Page 33 of Montana Justice

Lachlan

The conference room at Warrior Security felt like a cage.

It had been two hours since I’d confronted Piper.

Two hours since she’d been sobbing on my living room floor.

I could still hear that inhuman keening sound she’d made.

Could still see her pulling at her hair hard enough to rip strands from her scalp.

Could still feel the moment my world had tilted sideways with two words: Our daughter .

My hands shook as I gripped the edge of the table.

Beckett, Hunter, Coop, and Aiden were already seated.

Travis’s face filled the main screen, his compound visible behind him.

They’d reconvened, without any details, when I’d texted to let them know we needed to meet.

They all watched me with careful eyes, like I might explode.

Maybe I would.

“Where’s Piper now?” Beckett asked.

“At my house with Jenny.” The words came out rough. I’d called my secretary, asked her to come sit with Piper while I figured out what the hell to do next.

“Jenny? Not one of your deputies?” Beckett crossed his arms over his chest.

“I wasn’t afraid Piper was going to run. I was afraid she might hurt herself. She’s… Christ, I don’t even know how to describe it.” I scrubbed a hand down my face.

“You said there was more,” Hunter prompted. “Something that changes everything.”

My phone felt like lead as I pulled it from my pocket. The photo Piper had shown me—the only one she had of our daughter. My hands trembled as I set it on the table.

“This is Sadie.” Her name caught in my throat. “My daughter. Caleb’s twin sister.”

The silence stretched until I thought I might suffocate in it.

“Twins?” Beckett picked up the phone with reverent care. “What? How? Where is she?”

“Ray has her.” The words burst out of me, along with everything else. Everything that Piper had told me over the past few hours.

How Ray had shown up and beaten her when the twins were two months old. Her waking up and finding Sadie gone. Ray’s ultimatum—spy or never see her daughter again. How he’d demanded information and she’d provided it then gave me the watch a few days ago so Ray could hear everything.

“Three months. That bastard has had my daughter for three months. Using her as leverage to make Piper—” I slammed my fist on the table hard enough to make everyone jump. “Fuck!”

“Lachlan—” Beckett started.

“She should have told me!” The rage erupted, impossible to contain. “The second she showed up with Caleb, she should have trusted me. Instead, she let me believe…let me fall…” I couldn’t finish. Couldn’t admit out loud how completely I’d fallen for the woman who’d been betraying me since day one.

“Would you have believed her?” Hunter asked quietly.

I whirled on him. “What?”

“Three weeks ago, I was the one saying not to trust her. Warning you she might be playing you.” Hunter leaned forward, his gaze steady. “If she’d shown up that first day claiming Ray had kidnapped her daughter, would you have believed her? Or would you have thought it was another con?”

The question hit like cold water. I wanted to say yes, of course I would have believed her. But would I? After she’d stolen from me, disappeared for a year, shown up shoplifting baby formula?

“That’s not the point?—”

“That’s exactly the point,” Hunter interrupted. “She was terrified, traumatized, and completely under Ray’s control. She made the only choice she thought she had.”

“People died because of the intel she gave him!” My voice bounced off the walls. “Kids overdosed on drugs that made it through because our operations were compromised!”

“And if she hadn’t cooperated, your daughter may be dead,” Aiden said bluntly. “It wasn’t a chance she was willing to take. That’s a mother’s love for you: willing to do anything, risk anything, for her child.”

I pressed my palms against my eyes, seeing stars. The photo of Sadie burned behind my eyelids—dark hair, rosebud mouth, my father’s nose. A little girl I’d never held, never even known existed.

“Every time Piper cried…” My voice came out strangled. “All those nights I held her while she sobbed, I thought it was postpartum depression. Exhaustion. But she was crying for our daughter. And I just… I didn’t know. How did I not know?”

“Because she couldn’t tell you,” Travis said through the speakers. “I’ve been analyzing her communications since you left. The level of surveillance Ray maintained… He would have known immediately if she’d tried to get help.”

“She still should have trusted me.” But even as I said it, my conviction wavered. What would I have done in her place? If someone had Caleb, if the price of his life was betraying everything I believed in?

I’d have sold my soul without hesitation. I still would.

“We need to get Sadie back,” I said, the words coming from somewhere deep and primal. “I don’t care what it takes. Stopping the drugs and weapons are important, but not as important as getting my daughter home safely.”

“Agreed,” Hunter said immediately. “And I owe you an apology.”

I looked up, surprised.

“I was wrong about Piper,” he continued. “I saw Ray Matthews’s daughter and assumed the worst. But she’s been fighting a war none of us knew about, trying to protect your children the only way she could.”

“She lied to me.” The betrayal still burned, even understanding why. “Every kiss, every night in my bed, all of it was built on lies.”

“No,” Beckett said firmly. “The situation was built on lies. But what’s between you two? I think that’s real, man. I’ve seen how she looks at you.”

“You mean how she looked at me while reporting my every word to her father?” But the venom had drained from the words. I kept seeing her on the floor, broken, screaming about missing three months of her daughter’s life.

“A mother does whatever she has to do,” Hunter murmured.

“I’m not saying that makes everything okay between you two, I’m just saying that she’s not necessarily the bad guy here.

It’s not that black or white. You guys gave Jada a chance when it wasn’t so simple, and I, for one, am willing to give Piper the same chance. ”

If anyone knew that choices weren’t always black or white, it was Hunter and his fiancée Jada. But everyone else around the table was nodding too.

And while I appreciated my friends’ support, figuring out all this stuff with Piper had to wait. Right now, we had bigger issues at hand. “Thank you. But let’s focus on getting my daughter home where I can meet her and getting Ray Matthews placed behind bars.”

There was a curious mix of hallelujahs and fuck-yeahs, but everyone was in agreement.

“I say we use the watch against him,” Travis said. “It hasn’t been transmitting since I put it in the Faraday box, but Ray doesn’t know what’s happening. As far as he’s concerned, it could just be malfunctioning.”

“You want to feed him false intel,” Hunter said.

“Yep. Make him feel safe. Make him think law enforcement is looking the wrong direction.” Travis pulled up signal data. “I can modify the transmitter, make it seem active while we control what it sends.”

Coop stood up and started pacing. “We could make him think you’re focusing your attention on the east side of town closer to Billings. After last night’s failure, he’s going to be feeling cocky, thinking everything is going according to plan.”

“I think it will work.” Hunter leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “Our team will focus on finding out where he really is, while you focus on feeding him false info over the next forty-eight hours.”

It could work. It was a great plan. I thought about Piper’s face when she’d talked about those thirty-second photos. The desperate way she’d memorized every detail of our daughter before the images vanished. I wasn’t letting her go through that again.

“We’ve got to find where he’s keeping Sadie first,” Beckett said quietly.

“It’ll all have to be timed perfectly.” I rubbed my eyes. God, I needed a cup of coffee. “We have to know Sadie is safe before any sort of raid, but the raid has to be ready because once he finds out we have Sadie, he’ll be in the wind.”

Hunter looked at the screen. “Travis?’

“Already working on it. The burner phone Piper used, Ray’s communications—patterns emerge. Give me time, I’ll find him. We’ll get her to call him a couple times, and I’ll be able to triangulate his location.”

“How much time?” My patience felt threadbare. Every minute that passed was another minute my daughter spent with that monster.

“Not long. I’ll build some programs to make it quicker. Forty hours, tops. By the time we know where his operation is hiding, I’ll know where he’s been calling Piper from.”

Travis cleared his throat. “I’ll get the watch to you when I’m done with it. I’m playing with it now so it will only transmit when you specifically want it to. Otherwise, it will just run some basic chatter sounding like the department, at home, et cetera.”

I looked around the table at these men who’d become brothers. Who’d drop everything to help me save a niece they’d never met.

“I need to be clear,” I said. “Getting Sadie back is all that matters to me. The drugs, the weapons, even Ray—everything else comes second.”

“Agreed,” Beckett said immediately.

Aiden had been quiet this whole time, as he tended to be. The man was not a talker. “We’ll bring her home,” he added. “You have our word.”

I had no doubt.

“Let’s get Sadie back,” I said. “Then we’ll figure out the rest.”

I stood, exhaustion hitting like a physical weight. But tired didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the little girl in that photo.

“I should get back. Need to…” What? Comfort the woman who’d betrayed me? Plan with the mother of my children? I didn’t know what Piper was to me anymore.

“Lachlan,” Hunter called as I reached the door. “I agree with Beck. I think Piper loves you. Real love, not manipulation. That’s why this has been killing her.”

I nodded but couldn’t respond. Couldn’t process love when everything was tangled with lies and desperation and a missing child.

The drive home stretched endlessly. Every mile, I thought about Sadie. She wasn’t old enough to be scared, but I wished she knew we were coming for her.

I thought about Piper too. The woman I’d fallen for despite every warning. Who’d carried this impossible weight alone, crying for our daughter while I held her, unable to share the burden.

Part of me still raged that she hadn’t trusted me from the beginning. But the father in me—the part that would burn the world to protect Caleb—understood with brutal clarity what she’d done.

She’d done what she had to do to keep our daughter alive.

Now, it was my turn.

Ray Matthews had made a crucial mistake. He’d threatened my family. He’d taken my daughter. He’d turned the mother of my children into a weapon against me.

He thought he held all the cards. He was about to learn that a father’s wrath, backed by brothers willing to wage war, was a force he couldn’t contain.

I’d get Sadie back. Whatever it took, whoever I had to go through, whatever lines I had to cross.

My daughter was coming home.