Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Shadow Point Security Compound
Blackridge, Montana
The debrief took forty minutes, which was thirty minutes longer than it needed to be.
CB sat across from Garrett Cross, the SPS commanding officer, and answered questions about the Halverson case. Mack, his team leader, sat next to CB while Garrett read through their post-op notes.
Outside the window, the mountains were lit up gold like someone had left the lights on. CB had missed this view. He hadn’t admitted that when he came back, but it was true.
“Good work,” Garrett said without looking up. “Our client was pleased. Mr. Halverson said, and I quote, ‘Hawk and Grizzly handled my wife’s anxiety with respect, as well as stopping her stalker. She slept through the night for the first time last night. I can’t thank you enough.’”
A brief look up. A nod. Mack, known to clients as Hawk, slapped CB on the back. “You’ve got a way with people.”
Mrs. Halverson had reminded him of plenty of other folks he knew who’d been bullied early in life. All she’d needed was to feel safe. Some outfits treated bodyguard work like a contract. Shadow Point treated it like a responsibility. He appreciated the distinction.
“Now that her stalker is behind bars, she’ll be fine,” CB said. “I referred her to Doc, just in case she experiences any PTSD from the incident.”
Dr. Vivi Montgomery, psychologist and founder of this division of their parent company, Shadow Force International, chose that moment to poke her head in. “CB? You missed your appointment yesterday.”
CB pointed at Mack, more than happy to throw him under the bus. “Blame him. He had me at the range.”
The former Marine sniper held up both hands. “Now, just a minute. It wasn't blocked off on his schedule, and we had paperwork for Garrett to finish, so that was the only time available for target practice.”
Vivi rolled her eyes. “You guys will do anything to get out of having a session with me. You act like I’m the grizzly bear instead of CB.”
CB grinned. Grizzly was his codename because of his size, but they all knew Vivi was the real bear if they missed too many of their required sessions with her. “I’ll stop by later today.”
She pointed her pen at him. “I’m holding you to it.”
He gave her a mock salute, and she disappeared down the hall.
“I’ve got something new,” Garrett said, scrolling on his tablet. “A local bar owner is being targeted with escalating extortion demands.”
“Bar owner?” CB asked.
“Regan Hill. She runs Hill’s Tavern out on the highway. She inherited it from her father.” He slid a single sheet across the desk. “Her mother works there, too, and the last request for payment included a veiled threat. The mother called us and requested you specifically, CB.”
Hill’s had been one of the Canon Outlaws’ hangouts when he was a kid. Much of his family’s history was tied to the Hills and the bar. He scanned the intake form. “I know the place.”
“Lucy, the mother, asked for a consultation.” Garrett paused. “The daughter, Regan, doesn’t know she called us. Mrs. Hill just found out about the extortion threat this morning. She claims Regan can be…independent. She doesn’t like accepting help. We need to handle it carefully.”
Mack raised a brow at CB. “Do you know her?”
CB shook his head, took the sheet, and rose. “I’ve been out of that world since I was eighteen. I’ll look into it.”
On the way to the bar, he did his father’s grocery run. Wade’s live-in assistant had Thursdays off, and someone needed to make sure he wasn’t having one of his bad days, where he didn’t know what year it was or how to open a can of soup.
The stroke had stolen a lot from his dad—memories, names, his role as leader of the Outlaws. It had also taken his ability to drive. CB had garaged Wade’s favorite bike out of sentimentality. His father would never ride it again. He should sell it.
One of these days .
As CB pulled up to the house, he recognized the Harley sitting in the drive without needing to read the plates. It was nearly a match to his father’s.
He sat in his truck for a moment, staring at the house—the white paint his mother had chosen, faded now, the flower boxes under the front windows that nobody planted anymore. The gutters that needed a good cleaning.
He picked up the grocery bags and went inside.
In the kitchen, his cousin Ryder had his phone out, showing Wade something on the screen.
Wade was leaning forward in his chair with the engaged attention he got on good days.
He had on sweatpants and a t-shirt that needed to be washed.
His hair needed combing. Still, at sixty and post-stroke, Wade Briggs remained a substantial presence. CB had gotten his size honestly.
“You’re here,” Wade said, sounding surprised.
“I always come on Thursdays, Dad,” CB said, even though he knew Wade rarely knew what day of the week it was.
Wade nodded. “Ryder was just telling me about the Harlan County rally.”
Tension coiled in his gut. He shoved it down. “How was it?” CB said, keeping things polite.
“Good turnout.” Ryder leaned back in his chair, all ease and confidence. He wore expensive slacks and had gelled his shoulder-length hair back. “You should’ve come.”
“I was working.”
“Right.” A half-smile. “The security business.”
CB set the bags on the counter and started putting things away. SPS was more of a family to him these days than the two men in this kitchen.
He knew the cabinet that stuck, the drawer where the good knife lived, and the spot on the floor near the stove that creaked if you stepped on it. His mother had cooked in this kitchen every day of her marriage to Wade. CB still caught himself expecting to find her here sometimes.
“Groceries,” Wade said, noticing. “You don’t have to do that, Clive.”
That was code for ‘I don’t want you to do things for me.’ He’d made it clear to CB that he preferred Ryder to fill that role.
“I was at the store anyway,” CB lied. His dad would accept help more easily if it were incidental.
“How’s the shoulder?” Ryder asked Wade. “You were saying it’s been bothering you.”
And just like that, CB was forgotten again. Wade turned back to Ryder, and the conversation picked up where they’d left off.
He finished putting the groceries away and listened to his father talk with the ease of a man in his own home, in his own life, with the person he’d chosen to fill it.
Not his son, but Ryder, his nephew.
Ryder had been good at this since they were boys—knowing how to command a room.
Knowing who to aim his attention at to make that person feel like the only one in it.
CB had always recognized it was a skill, genuine and honed, without being able to fault him for it.
You learned early in the Outlaws to use the tools you had.
He just wished the tool wasn’t aimed at his dad.
Wade looked up when CB closed the pantry door. He looked at CB the way he used to, direct, assessing, and fully present. “You staying for coffee?”
“Can’t today. I’ve got a consult.”
Wade shook his head, frustrated. “You can’t even give your old man five minutes?”
CB held back his own frustration. “I’ll be back Sunday. We’ll have coffee then.”
“Bring those cookies I like,” Wade said, already turning back to Ryder’s phone screen to replay the video.
Ryder left Wade the phone and walked CB to the door.
But a walk with Ryder was never just a walk. “Your dad’s having a good stretch,” Ryder said on the porch, easy and conversational, like they were two men exchanging news about a mutual friend. “Three, four good days in a row last week.”
Letting CB know he’d been here while CB was handling the Halverson case. “Good.”
“He asks about you when you’re not here.”
CB took the subtle dig, let it spool out with nothing but a glance in Ryder’s direction. Ryder met it with the same surface ease, and underneath it, the old score, running and running, a tab that never got settled.
“But he’s got you, right?” CB said—a dig for a dig.
He didn’t wait for an answer, striding across the lawn to his truck. Behind him, he heard the front door close.
SPS’s standard procedure was to run a background check before any client consultation. Standard procedure kept jobs clean and people alive.
CB had built his life on the principle that skipping steps was how you ended up in situations you hadn’t planned for. So he had SPS’s tech expert run Regan Hill’s background check while he sat in the bar’s parking lot during the lunch rush.
When CB had been a kid, the bar had just been a bar. In recent years, they’d added a grill and now served sandwiches and a few appetizers. He suspected that was Regan’s doing.
The background check came back clean. No record, no flags. She was his age, born here, and had a journalism degree from the University of Montana. She’d spent six years as a working journalist before returning home to take over the bar after her father died.
She was the producer of a true-crime podcast called Cold Circuit, which had an impressive subscriber base and, according to the show’s own website, had been described by the Billings Gazette as “the most tenacious investigative voice in Montana journalism.”
She was tenacious, all right. He knew all about what her podcast had done to the Outlaws, outing Ryder’s father for looking the other way on illegal activities. Ray now sat in prison, thanks to Regan Hill.
CB pulled up the podcast and scrolled the episode list. Forty-six episodes across three years, ranging from cold cases to investigative pieces on public corruption to a four-part series on a prison system’s medical neglect that had, apparently, resulted in two legislative hearings.
The most-played series on the list was a three-parter titled: “Blind Eye: How One Montana Sheriff Protected the Canon Outlaws for a Decade.”
CB had never listened to it, but a whole lot of people had—the play count was substantial. He clicked play on the first episode.