Page 29 of Matthew
“Play away,” Callie muttered. “But make sure whoever’s behind this regrets it.”
“Nowthat’smusic to my ears.”
The line went dead with a cheerful beep.
Callie stared at the phone a second longer, the buzz of Carter’s words still hanging in the air. They hadn’t talked price, but it didn’t matter. The equipment was needed.
Her security wasn’t enough. Someone had tested her land like it was a game board, and she hated how close that came to being true.
She felt Matthew shift beside her, steady and quiet, and Caspian already moving into planning mode.
No one told her to stand back. No one suggested she step aside.
Good.
Because she had no intention of being a spectator.
Chapter Seven
Caspian took a final swig from his water bottle, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and nodded toward the lot. “I’m gonna head back to ESI and help Carter assemble the gear. Should be back in an hour.”
Matthew gave a nod in return, his eyes already scanning the row of greenhouses stretching along the back fence. He heard the SUV door shut behind Caspian, followed by the low hum of the engine as it rolled away.
Silence settled over the stretch of gravel. Not real silence, the kind filled with rustling leaves, the distant call of a bird, and the rhythmic hiss of a sprinkler nearby. But the kind that left too much room for thought.
He felt her behind him before she spoke.
“Walk with me?” Callie asked.
He turned. She was already headed toward the southern path that curved along the edge of the nursery’s display beds. Sammy trotted at her side, tongue lolling, tail wagging slow and steady. Matthew followed without answering.
They walked past neatly arranged pots of flowering salvia, through a patch of ornamental grasses that whispered against each other in the breeze. The landscaping was clean but natural, designed to feel like something you could recreate at home. It was a far cry from the chaos of deployment sites or safe house setups. Still, the terrain had blind spots.
Callie gestured to a slope near the back that overlooked the east side. “We get a lot of foot traffic here on weekends. Families, garden clubs…that kind of thing. It’s peaceful. Or it was.”
He noted the phrase but didn’t comment on it. “You’ve got solid lines of sight, but some of these corners are too soft. Once Carter brings the motion sensors, I’d start here.”
She didn’t argue, not right away.
But then she stopped walking and turned to face him. “You know I’ve run this place for two years without needing a detail or a tactical map.”
Matthew studied her face, finding no anger, only steel behind her eyes. The kind that didn’t flinch when things went sideways. He respected it, but he wasn’t going to pretend this was normal.
“And in those two years,” he said, “how many ghost trucks dropped mystery containers in your lot?”
She didn’t answer.
He let the question hang between them a moment longer before he softened it. “I’m not here to take over. But I’m not going to walk away either.”
Callie exhaled, her hand brushing over Sammy’s head as if to ground herself. “You’re staying?”
Matthew gave a slight nod. “Until the first phase of upgrades is in, yeah. I want eyes on what Carter’s installing. And if the bastard who did this decides to come back, I’d rather be here than hear about it after the fact.”
She looked like she wanted to argue. He could see it in the way her arms folded, in the way her weight shifted to one hip. But she didn’t push him away.
Finally, she said, “Fine. But I don’t need babysitting.”
Matthew looked past her toward the fence line, then back again. “Good. Because I don’t babysit.”
