“He’s your brother,” Ross said quietly. “You see the best in him. We all do. Jackson is brilliant. Protective to a fault.” His throat bobbed, and something in his eyes flickered. Regret, maybe. “But he’s also reckless. He improvises. He bends rules until they’re unrecognizable. And he’s been under pressure. A lot of it.”
Marshall stared at him. “You think pressure turns him into a traitor?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“It’s exactly what you’re saying.”
Ross pushed a hand through his hair and sank back in the chair, the weight of everything he knew—and everything he feared—crushing down.
“Listen to me,” he said, more firmly now. “I’m not accusing Jackson. I’m not calling him guilty. But Marshall, this isn’t a tidy setup. It isn’t a few forged logs and a cloned keycard. Whoever orchestrated this knew the system inside and out. They knew Jackson’s patterns. They knew his skillset. They knew how he’d react under stress. This frame job—if itisa frame job—was designed around him.”
He let that settle.
“And sometimes,” Ross continued, “the simplest explanation isn’t that the evidence is fabricated. Sometimes it’s that we missed signs we didn’t want to see.”
A sharp, hot anger licked up Marshall’s spine. “There were no signs. Thereareno signs.”
“Then help me understand,” Ross said softly. “Because the more intel we gather, the more I see two possibilities. Either Jackson is the most thoroughly framed operative I’ve ever seen...or he had a reason to go dark—one we don’t understand yet.”
Marshall’s vision tunneled for a split second. Not at the accusation. But at the heartbreak in Ross’s voice—because Ross didn’t want to believe it either. He was falling for the frame because it looked airtight from where he sat.
He thought he was being rational. He thought he was protecting the team.
“Tell me you don’t believe it,” Marshall said. It wasn’t a plea. It was a demand. “Tell me you don’t believe Jackson sold out his country.”
Ross closed his eyes for half a second, long enough that Marshall felt like the floor might disappear beneath him.
When Ross opened them again, they were steady. Apologetic. And not on Marshall’s side of the line anymore.
“I believe,” Ross said, “that Jackson is capable of things most operatives aren’t. Good things. Extraordinary things. But also things that walk a razor’s edge. And those edges cut both ways.”
Marshall stared at him, stunned.
Ross continued, gentler now, as if trying not to break him completely. “Until he contacts us—until we hear his side—we have to work with the intel we have. And right now? It points in one direction.”
No.
No, it didn’t.
It pointed in the direction Sidarov wanted them to look.
“You’re wrong,” Marshall said, voice low and lethal. “You don’t know my brother like I do. Jackson would never betray the team. Never betray this country.”
Ross didn’t argue. “I’m sorry, Marshall. I do hope I’m wrong.”
Marshall stared at the table and tried to process everything Ross had shared. After a few moments, Ross shifted.
“I know we’re not done talking about Jackson, but we should talk about Summit and what happened here last night.”
He leaned back a little, some of the tension in his shoulders bleeding out as they shifted from brother to mission.
“Now,” he said. “I’ve had Joey’s prelim report, but walk me through your night. Start at the hotel.”
Marshall compartmentalized everything from the last ten minutes and forced himself to focus on what he needed to share.
He relayed the events of the previous night, hitting the major beats. The gala. Morris. Norah revealing him to Hale. His departure and return. Trip’s execution. The scramble through service corridors. Landon’s late, bloody entrance. The gunfight. The escape.
Ross listened without interrupting, only a muscle ticking in his jaw when Marshall described Harrington going down.
