Chapter 2
Logan
I’d been sitting on the tailgate of my truck for forty minutes when Hunter’s headlights cut across the gravel lot.
It was four forty-five in the morning. The sky was still more black than gray, and the air had the kind of cold that Montana did in early spring, the kind that got into your knuckles and stayed.
My duffel was in the truck bed behind me, packed tight with the straps cinched, everything I owned in one bag.
I’d been awake all night, but that wasn’t new. I’d used the time to strip the room I had been staying in at the Resting Warrior Ranch lodge clean, wipe down every surface, fold the borrowed sheets into a square on the mattress. The room looked like no one had ever stayed in it.
Hunter parked and climbed out. He saw me on the tailgate before he saw the duffel, but not by much. His eyes went from me to the bag and back again, and his expression settled into something resigned, like he’d been waiting for this since we got back last night.
He walked over and stopped a few feet away. Stood there with his hands in his jacket pockets, looking at me the way he looked at most things, patient and unhurried, like he had all the time in the world and planned to use it.
“Early start,” he said.
“Wanted to catch you before the others got in.”
He nodded. He knew what was coming. I could see it in the way he settled his weight, the way his jaw set just slightly. He was already bracing, but he was going to let me say what I had to say anyway.
No need to draw this out. “I’m done. I appreciate everything you’ve offered me here. The training, the mission, all of it. But I can’t do this work.”
Hunter didn’t move. Didn’t look away. The silence between us held for three full seconds, which was long enough to hear the wind push through the tree line at the edge of the property and a horse shift in the barn.
“One mission,” he said. “You did one mission, and you handled yourself well.”
“That’s generous.”
“It’s accurate. Ask Beckett. Ask Coop.”
“I’m not questioning whether the team worked. The team was solid.”
“Then what are you questioning?”
I looked at him. Hunter wasn’t the kind of man who needed things spelled out, and I wasn’t the kind who liked spelling them. But he was going to make me say it because he thought I was wrong, and he wanted me to hear myself and reconsider.
“I’m not safe to work with.”
The words sat between us. Hunter’s expression didn’t change, but I watched him take them in. Process them. Decide what to do with them.
“Every operator has rough runs,” he said. “First time with a new team, new protocols, new dynamics. That’s expected. It doesn’t mean you’re a liability.”
“I know what a liability looks like. I’ve worked next to them. I’ve watched good operators become ones.”
“And you think that’s you.”
“I know that’s me.”
He pulled a hand from his pocket and rubbed the back of his neck.
It was the most unsettled I’d seen him. Hunter Everett was a man who’d built something real here with Warrior Security, something that mattered, and he didn’t extend invitations casually.
When he’d called and told me there was a place, he’d meant it.
Turning that down wasn’t something either of us took lightly.
“Something happened last night,” he said.
“I’m not going to get into specifics.” I held his gaze so he’d know this wasn’t evasion. “I’m telling you that I can’t guarantee the safety of the people around me. That’s not a rough first run. And it’s not a problem I can’t train through to get rid of.”
Hunter was quiet for a long time. The sky behind him was shifting, the black giving way to a deep, bruised blue along the ridge. Somewhere on the ranch, a door opened and closed. The day was starting for the rest of the world.
“You know I’m going to push back on this,” he said. “Everybody at Warrior Security has their issues. Hell, Resting Warrior Ranch was specifically built to help people dealing with those issues.”
“I know. But I’ve already made my decision.” Staying here wasn’t an option. Hunter had no idea how close to the edge I was. Nobody did. And I intended it to stay that way until I could sort my shit out. “I know Isaac Baxter vouched for me. I hope you won’t hold that against him.”
“Logan.”
“Decision’s made, Hunter.”
He studied me. I let him. I had nothing to hide except the specifics, and the specifics wouldn’t change anything except make him worry about me on top of losing an operator. I didn’t want that. He had a business to run, a team to protect.
I appreciated that Isaac, an old Army buddy, had set this up. He’d told me Hunter was the real deal. That seemed accurate.
And was all the more reason for me to leave.
What I was giving Hunter was clean. A man who recognized his own limitations and was walking away before those limitations cost someone.
Hunter exhaled through his nose. It was the sound of a man accepting something he didn’t agree with.
“Door stays open,” he said. “I mean that. No timeline, no conditions. Whenever you’re ready, if you’re ever ready, you call me and there’s a place. Isaac wasn’t wrong about you. I hope you’re not ditching me for his Zodiac Tactical.”
I forced myself to chuckle. “No, big cities are definitely not my thing, so no Zodiac. And I appreciate your offer.” Although I wouldn’t be using it.
“I’m not saying it to be kind. I’m saying it because I’ve seen you work. Last night and in the service. You’re good, Logan. Whatever’s happening right now doesn’t change that.”
I didn’t argue with him. There was no point. He believed what he was saying, and I believed what I knew, and those two things weren’t going to meet today.
I slid off the tailgate. Extended my hand.
He took it, and his grip was firm and held for a beat longer than a handshake needed to.
It wasn’t affection. It was Hunter saying something he didn’t have words for, or maybe didn’t want to say out loud because saying it would acknowledge that he was worried about where I was headed.
“Take care of yourself,” he said.
“Yeah.”
I walked around to the driver’s side and climbed in. Turned the engine over. Hunter stood in the lot with his hands back in his pockets, and in my rearview, he was still standing there when I drove through the gate and pulled out onto the road.
The road from the ranch cut through open land, past fenced pastures and a few houses set back from the shoulder, the mountains pushing up on every side like walls.
The highway was ahead. It went south to Wyoming, north to Canada, east or west to places I’d never been and had no reason to visit. All I had to do was pick a direction.
I didn’t have one.
Garnet Bend could be seen in the distance, then the main highway beyond.
Before the town limits, a mom-and-pop store—Arrowhead Grocers—came up on the right, a speed limit sign, a few other buildings, and then a main street that was maybe four blocks long.
I’d been here a few times during the past week, to grab a meal or necessities.
I’d planned to get to know it better once I settled in. No need to now.
But there was a coffee shop on the main street I’d been in a couple times called Deja Brew.
The lights were on inside. A woman with purple streaks in her hair was unlocking the front door, flipping the sign from closed to open.
Early morning in a small town, and the coffee shop was the first heartbeat.
I decided to stop since I had no idea which direction I wanted to drive anyway.
I pulled over and cut the engine. Sat in the cab for a minute with my hands on the wheel, looking up and down the street through the windows.
Garnet Bend really was a charming little town.
The type of place I’d always seen myself settling down in.
A week ago, this Warrior Security job had seemed like the perfect solution: small-town living while still doing what I was good at.
What I had been good at.
I got out of the truck. The sky had shifted while I’d been driving, the black gone to pale gray with the first real light of dawn coming over the ridgeline.
The main street was empty except for a few parked cars, a dog trotting along the opposite sidewalk with somewhere to be, and the sound of a truck downshifting on a cross street.
The storefronts were still dark except for Deja Brew and a hardware store a couple buildings down across the street where someone was moving around inside.
I walked toward the coffee shop and pushed through the door. The inside was warm and smelled like fresh grounds and pastries, and I almost made it to the counter before I heard the swearing.
It was quiet swearing. Polite swearing, if that was a thing. The kind where someone had clearly committed to a word and then pulled back from it at the last second, landing on something that wasn’t quite the word they’d wanted but got the point across.
The almost-swear came from a woman at the community board mounted on the wall near the entrance of Deja Brew, trying to pin a piece of paper to the cork while holding a stack of bright yellow flyers, a tote bag sliding down one shoulder, and a coffee cup that was doing its best to escape from the crook of her elbow.
She wasn’t very tall, maybe five foot four. Her hair was red or auburn or somewhere in between, twisted up in a knot that looked like it had been done fast and with limited cooperation from the hair itself. I could see the freckles sprinkled across her nose from ten feet away.
She got one pushpin halfway into the board before the paper curled away. She tried to flatten it with her chin.
The flyers went…flying. They slid out of her grip like a deck of cards being shuffled by someone who didn’t know how, fanning across the floor in a spread that covered a solid six feet.
“Oh, son of a—fudge. Shi—shoot. Come on.” She looked down at the flyers, then at the paper still half pinned and curling, then at the coffee cup wedged against her ribs, and I could see her calculating which disaster to address first.
I was already moving. I crouched and started gathering the flyers before the thought fully formed.
She looked down at me. “Oh. Thank you. That’s—thank you.”
I stood up and held the stack out to her.
She took it with her free hand, and the motion knocked the tote bag the rest of the way down her arm.
She caught the strap with two fingers and laughed.
It was a real laugh, short and self-aware, directed entirely at herself and the small chaos she’d created in a coffee shop at five thirty in the morning.
“I had a system,” she said. “It was working until it wasn’t.”
I couldn’t help but smile a little myself. “Yeah. Systems sometimes do that.”
She looked at me. Up close, the laugh was still on her face, softening the angles of her jaw and the scatter of freckles across her nose. Her eyes were green, sharp and direct, and something about them caught me off guard.
Realizing I was staring, I glanced over at the community board. The paper she’d been trying to pin was just below my eye level, half attached and still curling at the bottom corner.
HELP WANTED: Pawsitive Connections. Ranch hand needed. Physical labor, repairs, animal care. Room and board + small pay. Contact Lark Monroe. Then a phone number with a local area code.
“Looking for a ranch hand,” she said. “If you know anyone who wants to work hard for almost no money and get bitten by a parrot, send them my way.”
“A parrot?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, he knows seventeen curse words, so he’s very talented.”
“Do you mean really bad curse words like son of a—fudge?”
Bigger smile. “I wish that were the worst of it. I literally have to keep Clarence away from children because he definitely has no filter. And yeah, sometimes bites.”
“And Clarence lives on your ranch?”
She shifted the tote bag back up her shoulder and took a sip of her coffee.
“Yeah, but it’s a pretty nontraditional ranch.
Pawsitive Connections is an animal rescue and training facility outside of town.
It’s—well, it’s a lot of things. Service animals, therapy animals, rehabilitation.
We work with veterans, kids, trauma survivors.
We also have an alpaca named Al Pacacino, so, you know. Prestigious operation.”
Something in my chest loosened half a degree. I didn’t mean for it to. Everything about her pulled me in, not with charm exactly but with the sheer momentum of her. “Al Pacacino and Clarence-the-sailor parrot? I would say so.”
“Are you new in town?” she asked.
“Passing through.”
“Ah.” She nodded. “Well, passing through Garnet Bend takes about forty-five seconds, so you’re already behind schedule.”
I looked at her. She was bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet, this low-level restless energy that seemed to come from somewhere she couldn’t turn off.
Her hands hadn’t stopped moving since I’d handed her the flyers.
Adjusting the tote strap, shifting the coffee cup, tucking a loose strand of hair that immediately fell back out.
The paper was still curling at the corner, the pushpin barely holding. I reached over and pressed it flat against the board, pushing the pin in the rest of the way with my thumb.
“Thank you,” she said. “Again. You’re very helpful for someone who’s passing through.”
“Seems like you needed the help.”
“I always need the help. I just never admit it. Ask anyone.” She said it lightly, but something moved behind her eyes when she said it, a flicker that was there and gone before I could name it. Then the smile was back, full wattage, and she stuck out her hand. “Lark Monroe.”
I took it. Her grip was firmer than I expected, and her hand was warm.
“Logan Stroud.”