Page 47 of Untamed Hunter Daddy

“Maria,” Ryker says. “The woman who sang.”

“Maria.” I say her name carefully. “She was one of the fourteen they recovered. I asked Dr. Engel. She’s in a safe house in Billings now. She’s okay. She’s learning English. She still sings.”

Kane pulls the drive and seals it in an evidence bag. He labels it with a case number, a date, and my name in neat block letters, then sets it on the table beside the maps. Two inches of scratched plastic in a ziplock bag. Looking like nothing. Containing everything.

“I need to call Mason,” Kane says. He takes the satellite phone onto the porch. Through the window I hear the low murmur of his voice delivering the news that’s about to change the shape of the case.

Ryker comes around the table. He doesn’t say anything at first. He just takes my hand and holds it.

“Thirty seconds,” he says.

“Thirty seconds.”

“You changed everything in thirty seconds.”

“I pressed copy and paste. A kindergartner could have done it.”

“A kindergartner wasn’t standing in a hallway at a trafficking site with a predator thirty feet away. You were. And you pressed the button.”

I lean into him. His arm comes around me as the fire burns, and finally I feel like we’re getting somewhere. That maybe this nightmare will all be over soon.

24

Zoe

I go back to the apartment one last time to collect my life.

Ryker says we’re moving to a safe house in Bridger tomorrow while the operation enters its final phase. Tyler’s network is being mapped from the flash drive. Arrest warrants are being drafted. The window between now and the takedown is measured in days, and during those days I can’t be in Timber Creek because that’s where his people know to look. So today is the last time I’ll stand in this apartment for a while, maybe a long while. Ryker drove me down so I could pack whatever matters enough to carry.

It turns out most of what matters fits in a cardboard box.

The animal mugs come first. I wrap each one carefully in the dish towels from the kitchen drawer. The cat. The owl. The hedgehog with the tiny painted smile. I hold the hedgehog for a long time, turning it in my hands. I bought it with tip money on a Saturday afternoon at a thrift store for three dollars. The woman at the register said it was cute. I carried it home and set it on the shelf and it became the first thing I looked at every morning in a kitchen where nobody else drank coffee.

Three dollars. That’s what it cost to not be alone for the first ten seconds of every day.

The yellow curtains come down next. They don’t fold well. The fabric is cheap and permanently creased from hanging in the same position. I fold them as best I can and put them in the box.

Ryker is in the doorway, leaning against the frame, watching me pack. He offered to help. I said no. This is something I need to do with my own hands.

I find things I’d forgotten. A half-finished thousand-piece puzzle of a cottage garden sitting on the card table in the corner. The edge pieces are complete but the center is still empty. I look at it and leave it. Some things can’t be packed.

The framed photo of my parents goes in the box. The cheap dollar-store frame still tilts to the left no matter how many times I adjust it. My mother’s face looks up at me from behind the scratched glass, slightly surprised, slightly amused.

“Hey, Mom,” I say quietly. “I’m leaving. Not the town. The apartment. I’m going somewhere safer for a while and when I come back I might not come back here. But wherever I end up, the curtains are coming with me. And the hedgehog. And you.”

I press my thumb against the glass over her face for five seconds, then let go.

The box is full. It isn’t heavy. My entire life, the parts of it that are mine, weighs about fifteen pounds. I tape it shut. Ryker takes it from me without being asked and carries it down the stairs to the truck.

I stand in the empty apartment for a moment. Squares of lighter paint where the photos hung. Dust outlines on the shelf where the mugs stood. The window bare, afternoon light coming in too bright.

“Ready?” Ryker asks from the bottom of the stairs.

“Ready.”

We take Route 12 back toward the cabin. The highway is two lanes, winding, cut into the mountainside. The afternoon light is going orange and long. Ryker drives with one hand on the wheel and one on the shifter, eyes on the road in the way that means routine, not alert. We’re forty minutes from Bridger. Mason’s last update said the threat level in this corridor is low.

I’m watching the mountains through the passenger window when Ryker’s posture changes.