"I will be." I lean into Jesse's side, and his hand shifts to my hip, pulling me closer. "I need to debrief you."
"It can wait until tomorrow." Uncle Robert reaches out and squeezes my shoulder. His gaze lingers on Jesse's arm around me, and whatever he reads in his former operative's face makes him drop his hand without another word. "Take her home, Jesse."
Jesse turns us toward his truck without a backward glance.
He starts the engine and pulls away from the compound. I watch the flashing lights shrink in the side mirror until the distance swallows them whole. His hand finds mine acrossthe center console, his fingers lacing through mine with the possessive certainty I've come to know as well as my own heartbeat. He lifts my hand and presses his mouth to my knuckles, his lips warm and deliberate against the bruised skin, and the look he gives me over our joined hands is dark and intent and full of promises that have nothing to do with courtrooms or debriefs or the federal machinery grinding behind us.
The road stretches toward Fredericksburg and a future I stopped believing in long ago. Tomorrow there will be debriefs and statements and the long, grinding work of dismantling what Harlan and Alvarez built. Tomorrow Uncle Robert will want answers and Jesse's brothers will need reassurance and the federal machinery will demand its pound of flesh in paperwork and testimony.
But tonight, Jesse is beside me, his hand wrapped around mine, and the way his thumb strokes across my pulse point tells me paperwork is the last thing on his mind.
For the first time since I came back, I'm not running from anything.
I'm exactly where I belong.
20
JESSE
The cabin is dark when we pull up the drive, and Raven is asleep against my shoulder.
She went under somewhere past the turnoff to 290, her body finally surrendering to the crash that comes after sustained adrenaline. Her breathing slowed, her weight settled against me, and the gauze on her forearms caught the dashboard light every time the road curved. I drove with one hand on the wheel and the other on her thigh and didn't let go for a single mile.
The engine ticks in the dark after I kill it. The scent of cedar and limestone and the faint mineral edge of the creek bed filter through the cracked window, and the Hill Country night wraps around the truck like a soft weighted blanket. Raven stirs, her fingers tightening on my shirt before her eyes open.
"We're home," I tell her.
The word comes out without calculation. This cabin, built on land I bought back from my dead father's empire, became something else the moment she walked through the door. The woman beside me makes it true in a way the structure alone never did.
Inside, the cabin holds the particular stillness of a place that's been waiting. I move through the rooms by memory, checking the perimeter locks, clearing each space the way training demands even when my body is telling me to stop. Raven lowers herself onto the leather couch and watches me with heavy-lidded eyes while I build a fire in the stone hearth. The kindling catches, and the flames throw warm light across the hardwood and the exposed beams overhead.
My phone buzzes. Hawk's name flashes on the screen.
"The compound is secure. The FBI has primary custody of Alvarez, and the Bureau's processing the evidence now." Hawk's voice carries the clipped efficiency of a man filing his last report. "Cipher's data package, the Pritchard surveillance footage, Raven's case file, the intercepted communications. All of it's been logged and transferred to the lead agent."
"Casualties?"
"Multiple cartel operatives confirmed down. The rest are in custody. No friendly casualties, but Beckett took a graze across the shoulder and he's refusing medical." A beat of silence. "Rook's already heading south. Torque and Cipher are packing up. We'll be cleared out by morning."
"Copy. And Hawk." I keep my voice low enough that it won't carry to the living room. "Thank you."
The quiet on the line is brief but meaningful. Hawk isn't a man who needs sentiment, but the acknowledgment matters between men who've bled for each other. "Anytime, boss. Take care of her."
The line goes dead. Before I can pocket the phone, it buzzes again. Knox's name this time.
"How is she?" His voice is tight in a way that has nothing to do with the operation we just ran.
"Cuts and bruises. She'll be fine." I lean against the kitchen counter. "How's yours?"
Knox doesn't answer right away, and the hesitation tells me more than his words will. My brother moves through the world with the blunt certainty of a man whose fists have solved every problem he's ever faced, and the fact that he's searching for words tells me Delilah King has taken something from him that he doesn't know how to get back.
"She won't let me call a doctor." His voice drops, and the rawness underneath sounds like a wound he doesn't know he's showing. "She's got bruises on her ribs, her face, her arms. Somebody worked her over, Jesse. It wasn't a beating. This was sustained and systematic, like somebody was trying to break her."
My jaw tightens. Knox was four years old when Bo started training us, and he's carried every lesson since, the violence bred into his bones the same way it was bred into mine.
The difference between us is that Knox never learned to hide his darkness behind operational calm. His runs close to the surface, hot and immediate, and right now it's burning through every word.
"Did she talk to you?"
