Page 106 of Savage Rancher
And now I know exactly how deep it goes.
Jake Callahan thinks he won. He eliminated Eli. Claimed Emma. Made his threats. But he made a mistake: he showed me what matters.
And now I have options he doesn't even see coming.
Option one: Emma Hayes becomes leverage. I don't touch her—I just make sure Jake knows Icould. That I'm watching. That she drives those mountain roads alone, and anything could happen. The threat alone will paralyze him.
Option two: I use what I know. Jake Callahan killed my brother. No body, no evidence, but I know. And if I need to, I can make that knowledge very public. Very expensive for him.
Option three: I turn him into an asset.
That’s myfavoriteoption.
Jake Callahan is former Delta Force—so are his two friends. Men with those skills don't just disappear into ranch life. They get bored. They get restless.
And they can beuseful.
I've seen how they operate—the precision, the discipline, the way they extracted Emma from the ridge under fire. That's not amateur hour. That's professional-grade tactical capability—the kind of capability that's worth a lot of money.
The kind I could use.
Here's what Jake doesn't understand yet. He thinks he's protecting Emma by threatening me. He doesn’t get that every time he moves to protect her, he shows me exactly where to apply pressure.
Every time he positions himself between her and danger, he shows me the one thing he'll sacrifice everything for.
And men who'll sacrifice everything?
They're easy to control.
I don't need to kill Jake Callahan. I just need to make him understand that Emma's safety depends on his cooperation. One job. Then another. Then another.
Or I make a phone call, and Emma Hayes has an accident on one of those mountain roads she loves so much.
Jake will see it coming. He'll know exactly what's happening.
And he'll do it anyway.
Because that's what men like him do when you threaten the one thing they can't lose.
They break.
In less than two hours, I arrive at the property on Old Granite Highway. I had to shift everything east after Callahan and his buddies blew up my operation in Iron Ridge. We have contingency plans for situations like that.
This building is the same as the others: forgotten and isolated. The kind of place people avoid.
By the time I pull in, the trucks are already there. Engines idling. Men moving. Routine. I step out, boots hitting gravel.
The nearest man straightens. "Everything's set,” he assures me. “We're rotating drivers. No repeat patterns."
I nod once and keep walking.
Inside, it smells like dust, oil, and flop sweat. The crates are stacked, ready to be moved out.
It takes a couple of hours to pack the vans. I stand outside and watch the night swallow the last set of taillights. My gaze drifts out over the dark land stretching past the lot.
Quiet.
Waiting.
