Chapter 17: Home Base
The main house at Montgomery Ranch wasn't a house in any conventional sense. It was a low, sweeping fortress of glass and reclaimed limestone, built into the crest of a hill so it seemed to grow from the earth itself. From the east-facing terrace where Beth stood with a mug of black coffee, she could see for twenty miles—past the training paddocks and the quarter-horse barns, across the scrub-dotted flats, all the way to the hazy purple smudge of the distant mountains.It was a view that demanded perspective. It also made approach impossible to miss.
Behind her, through the wall of sliding glass, Dove was spread out at a massive live-edge table, her laptop flanked by two other screens scrolling with code and satellite feeds. The hum of servers, housed in a reinforced basement below, was a faint, constant vibration underfoot.
“Your boy’s busy,” Dove said, not looking up from her screens. “He lit up every contact you’ve got in the last twelve hours. Your assistant, Elliot, is about to have a coronary. He offered her a year’s salary for a hint.”
Beth took a slow sip.The coffee was bitter and strong, exactly how she needed it. “Did she take it?”
“Course not.She’s on the Montgomery payroll, too.Sent the standard ‘Ms. Montgomery is on a digital detox’ auto-reply and flagged it to me.” Dove swiveled her chair.“But he’s scared, Beth.It’s making him sloppy. He’s using his own name, his own numbers. He’s leaving a trail a blind man could follow.”
“Good.” Beth turned from the vista, leaning against the cool glass doorframe. “Let him burn his own bridges.It keeps him from looking for the right path.”
“And the other thing? Our nocturnal visitor?”
Beth’s gaze drifted to the west pasture, invisible from here but felt in her bones.“Double the patrols.Silent ones. I want to know if a jackrabbit farts within a mile of that cellar. And pull everything we have on Vega’s known affiliates. Financials, travel, everything since the nephew went missing.”
Dove nodded, her fingers already flying across the keyboard.“On it.You wanna bring in some of the crew? The ones who specialize in… proactive discouragement?”
“Not yet.” Beth set her mug down. The porcelain clicked softly on the stone table.“We don’t know what he wants. The shell casing was a signature.A calling card.He’ll make contact. We wait.”
She walked back into the airy, sun-drenched great room, all clean lines and seared leather. It was the opposite of Damien’s world of dark wood and velvet. This was a space that held light, that offered no shadows to hide in. She picked up a sleek, burner phone from a charging dock—one of a dozen from the vault.
She didn’t have to look up the number.Her fingers knew the sequence by heart, a muscle memory she’d tried and failed to delete.
It rang once.Twice.
He answered on the third ring, his voice a ragged, desperate thing.“Bethany.” It wasn’t a question.It was a gasp.
“Damien.” She kept her tone flat, procedural. The infinity pool outside glittered, a cruel mirror of the sky.“Where are you?Just tell me you’re safe. Please.” She could hear the strain, the echo of a large, empty space. He was probably in his penthouse, staring at a city he’d somehow lost.“I’m safe. I’m exactly where I need to be.” She paused, letting the silence stretch.“You need to stop. Stop calling my people.Stop tearing through my life looking for evidence of me. You look like a madman.”
A harsh, humorless laugh crackled down the line. “I feel like a madman.You vanished.After everything.After last night.”
“Last night was a mistake. A temporary lapse in judgment.” The lie came easily, polished and cool.
“Bullshit.” The word was sharp, sudden.“You felt it too.Don’t do this. Don’t hide from me.”
“I’m not hiding, Damien.I’m working. You’re the one making a scene.” She walked slowly toward the terrace door, watching a hawk circle on a thermal high above the paddock. “If you actually want a chance—and I’m not saying you have one—you will be quiet.You will be patient. You will wait until I decide to come back to Manhattan.”
“How long?” The anger was gone, replaced by a hollow dread.
“As long as it takes.” She could picture him running a hand through his hair, a gesture of utter frustration she knew intimately. “And if I hear you’ve so much as leaned on another one of my employees, or hired some clumsy private investigator, this ends.Permanently. Do you understand?”
A long, shaky exhale. “I understand.”
“Good.”
“Bethany… I just need to know.Is this about power?Is this about making me hurt? Because it’s working.”
She closed her eyes for a second. The sun was warm on her face. She thought of the cold feel of the rifle stock against her cheek, the smell of damp earth from the cellar, the weight of the legacy she carried here. His world of deals and betrayals seemed so small, so quaintly monstrous.
“It’s not about you, Damien,” she said, and it was the truest thing she’d spoken to him in years. “Not everything is.”
She ended the call before he could reply.Dove whistled low from her workstation. “Cold. Even for you.”
“It was necessary.” Beth placed the burner phone back on the dock.Her hand was steady.“He’ll wait now. He’s terrified of the final door slamming.”
“And that buys us time to deal with the ghost.”
“Exactly.”
The rest of the day bled into the sharp, golden light of late afternoon. Beth changed into worn jeans and boots, walking the perimeter with the head of security, a taciturn man named Hector who’d been with their father. They reviewed blind spots, updated motion-sensor grids, established new patrol routes. She spoke to the hands, to the grooms, a queen moving among her subjects, her drawl becoming more pronounced, her laughter easier.Bell-Elise Montgomery, home.
As dusk settled, painting the sky in streaks of violet and orange, Dove found her in the vintage wine cellar, inspecting a bottle of a ’47 Bordeaux their grandfather had laid down.
“Got a ping,” Dove said, her voice dropping the casual tone.“Not Vega. The other thing.”
Beth didn’t put the bottle down. “Tell me.”
“One of the shell companies Vega used back in the day.It’s been dormant for over a decade.It just activated. Made a single, large wire transfer.To a new LLC. The beneficiary of that LLC is a law firm in Dallas. A firm that just filed a motion this afternoon.”
Beth waited, her fingers cool against the dusty glass.“They’re filing a civil claim.For the wrongful death of one Emilio Vega. Alejandro’s nephew.” Dove leaned against a rack. “They’re naming the Montgomery Family Trust. And they’re subpoenaing all our financials, all our property records, going back thirty years.”
Beth set the bottle carefully back in its slot.A civil suit.It was brilliant. It wasn’t a cartel hit.It was a legal bludgeon. It forced everything into the light—their assets, their structure, their secrets. It was the perfect, poisonous first move.“He’s not trying to kill us,” Beth said softly. “He’s trying to take the ranch.To take everything. Legally.”
“And the discovery process would be a guided tour of our vault,” Dove finished. “He’s using their system to rob us.”
Outside, the first stars were pricking through the deep blue. The security lights along the distant fence line flicked on, tiny pearls in the gathering dark.
“We have a court date?” Beth asked, her voice now all business, all cold focus.“Seventy-two hours. Judge’s emergency order.He’s got someone bought.”
Beth smiled then. It was a thin, dangerous thing.“Good. That’s sooner than I expected.” She walked past Dove, out of the cellar and into the hall.“Get our lawyer on the line.The real one. Then pull the file on the presiding judge. I want to know what he loves, what he fears, what he’s hiding.”
“You’re not gonna fight this straight?”
Beth paused at the foot of the stairs, her green eyes catching the low light.“We’ll fight. But we’ll also send a message of our own. If Alejandro wants to play in the light, we need to remind him what we do in the dark.Prepare the guest house, Dove. I think it’s time we had a visitor.”
She took the stairs two at a time, her mind already racing ahead, mapping the moves on a board that was suddenly much larger than just her and Damien, larger than the ranch.It was a claim on her history, on her family’s soul. And as she reached her study, the dormant instincts of a fixer’s daughter settling into place like a well-worn coat, she knew one thing with absolute certainty.
They had just started the clock.