Chapter 12
JESSE
Most of the night went to planning.
Raven built out the timeline on paper while I mapped cartel positions and identified tactical weak points in their coverage.
By the time we called it, dawn was creeping through the curtains and the coffee pot had been empty for hours.
Raven went to bed, but I stayed up, poring over the timelines and trying to shape the raw data into an operational plan that wouldn't get us killed.
Now she's in the shower and I'm standing on the porch with my phone, watching the sun climb even higher over the hills.
I pull up Carmichael's number and make the call. He picks up after two rings.
"I need a team." Carmichael doesn't care for preamble, and I don't care to give it.
A pause. Then keys click in the background.
"How many?"
"Four should do it. Surveillance, signals, logistics, and someone who can move fast if things go kinetic."
"Timeline?"
"As fast as you can get them here." I check the tree line out of habit, scanning for movement that doesn't belong. "Things are moving faster on the ground than your reports suggest."
More keys. Knowing Carmichael, he's surrounded by monitors tracking operations across three continents and is already reviewing rosters in real time.
"I've got a team finishing up in Houston.
Small group, all solid. They can be at the quarry northeast of Fredericksburg by early afternoon.
" His tone shifts, the casual edge dropping away.
"They'll report directly to you. My involvement stays at intel support and coordination with federal assets when you're ready to move on arrests. "
"Good."
"Jesse." His voice drops a register. "One of them you'll know. The rest come recommended. But this is a covert op on US soil. That comes with complications if it goes sideways."
"Understood."
"I'm sending you their files now. Review them, establish your operational parameters, and make it count." A beat of silence. "Good hunting."
The line goes dead.
I slide the phone into my pocket and head back inside. Raven is in the kitchen, dressed in dark jeans and a black t-shirt, her damp hair pulled back into a ponytail and a coffee mug cradled in both hands. She looks up as I come through the door.
"What's going on?" She sets the mug down, reading my face.
"I called your uncle while you were in the shower. He's sending a team. Four operatives, all Shadowland. They'll be here this afternoon."
Her expression goes flat. "A team."
"We need people on the ground for surveillance, intel gathering, and operational support.
" I lean against the counter across from her.
"We can't run this alone, and my brothers don't have the training for intelligence work.
I'm not putting Knox and Beckett in the field when I can bring in people built for this kind of operation. "
She studies me for a long moment, working through the implications the way I knew she would. More people means more exposure. More variables. More chances for a leak. She'll land on all of it.
"Who are they?"
My phone buzzes. The encrypted files load onto the screen, four dossiers with photos, service records, and operational histories. I turn the phone toward her and walk through each one.
Ethan "Rook" Mercer. Marine Scout Sniper who went Shadowland years back. Long-range reconnaissance and precision fire. I shared a forward operating base with him in Kandahar for three months, and the man could thread a needle at eight hundred yards in crosswind.
Lucas "Cipher" Vale. NSA recruit turned cyber intelligence specialist. Signals intercept, data analysis, digital surveillance. No combat deployments on his record, but if it's plugged into a network, Cipher can crack it open and read its mail.
Darren "Torque" Maddox. Former Army quartermaster who moved through private military contracting before Shadowland recruited him.
Logistics and supply chain management. If an operation needs equipment, transport, or resources that don't officially exist, Torque is the man who makes them appear and leaves no paper trail behind.
Caleb "Hawk" Serrano. Former MARSOC, specializing in close quarters combat and rapid tactical response. The kind of operator you want at your six when a building needs clearing and the floor plan is a guess.
Raven reads without speaking, her eyes tracking across the screen and absorbing each dossier in turn. When she looks up, her expression is neutral but her voice carries an edge.
"They all work for Uncle Robert."
"They did." I set the phone on the counter between us. "Now they work for me. Your uncle made that clear on the call. They report to me and take their orders from me. Robert stays at intel support and coordination. He doesn't run this operation."
"And if Uncle Robert gives them a different order than yours?"
"This investigation matters to him as much as it does to us.
He won't undercut the chain of command." I hold her gaze.
"But if he tries, those four will hear from me directly that there's only one voice they answer to in the field.
Because I'll be the one standing between you and whatever comes through that door. "
Her jaw tightens, but she doesn't argue. She heard what I said underneath the operational language, and she's choosing not to push back on it. For now.
"Where are you meeting them?"
"An abandoned gravel quarry northeast of here. Isolated, with good sight lines in every direction." I check my watch. "I leave at one. Once I've vetted them face to face, I'll bring them back here."
"Here." She absorbs that, turning the word over. "You want them to know where we are."
"They need to meet you and hear the operation briefed by both of us. You've been building this case, and nobody will lay it out better than you." I move a step closer. "Stay here, keep working the files, and be ready to brief when we get back."
Her chin dips in a slow nod, and I can already see her mind shifting gears, organizing the material into the kind of structured presentation that will tell four experienced operators exactly what they're walking into and why it matters.
"I'll have everything laid out."
"If you find anything in those files that changes the tactical picture before we're back, call me. Don't wait."
"I will."
She turns back to the laptop and pulls up the next file, already deep in the work before I've left the room.
Morning burns off into midday heat. I move through the cabin with practiced efficiency, prepping gear in the armory. Spare magazines for the SIG. A tactical vest. Comms unit with a fresh battery.
Raven is working at the kitchen island with her laptop open and half a dozen files tabbed across the screen. Every few minutes her fingers fly across the keyboard in a burst, then stop cold as she reads a detail that makes her jaw tighten.
I can't stop watching her. The way she tilts her head when she's concentrating, copper hair falling forward across her cheek.
The unconscious competence in how she cross-references data, builds timelines, connects patterns that would take most analysts days to recognize.
The ATF trained her well, but the instinct underneath that training belongs to her alone, and no amount of betrayal can take it back.
It's dangerous, how much I want to cross the room and put my hands on her. Pull her away from that laptop and remind her how it felt when I had her underneath me in the dark. Make her forget about Alvarez and Harlan long enough for us to take what we both need.
But the mission comes first. It always does.
After the noon hour, the sun sits high and merciless overhead. Raven glances up from the laptop, and the silence between us fills with the shared awareness that I'm leaving soon and she'll be here alone. Neither of us names it.
"I'll be back soon." My voice comes out rougher than I intended.
"I know." She holds my gaze. "Be careful."
Two words that shouldn't land as hard as they do.
I cross to her and slide my hand around the back of her neck, fingers curling into the warm skin beneath her ponytail, and kiss her.
Quick, hard, and over before either of us can deepen it into what we both want.
I could do a hell of a lot more than that, and she knows it, but I grab my keys and head for the door before my body overrules my brain.
Outside, heat hammers down from a cloudless sky. I climb into the truck and pull out of the clearing, watching the cabin shrink in the rearview until the trees swallow it.
The back roads to the quarry wind through cedar breaks and limestone outcroppings, and I check my mirrors every thirty seconds out of habit.
Nothing follows. The county road stretches empty behind me, heat shimmering off the asphalt, and the landscape rolls past in the muted greens and tans of a Hill Country summer.
Live oak clustered in the draws, prickly pear spreading across rocky slopes, open pasture broken by fence lines that have been here longer than I have.
This land has been mine since I was old enough to ride it, and I know every turnoff, every draw, every place a man can disappear if the situation demands it.
The quarry sits in a natural depression, hidden from every approach by the surrounding hills.
I arrive twenty minutes early and walk the perimeter, checking sight lines and access roads.
The position is solid. Clear views in all directions, and anyone approaching will be visible long before they're in effective range.
Gravel crunches under my boots. Afternoon sun beats down on the quarry floor, throwing harsh shadows across the pale limestone walls. Cicadas drone in the scrub cedar, and beyond that there's nothing but silence and open sky.