Chapter 5 #2
"Until your uncle called in a favor and told me you were headed to Fredericksburg.
" Jesse straightens and crosses his arms over his chest. "When Carmichael texted that your partner tried to kill you in El Paso and that he was sending you here, everything changed.
Distance wasn't going to keep you alive anymore. "
I want to be angry. Part of me is, with a hot sharp fury that my autonomy was a bargaining chip between two men who couldn't be bothered to ask me what I wanted or how I felt about the deal.
But another part of me, the one I've spent a decade trying to silence, looks at Jesse Hollister and sees a man who traded eight years of his life to cover up his father's murder and get a girl to safety.
Eight years doing Uncle Robert's dirty work because of a deal struck the night my world burned down.
That part of me is dangerous, and I know it.
"Bo's operation destroyed families across four counties," he continues.
"And the land he stole needed to go back to the people it belonged to.
" Resolve hardens his expression. "I bought Devil's Acre piece by piece under shell companies with no Hollister name on any deed.
I cleaned the property, burned down the old and tainted portions, and rebuilt what needed rebuilding. "
He glances toward the window where the Hill Country stretches in every direction.
"I've been trying to keep things quiet, but the cartel has been rebuilding too, using new people on the same old routes my father mapped out.
My brothers and I have been monitoring their progress and feeding intel to Carmichael, waiting for him to pull the trigger on a takedown.
Then you showed up, and everything accelerated. "
Before I can respond, his phone buzzes on the island between us. Jesse glances at the screen, and his expression hardens.
"Carmichael." He picks up the phone and hits the speaker button, setting it on the granite where we can both hear. "You're on speaker, and Raven's standing right here. Whatever you have to say, she hears it."
Uncle Robert's voice fills the kitchen, steady and measured, the tone of a man accustomed to delivering difficult information with surgical precision. "Good. She should hear this."
"Then start talking." Jesse's arms are crossed again, his body coiled with a tension I can feel from three feet away. "Because your niece almost died twice yesterday, and I want to know exactly why."
"The cartel is moving faster than we anticipated.
" Uncle Robert's voice carries through the speaker with the calm authority I've known since the day I landed in Virginia.
The same voice that guided me through college, pushed me toward the ATF, and checked in during every dangerous assignment.
Right now, in light of Jesse's revelations, it sounds like that of a stranger.
"My team has been building a case against cartel leadership for years, Raven. We're close enough that they're getting desperate. Morrison's attempt on you in El Paso wasn't random. It was a direct response to our operations."
The mention of Morrison sends ice through my veins.
"You knew." The words leave my mouth before I can stop them. "You knew the cartel would target me."
"I knew it was a possibility." Uncle Robert's voice doesn't waver, and the absence of apology makes my blood pressure spike.
"Your investigation in El Paso was getting too close to their distribution network.
Our intelligence indicated that Morrison was compromised long before you were assigned as his partner.
When the cartel realized how much you'd uncovered, they activated him. "
Morrison was dirty before I ever met him, and Uncle Robert knew but hadn't bothered to tell me.
"And your response was to send me to Fredericksburg to investigate accidents you knew were tied to cartel operations." I force my voice to stay level. "Right into the snake pit, in other words, and you couldn't be bothered to warn me."
"I sent you somewhere Jesse could protect you." A pause, deliberate and measured. "And somewhere you could do the most damage to their operation."
Jesse goes still, and I can see the muscle jump beneath the scar on his jawline. "You used her as bait."
"You sent me the Pritchard file." The fury in my voice surprises even me. "You pointed me straight at that ranch."
"Because I needed someone on the ground who could find what my team couldn't from a distance." Uncle Robert's clinical tone makes my stomach turn. "That is exactly what you did. It was no different than what you were doing for the ATF."
"What you needed." Jesse's voice has dropped low and flat, with every trace of warmth stripped out of it. "She walked into a cartel ambush with nothing but a sidearm because you pointed her at a dead rancher's property and let her figure it out alone."
"She wasn't alone. You were there." Uncle Robert says it like it's obvious, like the entire arrangement was a foregone conclusion. "I've always known you'd protect her, Jesse. That was never in question."
"That's not the point."
"The point is that the cartel's leadership is within reach.
" Uncle Robert's voice sharpens, and the pretense of warmth drops away entirely.
"Every dead rancher, every seized property, every shipment that's moved through the Hill Country in the last eighteen months leads back to one coordination point.
We're close to identifying who's running the pipeline, and we need both of you in position to draw them out. "
"You're dangling us in front of the cartel and waiting for them to strike so you can trace the response back up the chain."
The silence on the other end of the line tells me everything I need to know.
"Raven, I knew you could handle yourself." Uncle Robert's tone softens, and the shift from handler to uncle is so practiced it makes me grind my teeth. "And I knew Jesse would keep you safe. The two of you together are the strongest team I have."
"A team." The word tastes like ash. "That's all we are to you."
"You're my niece, and you're alive because I made hard choices.
" For the first time, his composure fractures.
"I've spent ten years making sure you survived, Raven.
Every decision I've made, from taking you in to putting you through school to watching you join the ATF, knowing it would eventually put you in harm's way, all of it was to keep you breathing and to support what you wanted to do.
This is no different. The objective hasn't changed. "
The line goes quiet, and the three of us sit in a silence that hangs heavy and thick.
"Send us everything you have." Jesse's voice is low and controlled, with every word measured. "Every file, every surveillance report, every piece of intelligence your team has gathered on the pipeline. If you want us in this fight, we do it with full information. No more operating blind."
"Agreed. I'll have it encrypted and sent within the hour." There is a pause before he continues. "Raven?"
I stare at the phone on the island. This man is family. He took me in at nineteen when I had nothing and no one. He gave me a roof, put me through college, and pointed me toward the ATF. He also lied to me and orchestrated my path to Fredericksburg like I was a pawn on his chessboard.
"I'm here." My voice doesn't shake despite the storm raging behind my ribs. I don't want to hear another word of his justifications. "Just send the files."
Uncle Robert ends the call without saying goodbye. That has always been his signature move, the one I used to find endearing and now recognize as the habit of a man who never lets a conversation end on sentiment.
The kitchen settles into silence again, and this time the morning light feels different. Harsher, maybe, or just more honest. Jesse hasn't moved. His hand is still pressed flat on the granite; his gaze fixed on the phone like he's considering smashing it.
All this time, I thought I'd built something on my own.
The scholarship to college that appeared right when I needed it.
The recommendation letter that got me into ATF training.
The assignment to El Paso that Uncle Robert said would be perfect for my skill set.
Every door that opened, every opportunity that fell into place.
How many of those were real, and how many were Robert Carmichael pulling strings I never saw?
I want to throw something, scream at the phone, at the man who isn't here to face what he's done. But rage is a luxury I can't afford right now, not with a cartel hunting me and Jesse Hollister standing close enough to read my face like it's a tactical brief.
Instead I do what I've always done. I shove it down, lock it away, and focus on what I can control.
"He played us both." My voice comes out quieter than I expect. "He sent me here knowing exactly what would happen."
"Your uncle is a lot of things." Jesse lifts his gaze to mine, and the anger in his expression has hardened into resolve. "Sentimental isn't one of them."
"No, it isn't." The understatement almost makes me laugh, but the sound would come out wrong, brittle and sharp and too close to breaking.
Uncle Robert built a career on cold calculation, and apparently I was just another asset to deploy.
I don't know if anything about the last ten years was really my choice, or if I've been living inside a story he wrote for me.
The morning sun has climbed above the tree line now, spilling warmth through the windows and painting Jesse in gold and shadow.
The light catches the scar on his jaw, the silver at his temples, and the lines around his eyes that tell stories I wasn't there to see.
He is a stranger in so many ways, harder, quieter, and more contained than the man I knew before.
But his eyes are the same. That pale, impossible blue hasn't changed at all.
I don't want to feel the pull. I don’t want to notice the way his forearms tense against the island, or the way his voice drops when he's being honest, or how he’s positioned himself between me and the door without seeming to think about it. My body doesn't care what I want.
The heat that hit me when I opened that door last night hasn't gone away. It’s just settled deeper, coiled low in my belly where rage and want are tangled together so tightly I can't separate them.
"We're all targets now." Jesse straightens, and the movement brings him a step closer.
He isn't crowding me, but he's close enough that I can smell sandalwood and coffee and something underneath that's just him.
"You, me, Knox, and Beckett. After last night, the cartel knows I'm involved.
They'll have traced the plates on my truck.
Carmichael wants us in position to draw out their leadership, and whoever is running the pipeline through the Hill Country is going to come at us with everything they've got. "
"Then we need a plan that doesn't involve being Uncle Robert's pawns." I cross my arms, and I know the motion is defensive. "I'm not a chess piece; neither are you."
"No," Jesse agrees, and his gaze holds mine with an intensity that makes the air between us feel combustible. "We're not."
The moment stretches and the energy shifts between us.
It is subtle but undeniable. I'm standing in his kitchen, in a cabin no one else has ever seen, with a cartel hunting us and my uncle pulling strings from a thousand miles away.
Right now, the only thing I know for certain is that Jesse Hollister is the most dangerous man I've ever met.
It has nothing to do with what he can do with a rifle or how many men he's killed. It's the way he looks at me like I'm the answer to a question he's been asking since that night so long ago. It's the dreams that have left me panting and aching with want no matter how hard I try to deny them.
I should hate him. Part of me does, and that part is loud and justified.
But the other part, the part that remembers a young man who betrayed his own blood to save my life, who killed his father and disappeared into Shadowland for years, that part wants to close the distance between us and find out if this need burns hotter when I'm pressed against him.
I can't have both the mission and the man, and I can't afford to choose wrong.
But as Jesse holds my gaze across the kitchen island, I know the truth. Whether I trust him or hate him doesn't matter anymore. The cartel is coming, Uncle Robert is playing games with our lives, and Jesse Hollister is the only piece on the board I can see clearly.
That will have to be enough.