Page 157 of Found by the Pack

Then there’s the moment when it comes down to seeing or not seeing: a black pickup on the north road, a spray of motion as it tries to break a bar. My hands are already on the radio as I shout coordinates.

“Stop them. Tire spikes. Now.”

Someone answers and the world houses itself into a single heartbeat of movement. Road spikes unspool. Tires meet metal.

The truck careens, fights for traction, and then gives up. Four figures tumble out and scatter. I run.

I am wild with blood and intention. Every name crawls up my throat—Sadie, Gabe, Shepard—and I run until my lungs are on fire.

We close like a tide, and I won’t stop until I’m face to face with the men who thought they could take her without consequence.

CHAPTER 41

Gabe

The phone in my hand feels heavy, like it’s another piece of gear I’m carrying into the fire. I answer before it finishes ringing because there’s no time for small talk, no time to let the town’s chaos settle into sentences.

“Jake,” I say.

“Gabe—what the hell is going on?” His voice is cracked with stress. “Why did my wife send me a video of a crime in progress? I just talked to Boone but I had no idea it was this bad.”

My jaw clenches so hard the muscles ache. “Shepard sent it to Millie, who sent it to you,” I say, words sharp and clipped. “It shows Scott’s pack taking Sadie. Shepard’s been stabbed. I’m at the harbor, but I have to go after her.”

There’s a beat of static and then Jake exhales, the sound somehow steadier than anything else out here. “This town needs a sheriff,” he says quietly. “We can’t keep doing this on scraps and prayer.”

I don’t argue. The town has been paper-mended for months—volunteers and goodwill propping up what real infrastructure should have held together.

“I know,” I say. “I found an accelerant canister. This wasn’t a random fire. This was deliberate, and they used our own stuff.”

“You think it’s connected?” Jake asks.

“I know it is,” I say. The heat from the fire is already at the edge of my hearing, a low thunder in my bones. “This was organized. They came for her. They set those fires to sow chaos and cover their tracks.”

There’s a long pause, and in it I can hear other voices in the mayor’s background—someone barking into a radio, a car door slamming.

Jake swears, low and furious. “Good. God help us. If they were waiting, if they timed the fires with the town hall and trying to break us—” He cuts off. “Gabe, do whatever you need. Take whoever you have. I’ll call everyone I can think of. I’m radioing the governor’s office, and I’ll get aerial support if we can. You be careful, Gabe.”

Relief punches through me, quick and savage. The mayor’s voice is a lever in my hands.

I think of the rookies I left on the blaze, of Maddox holding the line while I ran, of volunteers dumping buckets at storefronts. I think of Sadie’s eyes in that grainy video. I think of Shepard, bleeding in the street, his phone in a daze of blood and grit.

I taste copper on my tongue again and it fuels me.

“I’m going to Route 9,” I say before I hang up. “We cut them off at the mill and box them in.”

I grab a few men and we tear down Route 9 like wolves. The drive is a blur of lights and smoke and radio static, a hundred pieces of the town’s life flashing past—boarded windows, curtains still smoldering, the hardware’s collapsed roof, a mural wall blackened but clinging to color.

My throat tightens and I bite back all the words that want to spill out. I think of Sadie’s hands covered in paint, the way she’d tilt her head to listen, the way she’d laugh like sunlight. I think of what it would mean to lose her.

Traffic reports ping in my ear—Riley says a black pickup turned north at the old mill; Knuckles’ men are there. Someone else says the truck tried to push through a spike and blew two tires. A hundred tiny movements converge into a single point I can aim at.

We catch them at a hairpin curve where the old mill road folds in on itself, a place easy to ambush because the trees crowd close and the ground is treacherous.

The pickup is there, black and ugly in the dust, one tire shredded. Men spill out like shadows—four of them—faces low, hands on guns. They move like scorpions, fast and practiced.

I lean forward and feel the air press against my skin. This is it. I taste iron and ash and adrenaline. I remember what I promised myself years ago in a different kind of fight: do not let the ones you claim fall.

“Hold,” I say into my radio. My voice goes cold. “Do exactly what we trained for. Don’t give them a route. Cut their exits. Rope them in. Box them.”