He’d never made a promise he couldn’t keep, but he’d also never given Stone the one promise that mattered.
He wanted a quieter life. But what good was a future if he couldn’t voice it—couldn’t share it?
The truth lingered heavy—he couldn’t see himself retiring without Stone. And yet the fear remained, raw and stubborn, that the same cracks that ruined his marriage would tear anything with Stone apart, too.
His marriage had failed on that battlefield. Six years of silence and distance, and unspoken words breaking what little trust remained.
Dave thought he loved Stone, but love and living it were two different wars.
The stars blurred for a moment as his reflection caught in the glass, lined and tired. He looked every one of his sixty-two years.
But he also looked like a man caught between two lives—one he’d built out of duty, and one he wanted but didn’t know how to hold.
The jet touched down on the private strip at the edge of Nightfall Drifters Ranch well after midnight. The desert air hit sharp andcold as Dave descended the stairs, Washington still clinging to him like a second skin.
Two ranch security men waited by the SUV under floodlights, silhouettes cut in stark relief. They saluted, and Dave returned the gesture before sliding, along with Clinton and his Secret Service, into the vehicle. The drive across the Nevada desert was silent, headlights slicing into the emptiness.
Out the window, Dave watched the land uncoil. It had been a working ranch once—sold when the government made the offer. A year later, the fences were higher, the soil packed down with boot tracks and training drills. Colorado’s sister site was already running, cut from the same blueprint.
Colorado meant a life beyond missions and shadows, something permanent.
But the thought was never just about geography.
It included Stone.
And that was the problem—Dave had never promised Stone anything solid.
Not really.
Now, retirement was coming, and with it, the question he kept dodging: could he build a life with Stone in the light when he still struggled to give voice to what he felt in the dark?
The vehicle lurched as the SUV turned into the main hub of the ranch. Floodlights swept across the main house, the bunkhouse, the training fields stretching beyond into the desert night. The compound was quiet, but it thrummed with the kind of readiness Dave had built into its bones.
He stepped out, boots crunching on gravel, and breathed in the dry Nevada air—sage and silence.
Here was where duty waited.
Where Stone waited.
And perhaps, Law too.
The past and the future were on a collision course, and Dave was standing dead center.
The mess hall was already loud by the time Stone walked in, the smell of grilled meat and seasoned potatoes thick in the air.
Metal trays clattered against the serving line, boots scuffed across the scarred wooden floor, and voices overlapped in a steady hum—assassins and recruits alike fueling up before afternoon training kicked into high gear.
Stone scanned the room automatically, cataloging faces and exits, before his gaze snagged on the figure at the far end of the hall.
Dave.
Sitting with his usual composure, a former Army General, spine military-straight even at a battered ranch table, cup in hand.
Stone noticed the small betrayals in Dave’s posture—the quickened rhythm of his breath, the way his pupils expanded as he drew closer.
Nobody else would catch it, but Stone had been reading Dave too long, too close, to miss it.
“About time,” Rip called out from two tables over, his grin flashing as he shoved a piece of toast into his mouth. “Thought you’d slept in with the boss.”
