Chapter 5
RAVEN
Iwake to birdsong and for three disorienting seconds I don't know where I am.
The mattress is too comfortable, the sheets too soft, the pillow beneath my head nothing like the lumpy disaster I slept on at the safe house.
Then it all comes crashing back. The cartel enforcers at the Pritchard ranch, the gunfire in the streets of Fredericksburg, and Jesse Hollister standing in my doorway like the angel of death.
Morning light filters through plaid curtains I don't remember closing, painting the bedroom in warm amber tones. The room is nothing like I expected from the cabin's weathered exterior. A tufted leather king bed dominates the space, and a braided rug covers the hardwood floor beneath the bed.
I can't remember the last time I slept through the night without waking.
Every muscle in my body aches from yesterday's adrenaline dump, and my mind feels sluggish and overfull despite the solid rest. I crashed hard the moment my head hit the pillow, exhaustion winning out over the questions that had been circling all through the drive from town.
Now those questions are back, sharper for the rest.
I slide off the bed, strap on my holster, chamber-check the Glock, and step through the doorway into the main room.
The cabin looks different in daylight, and the scent of coffee fills every corner of it.
The living room opens wide around the stone fireplace that anchors the center wall, with a longhorn skull mounted above the heavy timber mantel.
Exposed wood beams cross the ceiling, and the leather couch where Jesse slept has a cowhide blanket folded neatly at one end.
A dark wood coffee table sits on a layered spread of cowhide and woven rugs, and the bookshelves I noticed last night reveal worn spines in history, philosophy, and a surprising number of novels.
The books have all been read, their pages softened by use.
To my right, the kitchen occupies the far corner of the open floor plan, separated by a large island with dark granite countertops.
Jesse stands behind it with his back to me, pouring coffee into two ceramic mugs.
The distressed cream cabinetry and stone walls pick up the warm light from recessed fixtures overhead, and wrought iron hardware catches the glow of morning sun filtering through the windows.
He's changed clothes since last night into a clean gray henley pushed up at the forearms, dark jeans, and boots.
A holstered sidearm sits at his hip, as natural on him as breathing.
His dark hair is damp at the temples, and in the morning light I can see the silver threading through it more clearly than I could under the streetlight last night.
He doesn't turn around, but his shoulders shift in a way that tells me he was aware of me before I ever left the bedroom.
"Coffee's fresh." His voice is low and even, stripped of the urgency from last night. He slides one of the mugs across the island toward me.
I take it without thanking him. The first sip is bitter and scalding, and the heat of it centers me.
Through the living room windows, the morning light spills across the hills in shades of gold and pink, and cedar trees stand dark against the brightening sky.
The view is beautiful in a way that feels deliberate, like Jesse chose this piece of land for this exact morning light.
"It’s morning." I set the mug down and meet his gaze across the island. His eyes are steady and unreadable, and the patience in them makes my skin prickle with irritation. He's been waiting for this, probably awake for hours, probably rehearsing what to say. "You owe me answers."
"Okay." He leans against the island and wraps both hands around his mug. The casualness of the posture is at odds with the tension in his shoulders. "Where do you want me to start?"
"The plane." The words come out harder than I intend, sharpened by a decade of questions I've never been able to ask.
"I barely knew Uncle Robert existed when I was nineteen.
He was a name Uncle Martin mentioned once or twice, some relative in Virginia I'd never met and never spoken to.
Yet somehow you had a direct line to him, enough to arrange a private jet and armed escorts in the middle of the night. How?"
Jesse's expression doesn't change, but pain flickers behind his eyes before he buries it. "Your Uncle Robert was my commanding officer. Colonel Robert Carmichael, Delta Force. I served under him for years before I came back to Fredericksburg."
The words don't make sense at first. Jesse Hollister, Bo's eldest son, the man who was part of his father's operation even if he was secretly working against it, served under the uncle I'd never met. Two men connected by the military, orbiting my life from opposite directions without my knowledge.
"You served under Uncle Robert." My voice sounds distant to my own ears. "In Delta Force."
"He was the best CO I ever had. And when Bo found out I'd been feeding you documents, when I knew it was only a matter of time before he came for you and Martin, Carmichael was the only person I trusted with your life. The only person with the resources to get you out fast enough."
The understanding comes with a sickening clarity.
Uncle Robert hadn't just been a name on Uncle Martin's lips.
He'd had a direct line into Fredericksburg for years through both Martin and Jesse, through a military connection that predated anything that happened on the Bishop ranch.
The uncle I'd never met had been closer to my world than I ever realized.
"He was never just an uncle, was he." It isn't a question.
"Carmichael runs a black-ops organization called Shadowland. He's been in the intelligence game longer than either of us has been alive." Jesse's gaze doesn't waver. "That night, when everything went sideways, I called him and we made a deal."
"What kind of deal?"
"My freedom in exchange for service. I'd work for Shadowland, and in return, Carmichael would make whatever came next disappear." He sets his mug down on the granite. "He had the plane and his men at the airstrip within the hour. I got you there, his people took you, and I drove back to Blue Fork."
The coffee mug is warm between my palms, and I grip it tighter. "You went back."
"Bo was still there. Martin wouldn't leave. He faced Bo down with a shotgun, just like I knew he would. Bo had put a bullet in him by the time I got there."
My throat tightens. I already knew this, because Uncle Robert told me as much all those years ago. But hearing it from Jesse, from the man who was there, cuts differently. The wound has scarred over, but scars still ache when you press on them.
"And then?"
"I killed him." Jesse says it without inflection, the same way someone might report the weather. "Bo Hollister died on the same ground where he murdered your uncle. I put a bullet in him and watched him fall, and I didn't lose a second of sleep over it."
The kitchen is quiet except for the coffeemaker clicking off and the birdsong beyond the windows. I study Jesse's face for some sign of remorse, of guilt, of anything that might tell me the cost of what he did. His expression reveals nothing, but his knuckles have gone white around the mug.
"You killed your own father."
"I'd do it again." He doesn't waver. "Every single time, I'd do it again."
Relief floods my chest at the certainty in his voice, along with something else I wasn't expecting. Understanding, maybe, of the kind of man who could execute his own father and mean it when he says he'd choose the same path twice.
"What happened after?" I force myself to stay clinical, to treat this like an interrogation instead of two people with a decade of wreckage between them trying to find common ground. "You didn't go to prison. You didn't show up in any system I could find, and believe me, I looked."
A ghost of something crosses his face at that.
Surprise, maybe, or a dark kind of satisfaction at learning I'd searched for him.
"Carmichael honored the deal. Bo's death disappeared from every official record, and I disappeared into Shadowland.
" He sets his mug down on the granite. "I spent eight years running black ops, mostly overseas.
The kind of work that doesn't exist in any file.
Carmichael owned me, and I let him, because the alternative was a life sentence in Huntsville. "
"So Uncle Robert's had you on a leash this whole time."
"More or less. The deal was my freedom in exchange for service and..." He stops, and for the first time since I walked into this kitchen, Jesse Hollister hesitates.
"And what?"
"And keeping you safe." The words come out rough, like they've been lodged in his throat for years. "That was the original deal. My freedom and your safety. Carmichael would make Bo's death disappear, and in return I'd work for Shadowland."
The walls of the cabin feel like they're closing in.
I set my mug down because my hands aren't entirely steady, and I don't want him to see that.
I spent a decade building myself into someone who didn't need anyone, who didn't rely on ghosts or promises or the memory of pale blue eyes in the dark.
And all that time, Jesse was out there running black ops for Uncle Robert while my uncle held up his end of the bargain by giving me a life in Virginia.
"That was ten years ago." My voice comes out flat and quiet. "Did you even wonder what happened to me?"
"Carmichael gave me updates when I asked. He made sure I knew you were alive, that you'd gotten into the Academy, that you were climbing the ranks." He goes quiet for a moment. "But I couldn’t have contact with you. That was never part of the arrangement."
"Until now."