Chapter Thirteen
~ Cruz ~
I woke to the sound of a vehicle engine cutting too early, the distinctive hitch of someone who’d killed their lights and was coasting the last stretch of gravel with the engine off.
My hand was already reaching for the sidearm at the nightstand before my brain fully processed what my body had already clocked.
Six years of jumping at shadows, of sleeping with one ear on the alert, of running tactical scenarios until they became reflex—it all came down to this: I was out of bed, in socks, with my weapon in hand before I was even fully awake.
Jackson hadn’t moved behind me—still asleep, one arm across the space where I’d been. I didn’t wake him. Couldn’t risk the noise, the movement, the moment of confusion that came between sleep and alertness.
Instead, I checked the chamber by feel in the dark—round ready, safety off, magazine full—and moved out of the bedroom with silent steps that barely disturbed the air.
The house was quiet around me—just the soft tick of the heating system and the sound of Jackson breathing, steady and even behind the closed door.
I took up position in the hallway at the top of the stairs—the spot that gave me a clean sightline to both the front door and the kitchen entry below, the position I’d selected the first night I’d stayed in the farmhouse, back when Jackson had been stonewalling me and I’d been carrying a positive test between us.
Old habits. The kind that kept men like me alive when the world went sideways.
I keyed my earpiece with my free hand, the motion so automatic I didn’t need to look down. “Talk to me,” I whispered, the words barely audible.
Two clicks came back—Wade and Morales, the perimeter team Rawley had assigned to watch the farmhouse after the Peterson intel had come in.
Then Wade’s voice, barely above a whisper. “Two vehicles. Eastern tree line. Four men on foot moving toward the house from the north. Moving like they’ve done this before.”
“Copy that,” I said, already running the math. Four men outside. Two of ours on the perimeter. Jackson in the bedroom behind me. The farmhouse’s large ground to floor windows that wouldn’t stop a determined entry.
The calculation took under three seconds—hold the house, funnel them to one entry point, let the team collapse on the exterior. The kind of tactical assessment that had kept me alive through twelve years of operations where the margin for error was measured in seconds, not minutes.
I moved downstairs keeping to the edges of each step—the particular weight distribution that kept old boards from creaking. The kitchen was dark, moonlight spilling across the floor in long rectangles through the east-facing windows.
I took position behind the island—the spot that gave me angles to both the back door and the hallway to the front entry, the place where the counter’s solid oak would stop most rounds if things went sideways.
Then I heard it—the porch boards groaning under weight at two points simultaneously. Front and back. A coordinated entry, which meant there was a coordinator outside with eyes on the house. Someone running the show. Someone who knew what they were doing.
I clicked my earpiece twice—the signal for “hold positions, wait for my move”—and got two clicks back from Wade and Morales.
The back door came in first, kicked hard—the sound of someone who’d tried the handle, found it locked, and decided that wasn’t going to stop them.
I took the first man through the door with a controlled shot to the shoulder—not center mass, not a kill, but enough to drop him in the doorframe and create an obstacle for whoever followed.
I rolled left behind the island as the second man fired twice into the space I’d just vacated. The kitchen filled with the sharp smell of cordite and the ringing aftermath of gunfire in an enclosed space.
I fired again from the low position—controlled, center mass this time, the kind of shot that didn’t leave questions—and the second man went down.
From the front of the house came the rhythm of team work—controlled, fast, two shots, then silence.
My earpiece clicked three times: front clear.
I was up and moving through the kitchen, weapon still at ready position, when I heard Jackson’s bedroom door open at the top of the stairs.
Not the careful, quiet opening of someone who’d been woken by distant sounds, but the movement of a man who’d gone from asleep to tactical in under five seconds.
“Status?” Jackson called down, his voice low and flat—no panic, no drama, just a man who’d been woken by gunfire and wanted the facts as quickly as possible.
“House is clear,” I called back, already moving toward the back door. “Stay put. I’m checking the perimeter.”
The brief silence that followed told me Jackson was deciding whether to listen—the pause that meant he was calculating risks versus benefits, weighing compliance against whatever he thought needed doing.
I didn’t wait to find out—went out the back door over the downed man in the frame and swept the greenhouse path with my weapon up, moving fast and low through the cold pre-dawn air.
The fourth man—the coordinator—was positioned at the edge of the tree line with a radio and a clear sightline to the house. He was already running when I cleared the corner of the fourth greenhouse, his silhouette visible against the lighter darkness of the eastern pasture.
I closed the distance at a full sprint across the open ground, moving faster than he expected—twenty years of forcing my body to go past the point where most men would stop, to keep going when everything said quit.
I took him down in the grass with a tackle that drove us both hard into the cold ground—not elegant, didn’t need to be—got his arm up behind his back and my knee in his spine and held him there, chest heaving, until Wade came up to take over.
“You want me to—“ Morales started, one hand already reaching for his cuffs.
“I’ve got him,” I said, still breathing hard. “Find the vehicles. There should be two at the eastern tree line. Get me IDs on the bodies inside.”
Morales nodded and moved off toward the tree line, his weapon still at ready position, scanning the darkness with the intense attention that meant he was expecting more trouble.
I stayed kneeling in the grass for a moment after Wade pulled the coordinator up, hands on my thighs, breathing hard.
The sky was going gray at the edges—not quite dawn, but the shadowed darkness that meant it wasn’t far off. The mountains were dark shapes against it, solid where the sky was just starting to lighten.
Behind me, the greenhouse glass caught the first pale light of morning, and through it the grow lights were still running on their timers, indifferent to the fact that the world had just gone sideways.
I thought about Jackson upstairs in the farmhouse—about the way he’d been standing in the kitchen yesterday with a hand resting on the curve of his stomach, about the weight he’d been carrying for four months.
About the nursery down the hall from the bedroom—the crib with the recessed hardware and no edges to catch on, the toy box with the cedar lining, the rocking chair Jackson had driven forty minutes to find.
The thought arrived with a clarity that had nothing to do with the adrenaline still moving through me: I would burn down every network Peterson had ever built before I let anything come through that door again.
I got to my feet, wiped my palms on my pants, and keyed my earpiece. “Full status,” I said, my voice coming out steadier than I’d expected.
Morales answered immediately. “Two vehicles at the eastern tree line. Both registered to shell companies we’ve linked to Peterson’s network.
Four men down—two inside, one at the front entry, one with you.
All carrying Russian-made weapons. All with the same tactical markings on their equipment.
We’ve got IDs on three of them—Peterson loyalists, all with previous military or paramilitary training. ”
I nodded, the information landing exactly where it needed to—filed, processed, turned into the calculation that meant “actionable intelligence” rather than just “data.”
“Get them secured,” I said. “I want full IDs and background checks on all four. Then call Sterling. Tell him we need to move the ranch to condition three until we know what we’re dealing with.”
“Copy that,” Morales said. “Anything else?”
“Call Rawley,” I said. “Tell him what happened. Tell him Jackson’s fine, but I’m keeping him at the farmhouse until we’re sure it’s contained.”
Another “copy that,” then silence as Morales moved off to execute the orders. I holstered my weapon, ran a hand through my hair, and started walking back toward the house.
The sky had lightened another shade—not quite full dawn, but close enough that the mountains were visible as solid shapes rather than just darker patches against the dark.
The farmhouse sat on its rise, windows still dark except for the kitchen, where a single light had just come on—Jackson, then, moving through the house with the careful attention I’d come to recognize as his default.
I was halfway across the yard when the porch light flicked on.
Jackson stood in the doorway—barefoot on the cold wood in a flannel shirt and sleep pants, one hand braced on the porch rail and the other resting low against his stomach the way it always did now.
He watched me cross the yard with an expression that wasn’t quite relief and wasn’t quite anger and was probably both.
I climbed the porch steps and stopped in front of him, still breathing harder than I’d like, the last ten minutes sitting between my shoulder blades like something with an edge.
“Four?” Jackson asked, his voice level.
“Four,” I confirmed.
He nodded once, slow, filing it the way he filed everything—methodically, without drama that meant he’d be running the math on containment procedures and sightlines and whether the farmhouse was still viable as a position.
Then: “Come inside. I’ll put coffee on.”