29. Wren
WREN
Before Rhett’s tires were slashed, my field routes were close to the known trafficking corridors. After that warning, no amount of arguing could make those routes acceptable to the Wilder brothers.
But stopping my work isn’t an option, either. If I vanish from the backcountry the day after someone slashes the tires, Turner might decide he’s successfully scared me off, or worse, he might assume I know enough to be dangerous. According to Novak, either option could push him into moving faster.
My job is to keep working, but with an important change: I need to stay out of the hot zones, keep clear of the cache sites, and avoid the areas Cade has shaded in red on our shared map.
Aside from the location change, the parameters stay the same. I need to be visible and follow a routine, but I’m not going to play investigator or approach anyone.
Now, my work happens in quieter areas, where the damage has spread outward.
I’m still documenting abandoned game trails, disturbed bedding sites, and the way animals shift when human movement starts affecting their territory.
Secondary displacement patterns still matter, even if they don’t look like evidence to anyone but me.
I’m glad to keep working, too, because it’s better than hiding indoors while the bad men chase me out of the mountains I came here to study.
The brothers hate it.
They hate it with a contained fury that sits in the silence during breakfast and makes every zipper on my field pack sound too loud when I prepare to go out.
But they don’t try to lock me inside, because we’ve had that fight a few times, and I think they’ve come to understand the difference between protecting me and taking away the thing that makes me feel like myself.
We compromise, if that’s what you’d call three former Rangers turning my fieldwork into a military operation.
I don’t go out alone. I don’t leave the marked survey boundary. I check in every ten minutes, whether I have anything to say or not. Those are just a few of my instructions.
Boone is with me today, close enough to reach me quickly but far enough away to preserve the illusion that I’m simply doing my job. He’s somewhere uphill through the trees, and I feel his presence, even though I can’t see or hear him.
Cade is higher still, above the cut between two ridges, where he can see what Boone and I can’t.
Rhett is staged at what he insists on calling an extraction point, something we haven’t needed during my daytime work, but it makes him feel better.
All of this should make me feel safer, and it does, but it also reminds me there’s something out here worth fearing.
Which is why I’m not sure what to think when the back of my neck prickles beneath the loose strands of hair escaping my braid. My usual intuition has been overworked.
I pause and listen, and the mountain answers with ordinary sounds. Wind blows through the pines, squirrels chatter, and a jay cries. Farther off, spring runoff rushes over stones.
I stay still long enough for my breathing to settle, then I continue on my path, passing by a granite outcrop that blocks most of the draw from view. The gray stone is decorated with lichen and makes a wall between me and anything approaching from that angle.
As I clear it, the woods go silent. No birds, no chatter. Just as every nerve in my body lights, Cade’s voice snaps through my earpiece.
“Wren, move. West flank.”
As I turn, a man clears the outcrop. He’s only twenty yards away at most. Close enough for me to see the wraparound sunglasses on his face and the dark stubble along his jaw. He’s not startled by my presence. He’s moving like he’s here for me.
A second man appears behind him, partially hidden by the rock and brush, wearing a cap pulled low.
Cade says something else in my ear, but my blood is rushing too loud for me to hear it.
I yank the bear spray from my belt as the lead man lunges.
“Don’t,” he barks.
I flip the safety and fire a burning orange cloud straight into his face. The spray blooms between us, and enough of it hits him that he screams and stumbles sideways, choking.
I turn and run, and I barely make it five strides before a shot cracks from the eastern ridge. My first reaction is panic, but as I run faster, my brain tells me it might be Cade firing.
A second shot follows, then a third, the sound slamming through the valley, flat and violent.
One of the men behind me curses as stone chips burst off granite with a sharp, angry snap.
“Rally point,” Cade says in my ear. “Run, Wren.”
I keep running as branches snag my sleeves, and I slide on loose rocks. The slope is uneven, and every step threatens to turn an ankle or send me sprawling, but I keep my eyes on the ground and keep moving, because falling now would be the worst thing that could happen.
The thin mountain air is sharp in my lungs, and I taste metal.
Another shot cracks, then another.
The trail narrows between two clusters of pine, and I hit it hard, using the trees as markers. This route was planned in detail that seemed excessive at the time, but no longer does.
My earpiece hisses. “Straight ahead. Keep running,” Boone says. “I’m coming to you.”
I don’t have enough breath to answer.
The slope drops, then rises, and my thighs burn like fire, but I go faster. I clear a stand of young aspens, and Boone comes out of the trees ahead of me. He moves fast, rifle up, body angled past me toward the direction I came from.
Relief punches through me so hard, it almost brings me to my knees, but I keep running.
I cross the last twenty feet at something between a run and a controlled fall, and Boone catches me before I stumble, his hand locking around me with enough strength to bruise, but enough care not to hurt.
He pulls me behind him, putting his body between mine and the outcrop without looking away from the trees.
“Are you hit?” he demands.
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
His eyes still scan me, fast and clinical, maybe purely out of habit. His face is stripped of every ounce of charm that usually makes people underestimate him.
A shot cracks from above, and I flinch.
“It’s Cade.” Boone’s hand tightens on my arm. “Let’s go.”
Without waiting for me to agree, he pivots, keeping himself on my exposed side as we move.
“Lead is down but moving.” Cade’s voice in my ear is flat and almost calm. “Second target broke west. I have him pinned.”
Rhett answers. “Hold high ground.”
“Copy.”
Another shot cracks from Cade’s position, and Boone pushes me lower as we head through the trees. “Head down.”
When we finally reach Rhett, I have the absurd thought that he and Boone look exactly alike in a deep way I’ve never seen. The way they plant themselves between me and danger, they’re more like barricades than men.
Rhett’s eyes flick to me for half a second. “Can you walk?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Then we move.”
Nobody asks if I need a minute, and I’m glad, because if I stop, I’ll start shaking.
Rhett leads us out, with Boone at my back, and Cade a shadow above us.
By the time we reach the truck hidden below the service cut, my lungs are raw, and my legs are trembling.
Boone opens the rear door and guides me in with a hand at the small of my back.
Rhett stays outside, scanning the treeline.
Cade appears three minutes later and immediately looks for me.
When I tell him I’m okay, his eyes close for a second, then he turns to Rhett. “They knew her route.”
I curl my shaking hands into fists and look out the windshield as the men get in and Rhett drives us home.