"There's a lot to explain," he said.
"No shit."
"Come inside."
I followed him through the French doors, into the main house. The interior of Dominion Hall at night was different from the daytime version—warmer, the stone and dark wood softened by low lighting, the hallways quieter, the operational edge of the place muted by the domestic reality of people who actually lived here.
Wyatt moved through it like he knew it. Not the tentative navigation of a guest but the comfortable familiarity of someone who'd been here long enough to know which doors were which and where the good stuff was kept.
He took me to the kitchen—large, professional-grade, the kind that had been designed to feed a crowd. The chef wasoutside with the dinner, and the space was empty, clean, smelling of garlic and the warmth of a room that had been producing food all evening.
Wyatt nodded to himself, scanning the cabinets. Then he reached up to a top shelf—high, the kind you needed his height to reach—and pulled down a bottle of tequila. Good tequila. The kind with a cork and a label that suggested age and care and a price point that discouraged casual consumption.
"Silas's secret stash," Wyatt said, setting it on the counter. "Don't say anything or he'll kill us both."
I almost smiled. Almost. "Which one's Silas?"
"You'll know him when you meet him. Quiet. Intense. The kind of guy you don't turn your back on unless you mean it."
He poured two glasses—stiff, generous, the pour of a man who understood that what was coming next required lubrication. He replaced the bottle exactly where he'd found it, with the care of someone who respected another man's hiding place, and handed me a glass.
"Remember the first time we had tequila?" he asked.
I laughed. I did.
Four of us had saddled up on a Saturday morning, told Mom we were riding the south pasture, and pointed the horses straight for the border. The ride was hours, through scrub desert and mesquite, the kind of terrain that looked empty and was full of things that would stick you or bite you, if you weren't paying attention.
We'd crossed into Mexico at a place that wasn't a crossing—just a low spot in the Rio Grande where the water barely reached the horses' knees—and found a cantina in a town so small it didn't have a name. Twenty-five cents a shot. We'd had one each, burning and terrible, and then we'd run for the border like bandits, laughing so hard we could barely stay in the saddle, back across the river, back through the desert, back to the ranchwhere Mom was waiting on the porch with the expression of a woman who knew exactly what her sons had done and was deciding how much trouble they were in.
A lot of trouble. The answer had been a lot.
"She grounded us for a month," I said.
"Two months," Wyatt corrected. "And she made us muck the entire barn. By hand."
"Worth it."
"Every penny."
We drank. The tequila was better than the twenty-five-cent shots by approximately a factor of infinity, but the burn was the same.
Wyatt led me deeper into the house. Through a hallway lined with something that might have been art, into a room that felt like a salon for people who had more money than they'd ever need and the taste to know what to do with it. Deep leather chairs. Bookshelves. A fireplace, unlit. The kind of room where serious things got discussed by serious people who had the resources to act on their conclusions.
Wyatt closed the door.
He sat down. Took another drink. Looked at me with the eyes of a brother who was about to change the shape of the world I was standing in.
"Grant," he said. "Why do you think you're here?"
I set my glass down. "Recruitment. Ethan found me. Said Dominion Hall had work for someone with my skill set."
"That's true," Wyatt said. "But that's not why you're here."
The air in the room changed. I could feel it—the shift in pressure that happened before something detonated. The same feeling I'd had in briefing rooms before an op went hot, the moment when the intelligence shifted from theoretical to operational and everything after it was different.
"What do you mean?"
"I was found, too," Wyatt said. "Same way you were. Different state, different bar fight probably—" a grim smile, "—but the same process. Micah came to me. Brought me to Charleston. Showed me the stables, the grounds, the operation. Let me take my time."
