Chapter 20 #3
The office door clicks shut, muffling the house into a low, pressurized hum.
Caleb is already inside. His massive frame leaning back in one of the chairs opposite the desk, long legs stretched out, one boot hooked over the other.
Zack moves behind the desk, his movements economical and precise. He taps the tablet’s glowing screen.
“Sure you’re up to this, boss,” Caleb says evenly.
“Run it,” I say.
Zack pulls the main board onto the wall screen. The blue light casts sharp shadows across his face.
“Military advisory stable. DoD consult on schedule,” Zack says, his Texas drawl clipped. “Caleb handled the scenario revisions.”
Caleb nods. “They were soft on recon discipline. Fixed it.”
“PSYOPS integration?” I ask.
“Rewritten,” he says. “They won’t trip over their own messaging this rotation.”
Zack shifts to the next file—active open ops. “Counterproliferation intel active. West Africa corridor. HUMINT feeds held steady. Compromised local asset cut loose. Target exploitation review for a joint task group—we sent recommendations. Two agencies weren’t happy.”
“Good. Means we’re doing something right,” I say.
With a smile, Zack moves on. “Bomb Threat Management in Chicago. Executive team engagement better than expected.”
“Accept,” I say. “I want a full review of their internal security before we sign.”
“Cyber division identified zero-day vulnerabilities in the grid,” Zack adds. “Closed before breach. No blowback. Yet. Clandestine aviation supported one overseas movement. Clean insertion. Clean extraction. Wheels down less than a minute.”
“And Jericho?” I ask.
“Perimeter stayed cold,” Zack says. “One drone sweep picked up a hobbyist about five miles out. Delilah launched one of ours and took him into a snowbank.”
Caleb snorts. “The kid was ticked.”
Zack winces. “His dad got it for him. Had to fork over for a new one.”
Hiding a smile, I shake my head, though the movement sends a spike of fire through my neck. “I’ll remind Delilah we’re not running a drone air force. Add it to operational expenses.”
Zack nods, amusement fading. “Security upgrades completed on the north fence line. Cameras recalibrated. No internal breaches.”
I let the silence sit, watching the board—the invisible architecture of a world most people never see. And wouldn’t handle well if they did see.
“Pro bono?” I ask.
Caleb answers that one, his posture softening. “Village security assessment overseas. Funded off advisory revenue. Axel helped them set up basic trauma protocols remotely.”
I nod, but my mind is elsewhere. Traveling down the halls, outside, to where Ava is, and what she’s learning about Jericho.
About me.
Caleb leans forward, forearms resting on his knees. “Scope’s growing,” he says. “You want to trim?”
I shake my head once. “We still go where the Lord leads. We still take what aligns.”
Caleb holds my gaze a second longer. “Does this mean we can all start bringing S.O.’s to Jericho?” he says quietly.
Zack’s gaze flicks toward me. They know what Ava’s presence means. I’m breaking my own rule.
“This is… an exception. Ava needs… debriefing.”
Caleb snorts, grinning. “You mean it to sound that way?”
I shoot him a glare. Ignore the heat in my pulse for my slip, and make a gesturing motion with the hand not in the sling. “Continue,” I say.
Caleb leans back again, the leather chair creaking. “Open operations are solid,” he says. “Nothing on fire. Nothing we can’t carry.”
That’s what I needed to hear.
Jericho looks like a ranch. On paper, Hightower is a consulting firm. In practice, it’s a network that spans agencies, continents, and shadows most people never see. And, Lord willing, it’s going to be a company Ava can step inside without anyone outside Jericho ever knowing.
“Jake?”
Caleb answers. “Inbound from Maine. Should be here tomorrow.”
I nod. “Good. I have a task for him. I need him to interview assistants.”
Caleb folds his arms across his massive chest, his eyebrows arching. “Delilah mentioned that. Nearly fell off my chair.”
I smile, the tension in my shoulders easing. “Things are changing. Looks like I can take a few days off here and there.”
Zack and Caleb share a loaded look.
“Ava’s place suffered smoke damage…” Caleb says.
I nod. “She’ll be staying here until it’s taken care of.”
“With restricted access only?” he asks.
I eye a security pass on Zack’s desk and consider the layers. Physical security. Legal exposure. Emotional leverage. I’ve built this company on controlled entry. Nothing in this world stays compartmentalized.
There’s a colossal difference between bringing someone home and bringing them into this.
“I’ll tell you all in a few minutes,” I say.
Ava
Justus closes the laptop the moment I enter. The mechanical snap of the lid is sharp, a definitive period at the end of whatever he was reading. He stands, moving with the fluid grace of a man who knows how to inhabit a room without taking it over.
He doesn't wait for me to struggle. Before I can take the third uneven step, he is there—not hovering, but steady. He catches my elbow with a hand that feels like worn leather, firm and grounding, and guides me toward one of the wingback chairs. He waits until I’m fully settled, the weight of the day finally sinking into the cushions, before he speaks.
"I'm Justus," he says. He doesn't offer a hand to shake; he simply offers his name like a fact. "And you look like you’ve walked further than you were meant to today."
He settles into the opposite chair, though he doesn't lean back. He sits with the practiced patience of a man who has spent a lifetime waiting for the right moment to move.
The office reflects the man who actually belongs here.
There are no plaques on the walls, no gilded commendations, and nothing that advertises Silas's importance. It’s merely a massive desk, worn smooth at the edges from years of Silas's concentrated work, filing cabinets, and the window behind the desk.
Outside, the wide, unbroken expanse of the North Dakota grounds stretches away—the dark tree line and the frost-covered earth shivering under a vast, pressing sky.
The walls, however, do all the talking.
There are combat photos hung in sparse, intentional groupings—dozens of them.
They capture different terrain, different light, and different configurations of men, but Silas is the ghost in all of them.
He is tucked into the composition, usually at the edge of the frame, eyes fixed on the horizon or a doorway.
Never at the center.
"He hates having his photo taken," I say, my eyes drifting back to the wall.
Justus’s mouth curves, a soft, reminiscent expression that mirrors the son he raised. "Always has. His mother used to chase him around the yard with a camera." A short pause follows, his eyes twinkling. "She never quite caught him, either."
I look at the wall again. At the decades of faces Silas chose to keep near him. It’s a silent gallery of survivors.
"Who are they all?" I ask.
"People God put in his path," Justus says, his voice losing its humor. "Silas has never seen it any other way. He keeps them here to remind himself why he stays awake at night."
He’s quiet for a moment, looking at his son's wall the way a man looks at a map of a territory he helped seed, but no longer owns.
“He says he owes it all to you,” I say, repeating what Silas told me.
Justus shakes his head, a firm, absolute gesture. “Not true. I started something I couldn’t finish. Everything you see in this room—the way he lives, the way he protects—is his love for God expressed through love for others."
I look at the window and the frosted, indifferent grounds beyond it. The whole shape of Silas begins to assemble itself quietly in my chest. Not the soldier I met in the cabin, not the man who kept a careful, iron-clad distance and called it protection.
I see the man who built this sanctuary because he was asked to. The man who kept every face on that wall because he believed every life mattered enough to remember, even if he didn't think he belonged in the photo with them.
"He's remarkable," I say. I don't mean to say it out loud, but the admission slips out before I can pull it back.
Justus looks at me then, his expression shifting into something so precisely like Silas that it makes my breath hitch.
"Funny," he says simply. "My son thinks the same thing about you."
Silas
I’ve stood outside this door a thousand times.
Briefings. Debriefs. Hard conversations. Decisions that kept me up for weeks afterward. I’ve walked into this room carrying things most men never have to carry, and I’ve walked out again and gotten on with it. It’s my perimeter. My command.
I stand outside it now and take a breath, my hand hovering near the wood.
The door opens from the inside before I can touch it. My father doesn't say a word. He just puts his hand briefly on my good shoulder as he passes, a silent passing of the torch.
I push the door the rest of the way open.
She’s in the wingback chair by the window. She’s wearing borrowed clothes that swallow her, her blonde hair loose, her glasses catching the bruising afternoon light bleeding through the window behind my desk.
She’s out of place here in every measurable way—wrong clothes, wrong world, wrong history—and yet, in fifteen years, I have never felt anyone belong in this room the way she does right now. She’s the only soft thing in a room built of hard edges.
I don’t go to the desk. That’s for the commander. Today, I’m just a man.
I take the chair beside her, putting us at the same level. The leather creaks under my weight, a familiar sound in an unfamiliar moment. I reach into my jacket pocket and set the security pass on the armrest between us.