Chapter 9 Hawk
Hawk
The storm rolled in just after midnight, crawling over Copper Cove like it had a score to settle. Rain hammered the cabin roof, wind rattled the windows, and inside, the place hummed with low voices and glowing screens.
Logan and Boone were hunched over the dining table, the old wood buried under maps, printouts, and Boone’s laptop. Russ had staked out the big recliner, flipping through property files the county clerk had “accidentally” emailed him.
I pretended to be interested in whatever Boone was muttering about heat signatures and access tunnels, but my mind kept drifting back to Julia. The way she’d stood on my dad’s porch earlier, hands in her pockets, shoulders tight, staring out at the woods like they were staring back.
She’d gone home to her place by the lake after that. Alone.
My phone buzzed on the counter.
Unknown secure line. Washington D.C.
Logan glanced up. “You gonna get that?”
“Yeah.” I grabbed the phone and stepped out onto the back porch, into the pouring rain. The screen door groaned shut behind me.
I answered. “Jensen.”
“About time you picked up,” a familiar voice said, dry as dust. “Starting to think you’d forgotten how to charge your phone.”
I exhaled. “Aaron Cole. I didn’t realize you were the one pulling strings in D.C. these days.”
“Delta Five pulls the strings,” he corrected. “I just answer when the President calls.”
Of course he did.
“What’ve you got?” I asked.
A beat of silence, just the hiss of rain in the background on both ends. “You were right about Copper Ridge Mine,” Aaron said. “It’s not just cartel real estate. It’s owned through a shell company tied to a defense contractor in Virginia. That contractor’s been laundering money overseas for years.”
My grip tightened on the phone. “You’re telling me some beltway suit is loaning out American dirt to the Cali Cartel?”
“I’m telling you someone with access and clearance signed off on that land transfer,” Aaron said. “And they’re moving more than powder through those tunnels.”
I thought of the crates we’d seen earlier that day. Guns. Enough to arm a small war.
“Military-grade weapons,” I said.
“That’s the rumor,” Aaron replied. “And that’s why the President is officially very interested in your little mountain town.”
Rain dripped off the porch roof in thick ropes. Mom would’ve said it was good for the pines. Right now it just felt like the sky was closing in.
“So what’s the play?” I asked.
“Quiet,” Aaron said. “This doesn’t go through standard channels. DEA, FBI, half the alphabet soup is compromised on this. The order from the top is simple: find out who’s backing the cartel stateside, shut them down, and keep it off the front page.”
I let out a low whistle. “No pressure.”
“Pressure’s why they called us,” he said. “And why I’m calling you. We traced a series of encrypted calls that bounced through a government server and landed in Colombia. Copper Cove’s sheriff’s department is on that chain.”
My jaw clenched. “You saying the sheriff is in bed with them?”
“I’m saying someone with access to his systems is,” Aaron replied. “Could be him. Could be a deputy. Could be some idiot tech consultant who likes fast dark money.”
I stared out into the dark smear of trees. Somewhere out there was the mine. Somewhere out there were men who thought they could set up a war in my hometown.
“And Julia?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“Your detective?” Aaron said. I could hear the smile in his voice. “She’s not on any suspicious lists. Background is clean. Service record is solid. She’s been flagged twice for pushing too hard on cases, but that just tells me she’s stubborn as hell.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “She is.”
Aaron’s tone shifted, softer. “Keep her close, Jensen. Whoever’s feeding intel to the cartel knows you brought a team in. They’ll move faster now.”
“Already planning on it.”
“I’ll be wheels down in a few hours,” he said. “Me, Miles, and Jace. We’ll keep a low profile, but from the moment we arrive, this is under a different umbrella. You understand?”
“Presidential,” I said. “Got it.”
“One more thing,” Aaron added. “Trust no one wearing a badge unless you’d trust them with your life. And even then, double-check.”
The rain gusted sideways, spitting across the porch.
“I’ll send you coordinates when we’re en route,” he said. “Try not to start the war without us.”
“No promises,” I said, and hung up.
For a minute, I just stood there, letting the rain soak through my shirt, the cold biting into the heat coiled in my chest. Copper Cove wasn’t just a cartel staging ground. It was a chess piece on someone’s D.C. board.
And Julia was standing in the middle of it, thinking this was just about one mine and some bad men with guns.
Not anymore.
When I stepped back inside, the warmth and noise hit me all at once. Boone was arguing with Logan over the best ingress route, and Russ had started using my dad’s old coffee table as a filing cabinet.
Logan looked up. “That our friendly neighborhood spook?”
“Delta Five,” I said. “The president asked them to dig into who’s backing the cartel from our side of the border.”
Boone let out a low whistle. “If this has the President's fingerprints, we’re past small-town trouble.”
“Yeah.” I grabbed a towel off the back of a chair, scrubbing rain from my hair. “They traced calls from a government server to Colombia. Path runs through the sheriff’s department.”
Russ sat up straighter. “Through, not to?”
“Could be anyone with access,” I said. “Sheriff, deputy, clerk, janitor. Somebody with a password they shouldn’t have.”
Logan’s expression hardened. “You telling Julia?”
I hesitated. She’d already been stretched thin—between the mine, the dead cartel shooter, and the fact that someone tried to turn her into target practice twice in forty-eight hours.
“She deserves to know,” Logan said quietly.
“Yeah,” I said. “She does.”
I pulled out my phone again, thumb hovering over her contact. Before I could hit call, the screen lit up—Julia Marlow.
I answered. “You must be psychic, Detective.”
Her voice was strained. “I need you to meet me at the station. Now.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Just get here.” She hung up.
Logan raised a brow. “That didn’t sound like a social call.”
“Keep digging on the mine and whoever reopened it,” I told them. “Delta Five’s on their way, we need to have something when they hit the ground.”
Boone did a mock salute. “Yes, sir, Commander Anxiety.”
I flipped him off and headed for the door.
The sheriff’s department was half-lit, most of the overheads off, the place humming with the kind of quiet that comes after a storm and before bad news. I walked past the front desk, nodding at a deputy who didn’t bother to hide his scowl.
Julia waited outside the Sheriff’s office, arms crossed, jaw tight. She looked like she’d been standing there for hours.
“What happened?” I asked.
She jerked her chin toward the closed door. “He doesn’t want outside help. Says if I keep bringing in ‘your people,’ he’ll pull the case and send it straight up the chain.”
“He’d rather send it to the same chain that’s leaking?” I asked.
Her eyes flashed. “He says there’s no proof anyone’s leaking. That I’m letting my ‘big city paranoia’ cloud my judgment.”
“And yet,” I said, lowering my voice, “our cartel friend ate a cyanide tablet just in time, the men at the mine knew we were coming, and someone keeps beating us to every lead.”
She looked up at me, the fight in her eyes warring with something like fatigue. “I know. But I can’t prove anything yet. And if I accuse the wrong person…”
“This whole town turns on you,” I finished for her.
Her silence was answer enough.
The door opened, and Sheriff Hayes stepped out. Broad shoulders, gray at his temples, the same man who’d hauled me in as a teenager for fighting behind the bowling alley. His eyes flicked over me.
“Jensen,” he said. “I didn’t ask for you.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, “you got me anyway.”
He snorted. “As usual.”
He looked at Julia. “You be careful with this. One wrong move and we’ll have feds crawling all over this town. People who don’t understand Copper Cove will make decisions that hurt a lot of good folks.”
“Or,” I said, “one wrong move and we’ll have the cartel crawling all over this town. People who really understand hurting good folks.”
His gaze slid back to me, tired and sharp. “Not your jurisdiction, son.”
“No,” I said. “Just my home.”
For a second, I thought he might swing at me. Instead, he sighed and walked away down the hall, the weight of the badge visible in the slump of his shoulders.
Julia watched him go. “He’s not dirty,” she said quietly.
“You sure?” I asked.
“I’m sure he’s stubborn. Suspicious. And he hates being told he needs help. But dirty?” She shook her head. “No. If it’s someone in this building, it’s not him.”
I studied her profile for a moment. “We got a call from D.C. tonight.”
She looked up sharply. “What kind of call?”
“Delta Five,” I said. “The President brought them in. They’ve been tracking money and comms traffic for a while now. Copper Ridge Mine lit up their board.”
Her fingers tightened around the file she was holding. “So it’s bigger than we thought.”
“It always is,” I said. “They traced encrypted calls that bounced through a government server and ended up in Colombia. The path passes through this town. This Sheriff’s department.”
“And you’re just now telling me this?”
“I got the call an hour ago,” I said. “You called me before I could come find you. Besides, I wanted something concrete before I—”
She exhaled, some of the anger bleeding out. “Sorry. It’s just… every time I think I see the edges of this thing, it gets bigger.”
“Welcome to the party,” I said.
She gave a humorless huff of a laugh. “So what now?”
“Now,” I said, “you go home, lock your doors, and get some sleep. Delta Five lands in a few hours. When they do, this whole investigation changes.”
She hesitated. “I can’t just go home. I have paperwork—”