Page 10 of Raven's Mark
Someone was watching the Pritchard ranch. They saw the cartel arrive, and they had both the skill and the equipment to engage multiple armed targets at extreme range and come out on top. The precision of every shot, the distance involved, the tactical relocation between firing points without any loss of accuracy.
Maria's voice echoes through my head from last night, careful and quiet when she mentioned his name.Things have been quiet since he came back to town.
It could be Jesse Hollister. The pieces fit. Former military, intimate knowledge of the terrain, and Maria's cryptic comment about the change in this town since his return. But I don't have proof. And why?
The thought twists something deep in my chest. It might be horror, the idea that the man who dragged me away from Uncle Martin might have just saved my life. Or it might be something worse: a thread of gratitude I have no right to feel and no intention of examining. Without that sniper's intervention, I would be dead right now. One of those bodies cooling in the dirt would be mine.
I force myself to move. The cartel will send more men once they regroup, and it won't take them long. The fact that they showed up at all means they have some kind of surveillance on this property, cameras or motion sensors or both, and they'll know exactly when someone comes back. I need to be gone before that happens. I break into a run toward my car, keeping to the tree line and checking the road in both directions before I leave cover.
My sedan sits where I left it, untouched in the cut in the brush. I slide behind the wheel and start the engine, and my hands are trembling from the adrenaline still flooding my system. The drive back to town takes less than twenty minutes, and I check my mirrors constantly the entire way. No one follows me.
At the safe house, I lock the door and check every window before I let myself breathe. My phone shows no missed calls and no texts.
I pull out the rounds I pocketed and line them up on the kitchen table. Seven total, all with identical headstamps. Evidence that the gun-running routes through the Hill Country are operational again.
My burner phone rings. Uncle Robert.
"You made contact?"
"Cartel enforcers tried to kill me at the Pritchard ranch." The words come out flat and factual. "Six of them."
"Are you hurt?"
"No. Someone intervened. A sniper, positioned several hundred yards out on the western ridge. They dropped four of them. Only two made it to a vehicle and escaped."
Uncle Robert is quiet for a moment. "Did you see who it was?"
"No. The distance was too great and they stayed concealed the entire time." I pause, weighing how much to share and how much to hold back. "But I think it might have been Jesse Hollister."
Another silence. "What makes you say that?"
"The skill level. The knowledge of the terrain. And my gut." The admission costs me something I can't quite name. "The bartender I spoke with last night brought him up when I was asking questions about the area. She said things have been quiet around here since he came back to town a couple of years ago." I let out a slow breath. "I don't have proof. Just pieces that feel like they fit together."
"Your gut isn't evidence, Raven. What else do you have?"
"Nothing concrete. The skill level, the timing, and the fact that he's the only person in this area who fits the profile." I exhale slowly. "I know it's thin."
A longer pause than I'm comfortable with. "What did you find at the ranch before they showed up?"
"The barn was cleaned out completely, but there's a storm cellar behind it with empty shipping crates and military ammunition. 5.56 NATO rounds. It points to the Pritchard property being used as a transfer point for weapons moving north."
"Tom refused to cooperate," Uncle Robert says quietly. "That's why they killed him." He says it as a statement, not a question, which tells me he has intelligence he hasn't shared with me yet.
"There are others, aren't there?"
"Tom wasn't the first. Three other ranchers have died under suspicious circumstances in the last eighteen months. All of them were ruled accidents by local law enforcement. All of their properties were sold off quickly afterward."
"They're taking over the ranches again. The same playbook Bo Hollister used."
"And eliminating anyone who won't fall in line. The cartel is rebuilding their infrastructure piece by piece, using the old routes through the Hill Country." He pauses. "You need to be more careful than you were today, Raven."
"Send me everything you have on the other three ranches."
"It's already on its way. Keep investigating, but from this point forward I want you operating under the assumption that you're being tracked. The cartel knows someone is poking around their operation now, and after today they'll be looking for whoever that is." Urgency sharpens his voice. "Be smart about your next moves. Find out who's coordinating this thing on the ground. Get me names, locations, and evidence I can use. Then we bring in federal support and shut the whole pipeline down the right way."
"Alvarez is dirty, Uncle Robert. If we go to the feds through normal channels, he'll know about it within hours."
"Then we work around him. But none of that matters until you have actionable intelligence to bring to the table." A pause, and then his voice softens. "And Raven? Don't try to confront Jesse Hollister. If it really was him behind that rifle today, let him keep watching your back from the shadows. Right now, youneed him alive and in your corner more than you need answers about the past."
