I wanted more time with these people. Wanted to sit in the kitchen while Irish burned something and blamed the stove, wanted to watch Declan's hands execute those vegetables with that lethal precision, wanted to hear Nolan explain a financial diagram in terms that made an accountant sound like a detective. I wanted to understand how Diego had ended up in a family this fierce, this damaged, this stubbornly alive.
It reminded me of the army. Except the bonds ran deeper, because nobody here had been assigned to the person beside them.
They had chosen. Every single one of them.
Hawk's fist went up at the front of the column.
We slowed. The engines dropping from a roar to a rumble, then to idle, the convoy pulling to a halt on the empty two-lane. The desert silence rushed in to fill the space the engines left—wind across sand, the tick of cooling metal, the distant call of a bird I couldn't see.
Hawk pulled his phone from his cut. Looked at the screen. Then up, to the right side of the road, where a massive rock formation rose from the desert floor half a mile out—a ridge ofweathered sandstone and granite, tall enough to cast a shadow despite the overhead sun. It had been here a million years before the road was built. It would be here a million years after the asphalt crumbled.
"This is it." Hawk, loud enough for everyone to hear. "The property is on the other side of that ridge."
Whitfield. This close. An hour and change from the compound where thirty of her victims slept under the club's protection. She'd been hiding right here, behind a rock formation, while the empire she'd built burned down around her.
We left the road behind. The bikes hit the desert scrub and the ride changed—uneven terrain, sand and loose stones, a surface that punished carelessness and rewarded patience. I tightened my grip around Diego's waist as the Harley bounced over a shallow wash.
The rocky formation grew ahead of us, the rock face shifting from distant landmark to immediate obstacle. Hawk led us around the base, the engines throttled low now, the sound muffled by the rock and the sand and the care every rider was taking to keep the volume down.
The team parked at the base of the ridge's back side, out of sight from whatever lay beyond. Everyone killed the engines as soon as they came to a hault. The silence was enormous. Diego's hand found mine as I climbed off the bike—brief, warm, a squeeze that said something we didn't need to say out loud.
The rock was warm under my hands. Rough sandstone, the kind that gripped boot soles and offered handholds without askingto be trusted. The team hiked upward in a loose column—Ghost first, because Ghost was always first when elevation and silence mattered, then Diego, then me, then Hawk, with the others following. We reached the top in under five minutes and settled behind a row of boulders that lined the ridge like teeth.
Diego and Axel pulled binoculars from their packs. Diego handed a third pair to me. I pressed them to my eyes.
The property sat in a shallow basin on the far side of the ridge, maybe three hundred yards out. And the first thing I felt was anger.
It was a mansion. Modern, angular, all glass and white concrete—seven figures minimum, the sort of place that belonged in a magazine. It sat in the desert the way an ice sculpture sits on a kitchen table—beautiful but absurd, and fundamentally wrong in this environment. Inside the perimeter wall, I saw irrigated green—an actual garden, manicured grass and low hedges, an obscene patch of life in a landscape where water was worth more than concrete. A pool glinted at the far end, the surface still and blue.
My money had helped pay for this. The thousands I'd sent to High Basin for "worker salaries" that never reached a single worker—some fraction of that had watered this lawn, cooled this pool, built these walls.
I scanned the perimeter with the binoculars. Three men walking the grounds outside the main structure. Suits, not tactical gear. Earpieces. One older, two younger. Sidearms on their hips, but holstered. Their patrol routes were wide and lazy—the pattern of men who expected to be watching for something other than eight armed people on the ridge above them.
"Three guards." The VP's voice came low, briefing the group behind us. "Suited. Private security, not military. Older guy by the east gate. Two younger ones doing laps—west and south. About twelve-minute cycle. Predictable."
"Curtains closed on every window." Diego, beside me. "Lights on inside, faint, coming through the gaps at the edges. Someone's home and doesn't want to be seen."
I lowered the binoculars and looked back at the group. The rest of the team was watching Diego and Hawk. Waiting. Ghost crouched on the balls of his feet, still as stone. Tank's massive frame was somehow folded behind a boulder half his size. Tyler had his phone in his hand, ready. Kai's backpack sat at his feet, the medical supplies accessible.
Hawk was looking at the property. Not through binoculars—through his own eyes, squinting against the sun, studying the layout with a focus that suggested the distance wasn't a problem for him. I'd heard the men at the compound joke about Hawk's visual assessment skills. Watching him read a property at three hundred yards without optics, I understood why.
He turned to Diego. The look between them carried a decision. Hawk was giving Diego the final call.
Diego looked at me. I looked back, and we both nodded after a brief silence. We both knew what was going to happen.
"We go in." Diego's voice was low, controlled. "Stealth approach. Curtains are closed—they can't see us coming if we stay below the window line. We catch the security from behind. Keep your faces out of sight. Three of us hold the guards, no killing, the rest goes inside."
Diego turned to Tyler. "Call your contact. Someone's in there. There is light inside and one doesn't just post three guards on an empty house."
Tyler was already dialing.
"Axel, Tank, Tyler—you take the guards. One each. Gunpoint from behind. Radio when you're secure." He looked at Kai. "Stay with them. If something goes wrong outside, you're our insurance and our medic."
"Copy." Kai's voice, steady.
"Hawk, Ghost, Logan—you're with me. We go through the front door. Comms stay open. Always."
I looked at the property one last time. The white walls. The closed curtains. The manufactured green.
