Page 49 of Raven's Mark
I scan the room. "Everyone clear on assignments?"
A chorus of affirmatives.
"Then get to work. We reconvene here tomorrow, first light, for a full operational briefing. Dismissed."
The team moves out with quiet efficiency. Rook and Torque head for the door first, already talking logistics in low voices. Hawk follows, pausing to check the tree line through the window before stepping outside. Cipher packs his equipment with care, casting one last look at the frozen frame of Harlan walking out of the Pritchard barn before he closes the file and shoulders his bag.
Knox lingers near the counter after the door shuts behind the team. Beckett stays beside him.
"You sure about this?" Knox keeps his voice low enough that only the three of us can hear it.
"No." I meet my brother's eyes without flinching. "But it's the right call."
"The right call gets her killed if one variable breaks the wrong way."
"Every variable going wrong is what we plan for," I say. "That's the point of preparation."
Knox holds my gaze for another beat, then nods and heads for the door. Beckett follows without a word, and the cabin empties until it's just Raven and me standing on either side of the kitchen island.
She's still watching me with an expression I've seen on operators who've just had a risky proposal approved against their own expectations.
"You didn't fight me on it."
"No."
"I expected you to."
"I know." I move to the counter and pour coffee from the pot Cipher made earlier. "You made the right call. I'm not going to override sound tactics because the risk makes me uncomfortable."
Her eyes narrow. "But you don’t like it."
"I don't like any of this." I set the mug down and meet her gaze. "But we're not running on what I like. We're running on what works within the window we've got."
She studies my face for a long moment, and I let her look. Let her see the control, the calculation, the absence of panic. This is who I am when the mission sits above everything else, and she needs to see it clearly, because in a few days she's going to be trusting her life to it.
"A few days," she says. "That's tight."
"It's enough." I check my watch. "You should eat. Tomorrow we start rehearsals."
"Jesse." She doesn't move. "Thank you."
I look at her across the counter. This woman I've wanted for a decade, who walked back into my life at the worst possible moment. She's proposing to hand herself over to people who want her dead because she looked at every option available and chose the one that gives us the best chance of ending this.
"Don't thank me yet," I say. "We haven't pulled it off."
"We will."
Her certainty should steady me. Instead, it sinks into my gut with a weight I can't shift, because the last time I felt this sure about an operation, I buried two men I'd trained with and carried the third out on my back.
She heads for the shower, and I wait until I hear the water running before I pull out my phone and step onto the porch.
Morning sun is climbing high over the hills, painting the landscape in sharp relief. I dial Carmichael's private line and wait.
He picks up on the second ring. "Jesse."
"I need additional assets." No preamble. Carmichael has never needed it. "Operators who aren't on the team manifest. Experienced, discreet, and capable of working independently without coordination from the primary unit."
A pause. Keys click in the background.
