Diego looked at the phone, then at the dead man's face. Without a second's hesitation, he knelt beside the body, used his left hand to pry open the dead man's eyelids, and held the phone in front of the slack, empty face with his right.
The phone unlocked.
I watched him do it. The boy I'd known at Bragg would not have done that. This man did it the way he'd wiped the knife on the dead man's jacket. Without ceremony, without revulsion, as a practical step that had a purpose beyond the moment. He'd learned to use the dead as tools.
The realization sat cold and clear in my chest. The time we spent apart had built Diego into something I would need time to fully map.
He scrolled through the messages. His face didn't change, but his body did—a subtle tightening across the shoulders, the muscles in his forearms going rigid beneath the tattoos.
"They followed you." His voice was flat. Reading from the screen. "Messages from someone coordinating the operation. They sent one man to 'silence the questioning farmer.' One, because one should have been enough for a civilian asking too many questions on the phone."
He scrolled further. His jaw tightened another degree.
"Then a second message, sent later. Someone spotted my bike riding toward the bar. Phoenix colors. They knew my cut was at the same location as you." He looked up from the screen. "The sender tells the team they're sending three more brothers for the Phoenix. Killing both of us is the priority now. A Phoenix and a rancher meeting at the same bar means we're connected. And connected is dangerous."
He set the phone down, and his eyes met mine.
"One for you. Three for me. They thought I was the bigger threat." The corner of his mouth twitched. Not humor. Something harder. "They were wrong. The farmer shot just as straight."
I holstered my Beretta. These men wore matching leather cuts—the same motorcycle club, organized enough to coordinate a multi-target assault based on phone surveillance. Diego had called them Iron Wolves earlier. A name I'd never heard, but the way he'd said it carried the weight of long familiarity.
"If they followed me from the phone call, then the staffing company flagged my number the moment I started asking questions. Which means they know my name, my address, the ranch?—"
"Which means you can't go back."
My chest tightened. Everything I'd built—the ranch, the rescues, the land itself—was on the other end of a road I couldn't drive back down.
"My workers are still there. Danny's alone. If this group knows where I live?—"
"Then going back is exactly what they expect you to do." Diego's voice cut through mine. "You walk back onto that ranch and you're dead before you reach the porch. Dead doesn't help the workers. Dead doesn't help anyone."
He was right. I knew he was right.
And I hated every word of it.
"So what do I do?"
"You come with me. Henderson. The Phoenix compound." He held my gaze. The brown eyes that had been cold during the fight were something else now—not warm, but certain. Anchored. "We bring your intel to my club, we build the case, and we come back with enough force to take down whoever's running this operation. Your workers are safer right now with you gone. These people wanted to silence you, not them. With you off the property, there's no reason to hit the ranch." His voice softened by a fraction. "This person you mentioned, Danny, plays dumb, keeps the routine, and your workers stay where they are until we can get them out properly."
I stood in the wrecked bar and weighed the options. The glass crunching under my boots. The smell of gunpowder and spilled liquor and blood. Behind me, the bartender still hadn't moved, the shotgun lowered, but his hands were still trembling.
"I need to call Danny. But my phone's compromised—if they tracked me from the call to that staffing company, they're monitoring my number."
Diego pulled his phone from his jacket and held it out. "Use mine. Every Phoenix phone is encrypted and untraceable. We have a new tech guy who built the system from the ground up. Nobody's listening to this line."
I took the phone. The weight of someone else's device in my hand, the screen unfamiliar, Diego's fingerprint unlocking it before he passed it over. I dialed Danny's number from memory.
It rang four times. Five. I felt each ring in my teeth.
"Hello?" Danny's voice, cautious.
"Danny, it's Logan. I'm calling from a different number."
"Logan? Why are you?—"
"Listen to me carefully." I kept my voice level, borrowing the register from the man standing three feet away. "I'm going tobe gone longer than I thought. A few days, maybe more. Keep the routine. Feed the crew. Don't let anyone from High Basin onto the property. If the field rep shows up, the one in the clean boots, you tell him Logan seems to have disappeared. You don't know where I went. You haven't heard from me. You're just the foreman doing your job."
"Disappeared? Logan, what the hell is?—"
