Chapter Thirteen
The call came at noon.
Jessica was in the supply room—her supply room now, reorganized and efficient—when Trooper appeared in the doorway with a look on his face that stopped her cold.
"What happened?"
He didn't answer immediately. Just stood there, phone in hand, jaw tight enough to crack.
"Trooper. What happened?"
"Your facility." His voice was flat. Wrong. "Two of your employees didn't show up for their shifts this morning."
Jessica felt the blood drain from her face. "Who?"
"Scott Webb and Diana Crawford. Your assistant manager and the weekend security guard."
Scott. Diana. Faces flashed through her memory—Scott with his terrible jokes and obsessive organization, Diana with her no-nonsense attitude and the pictures of her grandkids she kept in her locker.
"Maybe they're sick. Maybe—"
"Ghost checked their homes. Both empty. Signs of forced entry at Scott's apartment." Trooper's expression didn't change. "Diana's car was found abandoned three miles from the facility."
Jessica's legs gave out.
She caught herself on the shelving unit, but Trooper was already there—hands on her arms, steadying her, guiding her to the chair she kept in the corner.
"Breathe."
"They took them because of me." The words came out strangled. "Because I ran. Because I'm here instead of—"
"They took them because Vance is a monster who eliminates variables." Trooper crouched in front of her, forcing her to meet his eyes. "This is not your fault."
"They're my employees. My responsibility. I hired them, I trained them—"
"And they were targeted by a weapons smuggling operation that has nothing to do with anything you could have controlled." His hands tightened on her arms. "You didn't do this. Vance did. Briggs did."
Briggs. The cleaner. The one who smiled while describing exactly how he'd hurt her.
"He took them to send a message," she said.
"Yes."
"To show me what happens to people I care about."
"Yes."
"Where are they?"
Trooper was quiet for a moment. Then: "Static found Scott an hour ago. In the pines, off Route 87."
Found. Past tense. The word hit her like a physical blow.
"He's dead."
"Yes."
"And Diana?"
"We're still looking."
Which meant she might be alive. Or her body just hadn't been found yet.
Jessica felt something cold settle in her chest. Not grief—that would come later, when she had time to process. This was something else. Something harder.
Rage.
"I want to see him work."
Trooper's eyes narrowed. "What?"
"You. Planning." She stood, pushing past the dizziness. "I want to see how you're going to find Briggs and make him pay for this."
"Jessica—"
"Don't tell me to rest. Don't tell me to process. Two people are dead or dying because of me, and I want to see the man who's going to fix it." She met his gaze. "Show me."
Something shifted in his expression. Not softening—sharpening. The calculating coldness she'd glimpsed before, the one that planned operations where people died.
"Follow me."
The planning room had been transformed.
Maps covered every surface now, marked with red and blue and yellow pins she didn't fully understand. Photographs lined one wall—surveillance shots of Vance, Briggs, locations she didn't recognize.
Trooper moved to the central table without hesitation.
"Briggs operates on a twenty-four-hour cleanup cycle.
Grabs targets, interrogates for information, eliminates witnesses, disposes of evidence.
" He pointed to a series of locations on the map.
"Based on Scott's location, he's using the pine forests east of Fayetteville.
Dense coverage, minimal traffic, easy access from the main highways. "
"How do you know his pattern?"
"Because I've been building his profile since you told me about him." Trooper's voice was clinical. Detached. "Former contractor, specializes in witness elimination. Takes pride in work no one ever knows he's done."
"How does that help us find him?"
"Pride creates patterns. He has preferred methods, preferred locations. The pine dump matches three other disappearances Cargo linked to Vance's operation." He circled an area on the map. "He's working within a thirty-mile radius of your facility."
"Because that's where his targets are."
"Because that's where you should have been." Trooper's jaw tightened. "He expected you to come back. When you didn't, he took the next best thing."
Jessica stared at the map. At the red pins marking bodies, the blue pins marking potential locations, the yellow pins she still didn't understand.
"The yellow?"
"Escape routes. Briggs always has three exit strategies—ground vehicle, secondary vehicle, on foot through terrain he's pre-scouted." Trooper's finger traced lines on the map. "When we find him, we need to cut off all three before he knows we're coming."
"You're treating him like a target package."
"He is a target package." Trooper looked at her, and she saw it then—the cold calculation, the absolute certainty, the man who'd planned operations that ended lives. "I'm going to find him, and I'm going to kill him. That's not a threat. It's a schedule."
Jessica should have been horrified. Should have felt something—fear, revulsion, doubt.
Instead, she felt relief.
"What do you need from me?"
"Your employee files. Everything you know about Scott and Diana—where they live, who they know, what their routines were." He moved to a stack of folders. "Briggs is smart, but he's also predictable. If I can figure out how he selected his targets, I can figure out where he's holding Diana."
"If she's still alive."
"If she's still alive," he agreed. No false hope. No comforting lies. Just the truth, brutal and necessary.
Jessica crossed to the table, pulling the files she'd rescued from her facility what felt like a lifetime ago.
"Scott lived alone. No family in the area, worked double shifts because he needed the money. He would have been easy to grab—predictable schedule, isolated housing."
"And Diana?"
"Widowed. Three grandchildren in Raleigh." Jessica's throat tightened. "She took the weekend security job because she wanted to stay active after her husband died. Said sitting around made her crazy."
"So she was harder to grab. Had people who would notice if she disappeared."
"Which is why they took her car instead of her." Jessica saw the pattern now, the way Trooper saw it. "They wanted her found eventually. Wanted someone to know what happened."
"Wanted you to know." Trooper's voice hardened. "This is psychological warfare. They're trying to break you before they try to take you again."
"It won't work."
"I know." His hand found hers, squeezed once. "Because you're not alone anymore. And because Briggs is going to be dead before he can try anything else."
They worked through the afternoon.
Jessica provided everything she knew—schedules, habits, relationships, the thousand small details she'd accumulated in six years of managing people's lives. Trooper took each piece of information and slotted it into his pattern analysis, building a picture of how Briggs operated.
By evening, they had a theory.
"He's using the old logging roads." Trooper circled a section of the map. "Dense pine coverage, minimal traffic, multiple access points. There's an abandoned mill here that matches his profile—isolated, defensible, easy to clean."
"You think Diana's there?"
"I think it's the most likely location." He looked at her. "I'm taking Ghost and Forge to confirm. If she's there, we extract her. If Briggs is there—"
"You kill him."
"Yes."
Jessica studied the map. The red pins. The blue pins. The life she'd built being dismantled piece by piece by a man who smiled while describing torture.
"I want to come."
"No."
"Trooper—"
"This isn't a negotiation." His voice was hard now. Absolute. "You're not trained for this. You'd be a liability, and I won't be able to focus on the operation if I'm worried about keeping you alive."
"I kept your brothers supplied during the compound assault—"
"Running ammunition through a defensive position is different from an offensive extraction in hostile territory.
" He stepped closer, crowding her space.
"I know you need to do something. I know sitting here feels like abandonment.
But the best thing you can do for Diana is let me work without distractions. "
"I'm not a distraction."
"You're my only distraction." His hands cupped her face, forcing her to look at him. "Everything I care about is standing right here. And I can't plan for Briggs's elimination if I'm also planning for your survival."
The honesty of it—raw, unvarnished—cut through her anger.
"Find her," she said quietly. "And make him pay."
"That's the plan." He kissed her forehead. "I'll be back before dawn. With Diana if she's alive, and with Briggs's head either way."
"Figuratively?"
"We'll see."
He left her in the planning room, surrounded by maps and photographs and the cold reality of what loving a man like Trooper actually meant.
She'd known what he was. Had seen him kill, had held his bloody hands, had slept beside a man who planned violence the way other people planned vacations.
But watching him work—watching the clinical precision, the absolute certainty, the complete absence of hesitation—that was different.
This was the man who'd led Rangers into combat. The man who'd planned operations where people died, where he'd known they would die, where that was the entire point.
She should be afraid of him.
She wasn't.
Because that same precision, that same cold calculation, that same ruthless efficiency—all of it was pointed at protecting her. At avenging people who'd been hurt because of their connection to her.
Trooper didn't feel emotions the way other people did. He processed them through planning, through action, through the systematic elimination of threats.
And right now, Briggs was a threat.
Jessica looked at the map one more time. At the red pins marking bodies, the blue pins marking possibilities, the yellow pins marking escape routes that wouldn't be there when the brotherhood arrived.
She was watching the man who planned operations that killed people.
And she wasn't afraid of him at all.