Just like the dogs, I trained them myself. They came out of bad land and worse hands—feral and half-broken, the kind that either learn to trust or never do. It took time, more patience than most people would bother with, and came at the cost of lots of bruises.
I move down the line, checking latches, running my hands over cold steel, making sure nothing’s come loose in the wind. The horses watch me, ears flicking, eyes sharp. They know me, but that doesn’t mean they like me.
“That gate better hold,” I tell one of them as thunder cracks overhead. “Because I’m not chasing you through the trees in this.”
He stomps a hoof, splashing mud up my pant leg.
“Don’t threaten me,” I add dryly. “I grew up breaking horses before breakfast. You don’t scare me.”
That gets me another snort. I take it as mutual respect.
You can take the cowboy out of the ranch, but you can’t take the ranch out of the cowboy. Iron Stallion branded that into my bones long before I learned to shoot straight or disappear clean. The habits stick: the way I move, how I work, and the way I talk to animals like they understand me better than people ever have.
I secure the last stall, give each horse a final look, and move on. The dogs fan out as we head back toward the house, their coats slick and dark, eyes bright with focus.
I take a moment under the overhang, wiping rain from my face, scanning the tree line. The valley is loud with weather, visibility shot to hell, but my perimeter sensors don’t care about rain or darkness.
Nothing pings.Good.
I feed the dogs inside, tossing them chunks of meat from the hunt earlier in the day. They eat with disciplined enthusiasm, tails thumping against concrete. I pour coffee I don’t really need and lean against the counter, listening to the storm crawl over the mountain.
Thunder booms again, closer this time, rattling the glass. Rook’s ears perk up in alarm.
“Relax, it’s just the heavens having a blast,” I reassure him.
He barely has time to relax when the alarm sounds. It’s a clean, unmistakable tone that cuts through the downpour and goes straight down my spine.
Perimeter breach!
I’m already moving before the sound finishes registering. My coffee is forgotten, my muscles snapping from calm into readiness like a switch has been thrown. I turn toward the control panel, heart steady, mind clear, already running through possibilities.
The dogs lift their heads in unison, their bodies going still as their muscles coil. They growl lowly, waiting for my instruction.
“Stay,” I tell them, even though they already know.
The screen resolves into a grid of feeds, with thermal overlays layered over night vision, perimeter lines glowing faintly against the storm. Wind and rain distort shapes, smear edges, but heat doesn’t lie.
My jaw clenches when I notice the breach on the eastern edge of the property—past the first fence and the natural choke point I put there on purpose. Whoever crossed it didn’t stumble in by accident.
My first thought is immediate and unwelcome.Barre’s son.I’ve been waiting for this. I might be a ghost, but I’m smart enough to understand that debts like that don’t evaporate; they collect interest.
I lean closer to the screen, eyes narrowing as I isolate the signature. It’s only one heat source. I blink once, then again, recalibrating the feed manually. Rain can play tricks, but the system is solid. Military-grade. Overkill, some would say.
Still one.
That doesn’t make sense. No team comes after me with a single body, not unless they want that body dead before it ever reaches the house. Even assassins need redundancy—overwatch and extraction.
A lone operator is either bait or desperate, and neither option relaxes me.
I zoom in further, fingers moving fast and sure over the controls. The shape is human-sized, smaller than I’d expect if this were a trained hitter. The movement is wrong, too—uneven and inconsistent. Not the clean, economical advance of someone who knows they’re walking into a kill zone.
I don’t let that lower my guard. I know enough to be aware that people fake weakness all the time. I shut the panel down and head for the weapons locker, the dogs rising silently to flank me now without being told. I pull the rifle free, check the chamber by feel, muscle memory so ingrained I could do it blind. Thesuppressor is already attached. A knife slides into place at my side, another at the small of my back.
I step back into my boots, shrug back into my jacket, and shoulder the rifle. The dogs’ eyes track me, waiting for the signal.
“Come,” I command.
The door opens onto chaos—rain slashing sideways, wind howling through the trees, thunder rolling overhead like artillery. Visibility is garbage, but that works both ways. I melt into the dark, moving along the path that doesn’t look like a path, feet finding familiar ground without thought. The dogs spread out, silent shadows to either side, trained to hold position unless I give the word.
