There. 2:27 a.m.
A figure approaches from the east side of the house—the one angle where the side yard camera catches them at the edge of the frame.
Dark clothes, baseball cap pulled low, face turned away from the lens.
They knew where the cameras were.
They walked the blind spot between the side yard camera and the front porch camera, crouched at the door for less than ten seconds, and disappeared back the way they came.
Professional. Practiced. They scouted my house before they made the delivery.
I save the footage, screenshot the clearest frame, add it to the file I've been building—dates, plates, sightings, the white card, and now this.
The Secretary in me is meticulous. The father in me wants to put his fist through the kitchen wall.
I don't. I pick up the phone again and I call Ruger. "Ruger, I need Church. As soon as you can get everyone there."
An hour later, I'm standing at the head of the table.
Not sitting. Standing.
Because sitting feels too still and if I sit down right now I might not get back up, and my girls are in school for the next sixhours and I need to be moving, thinking, acting—anything but sitting in a chair feeling the weight of those photographs in my back pocket.
I lay the photos on the table the way I laid the white card two weeks ago.
Face up. Wrenleigh. Sadie Jo. The message on the back is visible when Ruger flips Sadie Jo's over.
Pretty girls. Clock's ticking.
The room goes cold.
Colder than last time.
Last time was information—names, numbers, a debt that didn't belong to me.
This time is my daughters' faces on a table in a room full of men who would kill for their families without hesitation, and every single one of them knows it.
Maddox stands up.
Just stands—all six-something of him unfolding from that chair like a mountain deciding to relocate.
He doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to.
The fact that Maddox is on his feet is a statement louder than any words.
"Sit down, brother," Ruger says. Not unkindly. But firm.
Maddox sits, but barely.
"They got past Lock," I say. "Someone walked the blind spot between my cameras and slid this under my door. They scouted the house first. They knew the camera angles."
"Lock didn't see anything?" Maddox asks, and I can hear the anger in it—not at me, at the situation. At a prospect failing on his watch.
"Lock says he was in position all night. Which means either he's lying or they're good enough to move past a prospect without being seen." I pause. "I'm leaning toward the second one. These aren't amateurs."
Ounce hasn't spoken yet.
He's sitting in his usual spot, leaned back, those dark eyes half-closed.
