Logan moved to them. His voice low, steady, the calm that came from somewhere deep in him and never wavered. The Spanish rough but the tone carrying what the grammar couldn't:It's over. They're down. You're safe. We're leaving now.
Slowly, the workers climbed back into the truck bed. Their faces visible now in the residual glow of the headlights, the fear sharper than it had been in the bunkhouse, made concrete by the bound men on the road and the smell of gunsmoke in the cool Montana air. Their bodies were shaking—hands, shoulders, the way they gripped the tailgate as they climbed up. Mateo was the last one in. He looked at the restrained Wolves on the ground and his face carried something I recognized: not fear anymore, but fury. The fury of a boy who'd been branded and numbered and was looking at the men responsible for it, helpless on the gravel, and understanding for the first time that they could be beaten.
"Bravo, status." I pressed the comms.
A pause. Then Tank's voice: "Loaded. Both vans. Eighteen evacuees. Two need medical attention. Declan's working on them." Another beat. "We heard shots. Multiple. What happened out there?"
"Four Wolves. Advance team. All four restrained. No casualties on our side. Four more incoming at dawn with transport vans. We need to move now."
"Copy. Moving to the main drive."
The vans appeared from the north acreage road two minutes later, headlights off. Logan's truck was already running, the twelve ranch workers back in the bed, Danny in the cab with the dogs.
Logan stood beside the driver's door. His Beretta holstered. The adrenaline still visible in the set of his shoulders.
"Thirty people." I stopped beside him. Close. The darkness making the proximity feel private even though it wasn't. "Twelve from the ranch, eighteen from the building. Plus Danny. The vans are full. Your truck is full. We need to move."
"That was a lot of gunfire aimed at you behind that shed."
"They were shooting at a direction. Not at me. The dark did the work."
He looked at the ranch. The bunkhouses. The barn. The dark outlines of the house where he'd sat on the porch with his dogs and stared at the sky.
"The horses," he breathed. "Rio. The others. The cattle in the south pasture. I can't just?—"
"Danny." I turned to the truck cab. The kid's face was visible through the glass, pale but holding. "The horses and cattle. Are they safe?"
"Pastures are open. They can range." Danny's voice was muffled through the window. "There's enough grass and water for weeks. They'll manage. It's the people I'm worried about."
Logan's jaw worked. He was leaving the ranch. Leaving everything he'd built for four years, abandoned in the dark because the alternative was staying and dying.
I put my hand on the back of his neck. My palm against his skin, the warmth of him grounding me the way the knife grounded me—contact saying everything the mission didn't leave time for.
"We'll come back for them." Low. Only for him. "I promise."
He nodded. One sharp movement. Got in the truck. Closed the door.
I mounted the borrowed Harley. Kicked the engine to life. The V-twin caught and the vibration rolled through the frame, through my arms and into my chest where it settled beside the heartbeat that was only now beginning to slow.
Ghost and Irish pulled alongside. The vans settled into position behind Logan's truck. The convoy formed: truck, two vans, three bikes flanking. Thirty evacuees, one foreman, three dogs, and six men who'd ridden ten hours to take apart a piece of a machine that branded people.
We rolled south. Logan killed the headlights once we cleared the ranch road. No lights for the first five miles, the convoy navigating by moonlight and memory, the secondary roads that Irish had mapped winding through grassland that stretched flat and dark to the horizon. The bound Wolves disappeared behind us. The ranch disappeared. The mountains faded into silhouettes against a sky beginning to lighten at the edges—the first gray suggestion of a dawn that would arrive to find an empty property, slashed tires, and four men on the gravel with a story their backup wouldn't believe.
The air was cool. Montana cool, the kind that pressed through my jacket the moment the speed picked up, the wind stripping the day's heat from my hands on the grips. I leaned into it. Let the cold strip the excess, reduce the noise, leave onlythe road and the speed and the thirty people in the vehicles behind me breathing free air for the first time in months.
Mateo was in the back of Logan's truck. I'd seen him climb in last, his duffel over his shoulder, his face carrying the expression of a young man who'd taken his name back and was holding it with both hands.
Ten hours south. Henderson. The compound. Rosa and Kai waiting with medical supplies.
I rode point. The wind cold against my face, the highway opening ahead in the borrowed headlight. Behind me, the convoy stretched in a line of dark vehicles carrying thirty people toward something that might, for the first time in months or years, feel like safety.
My mother had walked north in the dark toward a gas station and a stranger's kindness and a life she couldn't see yet.
Her son was riding south, carrying thirty people toward the same thing.
9
NOW
