Chapter Fifteen
~ Hooper ~
It’s the same six degrees as yesterday, the cold notched just past bearable, enough that the skin on the back of my hands feels like it could split with one good knock.
The floor of the equipment barn did its best to telegraph the temperature straight through my jacket and up into the hinges of my jaw.
I lay flat under the old flatbed, diagnostic reader plugged into a port that should have been replaced in the Bush administration and squinted up at the tangle of wires with the kind of optimism reserved for those who’ve never had to wire a secondary relay with their ass on a slab of rebar-reinforced concrete.
The trouble light swung from the bumper, a little disco of shadows flicking across the undercarriage every time the wind tried the gaps in the siding.
I’d lost a washer somewhere between my chest and the differential, and the odds of finding it in the next twelve hours were worse than even, but I kept the rhythm going—loosen, pull, replace, test—because there was comfort in knowing that even the most temperamental machinery could be bullied into working with enough patience and torque.
Liam’s footsteps didn’t match any of the other regulars; he walked light, but not from habit.
From calculation. Each step on the old barn’s wood was a decision—make a sound, don’t make a sound, test if the world will let you get away with it today.
I counted his approach: six boards, then the hitch as he ducked under the low lintel.
Even with the trouble light overhead, it took a second for my eyes to adjust to the silhouette. He stood in the open, not hiding, not advancing, holding out a prepaid phone with two fingers, the way you hold evidence at the scene of a minor crime.
He didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to. He held out the phone like he’d already tried every other possible move and this was the last one left in the deck.
I finished the rotation on the ratchet, set it down on the creeper by my hip, and shimmied out until the cold air hit the skin above my waistband like a cattle prod. I sat up, propped on one elbow, and reached for the phone. He handed it off without ceremony.
The screen was unlocked, the message front and center: She’s coming herself. Madison County.
Nothing else. No number, no preamble, no signature.
It didn’t have to say more.
I scrolled up, just to check. The prior message was three days ago—an area code ping, likely a burner phone used only for this purpose. Whoever sent the last one sent this one too, and they’d waited until now, until the night before a forecasted freeze, to let us know.
I handed the phone back. “How old is the message?”
He checked. “Forty minutes.” His voice was thin, dry. Like it hurt to make it travel across the barn.
I wiped my hands on the inside of my jacket—already stained from axle grease and the kind of mud that never fully leaves you, not even after three wash cycles—and tried to think of the next step.
It was rare for Liam to come to me with a problem. Rarer still for him to do it without a joke, or at least a crack about the barn smelling like boiled dog food.
That’s how I knew he was scared.
I reached for the shop rag, rolled it between my hands while I let the plan build itself. “You need to get Emilio and head to the east house,” I said. “The Decker-Jasper place, not here. Not anywhere with a front window visible from the road.”
He blinked. Not pushback—just surprise at the speed of the instruction. “Now?”
“Now,” I said. “Don’t use the main trail. Take the horseshoe path by the old silo, then cut south once you’re past the marsh. Stick to the fence line.”
He nodded, still holding the phone like it might detonate.
The kid inside me, the one who grew up learning that nothing bad ever happened if you kept your head down, wanted to say something soft.
But all I said was, “She’s going to try and get you to come outside.
Don’t. Not for any reason. You see headlights, you move away from them, not toward.
If you’re with Jasper, you’re safe. He’ll have a radio on him, and so will Decker. ”
The little flinch in his jaw told me he was listening, not just waiting for his turn to talk.
I set the ratchet on the workbench, got to my feet, and wiped the sweat off my face. It was already drying, leaving a sticky line of salt in my eyebrow. “I’ll be here,” I said. “If she makes it past the tree line, I’ll be the one she sees.”
He didn’t say anything about that. Just turned the phone off and slid it into his pocket. There was no argument, no wasted words, nothing left in him that could even pretend to want a different outcome.
As he left, the shop light caught the side of his face—cheekbone sharp, mouth pulled tight, eyes doing their best not to dart back and check if I was following. I watched him disappear into the dark, counted to ten, and then reached for the handheld.
I thumbed the side button, twice, then spoke low: “Rawley. You up?”
The answer came back almost instantly, a whisper wrapped in static: “Copy.”
“We’ve got a move,” I said. “Inbound, probably from the Madison side. Forty-minute heads up. Two vehicles, minimum, but could be more.”
Rawley didn’t ask for a source. He knew what kind of intel this was. “I’ll set perimeter,” he said. “Burke and Macon?”
“Already moving,” I said. “Liam’s heading to the east house with the kid. If you see headlights on the county road, let me know before they make the main drive.”
There was a pause, not long, but loaded. “You want armed?”
“I want visible,” I said. “But not stupid. I’ll be at the porch. She’ll want a scene.”
“Copy,” Rawley said. I could hear the wind in his background, the crunch of boots on snow. “See you on the flip.”
I set the radio down, then did the rounds—checked the sight lines from each window, made sure the interior doors were unlocked and the exterior ones would hold then headed for the house.
Once in the inside, I double-checked the lockbox in the kitchen, spun the dial to the right numbers, and pulled out the SIG. I holstered it under the jacket, zipped up, and chambered a round with the kind of slow, measured calm that used to freak out the new guys when I was on teams.
The act of prepping made the nerves go quiet.
I didn’t rush. I didn’t let myself imagine how she’d try it.
I just worked the checklist: boots, gloves, jacket, radio, spare mag, flashlight, phone.
I left the house through the back door, cutting wide around the barn and keeping to the shadow of the equipment shed until I had the right sight line to the drive.
The porch was where I wanted to be, exposed enough to see, but sheltered enough not to get caught flat-footed.
I took the steps up, let the old boards creak under my weight, and planted myself square in the center.
The wind hit my face with a clean, straight shot from the north, and I let it strip away the last of the barn dust from my skin.
My jacket was open. Hands at my sides, loose. Nothing in my posture said “waiting for trouble,” but everything about the way I stood said “come find me.”
The world was white and blue, the snow gone hard and reflective under the porch light.
From the county road, anyone looking would see the outline of a man waiting for something—a father, maybe, or a caretaker, or just the only person dumb enough to freeze their balls off for the sake of a little clarity.
The headlights came before the engine noise did—a pair of beams slicing the horizon, turning the blue into sharp bands of gold and shadow.
The vehicle was dark, SUV, something new enough that it had the high-gloss finish of a rental or a fresh lease.
It slowed at the start of the drive, rolled up slow, not even bothering to kill the brights.
I stood there and waited.
Behind the SUV, I caught a second set of lights. Lower, wider, probably a truck. That would be Rawley, running the perimeter. No sirens, no lightbar—just the presence, the knowledge that there were more eyes on this than the driver might want to believe.
Eleanor’s SUV came up the drive in a measured way, each revolution of the tires eating the distance with a kind of predatory confidence you don’t learn unless you’ve watched a thousand cars come and go from a thousand different vantage points.
The headlights lit the porch in stark white, bleaching out my boots and jacket and casting a double shadow of me back against the door.
I didn’t move. Didn’t even shift my weight. I wanted her to see me the way I saw her: as an inevitable fact.
She got out before the SUV had fully braked.
The two men in the front seat stayed inside, hands visible on the dash, the posture of private security with a budget and a brief.
Eleanor’s heels hit the gravel in a way that said she could run in them, if needed.
She closed the door behind her, glanced at the sky—cloudless, hard, almost blue in the coming dawn—and then started up the drive.
Her coat was cashmere, or something close, black over dark gray pants, no hat, no gloves. She was tall, but the build was lean, like she was all tendon and nerve under the layers. Her features were sharp, not cruel but perfected for slicing through a negotiation.
When she walked, it was with the assurance of someone who believed the world belonged to her, and that any evidence to the contrary was a minor paperwork error soon to be corrected.
The air changed when she came within ten yards—a shift, a pressure, a rolling front of alpha pheromone that hit like dry ice in the back of the nose.
It was aggressive, but not out of control; she was using it the way you use a checkbook, not a fist. I recognized it for what it was and didn’t let myself flinch.
She stopped at the base of the steps, let her gaze drag up from my boots to my eyes. She smiled, perfect teeth, zero warmth.
“Tomás Hooper,” she said, making my name sound like an admission of guilt.