Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 56395 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 282(@200wpm)___ 226(@250wpm)___ 188(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56395 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 282(@200wpm)___ 226(@250wpm)___ 188(@300wpm)
“Those books don’t prove I knew anything,” Wade snapped, though the panic in his stare ruined the denial. “My employees used this place without permission. Same as the Rutledge barn.”
Cipher shoved his hair away from his eyes. “Then they forged your signature, used your accounts, recorded your cut, and sent orders from your phone. Must be exhausting getting framed this often.”
Wade’s gaze moved from the ledger to the accelerant before settling on me with the cruelty he’d used to silence frightened ranchers and witnesses. “The fire was a warning. A lesson she should’ve learned the first time. That little bitch kept sticking her nose into business she didn’t understand, and everything afterward was her fault.”
My rage narrowed instead of exploding. Wade’s breathing, posture, and every efficient way I could end him became separate pieces of information. But killing him would satisfy me for seconds and cost Raines the living defendant his case needed. More importantly, it would let Wade influence the decision, and no man who had hurt Jacqueline would ever control me that way.
I caught his shirt and dragged him close enough to see the certainty in my face. “You burned her grandfather’s barn, fired into our home, and sent your son to drag her through a door because she wouldn’t crawl away from land you wanted. You’re going to give us the last cache and name every man who took part in the fire. Then you’ll learn what happens when somebody mistakes restraint for weakness.”
Wade tried to smile. “You need my confession.”
“No,” Judge replied, closing the ledger inside an evidence sleeve. “Raines has stolen equipment, financial records, messages, arson materials, and living witnesses. We don’t need you to confess to shit.”
“What we need,” Hawkeye added, “is the cache before another idiot moves it and the names of everyone who poured fuel around a sleeping woman.”
Wade finally understood that cooperation wouldn’t buy freedom, but he still offered information like a bargain. He gave us the location of a storage shed near the county line containing two recent machines and stripped parts, then identified the men who carried fuel onto the ranch, fired into the house, and rammed the fence. Cipher sent the cache coordinates through the secure channel while Ghost checked the names against what the prisoners had already admitted.
“See?” Wade said, hope turning his face greasy with sweat. “I helped. We can settle this.”
“I never offered a deal.”
The men whose crimes ended at moving stolen equipment had already earned bruises during the intercept, and our code demanded nothing more merely because they were helpless now. Trigger and Breach restrained them beside the recovered machinery, leaving them capable of standing when deputies arrived. The men who had burned an occupied ranch, fired into a home, or helped Trent take Jacqueline had chosen differently, and the judgment waiting for them reflected those choices.
Wade began fighting the cuffs when Hawkeye cleared a heavy workbench near the center of the warehouse. I forced him against the scarred steel and took the short quarry hammer from the rack, its solid head designed for controlled breaks instead of wild swings.
“You don’t get to do this,” Wade shouted. “You think you’re better than me because you wear a patch and pretend you have rules?”
“I know exactly who I am.” I trapped his dominant hand against the bench while Hawkeye held his shoulder. “I don’t hunt people weaker than me and call it business.”
The hammer fell once, collapsing the bones across the back of his hand. Wade’s scream ripped through the warehouse while his knees buckled, but I kept the ruined wrist pinned until the first shock passed and his breathing told me he would remain conscious.
“That was for every rancher you terrorized into silence.” I forced him upright and positioned his right leg against the bench support. “This one is for Jacqueline.”
He begged then, spilling promises, money, property, and names while sweat poured down his face. None of it erased the burned barn, the bullets through our house, or Trent’s hand around Jacqueline’s arm. One controlled strike destroyed Wade’s knee without opening an artery, leaving him alive, breathing, and permanently incapable of stalking another frightened witness or dragging a woman toward a truck.
The judgment delivered to the others remained equally measured. Thieves were left with the injuries earned during the fight, while the arsonists and gunmen lost the use of the hands or knees they had chosen to turn against innocent people. No one celebrated afterward. We checked pulses, bound injuries to prevent anyone bleeding out, and positioned every prisoner beside the stolen machinery without contaminating the evidence Judge had marked for Raines. Vengeance without control created another predator, and our code demanded punishment without surrendering the line separating us from Wade.
Judge placed an anonymous call through Black Castle’s public tip line, reporting the armed men, stolen equipment, and injured suspects inside the warehouse. He gave Raines enough detail to find and document everything properly, then destroyed the burner while Cipher confirmed deputies and ambulances were minutes away. We left through the eastern service route Jacqueline had found and watched from the ridge as Raines’s convoy entered the quarry.