Page 53 of Raven's Mark
I take a sip of coffee and study the map, letting the caffeine work while I slow my pulse. The red marks Beckett placed at the cartel staging points are surrounded now by blue dots indicating our team positions. The coverage is layered, with overlapping fields of observation and fallback routes mapped between each point. It looks solid on paper. It looks like a plan that could work.
"Walk me through the contact protocol," I say. "All of it. Every step, every contingency. I want every detail locked down before we go any further."
Jesse pulls a notebook toward him and flips to a page covered in his tight, angular handwriting. "You surface at Maria's bar. Beckett confirmed the cartel's watchers rotate through there on a regular basis, and Maria can verify she saw you if anyone needs confirmation after the fact. You sit at the bar long enough for the watchers to make a positive ID and relay it up the chain."
"And then?"
"You leave Maria's and walk north on Main toward your truck. Torque will have a tracker sewn into the driver's seat in case they decide to use your vehicle to transport you." He taps the map. "Cipher will have multiple transmitters on you. Shoes, clothing seams, a piece of jewelry, a hair clip. He'll be monitoring your signal in real time, and he'll have the drone in the air before you walk out of Maria's front door. The moment you're inside their operational center, he relays the coordinates and we move."
I trace the route on the map with my fingertip. Main Street to the truck. A two-block walk that could be the longest of my life. "What if they don't take me to their control center? What ifthey decide I'm not worth the risk and put a bullet in me on the street?"
"They won't." Jesse's voice carries the certainty of a man who's studied predators long enough to predict how they feed. "Alvarez hasn’t been seen. Likely already in the wind, but he'll have told the cartel you possess information that could dismantle the pipeline. They need to know what you've uncovered and who you've shared it with before they can risk eliminating you. That buys us a window."
"A narrow one," I say.
"Wide enough." He holds my gaze. "I wouldn't have approved this plan if I believed otherwise."
The words settle between us, and the weight they carry goes beyond tactics. Jesse Hollister doesn't approve an operation because someone made a persuasive argument. He approves it because he examined every angle and couldn't find a better option. Knowing that is the closest thing to reassurance I'm going to get from him, and it's enough.
I'm about to respond when a sharp electronic chime cuts through the kitchen. The perimeter alert on Jesse's tablet flashes red, and a split second later the motion sensor feed populates with a grainy image of a vehicle turning off the access road toward the cabin.
Jesse is on his feet before I've processed the alert, his hand closing around the SIG at his hip. He checks the sensor feed with a single glance, then moves to the window with the controlled speed of a man who's spent his life responding to unexpected arrivals with a weapon in hand.
"Stay back." His voice goes flat and operational.
I draw my Glock and angle toward the kitchen wall, giving myself cover while maintaining a sight line to the front door. On the laptop screen, the vehicle grows larger in the motion sensor frame. Dark SUV. Single occupant, based on the silhouettethrough the windshield. The engine noise reaches us through the walls a few seconds after the camera picked it up, growing louder before it cuts. One door opens and closes.
Jesse peers through the edge of the curtain, and the rigid line of his shoulders shifts. Not relaxing. Recalibrating. He holsters the SIG and steps back from the window.
"It's Carmichael."
My stomach drops. Uncle Robert doesn't make field visits. He runs operations from behind monitors and encrypted phone lines, directing assets from a distance the way he's always done it, with control and plausible deniability. If he's standing on the porch of a cabin whose location is supposed to be known only to Jesse and the team, the situation has changed in a way that couldn't wait for a phone call.
Jesse opens the door, and Uncle Robert steps inside.
He looks older. The last time I saw him was six months ago, and the lines around his mouth have deepened since then. His hair has gone fully steel-silver, cut close and sharp, but those sea-blue eyes haven't softened at all. He still carries himself with the economy of a man who has never wasted a single movement in his life, tall and lean in a dark jacket over a button-down, no tie. Practical boots instead of his usual dress shoes.
His gaze finds me first. I watch him catalog the Glock in my hand, the way I've positioned myself behind cover. A flicker crosses his face, too quick to pin down. Pride, maybe. Or grief at the necessity of it.
Then his attention shifts to Jesse, and the temperature in the cabin drops.
"You gave him the cabin location," I say.
"He already had it." Jesse's jaw tightens. "Carmichael has resources I don't control."
Uncle Robert doesn't apologize or explain how he found us. He walks to the kitchen island, glances at the maps and satelliteimagery spread across the granite and sets his hands flat on the surface.
"I'm here because my niece is about to walk into a cartel trap, and I'm not going to sit at Shadowland watching it happen on a monitor."
"You approved the operation." Jesse's voice is level, but the undercurrent carries a blade I recognize. "You sent the team. You provided the intel. You don't get to second-guess the plan because you don't like the risk."
"I approved an intelligence-gathering operation with tactical support." Uncle Robert's composure holds, but the strain beneath it shows in the tight set of his shoulders. "What I'm hearing from my team is that my niece is volunteering to be the primary target in an operation where the margin for error is measured in seconds."
"That's exactly what this is." Jesse doesn't flinch. "And she's the one who proposed it."
They face each other across the island, and the air between them thickens with the particular tension of two men who've operated in each other's orbits for decades. Jesse stands with his arms crossed, his body angled slightly in front of me in a positioning that has become so instinctive I don't think he's aware of it. Uncle Robert mirrors him, chin raised.
"The risk profile is unacceptable," Uncle Robert says. "One variable goes wrong. One missed surveillance point or communication gap. She's dead before extraction can reach her."
