Chapter 21 #2
I set the file to one side and pull the next one toward me. My shoulder registers the movement before I do; I wait for the white-hot flash to pass before I pick up the folder containing Ben's update on Adena.
No change in status.
I know what she’s weighing. I know her well enough to know that whatever she decides, she will have counted every single cost first—she always does—and she won’t be talked out of it once the decision is made.
I look at the file sitting face down on the desk. Then I bow my head for a moment, release a slow, controlled breath, and give it to the Lord.
Adena is His to carry.
Not mine. Not even Jagger’s.
The final file is the Baltimore office assessment.
Caleb pulled three properties. I asked for one recommendation. He gave me three anyway, which is his way of telling me he has opinions I haven't officially asked for yet.
I look at the first one. Wrong side of the city. Twenty-five minutes from Greenfield on a good day. Baltimore does not have good days between seven and nine in the morning.
The second is better. Inner harbor. Rooftop access is already rated for a helipad.
Twelve minutes from Johns Hopkins. Six from Greenfield.
The building is half-vacant, which allows for a flexible configuration; I can build it the way I build everything—from the ground up, the right way, without inheriting someone else's flawed decisions.
I look at the spec sheet for a long moment.
It’s a good building.
It isn’t Jericho. But it is close enough to what matters now.
The door opens, and I already know who it’ll be. My father is the only person at Jericho who doesn't knock.
He lays a suit bag over the wingback chair and steps back. “You need to wear this.”
"Is that your way of saying the suit I’m wearing won’t impress the board?" I ask.
He settles into another chair. "This is my way of saying that every detail about how you present this to them matters."
"They’re not happy," I say.
"No," he agrees. "They’re not." He leans forward, forearms on his knees. "A Baltimore office means a reduced presence here. It means restructuring how you run operations. It means change, and the board has never been fond of change."
"It's the right decision."
"I know that," he says. "You know that." He pauses. "They need convincing that your attention won’t be split."
I look out the window. The grounds. Forty-five acres of sanctuary.
"It's not abandoning Jericho; I’m expanding operations," I say.
"Then say that," he commands. "You have an hour before the board arrives," he says. "Your team is waiting in the ready room for a brief."
My gut tightens. “Since when? There haven’t been any unscheduled arrivals.”
Dad just opens his hands. “What did you expect? For them to announce their presence? You taught them better than that.”
He has a point.
And if they’re worried about the changes, it’s my job to reassure them.
It takes twenty minutes to get into the suit.
The shirt takes five of them. My father works the buttons from the bottom while I manage the top. Neither of us says a word.
He ties the knot himself.
The pants are easy.
The jacket isn’t.
He takes my arm and guides it through the sleeve, careful, steady. No fuss. No comment until we’re done.
He steps back and looks at me. “Better,” he says.
He picks a single stray thread off my shoulder, his face a mask of practiced stoicism. "Now," he says, "go look them in the eye and tell them they still have jobs."
The transition from the plush, climate-controlled silence of the main house to the harsh reality of North Dakota starts the moment I step onto the wraparound porch.
My boots crunch as I descend the porch steps.
The walk to the machine shed is three hundred yards of exposure.
To any satellite or long-range lens, I’m just a man in a high-end suit walking across a snow-dusted yard.
But I feel the eyes of the perimeter cameras.
I know where they are: tucked into the shadows of the hay barn, perched in the roof, their thermal optics tracking the heat signature of a man who looks like he’s about to yank the rug out from under the people he brought here.
I reach the small steel "man-door" at the side of the shed. I don't knock. I press my thumb to the disguised scanner hidden behind a rusted junction box. There’s the dull clunk of a heavy magnetic bolt retracting.
Inside the shop, I walk past the smell of diesel and cold metal toward the back wall, where the massive tool rack looms.
I don't hesitate. I reach for the heavy pneumatic wrench hanging on the third peg and pull.
The hiss of released air is the only warning before the ten-foot section of the wall grinds inward.
My team is assembled. Every one of them. Caleb, Delilah, Zack, Reese, Verity, Luke, Axel, even Jake and Samantha have shown up. Which means whatever I'm walking into, it's worse than I thought.
I do a fast sweep the way I always do—threats, exits, who's standing where, and why. It takes me two full seconds to understand that none of my training applies here.
Fairy lights. Candles. Flowers.
No tactical gear. No tension in anyone's shoulders. My father is standing to the left with the expression of a man who has been sitting on something and is deeply pleased with himself.
The dread in my gut doesn’t evaporate—it recalibrates. I’m still trying to figure out what’s up when movement from behind the reinforced ballistic glass partition draws all the air out of my lungs.
Ava.
A vision of lace and light, shimmering against the dark walls of the ready room.
And beside her, an old friend turned army chaplain, I haven't seen since our last tour in the desert.
The realization hits me like a physical strike to the chest. The "Board." The "bad news." The suit change.
All misdirection.
I’ve trained my team to slip past the most impenetrable defenses unnoticed.
I just never expected them to turn those skills on me.
"Silas Hightower," Ava says, her voice steady, cutting through the silence of the room. "Will you marry me, right here, right now?"
I’m at her side before she draws her next breath.
THE END