Chapter 6
JESSE
My phone buzzes against the granite, shattering the moment. Knox's name flashes across the screen, and the timing is either perfect or the worst in history. I answer without breaking eye contact with Raven.
"Beckett's tracking something and it's getting worse." Knox's voice is clipped, with no preamble. "We need to see you as soon as possible."
"I can meet. Where do you want to do this?"
"Somewhere private. Not Devil's Acre. That place you mentioned once?"
Knox knows I have the cabin. He just doesn't know where.
"Meet me on County Road 12, a mile marker past the turnoff to Miller's Pond. I'll bring you in from there."
"Copy."
I lower the phone. Whatever was building between us fractures under the weight of reality. Raven steps back first, putting distance between us like she can reset the moment by sheer force of will.
"Your brothers?"
"Beckett's been tracking cartel movement. They need to meet." I pocket the phone. "And I'll bring them here."
Her eyes narrow. "To the cabin?"
"Knox knows it exists but not the location. Beckett doesn't even know I have it." I grab my keys from the hook by the door. "But if we're going after the cartel and whoever is coordinating locally, I need them in on this."
"How much do they know?"
"They know I killed Bo and disappeared into Shadowland." I stop at the door. "What they've never heard is why, or what really happened leading up to that night."
She doesn't respond, just watches me with those dark eyes that see too much.
"Stay inside. Don't open the door for anyone but me. The alarm is set and I'll know before you do if anyone crosses the property line." I move toward the pantry. "But if things go sideways, you need to know where everything is. Come with me."
She follows me into the small pantry off the kitchen. I push aside a shelf unit, revealing a hatch cut into the floor. The latch releases with a soft click.
"You've got a hidden basement?" Raven's eyebrow arches.
"It's my armory." I pull the hatch open and flip on the light below.
Concrete steps descend into a reinforced bunker I built myself over the course of six months. The walls are lined with gun racks and ammunition storage, and the space is less a panic room than a fortress.
I descend first and Raven follows, her boots hitting concrete.
AR-15s are mounted on the far wall with their barrels cleaned and oiled, and shotguns hang beside them.
A Barrett M82 sniper rifle, the same model I used to take down Bo, sits secured in a hard case.
The shelves are stocked with ammunition in 5.
56mm, 12-gauge, .50 BMG, and 9mm, enough rounds to hold off a small army.
Body armor hangs on hooks with Level III plates, tactical vests, and ballistic helmets.
A med kit stocked for gunshot wounds sits on the shelf beside water purification tablets, MREs, and emergency cash in waterproof bags.
"This isn't just an armory." Raven runs her fingers along the edge of an ammunition crate. "This is a last-stand fortress."
"If the cartel finds this place while I'm gone, you've got options." I pull an AR-15 from the rack and check the chamber. It's empty and the magazine well is clear. "This one is zeroed at a hundred yards and fires clean. You know how to use it?"
"ATF, remember?" She takes it from me anyway, checks the weight, and shoulders it. She tests the sight picture. "Where's the ammo?"
I point to the labeled crates. "Take whatever you need. There's a firing port cut into the north wall." I indicate a narrow slit at ground level. "It gives you sight lines to the driveway and the tree line. Anyone coming at the cabin has to cross open ground."
She lowers the rifle. "You planned for siege conditions."
"I spent the better part of a year on this place between building, digging the tunnel, and setting up fallback positions.
" I take the AR-15 back and return it to the rack.
"You can defend yourself from down here, or you can use the emergency exit.
" I point to a narrow tunnel entrance behind the ammunition storage.
"It runs through to the cedar break west of the cabin.
From there you can make it to a backup vehicle I've got stashed well beyond the tree line. "
"You really don't do anything halfway."
"Not when it comes to staying alive." I head for the steps. "I'll be back within the hour."
"And if you're not?"
"Then you use what's down there to get out. One way or another."
The clean truck is parked behind the cabin under a canvas tarp, a plain gray Chevy registered to the same shell company as the property with no connection to the Hollister name or the black Ford the cartel saw during the chase.
I pull the tarp off and toss it aside. The burned truck stays hidden in the equipment lean-to until I can deal with it, but this vehicle is the one I use for anything that requires moving without being recognized.
The drive to the rendezvous point gives me time to think through what I'm about to do. Telling Knox and Beckett about why Raven is back means exposing secrets I've carried for a decade. But it's more than that.
Bringing them to the cabin means giving up my last bolt-hole. The one place nobody knows about becomes a known location the moment I lead them through those trees.
I grip the wheel tighter. Every operator instinct I have screams against it. You don't reveal your safe house. You don't give up tactical advantage. You don't trust anyone with your fallback position.
But those rules assume you're operating alone.
The cartel knows my truck. They know I pulled Raven out of that safe house.
And Carmichael is playing games with all our lives.
If things go sideways, and they will, my brothers need to know where to regroup.
They need a fallback position that isn't Devil's Acre, isn't any place the cartel can connect to the Hollister name.
They need the cabin. And I need to trust them with it.
My phone buzzes. Maria's name flashes across the screen, and I answer on speaker.
"Jesse." Maria sounds tight and careful. "Sheriff Harlan was just here. He was asking about a redhead who'd been poking around the ranches. Someone fed him details."
"What did you tell him?"
"That she ordered a beer, asked some questions, and left. Nothing specific." There is a pause before she continues. "But Jesse, something felt off. He was too friendly and too casual about it, like he was fishing but didn't want me to know."
"Understood. Thanks, Maria."
"Be careful." She hangs up.
I stare at the empty road ahead. Harlan is already moving, and that changes the timeline.
Knox is waiting when I arrive, his truck pulled off to the side of the access road. I scan the area and check for tails. The road is clear.
My middle brother climbs out of the driver's side with every movement deliberate.
Knox doesn't just evaluate tactical positions.
He owns them. He is built like a brawler with fists that have ended more fights than they've started, and he surveys the tree line with the kind of focus that makes weaker men step back.
"Where are we going?" Knox doesn't waste words.
"Follow me. Stay close."
I lead them deeper into the hills. When the cabin comes into view, Knox parks behind me, kills the engine and gets out.
"This is yours?" Knox's tone carries an edge that could cut.
"I bought it a few years back."
Beckett climbs out of the passenger side, lean and rangy.
My youngest brother moves like a predator, quiet and calculating.
Where Knox announces danger, Beckett embodies it.
He reads terrain the way snipers do, mapping fields of fire and kill zones before his boots even settle on the ground.
His eyes catalog sight lines and defensive positions with the kind of automatic precision that never shuts off.
"This must be serious," he says.
"It is." I head for the cabin. "Inside. Now."
Raven is standing in the kitchen when we enter. She doesn't flinch when my brothers follow me through the door. She just stands there like she belongs, meeting their stares with one of her own.
Knox stops just inside the doorway. His gaze locks on Raven, and I can see the moment it clicks.
He knew about the woman from the safe house, knew I'd pulled someone out of a cartel ambush.
But he didn't know it was her. The sharp reassessment crosses his face as he recalculates everything he thought he understood about the last forty-eight hours.
"Raven Bishop." Knox says her name as if he's confirming something he already suspected but hoped he was wrong about. His attention shifts to me, and whatever he reads in my expression coils him tighter. "This is who you've been protecting."
Beckett moves to Knox's left, putting himself at an angle.
The move isn't threatening exactly, but it is positioning, creating a triangle with me at one point, them at another, and Raven at the third.
They are old habits from growing up in Bo's house, where you never let yourself get boxed in and you always kept your exits clear.
He studies Raven with the clinical focus of someone updating a file.
The last time Beckett saw her, she was a teenager in Fredericksburg, sharp-eyed and fearless even then, trailing me through town in her beat-up Ford and asking questions that could get people killed.
The woman standing in my kitchen with five years of federal training behind her is a different creature entirely, and Beckett is measuring exactly how different.
Raven tracks the movement. She is reading them the same way they're reading her, one operator recognizing others.
Knox breaks the silence. "Why is she in your cabin, Jesse?" The question underneath the question is unmistakable: What have you done, and what is this about to cost us?
"Because the cartel tried to kill her twice in the last twenty-four hours, and the safe house she was using is compromised."