Chapter Five #3
“I miss the NICU,” Jasper said suddenly, the words coming out unprompted, directed more at the window than at me. “Not the hospital. Not the politics of it. Just the work itself, you know? The weight of it.”
I kept my eyes on the road, giving him the space to say what he needed to without the pressure of being watched. “I know what it feels like,” I said, the words coming out before I’d decided to offer them. “To be cut off from the thing you were built for.”
He turned to look at me then, the movement quick enough that I caught it in my peripheral vision. I didn’t turn my head, kept my attention on the road ahead, but I felt the weight of his gaze, like he was seeing something he hadn’t expected to find.
“The Navy?” he asked, voice careful in the way it always was when he was asking a question he wasn’t sure he had the right to.
I nodded once. “Eight years. Three deployments.”
He was quiet for a moment, the kind of silence that wasn’t empty but full of things being considered. “Does it get easier?” he asked finally. “Being away from it?”
The question landed with more weight than its four words should have been able to carry. I thought about the answer, the version of myself that existed only in the space between “go” and “stop”—and chose the truth over the comfort.
“No,” I said. “But you get better at carrying it.”
He nodded, accepting what I’d offered without pushing for more. We drove the rest of the way without talking, but the silence between us had changed somehow—no longer the careful distance of the morning, but something that felt almost like companionship.
Dinner was quiet—spaghetti again, with sauce from the same jar but different seasonings added. Jasper had set the table while I cooked, his movements quick and efficient, finding plates and glasses in cabinets he’d never opened before.
He ate with better appetite than he had at breakfast, his attention divided between his food and the conversation—Jojo discussing recipes and the garden, Burke talking about a security system he was installing in the barn, Carter describing a bookshelf Macon was building, Rawley outlining the next day’s work assignments.
No one asked Jasper direct questions about Nebraska or why he was here or how long he was staying.
They talked around him rather than at him, creating a space where he could participate without having to explain himself.
It was the kind of consideration that came from recognizing someone was carrying a weight they weren’t ready to name.
When the meal was finished, Jasper helped clear the table without being asked, scraping plates and stacking them in the sink with the same careful attention he brought to everything.
I left him there, talking with Danny about different pasta shapes and whether the ridges actually held sauce better, and went to find my laptop.
It was still on the kitchen table where I’d left it that morning, closed but not put away. I opened it, entered the password, and pulled up the secure messaging system I used for contacts who needed to stay off official channels.
My source in Nebraska—a former SEAL who’d gone into private security after his discharge—had been quiet for three days, which wasn’t like him. I’d sent a message that morning, asking for an update on the “situation” I’d mentioned when we’d first arrived.
The response was waiting when I logged in, time stamped two hours earlier: Confirmed activity re: your inquiry.
Gerald Hughs, 47, Omaha-based. Family money, real estate development, connections that don’t show up in public records.
Has been making inquiries about Jasper Arnold through unofficial channels for the past four days.
The inquiries are not casual—he’s building a picture of where your friend went.
Multiple sources confirm he’s serious about finding him.
No idea why, but the man doesn’t waste time or money. Be careful.
I read it twice, making sure I hadn’t missed anything. Then I sat with the screen for a moment, the blue light washing my face in the darkening room, and thought about Jasper closing the laptop the night before and saying nothing.
He’d known. Or at least suspected. And instead of bringing it to me—the person whose literal job it was to manage threats to the property and its occupants—he’d chosen to carry it alone. To sit with it in the dark while I sat six feet away, unaware.
That bothered me more than the threat itself.
Not as an offense—I understood the math of trust, how it had to be earned in increments rather than assumed—but as a signal.
That after everything—after the extraction, after the drive, after watching him with the baby and the mother and the O’Reilly kids—Jasper still didn’t fully believe I would stay in front of this when it got complicated.
I closed the laptop and went to find him.
He was where I’d expected—on the east porch, the same spot he’d chosen the night before. He sat with his back to the house, knees pulled up, eyes on the mountain to the west. The light was fading fast, turning the peak from gold to purple to a dark silhouette against the darkening sky.
I pushed open the screen door and stepped out, letting it swing shut behind me with a soft click. Jasper didn’t turn, but I saw his shoulders tense slightly at the sound—the particular awareness of prey animals, always tracking potential threats even when they appeared to be at rest.
I crossed to the steps and sat down—not at the far end where a stranger would have placed themselves, but close enough that conversation wouldn’t require raised voices. Close enough that he’d know I was there.
“Got a message from my contact in Nebraska,” I said, keeping my voice even, no alarm in it. “About the search you found last night.”
He went perfectly still beside me, not breathing, not moving, like he was trying to minimize his presence in the physical world. “What did it say?” he asked finally, the words coming out careful, like he was afraid of what the answer might be.
I told him. Not softening it, not making it sound worse than it was, just the facts as they’d been given to me: Gerald Hughs, 47, Omaha-based, with money and connections and a clear interest in finding Jasper.
No elaboration, no theories, just the simple reporting of information that had been gathered.
Jasper’s face moved through a series of expressions I couldn’t fully track—relief first, then dread, then something harder to name underneath both. His hands, resting on his knees, curled into loose fists, then relaxed, then curled again.
“How bad is it?” he asked, voice steadier than it had any right to be.
I gave him the truth. “It’s not nothing,” I said. “But it’s not here yet. We have time to be smart about it. I’m going to make some calls in the morning.”
He nodded once, quick and tight, accepting what I’d said without trying to negotiate it into something easier to carry. Then he went quiet, the kind of silence that had weight and intention behind it.
When he spoke again, his voice was so low I had to lean forward slightly to catch the words.
“Gerald Hughs is the reason I lost my job,” he said, not looking at me, eyes fixed on the mountain.
“He’s—“ He stopped, started again. “He decided I belonged to him. Started showing up at the hospital, sending gifts, calling the unit to ask when I’d be off shift. When I told him I wasn’t interested, he had me fired.
Budget cuts, they said, but everyone knew what it really was. ”
The story came out in pieces after that, not everything but enough—Gerald’s pursuit, the job lost, the return to Nebraska to help his grandfather, the escalating pressure from men Gerald sent when phone calls and gifts didn’t work.
How it had started with surveillance, then threats, then actual physical contact when it became clear Jasper wouldn’t be intimidated into compliance.
“It wasn’t random,” he said, finally looking at me, something moving behind his eyes that I couldn’t quite name. “The men in the side yard. They weren’t just some guys who didn’t like what I was. They were sent. By him. To bring me back or make sure no one else could have me.”
I listened, really listened, keeping my face neutral, my questions minimal. One about timing. One about whether there’d been police involvement. Nothing that would make him feel like he was being interrogated rather than heard.
When he was finished—when the words had run out and there was nothing left but the weight of what he’d carried—he stood up, brushing his palms against his jeans. “I should go in,” he said, voice steadier than it had any right to be. “It’s getting cold.”
I nodded once. “I’ll be in soon.”
He turned and went inside, the screen door closing behind him with a quiet click. I stayed where I was, watching the mountain turn from purple to black against the darkening sky, and started running the problem.
Gerald Hughs. Omaha. Money, connections, and a clear agenda.
We had time, but not unlimited time—a week, maybe two, before he narrowed the search enough to send someone to look.
I needed to make calls—to a former teammate who worked private security in Chicago, to a lawyer I knew in Billings who specialized in protection orders, to Rawley, who had resources I didn’t and contacts who could make certain kinds of problems disappear.
But underneath the tactical thinking—the careful assessment of threat vectors and countermeasures—a different kind of calculation was happening.
A slow, non-professional anger was building in my chest, the kind that had nothing to do with operations or security protocols and everything to do with one person deciding another was property rather than a human being.
I’d seen it before—the cruelty that was reserved for omegas in certain contexts, the way certain men felt entitled to bodies that weren’t theirs. But knowing it existed and seeing its impact on Jasper’s face were different things entirely.
The anger was a liability if I let it drive decision-making. I needed to sit with it, acknowledge it, then set it aside until the immediate problem was handled. Threats first. Feelings after.
So I sat on the porch steps, the mountain dark to the west, and let myself feel exactly what I was feeling—not performing it, not denying it, just letting it exist in the space between one breath and the next.
It wouldn’t change what came next. It wouldn’t alter the decisions that needed to be made. But it was part of the calculation now, one more piece of data to factor into whatever happened tomorrow.
The screen door opened behind me, then closed with a soft click. I didn’t turn—my body recognizing the timing of the footsteps before my brain had processed who they belonged to.
Jasper came down the porch steps and sat near me—not where he’d been before, but closer, close enough that our shoulders would touch if either of us leaned slightly to the side.
He didn’t say anything. Didn’t ask what I was thinking or what came next or whether he should start packing. Just sat with his knees pulled up, eyes on the same piece of horizon I’d been staring at, and let the silence between us expand to fill the space it needed.
After a while—long enough that the cold had worked its way through my jacket and into my bones—he reached over and set something on the step between us: a carved wooden horse, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, its surface worn smooth with handling.
“My grandfather made it,” he said, voice low in the darkness. “When I was seven. It’s the first thing I grabbed when we left.”
I looked at it—the careful detail of the mane, the set of the ears, the way the wood had darkened with age—and understood exactly what he was offering. Not just the object itself, but the story behind it, the piece of himself it represented.
“It’s good work,” I said, accepting what he’d offered without making it into more than it was.
He nodded once, then turned his face back to the mountain. We sat like that as the last of the light faded from the sky, the carved horse between us on the step, its wooden body holding the day’s warmth long after everything else had gone cold.