A person who would, in approximately two months, change everything—again—the way the positive test had changed it two months ago.
I sat on the porch step with my hand on my stomach and my eyes on the dark valley, and tried to make sense of what was happening. Behind me, through the kitchen window, Cruz moved around cleaning up the dinner dishes like a man who had already decided the answer for himself.
Chapter Thirteen
~ Cruz ~
I woke to the sound of a vehicle engine cutting too early, the distinctive hitch of someone who’d killed their lights and was coasting the last stretch of gravel with the engine off.
My hand was already reaching for the sidearm at the nightstand before my brain fully processed what my body had already clocked.
Six years of jumping at shadows, of sleeping with one ear on the alert, of running tactical scenarios until they became reflex—it all came down to this: I was out of bed, in socks, with my weapon in hand before I was even fully awake.
Jackson hadn’t moved behind me—still asleep, one arm across the space where I’d been. I didn’t wake him. Couldn’t risk the noise, the movement, the moment of confusion that came between sleep and alertness.
Instead, I checked the chamber by feel in the dark—round ready, safety off, magazine full—and moved out of the bedroom with silent steps that barely disturbed the air.
The house was quiet around me—just the soft tick of the heating system and the sound of Jackson breathing, steady and even behind the closed door.
I took up position in the hallway at the top of the stairs—the spot that gave me a clean sightline to both the front door and the kitchen entry below, the position I’d selected the first night I’d stayed in the farmhouse, back when Jackson had been stonewalling me and I’d been carrying a positive test between us.
Old habits. The kind that kept men like me alive when the world went sideways.
I keyed my earpiece with my free hand, the motion so automatic I didn’t need to look down. “Talk to me,” I whispered, the words barely audible.
Two clicks came back—Wade and Morales, the perimeter team Rawley had assigned to watch the farmhouse after the Peterson intel had come in.
Then Wade’s voice, barely above a whisper. “Two vehicles. Eastern tree line. Four men on foot moving toward the house from the north. Moving like they’ve done this before.”
“Copy that,” I said, already running the math. Four men outside. Two of ours on the perimeter. Jackson in the bedroom behind me. The farmhouse’s large ground to floor windows that wouldn’t stop a determined entry.
The calculation took under three seconds—hold the house, funnel them to one entry point, let the team collapse on the exterior. The kind of tactical assessment that had kept me alive through twelve years of operations where the margin for error was measured in seconds, not minutes.
I moved downstairs keeping to the edges of each step—the particular weight distribution that kept old boards from creaking. The kitchen was dark, moonlight spilling across the floor in long rectangles through the east-facing windows.
I took position behind the island—the spot that gave me angles to both the back door and the hallway to the front entry, the place where the counter’s solid oak would stop most rounds if things went sideways.
Then I heard it—the porch boards groaning under weight at two points simultaneously. Front and back. A coordinated entry, which meant there was a coordinator outside with eyes on the house. Someone running the show. Someone who knew what they were doing.
I clicked my earpiece twice—the signal for “hold positions, wait for my move”—and got two clicks back from Wade and Morales.
The back door came in first, kicked hard—the sound of someone who’d tried the handle, found it locked, and decided that wasn’t going to stop them.
I took the first man through the door with a controlled shot to the shoulder—not center mass, not a kill, but enough to drop him in the doorframe and create an obstacle for whoever followed.
I rolled left behind the island as the second man fired twice into the space I’d just vacated. The kitchen filled with the sharp smell of cordite and the ringing aftermath of gunfire in an enclosed space.
I fired again from the low position—controlled, center mass this time, the kind of shot that didn’t leave questions—and the second man went down.
From the front of the house came the rhythm of team work—controlled, fast, two shots, then silence.
My earpiece clicked three times: front clear.
I was up and moving through the kitchen, weapon still at ready position, when I heard Jackson’s bedroom door open at the top of the stairs. Not the careful, quiet opening of someone who’d been woken by distant sounds, but the movement of a man who’d gone from asleep to tactical in under five seconds.
“Status?” Jackson called down, his voice low and flat—no panic, no drama, just a man who’d been woken by gunfire and wanted the facts as quickly as possible.
“House is clear,” I called back, already moving toward the back door. “Stay put. I’m checking the perimeter.”
