I hung up, then prowled the property perimeter, Sig low and ready, every footstep calculated. At the barn, the horses were on edge, nostrils flaring, ears swiveling to track me. No signs of human interference, but I left nothing to chance. I checked every stall, every feed bucket.
All clear.
On the way back, I stopped at the chicken coop. The door was off its hinges, the bedding inside thrashed and bloody. A trail of downy fluff and red spatters led toward the woods. I followed it a few yards, heart thumping, but the tracks vanished into the tangle. Smart. Or lucky.
Back inside, I washed my hands, then stripped to my jeans and stood by the kitchen window, watching the approach from the main road. Nothing moved but the wind.
In the silence, my mind replayed the events like film: Jojo retching, the embryo on the screen, the baby chicks arranged as a promise or a curse. It all ran together, adrenaline and dread twisting into a cold knot under my sternum.
I knew what was coming next. Whoever wanted us gone had played their first card, and it wouldn’t be their last. The difference was, now I had something worth fighting for. Something worth burning the whole fucking county down to protect.
I reloaded the Sig, chambered a round, and went to the bedroom. Jojo was curled on his side, blanket bunched under his chin, eyes open and waiting for me.
I slid in behind him, pulled him tight to my chest, and wrapped us both in a grip I wouldn’t loosen for anything. His scent—softer now, sweet with a new undercurrent I couldn’t place—filled my head, and I pressed my mouth to his nape.
“Go to sleep,” I whispered.
He nodded, but I could feel the tension in him, the question he didn’t want to ask.
“We’ll get through this,” I said. “Promise.”
He let out a shaky breath and, slowly, his body relaxed.
I lay awake until dawn, listening for footsteps on gravel, a car engine, a gunshot in the dark. Nothing came. Not yet.
But when it did, I’d be ready.
Chapter Thirteen
~ Rawley ~
The next time I woke, it wasn’t to retching, but to a silence so perfect it felt manufactured. For a disorienting second, I thought maybe the previous day had been a fever-dream: Jojo, the embryo, the threat painted in chick blood across our kitchen.
My body didn’t buy it.
Every nerve stayed live and twitchy, registering the faintest pressure, the shift in barometric pressure that came with dawn over the fields.
Jojo was fused to my side, the way a sapling clings to the only rock on a mudslide. His breathing, gone shallow and even, ghosted across my sternum.
I made myself catalog everything about the moment—his heartbeat, thready but steady; the soft fan of his hair against my shoulder; the heat radiating off his skin where his leg tangled with mine. My right hand was bracketed across his back, fingers splayed as if I could fuse him to me by grip alone.
The edges of the curtains leaked thin stripes of daylight, transforming the room into an aquarium of navy and gold. All the dust motes hung motionless, suspended in air still cool from the night. For once, there were no shadows of threat, just the illusion of peace.
But even in this pocket of calm, my mind ticked off contingencies: possible ingress points, which angles left us vulnerable, whether the windows were latched or the Sig on my nightstand loaded.
I tried to breathe it in. Not the threat, but the absurd fucking sweetness of the bed, Jojo in it, the low-grade hum of possibility that now pulsed under every moment.
I traced the memory of the ultrasound with my thumb over his skin. The embryo was microscopic, a dot in a blizzard, and yet it owned every square inch of my head.
The old stories always said it hit you like a bomb, the first time you found out you’d made a life. For me, it was more like waiting for a sniper’s bullet—time slowed, every detail burned in with a cruel clarity.
I kept waiting for the panic to kick in, but all I got was the same cold purpose I’d felt in combat. If anything, it made sense. I’d spent my whole life learning how to kill to protect.
Now I had something worth that violence.
Jojo burrowed tighter, his nose pressed into my armpit, breathing the way you do when you’re safe enough to surrender to sleep. I tensed at the soft scrape of gravel, a sound that didn’t belong—at this hour, on this road, it was a foreign intrusion.
Every muscle in my body shivered to wakefulness. I extricated myself, slow as a surgeon, bracing with my elbow so the mattress wouldn’t shift and wake him. The air lost some of its warmth as I eased away, but Jojo only flinched, then relaxed again, mumbling a syllable that sounded suspiciously like my name.
