I have sat at desks in other countries and watched dots like this one and decided what to do about them, and the man I wasthen was a different man than the one sitting at this desk right now.
The man I was then would have left this cabin tonight on a bike with a long gun in a roll and a clean rendezvous in a town two hundred miles from anywhere.
That man's not who I am anymore. I've got a six-year-old in the next room, a woman doing my laundry, and an old dog on my floor.
I'm handling this without ever leaving the ranch.
I take a slow breath through my nose, then I pull my phone off the desk and dial Banshee.
He picks up on the second ring. "Yeah?"
"Stay on the gate today. Don't leave it. Bex brings you food, you eat where you stand."
"What is it?"
"Hartley moved within an hour of us."
Two seconds of silence. He clears his throat. "I won't move."
"Thanks, brother."
I end the call and dial Thunder. He picks up before the first ring finishes. "Yeah, brother?"
"Hartley moved closer. You and Raine close to the cabin today?"
A breath on the line. The sound of Thunder shifting his weight, boots scraping on what's probably his front porch. "Mama Lou's got her until afternoon. Maybe I'll keep her there for the next couple of nights, just in case."
His voice is the careful, measured one. The one he uses when he's already deciding things he isn't saying. "Don't let her wander."
"I won't."
A short silence. The kind that says he heard the order and the order behind the order.
"Stay reachable."
"I'm always reachable."
I end the call, pull up Blaze's number and dial. He picks up on the second ring. The clubhouse office is quiet behind him. "What's happened?"
"Hartley's moved. We're an hour from him. Need you to put a brother on each of the property gates, not just the front. South pasture access, east, the access road back of the round pen."
The pause is Blaze running the names in his head. I can almost hear him assigning bodies to gates.
"Done. I'll move Miller and the other prospects to the south, Briggs to the east, the new prospect to the access road. I'll cover the gate rotation with Banshee."
I pick up my coffee. The mug is still warm. "Thank you, brother."
"You handling it the way you were trained to?"
The question is the kind of question Blaze asks when he's giving me room to say more if I want to. I don't. "Yes."
"All right."
He ends the call.
I sit at the desk with the phone in my hand and look at the screen. The dot is still where it was a minute ago. Stationary. Waiting.
Hadley appears at my shoulder. She didn't make a sound coming over. She's standing close enough that I can feel the warmth of her arm next to mine and she's looking at the monitor with the dot on it. "What is that?"