“Nobody will believe you,” the sheriff mocked my bleeding 17-year-old son after shooting him—then I walked into the ER in my janitor uniform, pulled out my phone, and called the men who knew exactly who I used to be.

The basement of the municipal courthouse was a concrete catacomb built in 1952. It housed the boiler, sixty years of archived tax records, and the janitorial supply locker.

The supply locker was twelve feet by twenty feet. No windows. One reinforced steel door with a deadbolt I had installed myself three years ago under the guise of "securing industrial chemicals."

Inside, the smell of chlorine was replaced by gun oil, lithium grease, and high-grade military electronics.

Frank "Grizz" Kowalski sat on an overturned five-gallon bucket of floor sealant. He made the heavy plastic bucket look like a teacup. He was cleaning the bolt-carrier group of a suppressed Daniel Defense MK18 rifle with a rag that looked small in his giant, scarred hands.

"You look old, Reaper," Grizz said without looking up. His voice sounded like gravel shifting under truck tires.

"I am old, Frank," I replied, locking the deadbolt behind me.

Grizz set the bolt down and stood up. He grabbed my shoulders and pulled me into a brief, bone-crushing bear hug. "How’s the kid?"

"He’s alive. Donnelly has him guarded by two boys from the 82nd who owe me their lives. He’s being transferred to Duke University Medical Center under an alias at midnight."

"Good," Grizz said, nodding toward the metal shelving units.

The shelves didn't hold bleach or paper towels anymore. Laid out with surgical precision were four ceramic-plate tactical vests, night-vision monoculars, electronic lock-picks, thermal trackers, and six Pelican cases filled with suppressed sidearms, non-lethal flashbangs, and specialized surveillance kit.

Marcus sat at a fold-out card table in the corner, three laptops running synchronized satellite feeds of Livingston County.

"Here’s the layout," Marcus said, tapping a pencil against the screen. "Barnes has three rings of security. Ring one is the official department—forty-five deputies who are mostly clueless idiots doing traffic stops, but ten of them are on the take. Ring two is his personal escort: Clint Miller and four former private contractors he hired as 'special investigators.' They handle the dirty work. Ring three is the warehouse on the rail spur outside town. That’s where the Catawba Logistics freight drops."

"Who’s the supplier?" I asked.

"A crew out of Charlotte calling themselves the Varga Group," Hex said through Marcus's laptop speakers. "Bulgarian syndicate. They move the fentanyl in industrial tractor-trailers carrying agricultural lime. Lime masks the chemical signature from K-9 units. Barnes provides a four-cruiser county escort from the county line straight to the rail spur. In exchange, he gets a five percent skim on every kilo."

"When is the next drop?"

Marcus smiled. It was an ugly, predatory thing that showed his gold crown. "Tonight. 0200 hours. A five-million-dollar shipment. Barnes is personally overseeing the transfer because the regular transport boss was picked up by federal marshals in Atlanta two days ago. Barnes is paranoid."

"He should be," I said.

I picked up a black Sig Sauer P226 from the table. I dropped the magazine, checked the spring tension, racked the slide back, and let it snap home with a clean, mechanical *clack*.

"We hit the rail spur?" Grizz asked, his eyes gleaming. "Lotta bodies to stack, Dennis."

"No bodies," I said.

Grizz frowned. "Dennis, they shot Tyler."

"And if we leave twelve corpses in a warehouse, the Department of Justice sweeps in, seals the crime scene, locks the files, and Barnes claims he was an undercover operative who got caught in the crossfire of a cartel war. He walks away with a medal and a pension."

I leaned over the map, placing my thumb directly on the rail spur.

"We take their cargo. We take their money. We deliver the evidence directly to the five entities Barnes cannot buy: the IRS Criminal Investigation Division, the DEA Special Operations Division, and every single news station in the state simultaneously. We leave Barnes broke, exposed, and abandoned by his own handlers."

"And then?" Marcus asked.