Chapter Nine
After dinner, Ty and Dale left Oren taking a shower back in the suite, and were taking a shift watching the drones fly over. Binoculars to his eyes, Dale let his breathing match the quiet.
“North fence is clear,” Ty said, watching the tree line. “Rolling east.”
A thin, insect whine slid in from the dark. Dale didn’t look toward it right away. H; he found the sound in the space first, then lifted the glass and caught the shape—small quad, no nav lights, a gimbal tucked under the belly.
“There,” he said. “Commercial frame. Lights killed.”
He set the binoculars to his chest and opened the tablet. A pinch brought the map in tight. “See the way it loiters over the service road? He’s mapping, not joyriding.” Dale said, keeping his voice easy.
The drone drifted along the outer line and paused just long enough to take them in, then eased south into the gap where the cameras don’t overlap.
“Blind spot?” Ty asked.
“About seven seconds with no lens on it,” Dale said. “We know it’s there. It’s on the list to fix.” He tracked the speck until it thinned into dark again. “Which means he’s starting to pick up patterns.”
Ty looked over, his hand on the jammer case. “We could knock it out without tripping lights or alarms.”
Dale shook his head. “Not yet. We take one, they send more. We need to learn the pilot first.”
He logged the pass, thumb quick and steady, and time-stamped the hover over the service road.
“We have done a lot up here in a short amount of time. There is a lot of chatter about the Ridge around the community, curiosity is normal. If it’s a neighbor’s kid, I’ll buy him a new kit and give him a lecture. If it’s not—”
“We’ll know soon enough I guess,” Ty said.
They let the quiet lay down again. Down-valley, a truck changed gears, distant and harmless. The drone’s whine faded and then came back, a shade higher and on a slightly different line.
“Second airframe,” Ty said. “Smaller. Higher pitch.”
“Yep, good call,” Dale found it and let out a slow breath. “Same hand?”
“Feels like it,” Ty said. “Same turns. Same hover time. He’s practiced.”
Dale nodded once. “Yep, right again. So—unknown operator. Consumer gear. Careful. Looking at our fence, not the view.” He dragged his finger and dropped a second track over the first.
“Why the two drones?” Ty asked.
Dale sighed. “Could be using a different camera, infra red, night vision, who knows.”
The second drone slid low over the outer fence and disappeared into the soft corner between cameras.
“Make a note: south run,” Dale said. “Tomorrow, we walk it and put eyes on everything.”
He watched as Ty thumbed it in. “Noted.”
Ty stayed quiet a moment, then said, “You notice anything about Oren tonight?”
“Yeah,” Dale said. He kept the glass moving across the tree line. “Something was off as soon as he got home.”
“He said he was fine,” Ty said. “He wasn’t. And it was certainly not like him to bow out of this.” Ty gestured around at the gear around them. “He loves this tech shit.”
“He was at the new wing tonight as always,” Dale said. “Checking spans.” He pictured Oren bent over Ty’s drawings, neat lines and careful numbers, the way Oren’s hands went still when his head got loud. “Think something happened?”
“I think he’ll tell us when he processes it all, that’s his MO,” Ty said. “If it had been something big he would have said something straight away. I think it might just be the voices in his head getting loud again.”
“I hear that.” Dale lifted the radio, thought better of putting Oren’s name on the air, and set it back down. “Fence first.”
Two more passes, five minutes apart. Dale marked each one. The arcs matched—loiter over the service road, drift to the blind spot, climb out to the west. A man could build a schedule from that kind of attention.
“Whoever’s flying has hours,” Ty said, lower now. “Real hours, not hobby hours.”
“Okay,” Dale said. “Unknown pilot, mapping behavior. We keep our heads down and gather intel. We don’t tip our hand until we’re ready.” He tapped the tablet once more and saved the overlay. “If it repeats tomorrow, we’ll be able to guess his next turn.”
He wanted to drop the bird, hard and clean, just to let the night know who owned the ridge. He wanted to go find Oren and make him sit and explain why his eyes hadn’t settled that night. He did neither. He stayed on the line of departure—didn’t step off—because someone had to.
Bateman’s voice came clean and clipped through their comms. “Roof, copy?”
“Go,” Dale said.
“Conference room. All leads. Now.”
“On our way.” Dale capped the binoculars and slung them. “Log what we’ve got,” he told Ty. “We’ll brief downstairs.”
Dale closed the tablet. Ty looked past him into the dark. “You think this is about the drones?”
“Probably,” Dale said. He took one last look at the trees and the space above them—nothing moving but night. “Either way, we go.”
They climbed down off the roof. Dale matched his pace to Ty’s in the hall, already stacking the conversation he didn’t want to have with Oren against the one he had to have with the team. First the conference room. Then the fence. Then Oren. One thing at a time.
He could live with that order for the next ten minutes.
****
The conference room was pretty quiet when he and Dale walked in.
Ty took the end of the table because it let him see everyone at once—Bateman at the head, arms crossed over his chest, Marsh to his left, phone face-down for once, Ricky and Ezra across from the bank of windows, Oren two seats down from Ty, jaw set, Dale beside him, steady like a wall.
The screen on the far end hummed alive with Dev’s face, lit by his own monitor.
Hogan wasn’t in the room, but he figured the man was probably on watch or something.
Ty tried to put his attention where it belonged—on the briefing that was about to take place—but his gaze kept sliding back to Oren.
Same shirt from an hour ago, same clean lines, but something in the posture off by degrees.
Color high in his cheeks, the look he wore when he was holding something in.
Dale had seen it, too. Ty could feel the heat of his focus from the next chair like a second pulse.
“Let’s keep this tight,” Bateman said. He didn’t raise his voice.
He never needed to. “Two items. One, the air over our fence line is busier than it should be and it has certainly increased in the last twelve hours.” He lifted a page.
“The Ridge had two unlit commercial frames running the perimeter in repeats. Mapping behavior. Dale and Ty logged arcs and times. We’ll walk camera gaps at first light.
Until then no heroics. We collect information and relay it back.
” A pause, then, almost offhand, “Ty and Oren are in here because they’re field-ready if this turns tonight or anytime soon. ”
Ty didn’t look at Oren this time, but the words hit him hard.
The last time violence came to the Ridge, he’d been unprepared.
Hell, he’d even questioned whether he could pull a trigger if he needed to.
Field-ready meant the room could ask things of them.
And with two men who meant more to him than his own life in the room, he knew he would do whatever needed to be done to protect them, and anyone on the Ridge.
“And two?” Ricky asked.
Bateman placed his hands on his hips and took a deep breath before he answered. “Hogan’s gone.”
The entire room froze. That was not at all what Ty was expecting to hear.
“What do you mean, gone?” Dale asked the million-dollar question, his voice colder than Ty had ever heard before. “I saw him at the gym and then in the pool earlier tonight.”
Bateman slid a second page forward and didn’t look down at it. “He filed a flight plan and launched. Solo. He’s headed to Hawaii.”
The room went quiet in the way rooms do when shock steals the oxygen from the conversation.
Ty’s stomach did the small sink he hated, the one that felt like missing a step in the dark.
Ezra’s head turned toward Ricky. Ricky was already looking back.
That look said a history Ty didn’t yet have all the details of and wasn’t sure he wanted.
“When do we go after him,” Dale said. Not if. When. The word had weight.
“Not yet,” Dev said from the screen, his tone measured. “He’s not lost. He’s working a thing he needs to work, and he needs to do it without a net. He’ll be back online when he can be, and we’ll go when he needs us.”
“What thing?” Marsh asked. It came out more clipped than curious.
“If I could say cleanly, I would,” Dev said. “Call it unfinished business. Call it something he can’t hear if we’re in the room. Right now, he’s in the air. He’s cleared to fly. We let him run it until he calls us in.”
Ty exhaled through his nose, slow. He believed in plans. He believed in men doing the thing only they could do. He thought about what Dale had said about him at the gym and the way Hogan had moved like sleep was a luxury only other men got.
Ty watched Oren’s hands. Flat on the table. Still. He could hold still for hours when his head was loud.
Bateman ticked off assignments. “Marsh, cameras and cycles. Ricky, exterior lights. Ezra, gate rhythms and vehicles we don’t know.
Dale, walk the south run at first light.
Oren, I know that you’re managing the lion’s share of the build at the moment, so Ty, you’re with Dale.
” He looked back at Dev. “We’ll have a better read by noon tomorrow. ”
A chair scraped. Oren stood.
Even before he spoke, Ty knew it wasn’t going to be good. Everything about his stance screamed tension. Color high in this cheek bones. Shoulders tight.
Oren glanced once at Ty, then at Dale, and said, “I had company at the build tonight.”
The tension in the room notched up a degree. Bateman didn’t move. “Say again.”