“Get the team together,” I said.
Three seconds of silence followed on the other end.
That was all I needed to know they understood exactly what kind of night this had become…
Part 2: The Gathering Shadow
Thirty-six hours after the call, four men who officially did not exist arrived in Livingston County.
They arrived separately. None of them stayed at the local motel. Instead, they gathered at an abandoned lumber storage facility four miles outside town—a rusted corrugated-steel warehouse Caleb had purchased through an anonymous land trust ten years earlier.
Caleb stood in the middle of the dusty concrete floor, lit by a single hanging LED work light. The air carried the smell of dry pine and engine oil.
The heavy metal door slid open, and four figures emerged from the night.
Jackson came first, callsign Ghost—a former counter-surveillance specialist capable of breaching a state-level intranet with a burner phone. Next was Miller, Anvil—six-foot-four and a former breach-and-entry expert who had spent fifteen years forcing doors in Fallujah and Kandahar. Behind them was James, Doc—a tactical medic who had treated Caleb twice in places that never appeared on maps. Last came Miller’s younger brother, Scythe—a precision marksman who had once maintained a perimeter for seventy-two straight hours without sleep.
