Chapter 17
Rhodes
The morning rush had taken on a new rhythm.
Instead of the usual frantic dash to get to Redhawk, everything seemed to slow down, but it had turned into a different kind of frenzy.
It was true that I’d previously left all the morning tasks with Opal to the nanny, so I hadn’t realized how much panic was involved in getting her ready.
Now that it was left to me, I wasn’t sure whether I woke up each day terrified or exhilarated, trying to get it all done.
Every morning was an actual bizarre obstacle course of decision-making, hair wrangling, and negotiations. I wasn’t sure, when I dropped my daughter off at school, whether to congratulate myself on completing the task or pour myself a drink.
I’d already called Mrs. Haines for extra tips and to make sure she knew how much I appreciated her.
That wasn’t to say I’d ignored her when she was with me in Seattle.
She was exceptional at her job and had even talked about working out a plan to move to Wildwood Meadows with us, but she had a complicated situation with one of her grandchildren, and family had to come first. That was something I understood.
It was becoming clear that I would need to diversify and hire some help.
Between my so-called part-time leave of absence with Redhawk, the size of the house and grounds, the restoration work, and Opal, I was starting to get frazzled.
Not that I wanted help with my daughter, but a house cleaner was necessary because that didn’t seem to be one of my strengths, and I was okay at cooking, but getting everything on the table on time also seemed to be a challenge.
This morning, it was a good thing I had Opal to help balance my grouchy mood, because I had tossed and turned for a few hours before finally getting up to work in my office.
Last night’s interaction had gotten me out of sorts.
Sage had said it was no big deal, but that Alan character had set my gut churning.
There was something off about him, but I was trying to remember that it wasn’t my business.
She said it was fine, and I had to respect that.
Then there was Sage herself. I liked her more than I wanted to admit.
Last night, when I asked for her help with the greenhouses, she beamed at me until her cheeks turned pink.
Later, I received a text from her with a link to a drive containing full plans and layouts for both greenhouses, broken down by planting season.
She also pointed out what should be restored in advance.
It was exactly what I needed. Concise and easy.
It wasn’t a surprise to me when I found out that Sage had already sent me plans.
Not only because I knew she was passionate about the project, but because she was driven and smart.
Hell, she had her own successful business, and I knew all about the help she’d given Kipp when he was setting up his cabins.
She designed his entire website and interactive maps that my team had raved about when they were there.
It gave me an excuse to text her back, so I awkwardly exchanged messages with her for a few minutes about the greenhouses, telling her she could come by again if she wanted (begging). What I really wanted was another chance to hang out with her.
Opal chattered nonstop about every part of the morning, from choosing her hair to picking out her clothes.
The main subject was cats. She was trying to convince me to visit the shelter to find some kittens, and she wanted more than one.
Apparently, if she was going to ask for a pet, she was going all in.
Thankfully, I’d gotten through drop-off without making any promises, but it had been close.
I had deliberately wanted a large space after years spent in crowded military tents, surrounded by tactical radio noise and people.
Seattle hadn’t felt exactly like a home to me.
Catherine was a wife who communicated loudly through heavy sighs and punctuated door slams. If that didn’t work, she would turn to words that dug in with heavy barbs that made me cringe.
I drank my coffee standing at the kitchen window, looking out at the expansive green lawn, and gave myself exactly ten more minutes of it before I went upstairs. Even now, routines were something that did my own mental health a great service. If I didn’t stick to them, then I spun in circles.
The house was large, providing plenty of options for a home office, but I chose to set up in a bedroom at the front since the window looked out onto the main drive and beyond to the gated entrance.
Even after installing security, I would still want to keep an eye on the entrance.
I was a control freak, and while it made me great at my job, it certainly was a liability in other areas of my life.
The fence work should be finished today, according to East, which meant I’d be able to get things going this afternoon while Opal played.
Maybe. There was also supposed to be a delivery today of a play structure to be built.
East hadn’t thought he’d have time to do it, so I figured I’d go ahead and have someone come down with one from Portland.
That meant I needed to get busy now because pick-up time was coming fast, and the last thing I would ever do was be late for getting my daughter from school.
My heavy oak desk was the same one I’d used in my Seattle home office, and I wasn’t sure why I’d brought it with me.
Most of the furniture we’d just gotten rid of.
Catherine hadn’t wanted it, and I hadn’t either.
It was wasteful, but it all held bad memories, and it hadn’t been to my taste anyway.
The desk had been the one thing that I’d bought at an estate sale when I’d begun Redhawk.
Catherine had always hated it. Maybe I’d held onto it out of spite.
I opened the laptop, logged in to the secure portal, and got to work.
Briggs had sent eleven messages overnight, which was about average.
My second-in-command operated on a different metabolic timeline than most people, burning through eighteen-hour days with the relentless focus of a man who didn’t have children and had strong opinions about organizational efficiency.
He’d served with me and was someone I could count on in extreme situations.
Briggs was also someone I felt confident leaving Redhawk with for now.
Most of his updates didn’t require a response, but the last one had a red flag…
literally. It was our internal priority system and alerted everyone in leadership that we all needed to pay attention.
Opening it, I braced myself for whatever was coming.
It was a high-risk extraction we'd been prepping for, and it apparently had a complication.
The client's personal security coordinator had been in contact with a known cartel-adjacent fixer in the port city, which meant either the coordinator was protecting the shipment or planning to compromise it.
Redhawk didn't operate in ambiguity when the lives of six of my men were on the line.
I dialed Briggs, who answered on the first ring. “Walk me through what we have on the coordinator,” I said, pulling up the secondary file Briggs had attached—personnel records, travel logs, and financial activity flagged by our intel analyst.
Without hesitation, he got into it. “Hey, man. So, we’ve got a forty-five-year-old male.
Alonzo Fernandez." I could hear him moving, the sound of a door closing behind him, the background noise dropping.
"The contact happened nine days ago. Single meeting, forty minutes, restaurant in the capital.
Our man on the ground didn't see it until after the fact.”
"Could be coincidental," I said, but I said it only to hear Briggs tell me why it wasn't.
"Could be," he agreed, in the tone he used when he was humoring me. "Except Fernandez ran a second financial trace the same day on the shipment route, which isn't in his job description."
Leaning back in the chair, I looked up at the ceiling and the original plaster medallion up there.
It was still intact, with a chip removed from one edge.
The history here was cool. I took the moment to let the information sit, the way the service had taught me: a deliberate pause before reaction, that saved lives and prevented the kind of catastrophic tactical errors that came from moving at the speed of feeling instead of the speed of thought.
"Pull the team back to staging," I said.
"I'm not sending six men into a compromised environment on a timeline we don't control. We renegotiate the window with the client and conduct a secondary sweep on Fernandez. We don’t want any unknowns. If he’s negotiating another deal …” I let that hang there. Briggs would know what was up.
"The client isn't going to love that."
"The client hired us to protect the asset," I said. "If we deliver the asset and lose a man doing it because we moved on bad intel, that's not a Redhawk outcome I’m willing to bargain on. Hold the timeline."
There was a pause of quiet on Briggs’s end, with that specific kind of silence that indicated he agreed and was considering whether to say so. "You want me to loop in the others on the Fernandez background?"
"Yeah. Talk to Parrish. I want his financial picture for the past five years. Personal accounts, not just the employment records."
"Done. Anything else?"
"You sleep?"
"Four hours." He said it like a reasonable number when it was anything but. Still, it came with the territory, and if I knew him, he’d grab a catnap when he needed to.
"Go home, Briggs."
"After the Fernandez pull," he said, and disconnected without any other discussion.