Chapter 25
GIDEON
I'd been trying to rest.
Not sleep—I'd given up on that hours ago when my brain refused to stop cataloging threats and running through contingencies. But rest. The kind where you let your body go still and your breathing slow while your mind stays sharp enough to catch the sound of trouble before it arrives.
The front porch was as good a place as any.
The new boards Ethan and Lucas had installed earlier were solid under my back, the railing steady against my shoulder.
The night air pressed close, thick with salt and the green smell of the marsh.
Somewhere out in the darkness, a night heron called, lonely and insistent.
Lucas was inside, supposedly sleeping on the sofa.
Ethan had taken the back door, positioned where he could see both the kitchen entrance and the rear approach to the property.
Elias had left an hour ago to check in at Dominion Hall, promising to return by dawn with better equipment and maybe some answers about who'd authorized Sam Jarrow's release.
The security sensors they'd installed were top-grade—motion-activated, networked, the kind of tech that cost more than most people's cars. If anything bigger than a raccoon crossed the perimeter, we'd know about it.
I'd just started to let my eyes drift closed when the alert came.
Not a blare or a siren. Just a soft chime from the tablet propped against the railing—the kind of sound that wouldn't wake a sleeping civilian but cut through an operator's rest like a knife.
My eyes snapped open. My hand found my sidearm before my brain caught up.
The tablet screen showed a heat signature moving up the main drive. Slow. Unsteady. Human-sized and alone.
I was on my feet and moving before the second chime sounded.
Lucas appeared in the doorway, weapon already drawn, eyes sharp and alert despite the late hour. Ethan materialized from around the corner of the house, moving with that silent, mountain-lion grace that made you forget how big he was until he was right on top of you.
We spread out without speaking, falling into a formation we'd never practiced but somehow knew—muscle memory from a dozen different units, a hundred different ops, all distilled into this moment.
The figure came into view at the edge of the floodlight's reach.
Male. Walking. Moving like every step cost him something he couldn't afford to pay.
"Stop right there!" I called, weapon raised, finger indexed along the frame but ready to drop to the trigger.
The figure kept coming.
Ethan moved up beside me, his massive frame blocking half my peripheral vision. "Don't take another step!"
Still walking. Closer now. Close enough to make out details in the harsh wash of light.
The clothes. The backpack gone, replaced by a dark jacket zipped to the throat. The shambling gait. The shape of the head, the slope of the shoulders.
Recognition hit like a fist to the gut.
Sam Jarrow.
But something was wrong. Not drunk-wrong or high-wrong or even crazy-wrong. He moved like a man being prodded forward by an invisible pitchfork, each step reluctant, his body language screaming I don't want to be here even as his feet kept carrying him closer.
"Sam, stop!" Lucas's voice cracked across the night, sharp and commanding.
Sam flinched but didn't stop. His hands hung at his sides, fingers twitching like they wanted to reach for something but didn't dare.
"They said," he called out, voice wobbling and wet, "they said I could fix it."
Ice ran down my spine.
Behind me, I heard the front door open. Heard Hazel's footsteps on the porch, too fast, too unsteady. Heard Maude's low warning.
"Hazel, get back inside," I said, not taking my eyes off Sam. Every instinct I had was screaming at me that this was wrong, all wrong, more wrong than anything I'd faced in a decade of black ops and sanctioned kills.
Sam's gaze found her. Of course, it did. That's what he'd come for.
"Haze," he said, the nickname dripping with false affection and real desperation. "Baby girl. I knew you'd be here."
"Don't talk to her," I snapped, fury cutting through the tactical calm I was trying to maintain. "You look at me, Sam. You keep your eyes on me."
He was forty yards out now. Maybe thirty-five. Close enough that I could see the tears streaming down his face, the way his jaw worked like he was chewing words he couldn't quite spit out.
"They came to see me," he babbled, scrubbing at his face with the back of one shaking hand. "Nice suits. Smiles like knives. Said, 'Sam, old buddy, you want to make things square with your little girl? You want her taken care of?'"
His eyes darted to something behind us—the house, maybe, or Hazel on the porch—then snapped back like he'd been yanked by a leash only he could feel.
"They told me there was money," he continued, voice breaking. "A chance. A way out. They said I could help you, Haze. Fix what I broke. I just had to—"
The words died in his throat.
"Sam!" Ethan barked. "Stop where you are."
But Sam's feet kept moving. Gravel crunched under his worn shoes, too loud in the thick night air. Thirty yards. Twenty-five.
My finger moved to the trigger. Not yet. Not until I knew what we were dealing with.
"Please," Sam whispered, and the word carried across the distance like a prayer or a curse. "They said they'd—"
His hands moved.
Everything shifted.
Time didn't slow exactly—I'd been in enough firefights to know that was Hollywood bullshit—but my perception sharpened, narrowed, focused down to the movement of Sam Jarrow's hands as they reached for the zipper of his jacket.
"Don't move!" I roared.
He didn't listen. Maybe he couldn't. His fingers—shaking, clumsy—found the metal pull and tugged.
The zipper caught. For one eternal second, the cheap hardware refused to cooperate, and I felt a surge of irrational hope that whatever was about to happen would be delayed just long enough for us to figure out how to stop it.
Then it slid down with a rasp that sounded like tearing fabric and breaking bones.
Sam opened his jacket.
Time stopped.
Not slowed. Stopped.
My brain went into combat mode, that crystal-clear state where emotions shut down and training takes over. I saw everything. Cataloged everything. Processed everything in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
Canvas vest. Military-style, or a civilian approximation.
Four pouches across the chest, bulging with what looked like clay or putty—C-4, probably, or something similar.
Fragments tucked into pockets along the sides—maybe ball bearings, maybe nails, the kind of shrapnel designed to maximize casualties in a crowd.
Straps crisscrossing over his shoulders and around his torso, keeping everything snug against his body.
And there, nestled against his sternum like a mechanical heart, a black box no bigger than a deck of cards.
Wires snaked out from it—red, blue, yellow, green—disappearing into the pouches with the careful precision of someone who knew what they were doing.
Remote detonated or manual?
That was the question. The only question that mattered.
If it was remote, then Sam was already dead. We were all already dead. Someone out there in the marsh had their finger on a button and we were just waiting for them to press it.
Sam's eyes locked on Hazel.
"It's all going to be okay," he said, voice soft and broken and absolutely sincere. Like he actually believed it. Like he'd convinced himself that whatever was about to happen was somehow for the best.
His hand started to move toward the black box.
Every gun at the bottom of the steps lifted.
My finger tightened on the trigger.
And then Sam Jarrow's right arm exploded.
Not the whole arm. Just the elbow, cut clean through.
One second it was there, pale skin and prison-wasted muscle and those trembling fingers reaching for the detonator.
The next second it was gone—obliterated in a spray of red mist and white bone fragments and shredded fabric, the rest of the arm slipped to the ground.
The sound came after. A crack that split the night, high-powered and distant. Rifle shot. Big caliber. Somewhere in the marsh, maybe a hundred yards out.
Sam looked down at what was left of his arm. His face went slack with shock, the pain not registering yet, his brain still trying to process the fact that part of him had just ceased to exist.
Then the second shot came.
It took half his head off.
Not clean. Not surgical. Just gone. Skull and brain and everything that made Sam Jarrow a person—monster, victim, whatever he was—turned into red mist and falling meat.
He dropped like a sack of wet concrete, hitting the gravel with a sound I'd heard too many times to count but never got used to.
Dead before he hit the ground. Dead before his body understood it was dead.
For one crystalline moment, nobody moved.
Then training kicked in.
"Move," I ordered, voice gone calm and predatory. "Ethan, cover the drive. Lucas, with me."
We fanned out, weapons up, eyes scanning the marsh for muzzle flash or movement or any sign of where the shots had come from. Ethan dropped back to a position that gave him a clear view of the road, his massive frame fading into shadow while Lucas and I moved toward the source of the gunfire.
The marsh was a black wall on either side of the drive, grass and reeds standing taller than a man in places, the ground underneath treacherous with mud and hidden channels. Perfect sniper country. Perfect ambush terrain.
Was this our savior? Someone who'd taken out Sam to save us from the blast?
Or was this the plan all along? Kill Sam, detonate the vest remotely, take us all out while we were scrambling?
I didn't know. Couldn't know. Could only move forward with my weapon raised and my eyes scanning and my finger ready to drop anything that moved.
"There," Lucas breathed beside me.
I saw it. A shadow detaching from the larger shadow of the marsh. Tall. Male. Moving slow and deliberate, hands raised.
No. Not raised. Holding something overhead.
A rifle.
"Come out!" I shouted. "Slowly! Keep your hands where I can see them!"
The figure kept walking, rifle held high above his head in the universal gesture of surrender. Not lowering it, not aiming it, just ... holding it. Presenting it like an offering.
Lucas shifted beside me, weapon steady. "Is there anyone else out there?" he called.
The figure spoke. Male voice, rough with age or smoke or something harder.
"Not anymore."
That voice.
Something about that voice crawled up my spine and wrapped cold fingers around my brain stem. Familiar. Dread seeped in.
"Slowly," I repeated, but my voice sounded strange in my own ears. Distant. Like I was hearing myself from underwater.
The figure stepped into the edge of the floodlight's reach.
Still in shadow, still more silhouette than man. But getting closer. One careful step at a time, rifle still overhead, moving with the kind of confidence that said he knew exactly what he was doing and exactly what he was walking into.
Not one of the Charleston Danes. Elias would have told me if any of them were coming. Would have warned me.
So, who?
Another step. Another. The light caught the edges of him—broad shoulders, tall frame, the rifle overhead casting strange shadows across features I couldn't quite see yet.
Then he stepped fully into the glow of the porch lights.
Time stopped again.
My brain stuttered, skipped, refused to process what my eyes were showing me.
Older. Grayer. More lines around the eyes and mouth. But the same. Unmistakably, impossibly the same.
The strong jaw. Movie star good looks. The way he held himself, even in surrender. The shape of his nose, his cheekbones, the set of his shoulders.
My father.
Byron Dane.
The man who'd disappeared fifteen years ago without a trace. The man we'd mourned, searched for, given up on. The man whose absence had carved holes in all of us that never quite healed.
He stood there in the wash of the porch lights, rifle still raised overhead, and looked at us with eyes that were the same storm-gray as mine.
His mouth curved into something that might have been a smile in better circumstances.
"Hello, boys," he said, voice carrying across the space between us like he'd never left, like fifteen years was nothing, like he hadn't just shot a man's arm off and blown his head apart in front of his own children. "I've missed you."
The words hung in the air.
Lucas made a sound—low, choked, like he'd been punched in the gut.
I hadn’t seen Ethan come up behind us. He didn't move. Didn't breathe. Just stared with the kind of stillness that meant his world had just tilted off its axis and he was waiting for it to right itself.
My finger was still on the trigger. My weapon was still raised. My hands were still steady.
But inside, everything was screaming.
Because Byron Dane—my father, my hero, the man whose footsteps I'd followed into the military and then into the shadows—was standing twenty feet away from me.
Alive.
Armed.
And apparently, very much back in our lives.