Chapter Two
~ Decker ~
The silence between us stretched taut, my grandfather’s words hanging in the air. The small room suddenly felt even smaller, the walls leaning in.
I kept my expression neutral, waiting for him to continue, though my gut had already dropped to somewhere around my boots. When the old man made direct statements, they tended to land with the impact of concrete blocks.
“I’m not dying,” he said finally, his voice low enough that it wouldn’t carry beyond the closed door. “The phone call was a lie.”
My jaw locked, teeth grinding together. I kept my face still, but my hands went flat on my thighs, pressing down to stop them from curling into fists. Six hundred miles of driving, eight years of absence, and the words I’m not dying.
I almost said something—was on the edge of asking what the fuck he thought he was playing at—when I caught the look in his eyes. Fear. Raw and unmistakable, cutting across a face that had never shown it in all the years I’d known him.
The anger went sideways, dissolving into something harder to define. I’d seen fear on people’s faces before—hundreds of them, in dozens of places—but never here. Not on him.
“I’m listening,” I said, my voice coming out steadier than I’d expected.
The story came out in pieces. My grandfather’s best friend of more than fifty years, a man named Earl Arnold, had a grandson named Jasper. An omega.
“He showed up on Earl’s doorstep six months ago,” my grandfather continued, the words coming faster now that the hardest part was out.
“Battered nearly beyond recognition. They’d laid him off from the hospital in Omaha—budget cuts, they said, but we all know what it really was. Then the trouble started in town.”
I knew exactly what “trouble” meant in this context.
I’d seen it before—the cruelty that was reserved for omegas in places like this.
Sometimes it was unplanned, the random violence of men who’d been drinking and didn’t like what they saw.
Sometimes it was calculated, a systematic effort to drive omegas out or keep them in line.
“Some people want to hurt him for what he is,” my grandfather said. “Others want to claim him by force. Earl’s too old to stop it—too frail—and Jasper’s trapped.”
He wanted Jasper out of Nebraska, tonight, taken somewhere safe. He’d thought of Montana—Black Butte, specifically.
“You’ve got a job in Montana, a place there, which means you’ve got connections, a place to keep him until he can get settled.
Earl and I have money saved—enough to pay his way until he can find work.
And you—“ He looked at me directly, no apology in his gaze. “You’re the only person I trust to do it.”
I sat with that for a moment, turning it over in my head.
It wasn’t just that I didn’t know Jasper—had never met the man, had no idea what he looked like or what his situation actually entailed.
It was that walking blind into a stranger’s situation—with no intelligence, no sense of the opposition, no plan beyond “get in and get out”—was exactly the kind of mistake that got people killed.
“This isn’t an extraction,” I said, flat and direct.
“I don’t have a team. I don’t have backup.
I don’t even know what the threat looks like or how many people I’m dealing with.
You’re asking me to go in blind and come out with someone who’s got no reason to trust me, and you’re giving me less than twelve hours to pull it off. ”
My grandfather didn’t argue. He didn’t try to minimize the risks or convince me it was simpler than it looked.
He just held my gaze, letting the fear in his eyes do all the talking.
It was the first time in my life he’d asked me for something I couldn’t do with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back, and he knew it.
“It’s not just a favor,” he said finally.
“It’s personal. Earl’s the only friend I’ve kept all these years.
The only one who didn’t care what your father said about you, who didn’t take sides when things went bad.
He stood by me when most people wouldn’t even say your name.
” He paused, hands working at the edge of the blanket. “I’d do it myself if I could.”
The unspoken end of that sentence—but I can’t—hung between us.
My grandfather, who’d fixed my broken arm in the barn rather than take me to the hospital because he knew what questions would be asked.
Who’d taught me to drive the tractor at ten and shoot at twelve, who’d never once made me feel like I was something broken that needed to be fixed.
“I’ll do it,” I said, the words coming out before I’d made a conscious decision. “But I need information. Address. Description. Who we’re looking for. What we’re up against.”
My grandfather reached for the nightstand, pulled open the drawer, and handed me a folded piece of paper. I took it without opening it, keeping my expression neutral.
“Jasper’s a nurse,” my grandfather said. “Used to work with premature babies. Smart. Quiet. Runs more scared than he should, but anyone would after what he’s been through.” He paused, then added, “He’s got the Arnold look—you’ll know him when you see him.”
I stood up, pulling on my jacket, and checked my watch. Just past seven. I crossed to the nightstand and retrieved my sidearm from the holster I’d set down when I came in. I checked it by habit—magazine seated, chamber clear, safety on—then tucked it into the waistband at my hip.
“Don’t wait up,” I said.
My grandfather nodded, the fear in his eyes giving way to something that looked almost like relief. “I won’t. And Decker—“
I turned back, hand on the doorknob.
“Thank you.”
I slipped out through the back of the house without a word to anyone else.
The screen door’s squeak was loud in the quiet yard, but I doubted anyone in the living room had noticed—they’d have the television on, my father with his feet up and his beer balanced on his stomach, my mother working at something in the kitchen that didn’t require her full attention.
The gravel crunched under my boots as I headed for my truck, the night air cool against my face. Overhead, stars were appearing in the darkening sky, the same stars that had watched over this place for generations. I’d gotten halfway to the truck when I heard the front door open behind me.
“Leaving already?” My mother’s voice carried across the yard, pitched just loud enough to reach me, but not loud enough to carry to the neighbors.
I turned. She stood on the porch, arms crossed over her chest, backlit by the yellow light from the house. Eight years since I’d seen her, and I still couldn’t read the expression on her face.
“I’ve got business in town,” I said.
She nodded once, a short movement that might have been acknowledgment or acceptance or neither. “Will you be back?”
It was the same question I’d asked myself a dozen times on the drive from Montana, turning it over from different angles, trying to find an answer that made sense. I still didn’t have one.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly.
Another nod. She stepped back, one hand on the screen door. “Your grandfather’s been asking for you,” she said. “Every day for weeks now. Even after the doctor said—“ She stopped, the words trailing off. “Anyway. Drive safe.”
The screen door closed behind her with a soft thud. I got in the truck, started the engine, and backed down the drive with my headlights off, following the familiar path by memory.
When I hit the main road, I flicked the lights on and pointed the hood toward town, the folded piece of paper burning a hole in my pocket.
I had a name, an address, and not nearly enough information. It wasn’t a plan—it was barely even a direction—but it was all I had to work with. I’d operated on less, but never by choice.
I killed my headlights half a block out from my destination, rolled the truck to the curb, and covered the last stretch on foot. The night air carried the smell of cut grass and old exhaust, a combination of scents that belonged to small-town Nebraska in summer.
I moved along the edge of the street, staying in the shadows where the streetlights didn’t reach, counting houses as I passed.
The neighborhood was flat and quiet, a row of small clapboard houses with chain-link fences and patches of dead grass struggling up through hard-packed dirt. TV lights flickered behind thin curtains.
I heard them before I rounded the corner of the side yard: four men, maybe five, their voices low and ugly with an edge that came before violence. The wet sound of boots connecting with something that didn’t fight back. A grunt, cut off before it could fully form.
I stepped sideways, putting my back to the neighbor’s garage, and did a quick scan of the area. No other movement. No vehicles that didn’t belong. Just the sounds from around the corner and the distant hum of an air conditioner kicking on.
Two options. Call the sheriff, wait for backup that would arrive too late to matter. Or go in now, with no intel and no exit strategy.
I went with option two.
I didn’t announce myself. The first man went down before any of them registered I was there—a short, controlled strike to the back of the knee, then the base of the skull, and he folded.
The second man swung wide, telegraphing the move with his entire body, and I stepped inside the arc and drove him into the chain-link fence hard enough to rattle the whole length of it. His head snapped back, connecting with metal, and he went slack.
The third and fourth men backpedaled fast when they got a look at what they were dealing with. I didn’t follow. I just gave them one long, flat stare that finished the conversation without words.
They left, dragging their friends between them, boots kicking up dust as they retreated down the street. I let them go because my attention was already on the man on the ground.