Relief floods my chest at the certainty in his voice, along with something else I wasn't expecting. Understanding, maybe, of the kind of man who could execute his own father and mean it when he says he'd choose the same path twice.
"What happened after?" I force myself to stay clinical, to treat this like an interrogation instead of two people with a decade of wreckage between them trying to find common ground. "You didn't go to prison. You didn't show up in any system I could find, and believe me, I looked."
A ghost of something crosses his face at that. Surprise, maybe, or a dark kind of satisfaction at learning I'd searched for him. "Carmichael honored the deal. Bo's death disappeared from every official record, and I disappeared into Shadowland." He sets his mug down on the granite. "I spent eight years running black ops, mostly overseas. The kind of work that doesn't exist in any file. Carmichael owned me, and I let him, because the alternative was a life sentence in Huntsville."
"So Uncle Robert's had you on a leash this whole time."
"More or less. The deal was my freedom in exchange for service and..." He stops, and for the first time since I walked into this kitchen, Jesse Hollister hesitates.
"And what?"
"And keeping you safe." The words come out rough, like they've been lodged in his throat for years. "That was the original deal. My freedom and your safety. Carmichael would make Bo's death disappear, and in return I'd work for Shadowland."
The walls of the cabin feel like they're closing in. I set my mug down because my hands aren't entirely steady, and I don't want him to see that. I spent a decade building myself into someone who didn't need anyone, who didn't rely on ghosts or promises or the memory of pale blue eyes in the dark. And all that time, Jesse was out there running black ops for Uncle Robert while my uncle held up his end of the bargain by giving me a life in Virginia.
"That was ten years ago." My voice comes out flat and quiet. "Did you even wonder what happened to me?"
"Carmichael gave me updates when I asked. He made sure I knew you were alive, that you'd gotten into the Academy, that you were climbing the ranks." He goes quiet for a moment. "But I couldn’t have contact with you. That was never part of the arrangement."
"Until now."
"Until your uncle called in a favor and told me you were headed to Fredericksburg." Jesse straightens and crosses his arms over his chest. "When Carmichael texted that your partner tried to kill you in El Paso and that he was sending you here, everything changed. Distance wasn't going to keep you alive anymore."
I want to be angry. Part of me is, with a hot sharp fury that my autonomy was a bargaining chip between two men whocouldn't be bothered to ask me what I wanted or how I felt about the deal.
But another part of me, the one I've spent a decade trying to silence, looks at Jesse Hollister and sees a man who traded eight years of his life to cover up his father's murder and get a girl to safety. Eight years doing Uncle Robert's dirty work because of a deal struck the night my world burned down.
That part of me is dangerous, and I know it.
"Bo's operation destroyed families across four counties," he continues. "And the land he stole needed to go back to the people it belonged to." Resolve hardens his expression. "I bought Devil's Acre piece by piece under shell companies with no Hollister name on any deed. I cleaned the property, burned down the old and tainted portions, and rebuilt what needed rebuilding."
He glances toward the window where the Hill Country stretches in every direction. "I've been trying to keep things quiet, but the cartel has been rebuilding too, using new people on the same old routes my father mapped out. My brothers and I have been monitoring their progress and feeding intel to Carmichael, waiting for him to pull the trigger on a takedown. Then you showed up, and everything accelerated."
Before I can respond, his phone buzzes on the island between us. Jesse glances at the screen, and his expression hardens.
"Carmichael." He picks up the phone and hits the speaker button, setting it on the granite where we can both hear. "You're on speaker, and Raven's standing right here. Whatever you have to say, she hears it."
Uncle Robert's voice fills the kitchen, steady and measured, the tone of a man accustomed to delivering difficult information with surgical precision. "Good. She should hear this."
"Then start talking." Jesse's arms are crossed again, his body coiled with a tension I can feel from three feet away. "Becauseyour niece almost died twice yesterday, and I want to know exactly why."
"The cartel is moving faster than we anticipated." Uncle Robert's voice carries through the speaker with the calm authority I've known since the day I landed in Virginia. The same voice that guided me through college, pushed me toward the ATF, and checked in during every dangerous assignment. Right now, in light of Jesse's revelations, it sounds like that of a stranger.
"My team has been building a case against cartel leadership for years, Raven. We're close enough that they're getting desperate. Morrison's attempt on you in El Paso wasn't random. It was a direct response to our operations."
The mention of Morrison sends ice through my veins.
"You knew." The words leave my mouth before I can stop them. "You knew the cartel would target me."
"I knew it was a possibility." Uncle Robert's voice doesn't waver, and the absence of apology makes my blood pressure spike. "Your investigation in El Paso was getting too close to their distribution network. Our intelligence indicated that Morrison was compromised long before you were assigned as his partner. When the cartel realized how much you'd uncovered, they activated him."
Morrison was dirty before I ever met him, and Uncle Robert knew but hadn't bothered to tell me.
"And your response was to send me to Fredericksburg to investigate accidents you knew were tied to cartel operations." I force my voice to stay level. "Right into the snake pit, in other words, and you couldn't be bothered to warn me."
"I sent you somewhere Jesse could protect you." A pause, deliberate and measured. "And somewhere you could do the most damage to their operation."
Jesse goes still, and I can see the muscle jump beneath the scar on his jawline. "You used her as bait."
