Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
JESSE
The Gillespie County Airport was dark save for its weak security lights.
At one in the morning, it was virtually empty, nothing but a single runway and a handful of buildings that looked abandoned.
Jesse pulled his truck past the main terminal to a private hangar at the far end, where a sleek jet waited with its engines already warming.
The jet turbines whined through the night air, high-pitched and insistent.
Two men stood beside the plane. Both wore dark suits that looked expensive even in the dim light, and both had the kind of build that came from years of serious training.
Military or intelligence, Jesse knew at a glance.
The kind of men Colonel Carmichael would send.
They stood with the stillness of men who knew exactly how to hurt someone and when not to.
Jet fuel mixed with sage and cedar from the surrounding hills. Under any other circumstances, it might have been peaceful. Tonight, it smelled like the end of everything.
Jesse killed the engine but didn't move to unlock the doors. His hands stayed on the wheel.
"Jesse." Raven's voice was hoarse. "Please. Don't do this."
He still wouldn't look at her. "Your uncle gave his life to get you here. Don't waste that, Raven."
She was silent for a moment, taking that in. Her hand lifted, as if she wanted to touch the bruises on his face, then it dropped back to her lap. "Come with me. You can't go back there. Your father will..."
"I can take care of my father." Jesse finally turned to face her. "Your Uncle Martin isn't the only one who made a deal for his family’s safety tonight. I have to finish this."
Before she could respond, he was out of the truck, moving around to her side. The two men from the plane started toward them with purposeful strides.
Jesse opened her door as she lunged for the driver's side, trying to escape across the seat. He grabbed her arm and dragged her out. She fought, kicking and thrashing, but he got her boots to the tarmac. She bolted. One of the suited men caught her around the waist.
"No! Let me go!" She threw an elbow back. The man grunted but held on. "Jesse, please! Please don't do this!"
Jesse stepped back. She twisted in the man's grip, got one arm free and swung at his face. He caught her wrist.
"Raven, we're not going to hurt you," the man said, his voice calm and professional. Almost kind. "But we need to get you on that plane. Your uncle is waiting for you in Virginia."
"I don't care about Uncle Robert! I don't even know him!" Her voice cracked. "My family—Uncle Martin is back there and he's..."
She stopped mid-sentence.
The second man approached, and Jesse could see what he held in his hand. A syringe. Small, professional, the kind doctors used.
"No." Her voice dropped to almost a whisper. "No, please, don't..."
She fought harder. Her boot caught the first man's shin and he cursed, adjusted his grip. She snapped her teeth at his arm, tried to slam her head back into his face.
"I'm sorry. This is for your own safety." The second man moved with practiced efficiency. The needle went into her upper arm before she could pull away.
"No!" She kept fighting, but within seconds her movements slowed. Her legs wobbled. "Jesse... please..."
Her eyes found his for just a moment. Then they rolled back and she went limp.
They carried Raven's unconscious body into the plane. She looked small in their arms. Nineteen years old and she'd just lost everything she knew in the span of a few hours. Her uncle. Her home. Her sense of safety in the world. And Jesse had been the one to take it away from her.
Jesse watched them take her, unconscious and helpless, and felt nothing.
No guilt, no remorse, no second thoughts.
He'd learned to turn off emotion in the Army, to focus on the mission. Right now, Raven was the mission. Getting her out, keeping her alive, using her survival as justification for everything that came next. His father had taught him to be ruthless. It was time to show the old man exactly how well he’d learned those lessons.
He wondered if Raven would ever forgive him. Probably not. He wasn't sure he'd forgive himself. But there had been no other way to keep Raven safe from Bo.
Jesse started back toward his truck, but the first man—the one Raven had kicked—stepped into his path.
"Mr. Hollister." The man's voice was polite but firm. "You made a deal with Mr. Carmichael. You deliver the girl, you report to Shadowland for extraction and integration. Those were the terms."
Jesse met his eyes, kept his own voice level. "I have something that needs to be done first. Something that can't be left undone."
"Mr. Carmichael was very specific about the timeline."
"Tell Carmichael I'll report to Shadowland as soon as it's done." Jesse's voice went hard. "But I have to finish this tonight."
The man studied him for a long moment, then glanced back at the plane where Raven was being secured for the flight. When he turned back to Jesse, something in his expression had shifted. He gave a slight nod.
"How long?"
"Two hours. Maybe three."
Another pause. Then a slow nod. "We'll tell him you're en route. But if you're not at the facility in San Antonio by dawn, we'll come looking."
"I'll be there." Jesse moved past him toward his truck, then paused. "Take care of her. She's been through enough."
"That's the job."
Jesse climbed into his truck. He watched as the plane's door sealed shut. The engines grew louder, and within minutes the Citation was taxiing toward the runway. He waited until it lifted off, until the lights disappeared into the night sky, carrying Raven away from Texas.
Away from him.
He pulled out his phone and started typing, his thumbs moving fast across the screen. The message went to both Knox and Beckett, his younger brothers. The only family he had left worth saving.
Bo killed Martin Bishop tonight. I’ve made arrangements to remove him from our lives permanently.
You need ironclad alibis for tonight—bar, friends, security cameras, whatever you can manage.
Raven Bishop is safe. I don't know if or when I'm coming back.
Protect mom and take care of each other. Don't trust the old man's people. —J
He hit send and watched the message be delivered.
Knox should understand—perhaps not immediately, but he’d put it together.
He'd been watching Jesse pull away from their father's operation for months, waiting for the moment it all came apart. Beckett was younger, less involved, but intelligent enough to read between the lines. He’d follow Jesse and Knox’s instructions.
They'd be okay. They had to be.
Jesse started the truck and headed back toward the Bishop ranch. Less than four hours since he’d met Raven. It felt like a lifetime ago. It felt like five minutes ago.
His hands were steady on the wheel, but his mind prepared for the moment he would pull the trigger.
Jesse had killed plenty of men before—enemies in combat, threats to his unit, targets marked for elimination.
In many ways, this was no different. This was his father, true, but his father had made it necessary with his own actions.
Premeditated? Absolutely. Planned? Meticulously.
Personal? It didn’t get any more personal.
His father had wanted to mold him into a blade, the Army and his time in Delta had honed that blade to a keen cutting edge.
Tonight that blade would find its way right into his father’s heart.
He’d honored Bishop’s sacrifice by getting Raven out. He'd saved her life whether she appreciated it or not. That had to count for something, even if it didn't balance the scales of all the times he’d stood by while he planned.
The highway was empty at this hour, just darkness and the rare pair of headlights passing in the opposite direction.
Normal people, heading home from late shifts or early mornings.
People whose lives didn't involve gun running and murder and watching a girl get tranquilized and shipped off to an uncle she'd never met.
Jesse envied those normal people.
He knew exactly where Bo would be—standing over his latest kill, savoring the victory, probably getting ready to burn the place down and destroy the evidence.
His father was nothing if not predictable in his methods.
Bo liked to savor the moment and watch things burn.
Liked to make sure his enemies knew they'd been destroyed completely, that nothing remained of what they'd built.
Jesse killed his lights a half-mile out and pulled off onto a ranch road that ran parallel to the Bishop property. He grabbed the rifle case from behind his seat—a Barrett M82, the same model that had served him so well.
Jesse moved through the darkness with the efficiency of years of training, the rifle case slung backpack style over his shoulders, his boots finding purchase on the rocky ground.
Hill Country at night was all shadows and sounds: crickets and the distant hoot of an owl, the rustle of something small moving through the brush.
It was beautiful, in its way. Jesse had grown up in these hills, had learned to hunt and track and shoot in places just like this.
Now he was hunting his own father.
He found a low rise, a mix of scrub, pine brush, and shale that gave him a clear line of sight to the Bishop house.
Jesse settled into the rocky outcropping, and began assembling the rifle.
His hands moved automatically—stock, barrel, scope, bolt.
He'd done this blindfolded, in sandstorms, under enemy fire.
He'd done this in worse conditions than a quiet Texas night.
Through the scope, he could see the lights, the black SUVs still parked out front.
Could see the shapes of men moving around the property, four or five of them, relaxed now that the violence was done, celebratory even.
They thought they'd won, that Bo had cleaned up another loose end and they'd all get paid and go home and life would continue as it always had.
And there he was—his father, standing on the porch with the light reflecting off a gas can in his hand.
Through the scope, his father looked smaller in the distance.
Just a man. Not the monster who'd haunted Jesse's childhood, not the tyrant who'd corrupted an entire county.
Just flesh and bone and blood, same as any other target.
Growing up, Jesse had been afraid of this man. He wasn't afraid anymore.
Jesse settled into position, with the rifle an extension of his body. A thousand yards, slight crosswind from the west, stationary target. A hundred times in training, fifty in combat, and harder shots than this in worse conditions.
Through the scope, he watched his father unscrew the gas cap.
Watched him start to pour gasoline across the porch, across Bishop's blood that probably still stained the wood.
Bo was laughing. Jesse couldn't hear it from this distance, but he could see it in the way his father's shoulders shook, in the tilt of his head.
Laughing. Like murder was funny. Like destroying a good man's life and home was entertainment.
Jesse took a deep breath and slowly let out half, waiting for the space between heartbeats and squeezed the trigger.
The shot cracked across the Hill Country night.
Through the scope: his father crumpled and lay still.
And Jesse felt nothing at all. No relief, no satisfaction, no regret.
Just the empty calm of a job completed. One shot, one kill.
His father had taught that mercy was weakness. Jesse had learned the lesson.
He watched as men scrambled for cover, trying to figure out where the shot had come from, then he began breaking down the rifle.
They'd never find the position; he'd chosen it too well and it would never dawn on them that the shot was from over half a mile away. By the time they organized a search, if anyone was interested in finding Bo Hollister’s killer, he'd be long gone.
He secured the rifle case in the back of the truck and pulled onto the highway, heading south toward San Antonio.
Toward the facility where Carmichael's people would collect him and funnel him into Shadowland—some off-books intelligence operation that trained operators for missions that never made it into official reports.
Jesse didn't know the details and didn't care. What mattered was the deal: Raven's safety and immunity for his mother and brothers in exchange for his disappearance into whatever black ops program Carmichael ran. Eventually, they'd ship him overseas where men like him went to become ghosts.
Jesse's phone buzzed. Knox, responding to the message:
What the fuck did you do?
Jesse typed back one-handed while he drove:
What needed to be done. Get those alibis. Love you both.
Another buzz, this time from Beckett:
You're coming back, right?
Jesse stared at the message for a long moment before typing:
Eventually. Not for a while. Take care of mom.
He didn't know if that was true. Didn't know if he'd ever come back to Texas, or if the person who eventually returned would still be Jesse Hollister. The military had changed him once. Whatever Shadowland was, whatever Robert Carmichael had planned for him, it would change him again.
Dawn broke over the Hill Country as Jesse drove.
Behind him, red and blue lights would be converging on the Bishop ranch.
They'd find Bishop’s and his father's bodies.
They'd investigate. But they wouldn't find answers—not the ones that mattered.
Jesse had been careful about the ground he chose, the rifle position, about the angle, about every detail.
They'd know it was a professional hit, but they'd never prove who pulled the trigger.
Knox and Beckett would survive this. They'd mourn or at least pretend to. And without Bo's shadow, maybe they'd have a chance at something resembling normal.
Shadowland waited for him in San Antonio. Two hours. Jesse pushed the speedometer to ninety and left everything he'd been bleed out in the Hill Country darkness.