18. Rhett
RHETT
The big topo map, weighted at the corners with two coffee mugs, a box of ammunition, and Boone’s knife, covers most of the scarred pine dining table.
Cade’s marked the suspected cache sites in red, the routes Wren recorded at night are in black, and the game trails that have gone quiet are shaded in dull pencil. The routes Elk Run Outfitters advertises to clients are marked in blue, and the overlap is absolute.
Every pass Turner’s guides use for legitimate trips overlays a corridor men have been using to move narcotics through my mountains.
Boone stands on the other side of the table, arms folded. He hasn’t smiled in an hour. Cade leans over the map, one hand braced on the table, the other holding a pencil.
“Run it again,” I say.
Cade taps the first red mark. “Cache one. Ravine west of Brindle Pass. Two miles off the maintained route, but less than a quarter mile from the switchback Elk Run uses for their three-day advanced package.”
He taps the next one. “Cache two. Deadfall basin below Mercy Saddle. Their guides bring clients over the saddle, drop down here for camp, then cut east.”
“Cache three. Stone wash under the western ridge. This is where Wren filmed the handoff. Elk Run markets that as their sunrise ridge route.”
“Son of a bitch,” Boone mutters.
Cade’s pencil moves to a blue line drawn through a narrow pass that’s been on our permits for years. “They started running trips through here in October. We lost the Crown group two weeks later.”
I remember that call. We had a trip booked for four businessmen who wanted pictures with snow-dusted peaks and a story about how hard the wilderness tested them, providing it didn’t test them too much.
They canceled two weeks before their trip, saying they’d found another outfitter with a lower rate.
Turner’s rate had been thirty percent lower than mine. I thought it was desperation or an attempt to buy market share, but now that I look at the lines on the map, the truth is clear.
“It was never about competition,” I say. “He didn’t undercut us because he wanted our clients. He wanted us gone.”
The fewer legitimate guides in the area, the less chance someone would discover what’s been going on. Now, thanks to Wren, we’re on to him.
I reach out to an old Army contact, and less than an hour later, when I’m working in the garage, my phone buzzes with a text that says, “You didn’t hear this from me.”
Then the phone rings.
Jason Reeve is on the civilian side now, but he was in Human Resources Command and is still connected enough to pull personnel files.
“Talk,” I say.
Reeve exhales. “Harlan Turner was commissioned through ROTC. Logistics branch. Captain when he separated. He had two deployments, one in Afghanistan, and one attached to a joint task force moving supplies through contested mountain terrain.”
“Decorations?”
“Bronze Star. Meritorious Service Medal. A few commendations. The man knew how to move supplies where they weren’t supposed to move, and he knew how to build systems that kept units well supplied in places where the terrain should’ve made it impossible.”
Cade and Boone appear then, as if I called them, though I didn’t make a sound. That happens with us sometimes.
Reeve keeps talking. “Six years ago, CID opened an investigation over missing assets. Weapons components, comms equipment, night-vision units, medical supplies. Some of it turned up later in private channels overseas, and some never turned up at all.”
“Did they charge him?”
“It was too muddy,” Reeve says. “Two witnesses changed statements, and one disappeared entirely.”
“Fuck.”
“The Army wanted him gone after that, so Turner took an other-than-honorable discharge rather than fight it. It kept him out of Leavenworth but ended his career. Since then, he was in private security contracting and logistics consulting, but nothing long-term. He was also tied to a couple of names I don’t like. ”
“Any cartel ties?”
Reeve pauses, and that says something in itself. “There were rumors, but nothing concrete. It was more like channels that overlap with people who overlap with people. You know how that works.”
I do. Everyone is clean if they stand far enough away from the blood.
“And his outfitter business?” I ask.
“Elk Run Outfitters registered eighteen months ago.”
Eight months ago, after he’d built it up, Turner approached us with a partnership offer. He framed it as a merger that would benefit both our businesses, with shared resources and reduced overhead.
I thought he wanted our reputation, but it turns out he wanted to see if Wilder Outfitters could be absorbed quietly. Something about the man had rubbed me the wrong way, and I declined.
Then he started undercutting us.
“Anything else?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Reeve says. “Be careful. This isn’t some idiot with a few mules and a storage unit. If Turner’s doing what you think he’s doing, he’s going to be good at it.”
“Send what you can,” I say.
“I’ll send what won’t get me arrested.”
“That’ll do.”
“Rhett?”
The way he says my name tightens something in my gut. “Yeah.”
“You have federal support?”
“Some.”
“Get more. You’re going to need it.” When I don’t respond right away, he says, “Don’t make me attend your funeral just so I can tell your brothers I warned you.”
“They’d throw you in the hole after me.”
“Fair.” He huffs out a breath. “Watch your six.”
“I’ve got two men for that.”
My brothers heard everything Reeve said, and as soon as I get off the phone, Boone says, “Wren showing up with a federal badge and a field kit wasn’t in his plan.”
She’s not just a witness. She’s a threat to his entire operation.
“We need to tell her,” Cade says.
“We will.”
“Not a watered-down version.”
I look at Cade, and he looks back. He rarely challenges me, only because he usually doesn’t need to. We’ve never been a hierarchy in the way outsiders think. I lead because someone has to set the direction. Cade and Boone follow because they trust me, not because they’re built to be led.
When I’m wrong, they correct me, usually before I get us killed.
“I said we will, but not tonight.”
Boone lifts his chin. “Why?”
“Because if we give her the new intel now, she’ll be up past midnight building a case file.” The woman has less sense than she should when a mystery gets its claws into her. She also has more courage than most men I’ve led.
That combination is going to make me lose my mind before this is over.
Cade looks toward the house. “She’ll hate being managed.”
“She’s not being managed. She’s being allowed to sleep.”
When we go back inside, I lock the front door, and Boone checks the back without being asked. Cade moves through the cabin checking windows and returns with the report that Wren’s sleeping.
My chest loosens, and I’d like to keep it to myself, but Boone sees it, and so does Cade. Triplets are inconvenient as hell when a man wants privacy.
We sit at the table around the map. Boone leans back in his chair, but there’s nothing casual about his expression. Cade sits to my right, angled toward the hall, keeping himself between danger and what matters.
And Wren matters.
There’s never been any denying it, not since the moment she walked into the Rusty Spike and looked at us like she could tell the difference between us even before we opened our mouths.
I should have put a stop to it right then, but I’m not sure I could have.
Boone catches my eyes shifting toward the bedroom and breaks the silence. “How long are we going to keep dancing around it?”
With someone else, I’d deny knowing what he’s talking about, but not with my brothers.
“I’m falling for her,” he says. “And before either of you try to be a martyr about it, so are you.”
Cade looks down at his hands, which for him is as good as a confession.
Boone challenges him anyway. “You want to deny it?”
“No.” Cade’s answer is quiet but without hesitation.
Then Boone looks at me. I’ve lied to enemies, officers, clients, doctors, and once to a chaplain who asked if I was all right after a mission that left blood in the seams of my boots.
I can’t lie to my brothers about Wren. “I’m not denying it, but she’s under our roof because she’s in danger. That comes first.”
“It has come first.” Boone straightens and leans forward. “Every damn day. You think I don’t know where the lines are?”
“I know you know.”
He looks away. “Knowing hasn’t made it easier.”
“That’s why we hold the line together,” Cade says.
Boone rubs both hands over his face. “So that’s what we’re saying?”
“I’m saying none of us touch her unless she comes to us clear-eyed and wanting all of it.”
“All of us,” Cade says.
I nod. “All of us.”
Boone’s laugh is low and rough. “God help me.”
“Discipline and respect help you. Remembering she doesn’t owe us a damn thing is what should help you.”
Any hint of charm remaining in Boone’s features falls away. “Don’t talk to me like I’d forget that.”
I stare back at him for a beat, then give a small nod. “I know you wouldn’t.”
We’ve shared women before, but those were other times that belonged to another life. Those were women who knew exactly what they wanted from three identical soldiers with too much adrenaline running through their veins. There were no promises made.
Those encounters were temporary and purely physical, but everything about being with Wren would be different.
I look between my brothers, and for a second, I don’t see our cabin.
I see the three of us at nineteen, standing shoulder to shoulder at our first duty station, already tired of people treating us like a novelty.
I see us older, harder, bloodied, carrying each other through places that wanted us dead.
I see the folded flag at our parents’ funeral, Boone pale with grief, and Cade silent, then absent.
We’ve survived because we do not fracture. We bend, fight, and call each other idiots. We go silent when it’s best.
We don’t fracture, but Wren could do that if we give in to fear. She could become the fault line.
Or she could become our center.
“It has to be her choice,” I say.
Boone draws in a breath and looks toward the hallway. “What if she doesn’t choose it?”
“We protect her, we finish this, and we let her go.” I don’t like the sound of it, and neither do my brothers, but that’s the way it has to be. “We don’t take because we want. We wait until she asks.”
Boone’s voice drops. “And if she asks?”
“Then we don’t let her doubt for one second that she belongs to all three of us.”