19. Ever
CHAPTER NINETEEN
EVER
By noon, Reva and Delia have learned how to sit in the same room without making a thousand tiny cuts they don’t mean to and can’t avoid.
It’s not smooth. It’s not easy. The silences between them still have teeth, and both of them keep finding old wounds by accident, stepping on memories as if the floor is scattered with broken glass.
But they are on the sofa together, a careful space between them, with Homer stretched across Delia’s lap like he has appointed himself a furry referee.
I sit in my room full of monitors just off the living area and pretend I’m giving them privacy.
The room is small by design, tucked behind a sliding panel of dark wood that stays open unless we need the room sealed.
From here, I can see the main living area, the wall of bullet-resistant glass facing the marsh, the dock feed, the old access-road camera, the east sensor grid, the hospital feed, and the map of every moving piece that keeps this cabin breathing.
I can also hear them.
Reva has been trying for twenty minutes to make conversation without making it feel like an interrogation, which is difficult for a woman whose nerves show up wearing boxing gloves.
She asks Delia whether she remembers a neighbor with a yellow bike.
Delia says the bike was green. Reva argues it was yellow because she fell off it and got paint on her knee.
Delia says the paint was green too. Reva calls her impossible.
Delia tells her she always was dramatic.
Then they both go quiet because always is still a trigger word.
A minute later, Reva asks whether Delia remembers their father whistling in the kitchen on Sunday mornings.
Delia answers so softly I almost miss it. “Badly.”
Reva laughs once. It breaks at the end.
I look down at the screen in front of me because watching them feels too intimate.
I have seen Reva naked, furious, terrified, laughing around Shiloh’s cock, bleeding from old memories, and standing with a gun in her hand over a body she put on the ground.
Somehow this is harder. Reva on one end of the sofa and Delia on the other, trying to pass pieces of childhood back and forth without admitting how many are missing.
It gets under my ribs and squeezes.
I know what it is to have a family name shaped like a bruise. I know less about sisters and old movies and fathers who whistle badly. I barely remember my own. These guys…they’re my only family.
Still, watching the two of them reach for each other through fifteen years of rot makes something in my chest go tight enough that I have to put my hand flat on the desk and breathe through it.
I stay in the office because they need space more than they need another man hovering with a gun and a plan.
I stay because Reva will look at me if the silence gets too hard, and if she looks at me, I’ll go to her.
That’s the kind of weakness that looks pretty from the outside and selfish from where I sit.
So I watch.
Perimeter. Hospital. Weather moving in from the south. Nash at Cal’s ICU with two guards in the hallway and Shiloh’s last text still on the side screen:
Shiloh
Leaving in ten. Tell my girls not to start a war without me.
I had not shown Reva the message because she would smile at my girls, then pretend she did no such thing.
The dock camera flickers.
I straighten.
At first, it looks like an insect crossing the lens, a blur of black against the gray marsh. Then the motion corrects, slows, and hovers at the edge of the frame. Small quadcopter. Matte black. No lights. Too steady in the wind to be hobby-grade, too close to be lost.
My hand moves to the keyboard.
The living room stays quiet except for Delia’s voice saying, “Mom hated that song.”
Reva’s answer comes after a pause. “I don’t remember it.”
The drone slides past the dock camera and disappears above the roofline.
Every muscle in my body goes still.
I switch to the exterior roof feed. There. North side, about twenty yards out, hovering above the cypress line. Its camera head turns toward the cabin windows.
A test.
Isabel is fast. I should’ve known she would be fast.
I key the internal comm and bring the house out of soft mode.
Locks prime. Exterior shutters stay open for now because dropping them too early tells whoever’s watching what rattles us.
The glass is rated for more than small arms and built to take a beating, but I don’t like anything with wings staring through windows at the women on my sofa.
Then a second drone appears over the east marsh, and my blood goes cold.
“Reva.”
She looks up immediately. So does Delia.
I step out of the office doorway, one hand raised before either of them can stand fully. “Stay down.”
Reva freezes halfway off the couch, then slowly lowers back, one arm closing around Homer, who remains boneless in her lap. Delia stays seated, but her eyes cut to the window.
She knows.
That is the thing about people raised around predators. They don’t need explanations for a shift in the air.
“What is it?” Reva asks.
“Drones. Two confirmed, maybe more. Call Deacon and Shiloh. Get into an interior room…stay low and away from the windows.”
“Shiloh is back?”
“He’s pulling into the service road now.”
Reva tightens her hold on the cat. “Ever—”
“Now.”
The command snaps out harder than I intend, and her face changes, not with hurt. With focus. Training is beginning to settle somewhere beneath the panic. She stands low, grabs Delia’s sleeve instead of her wrist, and pulls her toward the hallway without crossing in front of the glass. Good girl.
Delia doesn’t argue.
I move back into the office, seal the open line to Nash, and send him the alert with one key: DRONE CONTACT. CABIN COMPROMISE POSSIBLE. STAY WITH CAL.
His response flashes almost instantly.
:Status.
I type with one hand while pulling the dock feed wider.
:Test. Reva/Delia inside. Deacon/Shiloh on-site. Holding.
Nash answers: Keep them alive.
That has always been the job.
The third drone comes in low over the water.
Then a fourth from the tree line.
Not a scout, then. A probe with teeth.
I open the weapons cabinet under the desk and take the rifle already loaded with frangible rounds, then grab the sidearm and spare magazine from the drawer.
Shooting drones from the dock is a bad idea.
Letting them sit outside the windows and map the interior is worse.
If they are transmitting, every second gives Isabel more layout, more movement patterns, more proof that Delia is here.
The living room is empty when I step out. Reva listened. Delia moved. A door opens down the hall, followed by Shiloh’s voice, low and sharp now, stripped of charm.
“Where?”
“Office,” Reva says. “Drones.”
Deacon appears first, gun in hand, shirt untucked over the bandage at his side. He should still be resting. None of us are built right for should, though.
“How many?” he asks.
“Four confirmed.”
“Armed?”
“Finding out.”
Shiloh steps in behind him, damp from rain, eyes already on the windows. “Nash?”
“With Cal. I told him to stay.”
“Good.”
I toss Deacon the spare sidearm from the console because his draw is faster than Shiloh’s and because Shiloh is already moving toward Reva in the hall. “Keep them away from glass. Interior wall. If I say safe room, do not debate me.”
Reva, holding Homer against her chest, appears at the edge of the hallway. “I can hear you.”
“That was intentional.”
Her eyes narrow, then flick to the rifle in my hand. “You’re going outside?”
“For a minute.”
“That sounds like the kind of lie men tell before doing something stupid.”
“It’s only stupid if I miss.”
Deacon’s mouth twitches once. Shiloh does not smile at all.
Delia stands half behind Reva, wearing borrowed sweatpants, her bandaged hands loose at her sides. Her face has gone pale in a way I dislike. Recognition is carved into every hollow.
“She likes her drones?” I ask her.
“Her contractors do. They use them mostly for surveillance. Sometimes delivery. Sometimes worse.”
“Worse how?”
Her gaze moves to the window.
That is answer enough.
I open the back door and step onto the covered deck before anyone can decide to use concern as an obstacle.
Rain hits my face, thin and cold. The marsh stretches out in a flat gray sweep, cypress knees sticking through the water like broken bones, the sky low enough to press down on the roof.
One drone hovers near the far window, no more than fifteen yards out.
Another hangs above the dock light. The third is over the reeds.
The fourth stays higher, probably relaying signal.
I shoulder the rifle. Breathe once.
Fire.
The first drone snaps sideways, sparks, and drops into the marsh with a small splash. The second jerks upward, trying to climb. I track, squeeze, and catch it through the central housing. It comes down hard on the dock, skidding across wet boards in pieces.
The third darts left.
Fast little bastard.
I lead it, fire twice, miss once, hit on the second shot. It spins into a cypress trunk and breaks apart against the bark.
One left high.
The fourth backs off.
I lower the rifle enough to scan for more movement. The wind shifts. Rain taps against the barrel. In the distance, something small rises from behind the tree line.
Fifth.
Sixth.
“Ever,” Deacon says through the comm. “You have two more coming east.”
“I see them.”
The fifth drone drops low and fast, closer than the others dared. I swing the rifle toward it.
A tiny flash appears beneath its body.
The round cracks past my shoulder and slams into the siding behind me.
“Shit.”
I throw myself sideways as a second shot chips concrete near my boot. So, yes. Armed.
Good to know.
I fire from one knee, hit the drone on the underside, and it drops, but the sixth is already crossing above the dock. I do not like its angle. It’s looking, either for me or for the open door behind me.
I run for the house.