Chapter Six
~ Jackson ~
I’d been sitting at the kitchen table for over an hour, cold coffee in front of me, watching the valley outside my window remain stubbornly black.
The third night in a row I hadn’t slept, the third night in a row I’d spent staring at my phone or at the ceiling or at the property map spread across the table.
Three nights of wondering if Peterson’s people were still out there, still watching, still waiting for the right moment to move.
And then I heard it—footfall in the grass east of the drive, too deliberate for deer, too quiet for anyone who didn’t know what they were doing.
My hand was on the Glock at my hip before the first figure cleared the tree line.
I eased back from the window, keeping to the shadowed side of the kitchen, and watched as a shape separated itself from the darkness—tall, moving in a way I’d seen on enough insertion teams do to recognize even at fifty yards.
Not Peterson’s people. Not random trespassers. Someone who knew exactly what they were doing.
And then I caught the set of his shoulders, the way he moved—not rushing, not hesitating, just covering ground with the absolute certainty that he belonged exactly where he was—and something in my chest unlocked so fast it almost embarrassed me.
Cruz.
Not in Belarus. Not in Frankfurt. Not anywhere he was supposed to be, given the text he’d sent twelve hours ago. Here. On my property. Moving toward my front door with his jump bag over one shoulder.
I stayed in the kitchen. Didn’t go out to meet him. Watched him cross the gravel drive with his eyes on the house the whole time—not looking for threats, not searching for exits, just tracking the single light burning in my kitchen window like it was the only thing worth seeing for miles.
He took the porch steps in two strides and knocked—three firm raps that carried through the still night air.
I moved to the door on autopilot, my hand on the lock before I’d fully decided to answer.
When I pulled it open, Cruz was standing on the porch exactly where I’d known he would be—back straight, shoulders square, eyes fixed on mine with that look he always gave me.
Like he was solving a problem he already knew the answer to. Like whatever came next was inevitable.
“You jumped in,” I said, the words coming out rougher than I’d intended.
“Seemed faster,” he replied, his voice level, his eyes never leaving my face.
I let out a breath that was almost a laugh and stepped back to let him inside. “You could have called.”
“You’d have told me not to come.”
He was right. I would have. Would have said we had it covered, would have insisted the team could handle it, would have found a dozen reasons why he didn’t need to fly across an ocean and jump out of a plane in the dark.
All of them lies.
Cruz moved past me into the kitchen, his shoulder brushing mine in the narrow doorway. He set his bag on the floor by the table and started unpacking it with practiced movements—phone, tablet, a satellite phone I recognized from a dozen different operations.
“Rawley’s team found a camera on the eastern fence line,” he said, pulling up a map on the tablet. “Military tread boot prints at the creek crossing. Cut wire with an amateur repair job.”
I nodded. “I sent you the photos.”
“I saw them.” He spread my phone photographs across the table alongside a printed property map that looked identical to the one I’d been staring at for the past three nights.
“The camera position was chosen carefully. Clear line of sight to the main drive, coverage of both the house and the stable. Whoever placed it knew what they were looking for.”
He worked with focused efficiency, moving between the tablet and the paper map without breaking his train of thought.
Outside, his team was sweeping the fence line—I could see their silhouettes moving through the darkness beyond the window, methodically checking each post, each approach, each potential camera position.
I moved to the counter and started a fresh pot of coffee, watching Cruz over my shoulder as he worked. He’d flown out of a mission in Belarus, HALO-jumped into a Montana pasture at three in the morning, and was now sitting in my kitchen like it was the most natural place in the world to be.
The uncomfortable part was that it was.
“The boot prints,” he said, not looking up from the tablet. “How many distinct tread patterns?”
“Two,” I answered, setting two mugs on the counter. “Different weights. One was carrying something heavy.”
He nodded, fingers moving across the tablet screen. “Primary and secondary. One running surveillance, one providing over watch.” He tapped the screen, bringing up a satellite image of the eastern tree line. “There are two more camera positions. Here and here.”
He pointed to spots on the image—one at the junction of the eastern and northern fence lines, one halfway up the ridge that overlooked the main pasture. Both with clear sightlines to Rawley and Jojo’s farmhouse and the main barn.
“Military-grade cellular trail cameras,” he continued. “Same model as the one you found. They’re running on alternating frequencies—one active while the other transmits, then switch. Makes them harder to detect with a standard sweep.”
He laid it all out with the same even tone he used for everything—no embellishment, no theater, just the facts as he’d calculated them. But I heard the subtext without needing it spelled out: whoever built this net was patient, methodical, not adaptive. Couldn’t improvise when conditions shifted.
And Cruz had already found where it broke.
The coffee finished brewing. I filled both mugs and carried them to the table, setting one in front of Cruz without interrupting his flow. He picked it up automatically, took a sip without looking, then went back to the tablet.
“The pattern’s clear,” he said, tracing a line across the image with his finger. “They’re watching the main house, not the outbuildings or the perimeter. Specifically the eastern approach and the front drive. The cameras are positioned to catch anyone coming or going from the front of the house.”
“Rawley’s team did a full sweep yesterday,” I said. “Found the one camera, checked the fence line, cleared the tree line beyond the creek. Didn’t find these.”
Cruz nodded. “They would have needed satellite coverage to spot them. The cameras are mounted facing away from the property—lens pointed outward, casing blended with the post. You wouldn’t see them from the ground unless you knew exactly where to look.”
He worked through the rest of the satellite imagery with methodical precision, identifying three gaps in the surveillance net—places where the terrain or tree cover created blind spots in the camera’s field of view.
Places where, if someone knew the property and moved with care, they could approach unseen.
By the time he finished, the sky outside was starting to lighten—deep black giving way to the first hint of gray along the eastern horizon. Cruz checked his watch, then reached for the satellite phone.
“I need to call Rawley,” he said, already moving toward the kitchen door. “He needs to know about the additional cameras before the ranch comes awake.”
I followed without thinking about it, standing just behind him as he dialed Rawley’s number from memory. The call connected after two rings—Rawley answering with his name and nothing else, the way he did when he didn’t recognize the number.
“It’s Cruz,” Cruz said, his voice level.
“I’m at Jackson’s place. We’ve identified two additional camera positions on the eastern and northern fence lines.
” He laid out the full picture without softening or theater—camera positions, observation timeline, ground team profile—his voice steady throughout.
On the other end of the line, Rawley went quiet for a long moment. Then: “You’re sure?”
“Satellite confirmation,” Cruz said. “Military-grade cellular trail cameras, running alternating frequencies. They’re watching the main house, specifically the eastern approach and the front drive.”
Another pause, longer this time. Then: “I’ll wake Decker and Burke. We can have a team on the ground in thirty minutes.”
“Give it an hour,” Cruz said. “Let the ranch come to life on its normal schedule. Don’t change the pattern.”
There was a beat of silence from Rawley’s end. Then, quietly: “You sound like Jackson.”
Cruz glanced back at me in the doorway, his expression giving away nothing. “He trained with better people than I did.”
I looked away before he could see what my face was doing—the heat rising in my chest, the tightness in my throat, the embarrassing wave of feeling that came with being known that completely.
Outside, the sky was lightening by the minute, the first hints of dawn visible along the eastern ridge. Inside, Cruz was still on the phone with Rawley, working through approach vectors and team assignments with the same focused attention he’d brought to the map.
And I was standing in my kitchen doorway, watching a man who’d jumped out of a plane in the dark to get here, and wondering what the hell we were doing.
* * * *
The takedown that afternoon was fast and clean.
We moved in just after two—Cruz’s team approaching from the east with Decker and Burke covering the north and south approaches—converging on the hunting cabin a mile past the property line with the kind of synchronized precision that came from years of working together.
The cabin was exactly where the satellite imagery had placed it: a low, weathered structure half-hidden in the pines, with a clear sightline back toward the main drive.