Chapter Two
~ Rawley ~
The road out to the farm was long. It wound through five miles of fence posts, cutting through pastureland so green it made your retinas ache. At every curve, the Blackwater River flashed between stands of pine and aspen, silvered by the last light of day.
When the road crested the final hill, the ranch unfurled in front of me: fields, barns, outbuildings, and the old two-story house standing square against the cut-glass outline of the mountains.
I killed the engine halfway up the drive and let the silence take over. No traffic hum, no neighbors, just the wind sliding over the fields like a whisper you could never quite catch.
I stepped out of the truck, stretching my back until it cracked, then walked around to check on the mustangs. They were fine—more eager to get out than worried about the journey. I unlatched the trailer, but left the ramp up, for now.
The house watched me from the rise, every window a dark, wavy-glassed eye.
The siding was raw and silvered from decades of sun, but it was straight as a rifle barrel.
Porch roof sagged a little, but the posts were solid.
Grandpa’s legacy—never pay for labor you can do yourself, never cut corners you can sweat out.
I did a slow 360, soaking it all in. My knee caught in the cold, made the limp more pronounced, but I ignored it. You learn to work around things that don’t heal right.
I started walking the perimeter: first the barn, then the outbuildings. Barn doors were secured with a new padlock, which was odd because the rest of the hardware looked older than I was.
I clocked that and moved on.
The air had a sweetness you couldn’t fake, not even with all the artisanal honey in Austin. Grass, manure, the wet mossy undertone from the river. But overlaying it was something sharper—a trace of woodsmoke, and beneath that, yeast and fresh bread.
I stopped in my tracks. That wasn’t nostalgia or PTSD; that was real. And it meant someone had been inside the house, probably within the last hour.
I moved toward the front porch, hand sliding down to the holster at my hip. The Glock nestled there was legal in every sense of the word, but you never broadcast it unless you wanted trouble.
My approach was slow, deliberate, every SEAL muscle memory firing off in sequence: left foot silent, right dragging a little; shoulders loose, hands open and low.
The porch had been swept clean, recent—the dirt hadn’t even resettled on the steps. The doorknob gleamed like someone polished it just for my arrival. On the railing, a terra-cotta pot overflowed with herbs that hadn’t been deadheaded; a pair of scissors rested beside it, still open.
I reached the front door and listened. My ears caught the faintest vibration from inside—maybe a fridge, maybe voices, maybe just the old bones of the house settling into evening.
The hinges had been oiled, which pissed me off more than if they’d been left to squeal; it meant someone cared about the place. My place.
I circled to the back. Kitchen window was cracked open, letting out ribbons of steam and the unmistakable smell of sourdough.
I peeked in. The counters gleamed. The sink was empty except for a mixing bowl and a wooden spoon.
There were clean footprints—barefoot, narrow, a little duck-toed—in the flour dust on the floor.
Someone was living here.
I retreated, did a quick sweep of the outbuildings to be sure it wasn’t a family, or worse, a crew.
The only sign of life was in the main house.
I checked the garden beds as I moved: freshly weeded, drip hoses rerouted, a couple of new tomato cages staked down with baling wire.
There was a handprint in the soil, small and delicate, right where someone had just watered.
I hesitated at the mudroom door. This one was old oak, fitted with a window the size of a playing card, original to the house. I tested the knob. Unlocked. I let my left hand rest on the butt of the Glock, then pushed the door open with my right, silent as a ghost.
Inside, the light was different. Golden, alive, warm against the blue chill creeping in from outside. The floorboards flexed, but didn’t creak; someone had learned the rhythm of the house, knew which spots to avoid.
I moved through the laundry and into the pantry, where the smell of baking was so strong it nearly staggered me.
I paused there, breathing it in, remembering my mother’s hands punching down dough every Saturday morning, before she vanished from our lives and left my father with nothing to feed us but disappointment.
There was a faint scrape from the next room.
I drew the Glock, finger indexed, and entered low, covering the angle to the right where the kitchen opened up.
The table was set for one: a chipped plate, a blue mason jar with half-dead daisies, a slice of bread beside a knife still smeared with butter.
Someone stood at the old fashioned wood stove, back to me, stirring a pot. They wore jeans two sizes too large, rolled at the ankle, and a flannel shirt cinched tight at the waist with a length of orange twine. Hair, long and wheat-colored, was tied back in a loose ponytail.
My brain made the leap before I was ready for it: not a vagrant, not a tweaker, but a kid. Maybe twenty? No muscle, no threat. But still—someone in my house.
I stepped into the doorway, gun lowered, but visible. “Hands where I can see ‘em.”
The kid froze. The spoon clattered into the pot. They turned slowly, both hands going up, eyes huge and bright blue, flour dusted across their cheeks like war paint. The look on their face was pure terror and something else—recognition, maybe. Like they’d been waiting for me all along.
My voice came out harsher than I intended. “Who the fuck are you?”
The kid swallowed, took a shaky breath. Their hands shook, but they didn’t drop them. “I—I’m sorry, I didn’t know anyone was coming. Please don’t shoot.”
I didn’t lower the gun, but I didn’t advance, either. I took in the details: no bulge at the hip, no knife in reach, feet bare and red from standing on cold linoleum. I eased off the trigger. “How long you been living here?”
They blinked, then let the words tumble out in a rush: “I just needed a place to stay, I wasn’t gonna take anything, I’ve been cleaning, I fixed the leaking sink, I can leave if you want, I just—please, don’t call the sheriff.”
The voice was higher than I expected, not a kid but definitely not a grown man. There was something soft about them, from the delicate wrists to the way they clutched their own elbows when nervous. I tried to do the math and came up short.
“Step away from the stove,” I said, “and keep your hands where I can see them.”
They did, moving to the table like someone trained to obey orders. I kept my eyes on them and holstered the Glock, but didn’t bother hiding the fact that I was still on edge.
Now that I wasn’t in threat mode, the smells in the kitchen hit me all at once: bread, wild honey, black pepper, and a faint tang of sweat and something sweeter.
Not cologne, not perfume—something else.
I realized with a jolt that I was standing three feet from an omega, and the scent of it was strong enough to make the air pulse.
I took a slow breath. “You got a name?”
They nodded, lips trembling. “Jojo. Joseph, I mean. Stinson.”
I let the silence drag out. “You always break into people’s houses, Jojo?”
He shook his head, and the ponytail whipped across his cheek. “No, never, I swear. I just—I lost my job at the bakery in town, and I couldn’t make rent, and when I saw this place was empty, I thought maybe it was abandoned. I’m sorry, please don’t call anyone.”
I looked at him—really looked, for the first time.
He had the kind of face that could go twelve rounds with a bad day and still come up smiling: high cheekbones, big eyes, mouth too generous for his own good.
He was scared, but not the way I expected; more like a deer waiting to see if the headlights would swerve.
I ran a hand over my head, trying to think. “You’re alone?”
“Yes. I swear.”
I let that hang. “All right, Jojo. You get a pass for tonight. But you’re gonna have to explain how you got in, and how you survived two months in this place without anyone noticing.”
The relief on his face was almost comical. “Thank you. I can show you around, if you want. Or—uh—if you’re hungry, the bread’s still warm.”
I almost laughed. Almost. “You always try to bribe armed men with carbs?”
He shrugged, a tiny ghost of a smile breaking through. “It usually works at the bakery.”
I pulled a chair from the table and sat, leg stretched out in front to ease the ache. He watched me, wary but curious. I gestured at the stove. “Go on. Finish what you were doing. But you and I are having a conversation.”
He nodded and turned back to the pot, stirring with shaking hands. I kept an eye on him, but some of the tension had bled out of the room. He didn’t seem dangerous. Just desperate.
I looked down at the table, then back at him, and realized the house didn’t feel empty anymore. Not haunted, not abandoned—just waiting for someone to come home.
I still had questions. But for the first time since I’d crossed the state line, I didn’t feel like an intruder.
I felt like the one in charge.
Jojo’s hands shook as he set the spoon down, but the stubborn little bastard didn’t spill a drop. I sat at the table, my knee barking a slow, insistent complaint, and watched every move.
Old habits die harder than steel.
I couldn’t just take the kid’s word for it.
Anyone desperate enough to squat a ranch could be desperate enough for worse.
I forced myself to keep the Glock holstered, but my palm itched for the grip.
I let my hand rest flat on the table, fingers splayed, in case Jojo was the kind of omega who needed a visual reminder of where the power was in the room.
He kept glancing at my hand. My guess was correct.