Page 34 of Naughty With The Mountain Man
“Cut south on Ridgeview, then west behind the mill. One more ping on the library lot cam, then it disappears.”
“Disappear how?” Hale says.
“Blind spot between City Works and the freight spur,” Nate replies. “Only a few places they can hole up on that line—old cannery, bus barn, warehouse by the river. And guess what’s got a new padlock and a fresh tire track this morning?”
“The warehouse,” I say.
“Bingo. Sending coordinates.” A beat, softer. “We’ll get her.”
I end the call and meet Hale’s eyes. There’s the same thing in them I feel in my chest: the loathing that lives in men like us for the kind of predator who hunts the soft thing we love.
“Sheriff’s en route,” I say. “We go in with them. Clean.”
“Stack left,” Hale answers. “You, point. I’ll float high.”
Ranger bumps my thigh, keyed up, waiting for a job.
“You stay,” I tell him. He doesn’t like it, but I don’t care. I won’t have him catching a stray round because I couldn’t stand to shut a door on something faithful.
Five minutes later, the sheriff’s Tahoe crunches into the drive with a second unit behind it. Dixon rolls down his window, takes one look at my face, and nods like he’s already written his report and painted it with blood.
“You lead,” he says. “We keep perimeter. Quiet as we can until we can’t.”
We roll.
I drive. Hale rides shotgun, already assembling the short barrel he favors for inside work. Dixon sits tight on our bumper; hissecond car tucks in behind him, lights dead, engines low. Snow needles the windshield; the wipers keep time with my pulse.
My mind runs two tracks: the route, the entry, the angles—and Ellie. Her laugh at the diner. The way she looked at the kids like they were the future and not a problem to be managed. The way she fit under my arm like that space was made for her and had been cold until she found it.
She is not a file. Not a mission. Not a statistic.
She is the point.
Ridgeview bends to the river. The old warehouse rises from the trees like a box full of bad history: corrugated metal, broken windows tarped over, a chain-link fence slumped on one side where plows have kissed it too many winters running.
I ease the truck into shadow behind a stand of fir and kill the engine. We sit in the cold, letting the world settle. There—movement at the side door. A man steps out, scans, smokes half a cigarette like he isn’t afraid of anything, then flicks it and goes back inside. Door shuts. No rush. No caution. They think they bought time.
“Two on exterior?” Hale murmurs.
“One smoking, one on the roof,” I say, nodding to the barely visible shift in the snow dam where a boot dragged, then stopped. “Maybe four inside. Maybe more.”
Dixon keys his mic. “Units hold. Hunt, you call it.”
“We take the smoker first,” I say. “Hale on roof if he pops. I breach side door, Sheriff dogs the hall, second unit covers rear exit.”
Hale checks his watch. “Two minutes. On your count.”
I breathe once. Twice. The cold bites lungs and nerves. I let it. It sharpens everything—the bead of sweat at my temple, the weight of the rifle, the exact distance from our bumper to the side door and the time it takes a man to raise a weapon versus to drop one.
“One,” I say, and we spill from the truck like a shadow breaking apart.
We move hunched along the fence line, using the trees for cover until the concrete wall blots out the sky. The smoker opens the door again—right on time, a creature of habit—and I’m already there, the muzzle kissed to the notch above his ear while my free hand strips the weapon from his belt.
“Hands,” I whisper.
He freezes, then lifts them. Hale ghosts past me, cat-quiet, and vanishes up the access ladder to the roof. I zip-tie the smoker’s wrists, yank him back off the threshold, and leave him kneeling in the snow with a mouth full of his own fear.
Dixon and his deputy take the rear corner. I feel rather than see them settle.
