His eyes flashed.
“No?”
“If you move now, Blackwood knows the game broke open. Let Marcus think he’s still invisible. We use him.”
Damon wanted blood. She could see it in the stillness of his hands.
But after a long moment, he nodded.
“Tell me the plan.”
Part 3
The plan began with a drone.
Blackwood’s men sent it over the north woods at 11:47 p.m., dark-painted and modified, flying low at treetop height. Anton took it down with a directional jammer from the porch. Inside, Savannah found a camera, GPS transmitter, and live uplink.
“They found us,” Damon said.
“No,” Savannah said, already unscrewing the casing. “They found what we’re going to let them find.”
She rebuilt the drone’s firmware, spoofed the coordinates, and made the receiver believe the farm sat twenty miles southwest at an abandoned grain facility.
By dusk the next day, Damon had twelve men waiting there.
At first light, a six-person Blackwood team arrived in two vehicles.
Victor Petrescu limped at the front.
The engagement lasted less than ninety seconds. Four surrendered. Victor took a round through the thigh and was dragged into custody before he could reach his gun.
Savannah, by her own rule, was nowhere near the interrogation.
Anton relayed updates.
After two hours, Victor broke.
He gave them the Milwaukee safe house. The Blackwood routes. The payments Marcus had taken. And one thing more.
Marcus was not with the strike team because he was on a private errand.
Lily.
Damon called Savannah immediately.
“He’s coming to the real farm.”
Savannah was in the barn with Lily, counting chicken coops.
She did not let her voice change.
“Understood.”
The power cut at 9:46 a.m.
Every light died.
The perimeter alarms routed through the house went silent.
Savannah’s old Bureau reflexes fired before thought. She pushed Lily behind stacked hay bales and drew the Glock Damon had given her two days earlier.
Footsteps creaked over wood.
Slow. Careful.
Then a voice she knew.
“Miss Rhodes.”
Marcus Vale stepped into the barn shadows.
Savannah kept low behind the hay.
“Did you kill Evan?”
A pause.
“I created the conditions,” Marcus said. “Briggs did the sleeping.”
Lily whimpered.
Marcus turned toward the sound.
Savannah fired.
Missed.
Marcus fired back.
Pain tore across her upper arm. She hit the floor hard. Before she could raise the Glock again, Marcus was past her. He grabbed Lily by one arm and pressed a gun to her temple.
“Drop it,” he said.
A single shot cracked from above.
Marcus froze.
A neat dark mark opened between his eyes.
He dropped without another word.
Anton stood in the loft with a rifle against his shoulder.
Savannah crawled to Lily and pulled her into her chest.
Lily had not cried during the apartment attack, the penthouse threats, or the move to Wisconsin.
She cried now.
“I was so scared, Savvy.”
“I’m here,” Savannah whispered. “I’m right here. I’m not letting go.”
Damon reached the farm an hour later.
He crossed the yard at a run and found them in the barn. Savannah sat against a post with her arm wrapped in cloth. Lily was in her lap, Mr. Biscuit crushed between them.
Damon knelt in the straw.
For once, he had no command.
No order.
No violence left to offer.
He wrapped one arm around Savannah and one around Lily and pulled them both against him.
It was the first time he had held anyone like that since Evan.
Lily whispered into his collar, “Mr. Cross, if I hug you, you feel better.”
Damon’s voice broke.
“You’re right, Bean.”
Savannah closed her eyes and let the tears come silently.
That night, after Lily finally slept upstairs with the door open one careful inch, Savannah and Damon sat by the dying fire.
“This isn’t happening again,” Damon said.
“You don’t control everything.”
“I control what I can.”
He wanted to cut Blackwood down the old way. Men, guns, closed rooms, bodies disappearing.
Savannah listened.
Then she shook her head.
“No.”
Damon looked at her.
“No?”
“Stop treating me like someone you have to protect. Treat me like a partner.”
For a long moment, he said nothing.
Then he leaned back.
“All right.”
“Good,” Savannah said. “Because my plan is better than yours.”
She built a dossier.
Marcus’s access logs. The SSH fingerprints. Victor’s recorded statement. Blackwood’s connection to Evan’s death. Shell accounts. Smuggling routes. Six unsolved homicides tied to Blackwood pressure points.
Three hundred forty pages.
Then she entered Blackwood’s financial network quietly, invisibly, and waited.
For sixty hours, she changed nothing.
She watched.
Copied.
Mapped.
Timed the rhythm of the host until she knew where to touch it without waking the beast.
Damon brought her soup, sandwiches, coffee, water. He did not interrupt her work. He simply made it impossible for her to forget she had a body.
Near midnight on the second day, he watched her type and said softly, “You’re more dangerous than any gun I own.”
Savannah did not look up.
“I know.”
On Friday at 3:00 p.m., she pressed Enter.
In forty-seven seconds, three hundred twelve million dollars in Blackwood liquid assets moved through one hundred eighty intermediate accounts. His ledgers were replaced with corrupted duplicates that would pass a glance and fail a real audit. Correspondent banking relationships severed automatically. Shell structures collapsed into one another like rotted beams.