“Surprising, right?” he says.
“Surprising is a town having a decent coffee shop,” I manage. “This is—what is this? You guys live on aranch?”
He laughs.
The sound is bright in the cruiser’s cab—warm, unguarded, carrying the candied blood orange of his scent in a way that I’m starting to understand is characteristic. Oakley’s scent responds to his emotions with less restraint than Roman’s or Alaric’s, the olfactory output tracking his mood in real time like a broadcast he either can’t or won’t control. Right now the blood orange is sweet, effervescent, threaded with the caramelized sugar notes that emerge when he’s genuinely pleased.
“It’s the perfect cover,” he explains, one hand on the wheel, the other gesturing at the landscape with the enthusiasm of a tour guide who loves his material. “Think about it. You need underground operations for sensitive police work—surveillance, safe houses, evidence storage, witness protection—but you can’t exactly build a compound in a town where everyone knows everyone and a new construction project would generate six months of gossip.”
He nods toward the stable complex.
“So you disguise it. Horse grooming and manure scooping on the surface. Tactical infrastructure underneath. The neighbors see a ranch. The county records show agricultural land. The tax assessor files it under livestock operations. And nobody asks questions because ranches are boring and boring is invisible.”
Boring is invisible.
The same principle that governs small-town crime. The disappearances are quiet, so the town ignores them. The property transfers are clean, so the records don’t flag them. The silence is comfortable, so nobody breaks it.
These three men built their base on the same logic that the criminals use. The difference is what’s hiding beneath the surface.
“Plus,” Oakley adds, his voice softening with something that sounds less tactical and more personal, “it preserves the animals. These small towns—the farmers get older, they can’t manage the livestock anymore, and the ranches get sold or abandoned. The horses end up at auction or worse. This way, the property stays operational, the animals get cared for, and the department gets a secure facility that generates zero suspicion.”
He glances at me.
“Roman pretends he doesn’t like the horses, but I’ve caught him feeding sugar cubes to a mare named Dolly at five in the morning when he thinks no one’s watching.”
Sugar cubes.
Roman Kade. Commander. Norse-rune-tattooed. Put-my-fist-through-a-wall-for-you Alpha. Feeding sugar cubes to a horse named Dolly at five in the morning.
Store that image. File it. Access it the next time he calls you a bitch.
The cruiser veers onto a smaller road—narrower, the mud giving way to compacted gravel that crunches beneath the tires with a satisfying, material sound. Trees line both sides, the aspens showing the last of their October gold, the evergreens standing dark and permanent behind them. The canopy creates a tunnel effect—dappled light, the air cooling by a degree, the scent shifting from open grassland to the particular, resinous perfume of pine needles and damp earth.
And then the trees part.
And I see it.
The cabin.
Exceptcabinis the wrong word.Cabinsuggests something modest, functional, the kind of structure that a man builds whenhe needs four walls and a roof and doesn’t care what they look like. This is?—
This is a house.
Massive. Two stories of dark timber and stone, the architecture carrying the specific, ambitious aesthetic of a structure designed by someone who understood that a home can be both a fortress and a place where people live. A wide, wraparound porch anchors the ground floor, the railings made from the same weathered wood as the paddock fencing, the posts thick enough to suggest structural intent beyond decoration. The upper level features dormer windows that catch the morning light, the glass reflecting the Montana sky with a clarity that makes the building look like it’s holding the landscape inside it.
A stone chimney rises from the western end, and even from the cruiser I can see the faint haze of residual smoke—someone lit a fire this morning. Left it burning low while they went to the hospital to retrieve their Omega.
Their Omega.
You keep calling yourself that.
Because you are one. Legally. Officially. On government record.
And now you’re looking at the house where that legal, official, government-recorded fact is going to become your daily reality for the next two weeks. Minimum.
Oakley parks behind the house, pulling the cruiser into a large barn structure that has been converted into a garage with the seamless, function-first engineering of a military motor pool. The space is clean, organized, the concrete floor marked with parking designations that someone took the time to paint.
And the vehicles.
