Chapter One
~ Decker ~
The phone’s ring cut through the stillness of my room like an electric current. I’d been in the middle of cleaning my sidearm, a nightly ritual that required no thought, but kept my hands busy—the kind of task that left my mind free to scan for threats, assess the day’s work, plan tomorrow’s.
Five a.m. calls never meant anything good.
I set the cleaning rod down and wiped my hands on an old dish towel before picking up the phone. The screen glowed with a number I recognized, but hadn’t seen in a very long time. My grandfather.
I pressed the phone to my ear. “Decker.”
“Decker.” His voice came through the line thin and unsteady, a register I’d never heard from the man before. “It’s—it’s your grandfather.”
“I know.” I sat down on the edge of the bed, back straight, eyes fixed on the far wall. “What’s going on?”
“I’m sick.” A pause. “Maybe dying. The doctor says it’s my heart.” The words came out clipped, like he was delivering a report on fence repairs or crop rotation. “I’d like you to come home. If you can make it.”
No elaboration. No pleas. Just the bare facts delivered in the same tone he’d used to tell me the tractor needed oil or the north pasture was ready for planting. Sixty years of Nebraska stoicism compressed into forty seconds of phone call.
“I’ll be there.” I didn’t ask how bad it was or what the doctors had said. Those questions would keep until I arrived. “I’ll leave tonight.”
“Good.” The word carried the weight of four letters. “Drive safe.”
The line went dead. I sat with the phone in my hand, thumb pressed flat against the screen, watching the light fade. The room suddenly felt too small, too closed in.
I set the phone down, finished cleaning my sidearm with methodical efficiency, then packed it away in the metal lockbox under the bed.
Two minutes to pull on boots and jacket. Thirty seconds to grab my keys from the hook by the door. I stepped outside into the pre-dawn darkness, the air cool against my face.
Rawley would be up. The man kept Navy SEAL hours even out of the service—sleeping four hours a night, running the ranch with military precision. Another former operator who couldn’t turn it off.
I found him near the barn, checking the lock on the main doors with a tactical flashlight. He turned at the sound of my footsteps, expression unchanging as he registered my presence.
“My grandfather’s sick,” I said, keeping it simple. “Could be dying. Needs me in Nebraska. Don’t know how long.”
Rawley’s eyes did a quick scan of my face, reading whatever was written there. He didn’t ask follow-up questions or offer condolences—one of the reasons I’d taken the job at Black Butte in the first place. The man didn’t waste words.
“Go,” he said, giving a single nod. “Take whatever time you need. Job’ll be here when you get back.”
I nodded back. “Thanks.”
“Keep me updated.” Not a request, but not quite an order either.
I returned to my room and packed a single duffel—three shirts, two pairs of jeans, underwear, socks, my kit with its carefully organized medical supplies. Nothing sentimental. Nothing I couldn’t live without. The whole process took less than five minutes.
The truck started on the first turn of the key. I loaded the duffel behind the seat, did a quick check of the tires and fluid levels, then pointed the hood east and pulled away from Black Butte. The headlights cut a swath through the darkness, illuminating the gravel drive, the main gate, the long stretch of highway beyond.
In the rearview mirror, the ranch receded in slow motion. The fence line disappeared first, then the silhouette of the barn against the dark sky. The house lights grew smaller, pinpricks of yellow in a sea of black. The big Montana sky arched overhead, stars scattered across it like salt on black velvet.
The last of the familiar—the road I knew, the mountains I’d memorized, the weight of the pistol at my back that felt like part of my body now—all of it falling away behind me.
I pushed the speedometer to five over the limit, not enough to attract attention, but enough to shave minutes off the drive. The landscape flattened as I headed east, rolling hills giving way to long stretches of featureless prairie.
The sky seemed to shrink with each passing mile, the horizon pulling closer, the world narrowing down to two lanes of cracked blacktop and nothing to look at but my own thoughts.
I’d left Nebraska eight years ago with a duffel bag not much bigger than the one I’d just packed, the door to my parents’ house closing behind me with a finality that still echoed.
Eight years of building a life that had nothing to do with that place or those people. Eight years of finding corners of the world where the question of who I slept with mattered less than whether I could do my job.
