Page 35 of Ranger's Oath
“You did.” Sadie tilts her head. Her voice gets smaller when she speaks the second time. “You just do not trust that none of it will fall on you.”
Her honesty is an ache. It always has been. She names the place in me where the fear lives and does not flinch. “Maybe I am selfish,” I say. “Maybe I like being the one who has to clean up the mess. Gives me something to do with my hands.”
Her laugh is a short thing, not soft but not cruel. “You name everything but what you want.”
What I want does not fit on paper. It is not tactical. It is not something you can carry in a pack. It is a ruin and a palace and a burning that will not go out. I keep it locked because when you keep vows like mine you learn how dangerous words can be.
Dalton steps closer. “No reason to push it tonight,” he says. “We all get some sleep. We pull the route again at first light. If anything changes, we roll hard.”
“Good,” I tell him. It is mostly to him but his eyes flick to Sadie, then to me, like he is taking a tally.
They start dispersing, checking kit, loading small things into the shed. The quiet returns, but it is thinner now, stretched and taut. Sadie stays. She moves until she is beside me, close enough that the warmth of her shoulder touches my arm. The contact is a single, dangerous thing.
“You should go rest,” I tell her. It is order and shelter and cowardice wrapped in one.
She looks up at me and the look strips away any pretense. “And miss watching you try not to explode? Not a chance.”
She says it like a dare. I almost take it as a promise. Instead I fold my hands around the porch rail and let the night pour over me. The world is intact for the moment. The convoy is whole. The ranch stands.
That is not the same as being safe.
I do not tell her that. I do not tell her how the choice gnaws at me the way salt eats iron. I only watch the men fade into the dark and listen to the soft shuffle of boots and the click of locks. I keep the vow sealed in my chest where it cannot be used against her, even as the pull of her breath keeps me from stepping back into the dark where the danger waits.
The war room vibrates with a low hum when I return, tension soaking into every wall and wire. Gideon sits at the monitors, posture steady, fingers moving with calm precision. “Got something,” he mutters without looking away.
Rush leans in over Gideon’s shoulder, command radiating off him like pressure in the air. The screens stutter, static rolling in jagged waves before the picture steadies. Frame by frame the drone footage bleeds onto the monitors, raw and unedited, the silence in the room thickening as each blurred image sharpens into view, drawing everyone closer to the edge of unease.
At first the view drifts over brush rippling in the restless wind, pasture washed pale beneath the moonlight, nothing out of place. Then the frame steadies, locking on the south fence. The camera lingers, and there it is: a faint red glimmer, small but deliberate, pulsing in the dark where no light should exist, an omen too precise to ignore.
Gideon tightens the zoom, pulling the hazy glow into sharper focus until a distinct pattern emerges. The lines converge with mechanical precision, too deliberate to dismiss as chance. A laser trip mark stretches across the south fence, thin as thread but undeniable, a silent warning left where none of us should have missed it.
The room stills. Rush mutters a curse under his breath. Even Gideon’s hands pause at the keys. My pulse slams against my ribs, urgent and heavy. That mark didn’t exist yesterday. Which means while we slept, someone crossed our line, close enough to lay it down and vanish again. The thought drives in deep, the image of an intruder breathing our air, watching from the dark, slipping away before we even knew they were there.
I grip the back of Gideon’s chair and lean in, jaw tight. “Roll it back. Frame by frame.”
He does. Each frame pulses with threat, a low vibration that crawls under my skin. Then a faint stir at the fence line—a shadow twitching against the pale ground, gone as soon as it appears. Too distant to give us a face, but enough to leave no doubt: someone was there, close enough to work their markwhile we slept, close enough to remind us how easily they can breach our walls.
“They’re probing us,” Rush says. “Testing reaction time.”
“They’re closer than we thought.” My voice is flat, but the fury behind it burns hot. I can feel Sadie’s eyes on me from the doorway. She came looking, drawn by the tension, and now she knows something’s wrong.
“What is it?” she asks.
“Back to bed,” I tell her.
She folds her arms tighter. “Not a chance, unless you’re planning to come with me and fuck me senseless.”
Rush nearly chokes on his coffee, sputtering as he sets the mug down hard on the desk while Gideon coughs into his fist, laughter barely contained. Her boldness should have me furious, should make me shut her down cold. Instead it lights me up from the inside, a slow burn that settles low and refuses to die out. She doesn’t back down, doesn’t bend, and the truth is I want her all the more because of it.
Rush cuts in, voice clipped. “Tomorrow we set panels on the south fence. We’ll blind their toys before they get another look.”
Sadie meets my gaze over Rush’s shoulder, and the rest of the room blurs until there is only her steady, unyielding stare. It feels like a dare, daring me to hold my secrets, daring me to draw lines she intends to test. Every time she presses, the control I cling to unravels thread by thread, and I can see in her eyes that she knows it. If she keeps pressing, one of us will cross into dangerous ground, a place from which there’s no return.
CHAPTER 13
SADIE
The war room hums with low voices, the soft scratch of pens, and the tap of keys. I sit with Cassidy and Kari at the long table, laptops open, a tangle of charging cords and half-finished coffee cups between us. It feels like a late-night study session back in college, only instead of exams, we’re digging through donor rosters, logistics invoices, and staff rotations tied to a Caribbean island that tried to erase me.
