The inside of the house was a war zone. Holes in the drywall. Glass shattered on the floor. Drug paraphernalia on the coffee table where Justin used to build Legos.
Patricia was on the couch. She looked skeletal, her eyes wide and glassy. She shrank back when she saw me.
“Thomas?” she whispered. “I didn’t… they just wanted to have fun…”
I didn’t speak to her. She was a ghost to me.
I walked to Justin’s room. The door was barricaded.
“Justin?” I called out, my voice breaking. “It’s Dad. Open up.”
Silence. Then, the scrape of the dresser. The click of the lock.
The door opened. Justin stood there, pale and shaking. He looked at me for a second, making sure I was real, and then he collapsed into my arms.
“I’ve got you,” I whispered, burying my face in his hair. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
Outside, sirens wailed as the local police finally arrived to take over from Luther’s men. I heard shouting. I heard Clint screaming about his rights.
But inside that room, holding my son, I made a silent vow. The law would try to handle this. They would file charges. They would set bail. But men like Clint Roach didn’t stop because of a piece of paper.
Sheriff Gerald Morrison found us ten minutes later. He was a good man, but a by-the-book bureaucrat. He looked at the Humvees outside, then at me.
“You brought a battalion into my town, Black?”
“I saved my son, Sheriff.”
“You used excessive force.”
“Those men were high, armed, and threatening a child. If I hadn’t brought the cavalry, you’d be zipping up a body bag right now.”
Morrison sighed. “We arrested them. Possession. Threats. But the DA is going to have a headache with this military involvement. They might walk on a technicality.”
“They won’t walk,” I said.
“And your wife?”
“My wife is dead to me. She’s all yours.”
I took Justin and we left. We stayed with Flora next door. I watched the police process the scene, watched them take Patricia away in cuffs for child endangerment.
The legal battle started the next day. I hired Clarence Garcia, a shark of a divorce lawyer. I filed for full custody. Patricia fought it, urged on by a sleazy public defender, but the evidence—the drugs, the police report, Justin’s testimony—was overwhelming. I got sole custody. She got supervised visitation and a court-ordered rehab stint.
As for Clint, Dale, and Ed? They were charged. But as the weeks went on, the cracks in the system began to show. Clint made bail. He had connections. Rumors started floating that he was cutting a deal.
I sat on Flora’s porch, watching the sun go down, realizing that “safe” was an illusion.
The law was a shield, but shields can be broken. I needed a sword.
Eighteen months later, we were living in Columbus, Georgia.
I had transferred to a training role at Fort Benning. Non-deployable. I was done leaving my son. Justin was fourteen now. He was playing soccer again. He was seeing a therapist, Dr. Rose, and the nightmares were fading.
We were healing. Or so I thought.
Then the phone rang.
“Staff Sergeant Black?” A woman’s voice. “My name is Emily Wilkerson. I’m an investigative journalist with the Denver Post.”
“I’m not interested in interviews,” I said, reaching to hang up.
“I’m writing about Spider Morrison.”
I froze. “Who?”
“Calvin ‘Spider’ Morrison. He’s a methamphetamine kingpin operating out of the Rockies. I believe the men who threatened your son—Clint Roach and his crew—were part of his distribution network.”
I sat down slowly. “Explain.”
“Clint wasn’t just a junkie, Sergeant. He was a mid-level distributor. When you took him down, you disrupted a supply chain worth half a million dollars. Spider Morrison doesn’t like losing money. And he doesn’t like loose ends.”
“Are you saying we’re still in danger?”
“I’m saying Spider Morrison has ordered hits on witnesses before. I’m building a case to expose him, to force the Feds to act. But I need victims to speak out. I need you.”
I looked out the window. Justin was in the backyard, laughing with a neighbor kid.
“If I speak out, I paint a target on my back.”
“The target is already there, Thomas. Helping me is the only way to remove the shooter.”
I agreed.
I met Emily in Denver. I met the other victims—mothers who had lost sons, women forced to cook meth, a former chemist named Molly Owens who was in hiding.
I realized then that my war wasn’t over. It had just changed battlefields.
The article ran two months later. It was a bombshell. It laid out the entire network, naming Spider Morrison as the head of the snake. My story was the emotional anchor—the soldier who came home to find his family ensnared in the web.
The public outrage forced the Feds’ hand. Spider was indicted on sixty-three counts of racketeering, murder, and trafficking.
The trial began in July. I took the stand. I looked at the jury and told them about the eight-minute drive. I told them about the fear in my son’s voice.
But the defense had a surprise witness.
Patricia.
She walked into the courtroom, looking clean, sober, and utterly treacherous. She had been bought.
“It was a misunderstanding,” she testified, avoiding my eyes. “Clint never would have hurt Justin. Thomas overreacted. He has PTSD. He saw a threat where there wasn’t one.”
The defense attorney smirked. It was a lie, but it sowed doubt. If the mother said the child wasn’t in danger, was it really kidnapping?
I left the courtroom feeling a familiar weight in my hand—the weight of a grenade with the pin pulled.
Spider Morrison was convicted, thanks largely to Molly Owens’ testimony and the digital trail Clint Roach had been too stupid to delete. He was sentenced to four consecutive life terms.
Justice served. Case closed.
Except for the letter I received three months later.
It had no return address. The handwriting was jagged.
Sergeant Black,
You cost me my freedom. You cost me my business. I have a long memory. Your boy is fourteen now. That’s a dangerous age. Accidents happen. Cars crash. Houses burn.
Sleep tight.
I took the letter to the FBI. They filed a report. They revoked Spider’s commissary privileges. They told me not to worry, that a man in supermax couldn’t hurt us.
They were wrong. Men like Spider ran empires from solitary confinement.
I realized I had two choices. I could live in fear, watching Justin every second of every day, waiting for the “accident” to happen. Or I could finish the mission.
I called Mike Lions. Mike was out of the service now, working as a contractor in private security. He still had friends in low places. Specifically, friends in the federal prison system.
“Mike. I have a problem.”
“The Spider problem?” Mike asked. He’d read the articles.
“He threatened Justin. From inside.”
Silence on the line. Then Mike sighed. “What do you need?”
“I need the threat neutralized. Permanently.”
“Thomas… you know what you’re asking. There’s no coming back from that.”
“I crossed the line the day I drove 110 miles an hour to save my son. I’m not coming back. I just want to make sure Justin has a future.”
“Give me a week.”
That week was the longest of my life. I went to work. I cooked dinner. I helped Justin with his algebra. I watched the driveway for strange cars.
Seven days later, the news broke.
Calvin ‘Spider’ Morrison found dead in federal prison cell. Authorities rule it a suicide.
He had hanged himself with a bedsheet. Or so the report said. The autopsy noted bruises consistent with a struggle, but in a prison filled with violent offenders, investigations often hit dead ends.
I received a text from a burner number the next day.
Paid in full.
I deleted the text. I went to the fireplace and threw the threatening letter into the flames. I watched the paper curl and blacken, the words “Sleep tight” disappearing into ash.
Six months later, I stood in the bleachers of a high school soccer field. The Georgia air was thick and humid.
Justin was down on the field, wearing number 14. He was taller now, his shoulders broadening. He sprinted down the sideline, calling for the ball.
He trapped a pass, cut inside a defender, and fired a shot into the top corner of the net.
The crowd erupted. Justin threw his arms up, a grin splitting his face. He looked toward the stands, scanning the crowd until he found me. He pointed.
I pointed back.
After the game, he ran over, sweaty and breathless.
“Did you see that, Dad? Top shelf!”
“I saw it, buddy. Proud of you.”
He took a drink of water, then looked at me. “Dad? Do you think Mom will ever… you know. Get better? Come back?”
It was the question I had dreaded. Patricia was living in Billings now, working at a diner, still drifting in and out of rehab. She hadn’t called on his birthday.
“I don’t know, son,” I said honestly. “Do you want her to?”
Justin looked at the field, then back at me. “No. I don’t think so. I like things the way they are. Just you and me.”
“Me too, son. Me too.”
We walked to the car as the sun set, painting the sky in violent shades of orange and purple.
I am Thomas Black. I am a father. I have broken laws, destroyed men, and crossed moral lines that I can never uncross. I carry the weight of those choices every day.
But as I watched my son toss his gym bag into the backseat, safe, happy, and alive, I knew the truth.
I would do it all again.
Because some things are worth killing for.
