Page 13 of Her Mountain Man Protector

"Has anyone successfully fired you from being like this?"

"Plenty have tried. They're not sitting in this booth."

I eat faster, mostly to spite him, partly because the diner's fluorescent light is starting to feel too bright on my face. Every time the bell over the front door jumps, his shoulder tightens. Mine does too. The coffee does nothing for the jump in my hands.

When the plate is empty he drops cash on the table and stands. "Now we move."

"A thank you for the pie wouldn’t kill you."

"I'll send a card."

Outside, the fog has thinned to a damp film on the brick. He puts me in the truck without asking and I let him, which I will deny later if he looks too satisfied about it. We take the river road out of the little grid of Main Street, past the mural of the falls, toward a long brick mill on the water.

The sign on the rebuilt loading dock is small and clean. EQUINOX PROTECTION GROUP. Under it, in smaller letters, The Foundry.

"This is your side hustle," I say.

"This is where I go when I need a building that doesn't fold after two shots through a window."

He parks in a gated lot along the river. A woman in a black coat is already crossing the pavement toward us before the engine dies. She’s sharp in that expensive, unhurried way, dark hair twisted up, tablet under one arm, eyes doing math on my hoodie and Colt's scraped knuckles at the same time.

"Hawthorne," she says. "You're late for a man who doesn't make appointments."

"Marin. This is Oakley Vega. She's with me."

Marin Wolfe looks at me with velvet, brutal attention, already sorting me into columns. "Freelance photographer. Chicago kill fee last April. You're the fuse Banks flagged."

"I'm the person attached to the fuse," I say. "Nice to meet you too."

Her mouth ticks, almost approval. "Alden's in the Watchline. Try not to track river grit onto my floors. I just had them done."

Inside, the mill is restored brick and black steel. A glassed-in loft runs the length of the second floor, screens throwing cool light across a long table. That's the Watchline. Below it, through an open arch, I catch a tactical gym and, farther back in the old turbine hall, a range boxed off behind serious doors. Colt walks it with the ease of someone who already knows every bolt. I walk it and fail at not gawking.

"You work here," I say, and it comes out softer than I mean.

"When I'm not tearing up mountains looking for my father. Alden lets me come and go. I owe him for that."

Alden North is waiting at the top of the Watchline stairs. Forty, maybe, with the kind of stillness that doesn't need to prove itself. One good charcoal jacket over a flannel that has seen actual years. He takes Colt in first, then me, then the camera, and none of it seems to surprise him.

"You're upright," Alden says to Colt. "That's a start."

"Cabin isn't. Helix walked onto my porch and tried to collect her. Tracker in her jacket since Chicago. Banks has the names I could give him. I need a hole, Alden. Somewhere off their map."

Alden looks at me properly now. "Oakley."

"That's me. I'd shake your hand, except mine are still deciding if they're done shaking."

"They can decide sitting down." He tips his head toward the table. Marin’s already there, tablet awake, a map of the county blooming across the glass. "Start at the beginning that matters. Not the fog. The dock."

So I tell them. The campus spread that never ran. The after-hours loading bay I wasn't booked to shoot. The crate stencil. The name I wasn't supposed to keep. The lock on my Chicago door that sat wrong. The editor who stopped answering. The jacket that carried a bead all the way to Colt's hem inspection in a moving truck. I keep my voice even because if I let it fray, Colt will decide I'm cargo again, and I'm done being cargo.

Marin doesn't interrupt. She tags lines on the tablet as I talk, a quiet, vicious kind of attention. When I finish she says, "Vanguard Helix donor file is packed with shell companies. I can open three of them before dinner. The warehouse fires Alden wouldn't bury for ATF rhyme with two of those shells. That's not a coincidence I enjoy."

Alden's gaze stays on Colt. "You want unofficial. You came to the right mill. Official would put her in a report and put you under a thumb."

"I need her off the street," Colt says. "I need time. I need you looking at the same rot my father walked into."

"You'll get all three." Alden pulls a paper map from a drawer because of course this man still owns paper. He sets it on the glass and taps a mark high on the far side of the falls, above the tourist pull offs, where the trees close and the road thins to a private cut. "Safe house. Equinox property, titled through a holding company Marin built so it doesn't scream our name. High. Ugly driveway. No neighbors who ask why a truck comes in after dark. You lay low there. I work the Helix thread from here. Rowe stays with me tonight, so the house is empty."