Chapter Fifteen #2
By the time we were done, the barn was no longer a soft target. It was a fortress. Every camera was synced to a cheap burner phone Macon had pre-programmed. If anything crossed the property line, we’d know about it before they got within a hundred yards.
We stepped back to admire the work, hands on hips, sweat dripping even in the cold.
“Not bad,” Burke said. “Almost makes me nostalgic for the old days.”
Macon shot him a look. “I’ll pass on the sand and the mortars, thanks.”
I wiped my palms on my jeans, felt a surge of pride in the ugly, patchwork security we’d built. “Let’s get the sensors up by the house, then we can eat.”
Macon cocked an eyebrow. “Food still as good as last time?”
“Better,” I said. “Jojo’s a professional.”
Burke’s smile softened. “Guy’s a keeper.”
I felt the truth of it in my bones.
We loaded up and stomped back to the house, boots mud-caked, faces burning with the promise of battle.
Let Hargrove come. We’d be ready.
If the barn was a war room, the kitchen was a sanctuary. Jojo had gone full panic-chef, prepping enough food to feed a high school wrestling team in the middle of a famine.
The aroma hit us in the foyer—yeasty bread, slow-roast chicken, the hidden sharpness of black pepper that clung to the tongue. There were three different vegetables, two kinds of potatoes, and a chocolate cake cooling on the windowsill like a fuck-you to anyone who doubted his credentials.
He darted from counter to oven with the energy of someone running a triage tent, barely registering us as we stomped the mud off our boots. Only when I snared him by the waist did he freeze, eyes wild.
“It’s not enough, is it?” he blurted. “I thought you’d need calories after—” He jerked his chin at our mud-streaked jeans, then flinched like he’d said something out of line.
I gripped his hips until he looked at me. “It’s perfect, Jojo.”
Behind me, Macon surveyed the spread with a veteran’s skepticism. “You catering a wedding, kid?”
Jojo flinched again, but before he could answer, Burke clapped his hands and said, “This is the best meal I’ve seen outside of Naples, and Steele once made us eat rat stew for a week.”
Jojo’s eyes flicked up, uncertain, until he clocked the smile on Burke’s face. Then he actually managed to breathe.
We washed up, sat at the table, and fell into the ritual.
Macon ate with his left hand and kept his right close to the knife, old habits dying hard.
Burke used a fork like a weapon, stabbing every bite with full intent.
Jojo just watched us, curious and a little awestruck, like he couldn’t believe we all used napkins.
Burke started the stories—PG-13 versions, nothing about friendly fire or the time we had to improvise a tourniquet with a necktie.
He told the one about the goat that survived three IEDs and became our unofficial mascot, and the one about the munitions officer who accidentally blew up his own latrine.
Jojo laughed so hard he almost choked on a dinner roll.
Even Macon cracked a smile, and when Jojo reached for seconds, Macon actually nudged the dish closer without being asked.
I watched Jojo absorb it all, watched his nerves settle into something soft and trusting.
He wasn’t just tolerated; he was part of the team, even if he didn’t know the code words.
It hit me in the gut, the way a flashbang does—bright, then hollow, then suddenly you can’t imagine a world where he isn’t there.
After the plates were cleared, Jojo excused himself to set up the chicks in the laundry room.
I offered to help, but he waved me off, claiming “the brooder takes a delicate touch.” I let him go, but I listened to the steady thump of his feet and the muted “peep-peep-peep” that followed him down the hall.
The three of us moved to the porch. It was black outside, the kind of rural dark that sucks up starlight and spits out fear. The rain hadn’t started, but the thunder had grown teeth, rumbling every few minutes as if to remind us it was coming.
Burke produced a bottle of whiskey, the good stuff, and poured three shots into mismatched mugs.
“To the Black Butte Ranch,” he said, raising his. “And to surviving one more day.”
We drank. The first swallow burned; the second just smoothed the edges.
Macon set his cup down with a thunk. “You know this isn’t just about the land, right?”
I nodded. “Water rights. Hargrove’s desperate.”
“Not just that,” Burke said, swirling the amber in his mug. “He’s escalating. The break-in, the dead animals, sending muscle to your front door. Next time won’t be chickens.”
Macon nodded. “You’ve got a pregnant omega to protect, Commander. And Hargrove knows it.”
The old title sat heavy between us. I could feel the weight of it, the way it used to mean “invincible,” and now just meant “responsible for everything.”
“We defend what’s ours,” I said. “But we do it smart. No collateral.”
Macon raised a brow. “You sure about that? Last time you said that, you blew a hole in a tanker and we spent two weeks in Turkish prison.”
I shrugged. “Worked, didn’t it?”
Burke smirked. “Just saying—if you want backup, I can call Decker, Hooper, even Jackson. They’re all bored and semi-unemployed.”
I thought about it. Jackson would drink us out of house and home. Decker was good with dogs, which might be useful. Hooper was nuts, but the kind of nuts you want on your side in a gunfight.
“Let’s wait and see what the next move is,” I said. “Don’t want to turn the ranch into a base camp unless we have to.”
Macon was quiet for a long time. Then: “What about Sterling?”
The name hit like a sucker punch. I hadn’t spoken to him since the last op, since the shit in Aleppo. “Haven’t heard from him,” I said.
“He made it out,” Burke said quietly. “But that last job broke something in him.”
We let the silence stretch. Macon lit a cigarette, Burke poured another round, and I stared into the night, wondering how many people out there hated me enough to bleed for it.
Inside, the kitchen light cast a soft halo, and for a moment I saw Jojo through the glass, bent over the brooder box, his whole body curved around those stupid chicks. I wondered if he could sense us, the way animals do before a storm.
I downed my whiskey. “If they come, we’re ready,” I said. “If not, we live like normal people.”
Burke snorted. “You don’t know what normal looks like, Steele.”
Maybe not. But for the first time in my life, I wanted to try.
When the rain started, it was gentle, almost polite. We sat and drank until the bottle was empty and the storm drowned out everything but the promise of tomorrow.
By midnight, the house was a fortress.
Burke took the attic room, Macon staked out a guest suite with a field of view on the approach road, and I prowled the halls, double-checking locks even though every door had been reinforced twice since dusk.
The rain had found its stride. It battered the roof, drove sideways through the eaves, and pooled in the gutters like a time bomb waiting to freeze.
Every so often, a gust would rattle the old windowpanes, and I’d catch myself reaching for the pistol even when I knew, rationally, that the only thing outside was a hell of a storm.
I made a last perimeter check, the motion lights flaring in sequence as I walked the grounds. In the laundry room, the chick box glowed under a red lamp, Jojo’s careful handwriting labeling each with a dumb name: Midnight, Plum, Biscuit, Gunner, Little Mac, and so on.
Upstairs, his bedroom door was ajar, light from the hallway limning the edges. I paused, listened for the telltale rhythm of his breath. He was asleep, but even in dreams, he guarded his stomach with one hand, the other flung wide as if to catch me when I came to bed.
I watched him for a minute. He looked so fucking young like that, all bones and hair and soft, unguarded mouth. The kind of vulnerability that would have terrified me once, because it begged to be protected, and I’d failed too many people before to trust myself with anything fragile.
But that was the past. I was building something different now. I was going to protect it even if it killed me.
I stripped off my shirt, climbed in beside him, and spooned my chest to his back. My arm curled over his ribs, hand flattening over his—our—child.
For a long time, I just breathed him in. The storm outside was a war, but the bed was a foxhole, and I’d be damned if I let anything breach it.
Jojo stirred, muttered something that sounded like “honey” or maybe “hungry,” then settled. I pressed my lips to the nape of his neck, let myself hope that maybe, just maybe, there was more to life than the next battle.
I closed my eyes and, for the first time in years, prayed. Not for myself, but for the strength to keep this. To hold it together without turning into the weapon the Navy had spent a decade forging.
Somewhere out there, beyond the circle of porch light, I knew the enemy was watching. I knew they’d try again.
Let them come.
I’d be ready.
* * * *
On the far edge of the property, headlights flickered once, then went dark.
A figure in rain gear raised night-vision binoculars, sighting on the farmhouse. He watched the windows, counted the shadows moving through the upstairs rooms.
He spoke low into a satellite phone: “They brought in reinforcements. Military types. Yeah, three, maybe four. The target’s locked down tight.”
A pause, then: “No, sir. Not yet. But I’ll keep watching.”
He clicked off the call, shifted his weight to keep from sinking in the mire, and settled in for a long, cold wait.
The storm did its best to drown him out. But the figure watched, and waited, and never looked away from the lighted window where two shapes pressed together in the dark, perfectly still.
A promise, if you knew how to read it.