into the passenger seat, laptop blinking.
“I’ve got feeds on three intersections between here and Route 80,” he says, voice tight.
He’s been scraping everything—traffic cams, highway cams, private feeds—anything that will show us a tail or a stop.
He’s good.
He’s been good since day one.
Benji’s quiet beside me, hands locked around a coffee cup he hasn’t touched.
He looks like a man waiting for the order to move, coiled and ready. “Where we headed?” he asks like it’s a test.
“Straight West on 80, then keep eyes on every rest stop and back road,” I say, eyes on the road.
My voice is steady but whatever’s under it is hot and sharp.
“Micah, drone up. Give me eyes over tree line.”
Micah smirks, thumbs dancing. “Already airborne. Thermal’s warm. Running path prediction on their last known vector.”
He taps.
The screen blooms.
A thousand dots of heat, a lacework of routes.
His grin drops off when the software starts to snap things into place.
A couple of hours later, he sits up.
“Found them!” he yells before he can even temper it. The laptop chirps, and a live feed pops up—grainy, cracked like old film, but clear enough.
A small cluster of heat signatures at a lone rest stop ten minutes ahead.
One blob is double the size of the others. All bikes, but there’s someone hunched over on that one.
It’s her.
My stomach flips, and a new engine revs in my chest. The hunt lights me up from the inside.
For a second, the world narrows to tire and taillight and the sound of our breath.
Then another feeling slides in under the adrenaline.
It’s something darker and meaner, a hunger that’s less about rescue and more about retribution.
It bubbles up like oil and hot coals. I don’t like that part of me, but I don’t deny it either.
“She’s there?” Benji repeats.
His eyes are dangerous in that way I’ve seen a hundred times.
A soldier’s focus turned inward for one thing only.
“She’s there,” Micah confirms. “Roach’s bike cluster is on the north side of the gas station. Two extras. No transport rigs. Looks like this is an impromptu pit stop.”
I take that in like a man taking aim. Ten minutes. That’s all.
Ten minutes to close, ten minutes to plan and steady and not fuck this up.
“You want us to call it in?” Benji asks, the civvies in him peeking through.
“No.”
I don’t want sirens or uniforms or a bunch of paperwork that gets her back in pieces.
“Too much noise. We can do this better alone. We move fast, clean. We get her out—and we make the rest of them look like an unfortunate fucking accident.”
Benji nods. “Got it.”
Micah kills a stream, then keys the drone feed to my phone. A tiny window appears over my HUD—heads-up display. It’s a grainy, thermal view of the rest stop. I can pick out the shapes—the bikes, the truck, the spot where she’s been corralled.
She’s inside the bathroom. Smart girl. Brave girl.
Seeing her small and hunched under the fluorescence does something to me I don’t want to admit out loud.
My throat tightens.
For a second I let myself see her smiling in that sweet way she does when she thinks I don’t notice.
Then the dark thread winds up again.
I don’t need anyone to tell me what to do next. Muscle memory and a dozen rehearsed moves take over.
I map the approach route in my head—where the bikes block sight lines, where I can tuck the SUV out of view, where Benji and Micah will cut off escape.
I can taste the plan like copper on my tongue.
“Alright,” I say, voice flat and low. “We move on my mark. Micah, tuck the drone away. Recon is over. Benji, you’re point with me. We hit these motherfuckers hard and fast. No bullshit.”
“No bullshit,” they echo.
The SUV hums to the left, tires biting into the night. The GPS ticks down: five minutes. Four. Three.
I feel a gravity in my gut that’s older than fear and harder than anger.
It’s a promise.
A line in the dirt I don’t cross lightly.
“Lil Bit,” I whisper to the dark windshield, to the radio, to the men. But to myself I add something.
I’m coming for you, Lil Bit. And there’s nothing in the goddamn world I won’t do to bring you home.