"One target. Billings." I tapped the circle. "It says here it's a cattle operation and the biggest site in the network—tenthousand acres, at least fifty workers. There has to be evidence here. Contracts, payment records to High Basin, documentation. And it's where the witnesses are. More workers who've been there long enough to know how the system functions."
"That's Iron Wolves territory." Declan's voice from the door. "Billings is two hours from their compound. We hit that site, they respond."
"Not if we're fast enough. Not if we're quiet enough." I set the marker down. "This isn't a raid. It's an extraction. We go in silent, we get what we need, and we're gone before the Wolves even know something's wrong."
"What about the workers?" Ghost's question came hurried. "You said at least fifty people. We can't fit more people here. Some members are already sleeping in shifts, or sharing rooms."
"We're not extracting fifty people." Tyler leaned forward, hands flat on the table. "We can't. Not in one night, not with our resources."
The words landed wrong. I felt my jaw tighten. "So we leave them?"
"We free them by taking down the corruption that enslaves them." Tyler held my gaze. "There's a difference. We take the documentation, we get the witnesses who are willing to testify. My contact moves on Whitfield with federal warrants, and the rest of the sites get raided by people with actual infrastructure—immigration attorneys, asylum processing, the resources to do this right."
"And while we wait for your contact to move, those people sit in the same buildings they've been trapped in for years."
"Those people sit with hope they didn't have the day before." Tyler held my gaze. "I don't like it either. But we're not equipped to house fifty more people, feed them, and protect them from an FBI deputy director with federal resources. We try that, we fail, and Whitfield buries all of us—including them."
Hawk's voice cut through. "How many witnesses does your contact need?"
"Enough to establish a pattern. Ten, maybe fifteen who can speak to the operation's structure. Only experienced ones, workers who've been there long enough to know how often they are moved, who gives orders, how the system functions."
"Fifteen we can handle. There might be some who are willing to testify among the ones we already rescued." Hawk looked at me. "Blade. This is the play."
I didn't answer. The math made sense. The strategy made sense. And somewhere in that Billings operation, people who looked like my mother were waiting for a door to open, and I was planning to only walk some of them out.
"The ones who stay," I said finally. "They need to know help is coming. That this isn't just another set of strangers making promises."
"Then we tell them." Logan's voice from the back wall. Steady. "We tell them exactly what's happening and exactly when to expect the follow-up. We give them a timeline and we keep it."
"Forty-eight hours." Tyler nodded. "She moves within forty-eight hours of receiving the evidence. I'll make sure of it."
It wasn't enough. It was what we had.
"Fine. Small team. Fast and quiet." I turned back to the whiteboard. "Ghost and Logan take point. Ghost for stealth—you move like a shadow when you want to. Logan because he knows how cattle ranches work. Building layouts. Where workers might get housed. Where records get kept."
Ghost's frost blue eyes locked on mine, the energy channeled into complete focus. "How silent are we talking?"
"Cemetery silent. You two are our eyes. You scout the layout, identify guard positions, find the safest approach to the workerhousing and the records office. You radio back before anyone else moves."
"I don't get seen." He said it like a statement of fact, with no bravado another man would have packed into it.
Logan pushed off the wall. Moved toward the whiteboard. Took the marker from my hand—fingers brushing mine in a contact that lasted half a second longer than necessary.
"Every operation like this has a back entrance." He began to draw. Rectangle for the main building. Smaller rectangles for worker housing. Fence lines. Access roads. His hand moved with confidence. "Supply deliveries come through a service road, away from the main gate. Standard agricultural layout puts it approaching from the east."
I watched his hand move. The same hand that had traced my tattoos this morning. Now drawing tactical diagrams.
"The service road connects here." He marked the eastern approach with a heavy line. "Behind the silos, where deliveries get unloaded. At night, this section will be dark. No reason to light it when operations are shut down." His marker paused. "Ghost and I come in through the east. We map the layout, find the guards, radio positions back to the breach team."
"Once you give us the green light, Irish and I move in." I stepped closer to the whiteboard. "We hit the worker housing first. I speak Spanish, Irish speaks people. We explain the plan—what's happening, what the timeline looks like, who's coming after us to finish the job. We identify volunteers willing to testify, and we move them out quiet."
"While you're handling the workers," Logan continued, "Ghost and I locate the records. Office, filing cabinets, whatever they're using to track the operation. Contracts, payment logs, worker manifests, there has to be something. We photograph everything, take originals if we can."
"What about guards?" Declan asked.
I met his eyes. "Tranquilizers. No killing."
The room shifted. Tank's brow furrowed. "Tranquilizers?"
