Chapter Fifteen #2
Jackson gave the slow filing nod he always gave a status report—the motion that meant he was processing, calculating, making the kind of assessments that had kept him alive through ten years of active duty. Then his eyes dropped for exactly one beat to my bleeding knee and came back up.
He said nothing about it.
He stepped back to let me through the door, the movement so slight I might have missed it if I hadn’t been watching for it.
Inside, the living room was exactly what I’d expected—the kind of emotional battlefield that belonged in parking lots and hospital waiting rooms, not in a farmhouse in Montana.
Jackson’s father was on his feet in the center of the room, face red, voice already at the register of a man who had been looking for a target since the driveway.
He rounded on me the moment I stepped inside, one hand already gesturing in a way that meant he was three steps into whatever performance he’d decided we were having.
“You,” he said. “Who are you? What is this? What kind of life is my son living?”
I looked at him once—took in the set of his shoulders, the careful way he was holding himself, the performance of it all—then looked at Jackson.
Jackson was standing very still beside the door, one hand resting low against his stomach the way it always did now.
His face was at the flat calm he used when he was deciding whether something was worth the energy—not the careful neutrality that meant he was hiding what he felt, but the stillness that meant he’d already made his decision and was just waiting for the right moment to execute it.
I moved to Jackson’s side and stood there, shoulder to shoulder, close enough that our arms were touching. Not quite holding, not quite claiming, just the physical fact of two people standing in the same space.
The message required no translation—not to Jackson, not to his father, not to anyone who’d spent five minutes in the same room with both of us.
Jackson glanced at me sideways—something shifted briefly in his expression that was not quite gratitude and not quite relief, but lived in the same territory as both—then turned back to his father.
“You’re going to sit down now,” Jackson said, his voice very quiet and very final. “Cruz needs to make some calls. When those calls are done, we’re going to have a conversation about what just happened on this property and why. And you’re going to listen.”
His father opened his mouth—already reloading for another volley.
Jackson said his name once, just his name—the emphasis that meant this wasn’t a request, but the kind of directive that came with consequences.
His father sat down.
I stepped into the kitchen and pulled out my phone. Sterling answered on the second ring, his voice coming through as if he was already moving to execute whatever came next.
“Cruz,” he said. “Talk to me.”
“Three men at the east tree line,” I said, keeping my voice level.
“Professional, not local. Peterson network, based on equipment and approach pattern. They hit the property with a two-position advance designed to push occupants toward the front of the house and away from vehicles. All three secured, no casualties on our side.”
Sterling was quiet for a beat—the silence that meant he was running scenarios, calculating risks, making the kind of assessments that had kept him alive through years of active duty.
“Copy that,” he said finally. “I’ll have people on-site within the hour. You need anything before then?”
“We’re good,” I said. “House is secure. Team’s running the perimeter. Nothing’s getting through that door without someone noticing.”
Sterling made a sound that was almost a laugh—a noise that came from genuine amusement rather than politeness. “Copy that,” he said. “Sit tight. Help’s coming.”
I hung up and stood for a moment in the quiet kitchen, listening to the sounds that came from the living room—Jackson’s voice, low and steady, his father’s responses, gradually moving from volume to something adjacent to actual conversation.
Through the kitchen doorway, I could see Jackson standing in the center of the living room, back straight, voice level, beginning the conversation that had apparently been thirty years in the making.
His mother sat on the couch with her hands folded in her lap, her face giving away nothing. The young woman—Elena—was still in the farthest corner of the room, her carefully arranged composure completely gone.
I found a dish towel in the drawer by the sink—blue cotton, slightly frayed at the edges, the kind of thing that had seen actual use rather than sitting in a drawer for decoration.
I folded it with careful attention, pressed it to my bleeding knee, and leaned against the counter with my weight on my good leg.
The grow lights hummed in the greenhouses outside the kitchen window, steady and indifferent to all of it. The house was warm—warmer than it had been when I’d left it at five that morning, the kind of warmth that came from bodies and breath rather than just a functioning furnace.
I stayed where I was—leaning against the counter with a dish towel pressed to my knee, listening to Jackson’s voice carry from the living room.
He did not need backup for this fight—had been handling his father’s brand of performance for thirty years without my help—but the kitchen was close enough that Jackson would know I was there, and that was the only thing I needed it to be.
The conversation continued in the living room—Jackson’s voice steady, his father’s responses gradually losing their edge, the rhythm that meant something was actually happening rather than just being performed.
I listened to it with half an ear, my attention split between the tactical situation outside and the emotional one inside.
Three men secured. Property perimeter holding.
Jackson’s father sitting rather than standing, listening rather than talking.
Small victories, maybe, but the kind that mattered when the alternative was watching everything come apart.
The baby would be due in two months. My baby. Jackson’s baby. A fact that had been true since the moment the doctor had handed Jackson that ultrasound image, and was now suddenly, physically present in a way it hadn’t been before.
Not just a medical reality or a logistical problem or the reason Jackson had gone silent for six weeks, but a person who would have his eyes, maybe, or my height, or some combination of features neither of us could predict.
A person men with guns had just tried to reach, on property I was supposed to be keeping secure, with a team I was supposed to be leading effectively.
I shifted my weight against the counter, adjusting the dish towel on my knee, and listened to Jackson’s voice carry from the living room. Steady. Level.
The grow lights hummed outside the window. The house was warm around me. Somewhere in the distance, a vehicle engine started—Rawley, probably, headed for the farmhouse with whatever security he’d decided we needed.
I stayed where I was—leaning against the counter with a dish towel pressed to my knee, close enough that Jackson would know I was there, and that was the only thing I needed it to be.