Chapter 26 Jackson
MOVING ON
The duffel bag sits open on the bed. It’s the same bag I’ve lived out of for three years—tactical nylon, fraying at the seams, smelling of gun oil and old airports. Usually, it holds a uniform loadout: Kevlar, ammunition, trauma kits, three changes of black clothes.
Today, it holds a silk blouse. A pair of jeans that aren’t mine. A laptop that contains the secrets of the free world.
“You’re packing it wrong,” Talia says.
She leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, wearing a smile that makes my chest ache. She’s dressed in clean clothes—dark denim, a sweater she stole from my drawer that hangs to her mid-thigh. She looks rested. The shadows under her eyes are gone, replaced by a brightness I haven’t seen before.
“It’s a bag,” I say, shoving a stack of socks into the corner. “Physics dictates that if I push hard enough, the volume expands.”
“That’s not physics. That’s brute force.”
“It’s my specialty.”
She laughs, pushing off the doorframe to join me. She reaches into the bag, rearranging the chaos into neat, logical layers. “Optimization, Jackson. You create space by organizing the variables.”
I watch her hands. Competent. Sure.
I reach out, capturing her wrist.
“Leave it,” I say. “We aren’t deploying. We’re just going home.”
“Home,” she tests the word. “I haven’t had one of those in a while. My apartment is a crime scene.”
“Then we find a new one.” I pull her closer, careful of the stitches in my side. “Somewhere with better locks, and a coffee machine that doesn’t taste like burnt plastic.”
“And a workspace,” she adds, her hands resting on my chest. “I need monitors. Lots of them.”
“Done.”
She rises on her toes and kisses me. It’s light, domestic, a promise of a future I didn’t think I’d live to see.
“The team is waiting,” she whispers against my lips.
“Let them wait.”
“Jackson.”
“Fine.”
I zip the bag. I sling it over my good shoulder, ignoring the twinge of protest from my healing muscles. I grab her hand. We walk out of the load-out bay, down the corridor, toward the hangar.
The Cerberus hangar is cavernous, smelling of jet fuel and rain. The massive bay doors are open to the gray Seattle sky.
Torque is prepping a sleek, black fixed-wing aircraft on the tarmac. Brass and Whisper are loading crates of gear.
And Halo is standing by, checking a tablet. He looks less like a tech genius and more like a kid about to joyride his dad’s car, but there’s a tension in his frame, a vibration I recognize.
The pre-mission jitters.
“You good?” he asks, checking my injuries.
“I’m functional.”
“You’re on medical leave,” he corrects. “At least for a few weeks.”
“Whatever.” I change the subject, turn it back at him. “So—Cassie Brennan?”
Halo’s expression hardens. “Yeah.”
“You found something?” Talia asks, stepping up beside me. “In the Admiral’s files?”
“I did.” Halo taps the car door. “I dug into the specific threat profile Phoenix built on her. It’s not just surveillance. They’re terrified of her.”
“Why?”
“Because she wasn’t just looking at the money,” Halo says.
“She found the connection between Vanguard Defense and a black-site project in Nevada. Something the Admiral was trying very hard to keep buried.” He looks at me.
“She’s the next domino. I feel it. If Phoenix takes her out, we lose the trail to the Rook. ”
“The Rook,” I repeat. The next piece on the board. The money man. “That’s the next piece?”
“Looks like.” Halo glances at Talia, and she nods. Their tech brains work on a level I’ll never achieve.
“Don’t let them take her out,” I say.
“I won’t, but it’s just me on this op, while the rest of you—”
“Right. ”A laugh punches out of me, sharp and disbelieving. Just him. The hell it is. “You’re just the guy who ran a five-man strike team around a warehouse like you had them on puppet strings.”
Halo stiffens. “That was situational awareness.”
“Situational awareness?” I raise a brow. “You called the ricochet angles like you were seeing them before they happened.”
He grimaces like I’m dragging up something embarrassing.
“I calculated probabilities.”
“You calculated them while dodging bullets.”
“Multitasking.” He shrugs, like that isn’t ridiculous.
I step close enough that he has to look up at me. I grip his shoulder, feel the tension thrumming beneath the half-casual posture.
“You can handle this.”
“I’m a tech guy, Jackson. I don’t kick down doors.” He exhales through his nose, eyes dropping. “And I certainly don’t do it alone.”
“Then don’t kick them.” I lean in, voice low. “Pick the lock. Cheat. Use your luck and win.”
His eyes lift, that small spark flickering through the humility he tries like hell to wear like armor.
And here’s the thing he’ll never say out loud—and doesn’t have to, because I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Halo runs circles around most of the door-kickers I’ve served with. Not because he’s the strongest or the fastest, but because the universe bends for him in ways that shouldn’t be possible.
He calls it luck.
I call it supernatural. He has a pattern of surviving things no human should survive.
The reason he’s Halo?
It’s not a joke.
It’s not irony.
It was that night in Basra—twenty-seven seconds of bullets slicing the air like angry hornets, every single one missing him by inches, ricocheting off walls in angles that should’ve killed him but somehow didn’t.
He moved through that kill box like something unseen cleared a path for him. A guardian angel tugging him out of harm’s way. We joke about guardian angels, but deep down, watching him walk through a warzone untouched—watching death curve around him—it doesn’t feel like a joke.
It feels like witnessing a glitch in the universe.
He pretends he’s just a tech guy.
Pretends he’s the weakest link on the team.
But the truth?
If I had to bet my life on one man making it through a firefight, one man finding a way out of an impossible corner, one man outsmarting and outlasting every son of a bitch hunting him—I’d bet on Halo.
Every damn time.
There’s a subtle shift in his posture, and a slight roll of his shoulders. The man’s gearing up. Pretending he’s not.
Halo’s a tech genius, but underneath the hoodie and sarcasm? He’s one of the deadliest bastards I’ve ever gone to war with.
Ghost walks up, flanked by Brass. The team leader looks from Halo to us.
“Green light,” Ghost says. “Wheels up in five, Halo. DC is waiting.”
Halo nods and salutes us—a two-finger flick off his brow. Then he boards the waiting jet. We watch him go until the taillights disappear into the rain.
“He’ll be fine,” Ghost says, though his eyes remain fixed on the jet.
“He’s going solo,” Brass mutters. “He hates solo.”
“He needs it,” Ghost says. He turns to me. “And you need to get out of my hangar.”
“Trying to get rid of me?”
“Trying to keep you alive.” Ghost hands me a set of keys. “Your truck is out front. I had Torque bring it around. There’s a safe house in the Cascades. Fully stocked. Off the grid. No internet, no cell service.”
“Sounds like hell,” Talia says.
“Sounds like paradise,” I correct.
“Go,” Ghost orders. “Heal up. We’ll call you when the world ends, and we need you. And we will need you.”
I take the keys and shake Ghost’s hand, then Brass’s. Whisper gives me a nod from the shadows near the crates. Then, I take Talia’s hand, and walk out of the hangar.
My truck—a battered Ford F-150 that has seen more warzones than most tanks—sits at the curb. I toss the bag in the back.
I open the passenger door for Talia. She climbs in, settling into the worn leather seat as if she belongs there.
Which she does.
She belongs right beside me.
Partners.
I get behind the wheel. The engine rumbles, a familiar vibration that travels up my arms.
“The Cascades?” she asks as we pull away from the complex.
“Too quiet?”
“Maybe.” She pulls up the map on the console. “But I ran the probability of recovery times in high-altitude environments. Lower stress variables …” She looks at me, a smile playing on her lips. “It’s optimal.”
“You just want to see me chop wood.”
“That is a variable I’m considering.”
I laugh. It hurts my side, but I don’t care.
The city fades behind us, replaced by the towering pines and gray mist of the Pacific Northwest. The road stretches out ahead, winding into the mountains.
For three years, I looked at the horizon and saw only threats. Ambush points. Sniper hides. Fatal funnels.
Now, I look at the road, and I see the woman sitting next to me. Her hand rests on my thigh. Her eyes scan the trees, analyzing the forest’s patterns, her mind a beautiful, restless machine.
I reach over and cover her hand with mine.
“We good?” I ask.
She laces her fingers through mine. Squeezes tight.
“We’re good,” she says. “Statistically speaking.”
I shift gears. We drive into the trees, leaving the ghosts in the rearview mirror.
Nexus is out there.
Phoenix is licking its wounds.