Page 41 of Her Mountain Man Protector

"I know." His voice goes rough. "I used a camera I didn't own. I wrote coordinates on paper I knew a shooter would hang behind crates. I counted on a professional keeping raw files. I didn't count on my son falling in love with the professional. That's on me too."

I don't confirm it. I don't have to. The way I took the last turn already did.

"Who's the man at the top?" I ask.

"I don't have his face in a file yet. I have a title and a pattern and a van that just rolled north with your girl. Equinox first. Then we pull him out of her by going through whoever is holding her."

The Foundry is lit when we hit the lot. Power's back. The gate opens on Marin's code before I finish rolling down the window. I'm out of the truck before the engine dies.

They're all here.

Nash by the side door, jaw tight, a healing line still pale at his temple. Sin next to him with his arms crossed and his eyes already on Dad. Crewe at the threshold, the brother I trust wholeheartedly, already wired for a hunt. Mack in a coat that costs more than my truck, which doesn't stop him from looking ready to ruin a life. Banks with two laptops under one arm. Jace last, sun-faded and grim, the beach burned off him.

Six brothers. One father stepping out of my passenger seat. For a second the lot is only Hawthornes and the years we spent chasing a man who was trying not to be found.

Nash moves first. He doesn't speak. He hits Dad's shoulder with a hand that is almost a blow and then pulls him in. Sin follows, rougher. Crewe nods once, which from him is a speech. Mack swears and laughs in the same breath. Banks stares until the file in his head grows a pulse. Jace says, "You old bastard," and his voice breaks on it.

Crewe's hand lands on my shoulder on the way past, a brief grind of bone that says later. I let them have ten seconds. I don't have eleven.

"He faked the Sunbreak grab," I tell them. "Helix sells military secrets. He died on paper years ago to keep us and Mom off the board. He left breadcrumbs in Oakley's photos. They took her from Yard 4 twenty minutes ago in a dark van, north. They want her because she can swear to the files, and they want him to come collect."

The reunion dies on that last sentence. Every face turns to me.

Alden is in the doorway behind them. Marin too.

Billy looks at his sons, all seven of us, and then he looks at me. "I'm sorry," he says. It isn't enough. He knows it.

"Keep it." I'm already moving toward the Watchline stairs. "You can be sorry when she's in this mill. Now how are we getting my girl back?"

Nobody asks who I mean. Nobody tells me to sit down. Crewe’s already pulling a map. Banks’s already opening a machine. Nash cracks his neck. Sin checks a weapon without making a show of it. Mack’s on a phone that can move money and men. Jace falls in on my left.

Billy Hawthorne, alive and late and mine again, follows us into the glass loft where the county waits on a dark screen, and I put both palms on the table because if I don't occupy my hands I'm going to put them through the wall.

"Talk," I say. "Van. Outfall. North road. I want a location before they get her into a building I can't walk into. She's mine and we're going to get her back and end this once and for all."

16

Oakley

The van stops so hard I slide off the wheel well and hit the partition with my shoulder. Doors open. Cold pours in. Hands haul me out into a lot that isn't Yard 4. This building is older. Brick. Broken panes. A faded name I can't read under the rust.

They walk me inside between them. Scar-guy on my right. The quiet driver on my left. My boots scuff grit and old paper. A chair waits in the middle of a swept circle, which is worse than a mess. Mess is neglect. A circle is a plan.

They put me in it. Plastic at my wrists, already chewed raw from the van, gets swapped for rope that bites when the driver yanks the knot. Ankles next. The chair doesn't rock. Someone bolted it down.

I start crying before I mean to. Heat in my face. Salt in my mouth. I hate the sound of it in this empty room and I can't shut it off.

"What are you going to do to me?" My voice comes out wrecked. "I already told you I don't have another drive. The files were on the one you stole. I'm a photographer. That's the whole resume."

Scar-guy laughs. It isn't loud. It's worse for that. The driver doesn't laugh. He checks a phone and leans on a crate with the helix stencil half scraped off. "You're not the resume, Miss Vega. You're the bait." Scar-guy crouches so I have to look at him. "Collateral. The Hawthornes will come for you. All of them, if we're lucky. The old man included. That's the hour we end this family problem in one room."

"Kill them," I say, because I need it said out loud so it becomes a thing I can hate instead of a fog.

"Kill them," he agrees. "You get to watch or you don't. Depends how useful you stay between now and the door."

The tears keep coming. I let them. I also start looking.

High windows along the west wall, most of them boarded. One pane still has glass, filmed white. A metal door behind Scar-guy with a chain and a padlock that isn't cheap. A second door on my left, inward swing, no chain I can see. Overhead a catwalk with a missing section. On the floor near my right boot, a rusted screw and a strip of packing strap.