Ranger - Jericho's Boys #4 - ch. 21 (Patreon)

Home stretch guys. Unbeta'd/Unedited. Only one or two more chapters and the schmoopy epilogue. I'm gonna finish it this week so I can catch up on all the other moving parts. Nolah stuff, Halloween stories, Learning Curve. All of it. We're almost there. Sevenenzo is taking a fieldtrip...to Calliope's house and they're bringing the Conti twins to meet their guru.

“Do I look okay?” Ansel asked.

Enzo rolled his eyes. “We’re going to Calliope’s house for work, not a social visit. If you’re just gonna be weird, I’m leaving you in the car.”

Elio snorted. “When is he not weird?”

Enzo glanced at Seven in the passenger seat, watching him bite that plush bottom lip to keep from laughing as his teen brothers started a shoving match in the backseat. There was a throbbing behind his right eye that was only getting worse since they’d left the city. He understood now why Calliope chose to work remotely. She and her wife lived in the middle of fucking nowhere.

“Why are we going to Calliope again?” Elio finally asked. “Didn’t we hand you everything you needed to get Neith’s charges dropped?”

Seven nodded. “Yeah. Bethany was arrested, made a deal for conditional immunity, and she and her mom are now stashed somewhere safe until we know whether we have to disappear them permanently.”

“Kill them?” Ansel practically shouted.

“No, you idiot. Relocate them,” Enzo said, shaking his head.

He’d never seen two people so smart and yet so dumb in his whole life. Neith was all but in the clear. But that wasn’t good enough for Seven…or Neith for that matter. If there was one thing that truly tied Enzo and Seven’s families together, it was that they both believed that justice was best served soaked in blood. They’d spared Bethany because she’d made the right choice; the others wouldn’t be so lucky.

But in order to ensure all parties died screaming, they needed names, and while the names of the donors had been easy enough to identify, the names of Grant’s bosses were harder to pin down. Bethany had been forward-facing enough in the operation to easily corroborate which donors were actively buying victims, but not who ultimately financed the operation. For that, they’d need an expert.

An expert who had goats named after fictional vampire hunters and chickens named after a very real K-pop group. Their lives were really fucking weird. Calliope had already found the information but when they’d asked her to send it to them, Seven had let it slip that Enzo's brothers were…fans. She’d asked if they wanted to come see the farm. The answer had clearly been yes. That was how Enzo found himself on the longest short car ride of his life. 

When Calliope had said she didn’t live on a farm, she hadn’t exactly been lying. There were houses dotting the landscape, sitting on land that had plenty of room but it wasn’t farm country. There weren’t crops or cattle. If anything, the town looked more like a commune, or maybe an artist’s colony. 

Did those still exist?

They drove through a small downtown area that looked quaint during the day with its little galleries and bookstores but probably took on a far more sinister appearance at night, all darkened streets and a church spire that pierced the sky.

“Oh, can we stop there on the way out?” Elio asked, pointing at a cafe with a wooden storefront and a large window filled with baked goods. “It says they have apple cider donuts,” he cried, like a little kid.

Right. He was a little kid. At least in Enzo’s eyes. Both his brothers were still in their teens. He forgot that sometimes.  “This isn’t a vacation,” he muttered.

Seven’s quiet laughter filled the car, low and warm enough to ease some of the tension at the base of Enzo’s skull. He could feel the boy’s amusement like sunlight through glass, soft and  impossible to ignore.

His breath hitched as Seven’s hand found his on the center console, threading their fingers together and giving it a squeeze.

“Relax. Why are you so tense?” he asked softly.

Enzo looked at him from the corner of his eye, not sure he dared to look full-on. “I’m not a hundred percent sure, but if I had to guess, it’s because it’s my first time taking my baby brothers to a black-hat hacker’s home to plot a group murder.”

Seven grinned, flashing his pretty white teeth. “It gets easier. Especially if you get donuts after.”

Enzo huffed out a surprised laugh, shaking his head and giving Seven a raised brow. “Is that your way of saying you want to stop for donuts too?”

“Yes, please,” Seven said, then mouthed, Daddy, giving him a look that would have melted solid steel.

Enzo’s cock twitched, his response nearly Pavlovian at this point. Seven said Daddy and Enzo’s dick was at the ready immediately. How had he gotten sucked so deep into this boy’s orbit without even realizing it? He’d never had someone who could both short-circuit his body and steady his mind with the same look. Somehow, Seven had become both his worst distraction and his calmest center.

Once they exited the little town, they ended up on dirt roads with houses sitting on four- to five-acre parcels of land. Enzo wasn’t sure what he’d expected of Calliope’s house, but it wasn’t the massive farmhouse that looked like it had been sitting there for a hundred years. He might have thought they were in the wrong place if not for the security measures.

They stopped just outside an ancient iron gate–too ornamental to simply be a barrier–and he wasn’t surprised when it swung open without them alerting anyone to their presence. Once on the property, they followed a well-worn gravel road, his tires instantly falling into the narrow grooves carved into the drive over time.

He found himself scanning the property as they drove the short winding path. There was a weathered outbuilding with oddly modern fixtures, a birdhouse perched a bit too straight on its pole, and a goat standing at the top of a small shed covered in solar panels, because apparently even the livestock here were preppers.

When they parked, they found Calliope standing on the porch, a dish towel thrown over one shoulder. She wore skin-tight jeans and a V-neck tee that showed off her curvy body, dark hair flowing over her shoulders. She had to be close to fifty but didn’t look a day over thirty-five. She smiled, then gave them a wave.

“Holy shit. Is that her?” Elio whispered.

“She’s so hot,” Ansel said, mouth hanging open.

Enzo shook his head. “I thought you didn’t like girls,” he said, not addressing either of them by name.

“We like everything. Gender is a construct,” Elio said as if Enzo was ancient for even hinting at a preference.

Seven snickered as the car rolled to a stop, squeezing Enzo’s hand once more. It was a small thing, that squeeze, but it felt like a silent promise, an I’ve-got-you amid the madness. Every time Seven did it, Enzo swore he could breathe again. Seven had leaned on him for weeks, trusting him to save his mother with his legal knowledge, but now that he’d done that, he felt a bit out of his element. He wasn’t opposed to murder if it was justified. There were plenty of Conti's with blood on their hands, but he wasn't one of them. He'd never been an active participant.

Now he was playing in Seven’s wheelhouse. 

On the porch, a battered laptop played gardening blogs while, off to one side, a travel router and a compact antenna sat casually on a stack of seed catalogs. A ‘broken’ lantern hid a discreet cable where a brand-new conduit snaked into the wall. Calliope hadn’t built a homestead; she’d built the world’s most discreet fortress.

She beamed at them as they made their way onto the porch. “Come on in. I made cookies.”

Enzo rolled his eyes as his brothers practically fell all over themselves at the idea that this mythical digital goddess had made them cookies.

The inside of the house was beautiful, every inch remodeled, but in a way that honored the bones of the place instead of erasing them. The air smelled of coffee and something tart. Jam or jelly maybe? His question was answered when she led them into a large country kitchen.

“You caught us on prep day,” she said, gesturing to the clearly lived-in space. Something bubbled in a pan, a large pot of water boiled beside it, jars lined up on the counter, and a loaf of bread still steamed on the cooling rack.

Enzo pinched the bridge of his nose as his brothers started peeking into every nook and cranny.

“Are you making strawberry jam?” Elio asked.

Calliope smiled in a way that reminded Enzo of his mother. “No, strawberry simple syrup. I sell it at the farmer’s market. It’s healthier than the stuff you buy at the store. I make chocolate syrup, too.”

Calliope was a fascinating creature. Quirky, so terrifyingly smart, the government had given her open access to their systems rather than try to outsmart her. Yet she loved animals, and her son and son-in-law, had a wife, a quiet home and–apparently–a side gig at the farmer’s market. Enzo felt like he really didn’t know anything about making the most of his days. 

“How do you have time to hack the planet and make syrup? And bread?” Ansel asked, giving voice to Enzo’s thoughts as he hovered over the loaf, inhaling deeply.

Calliope sighed wistfully. “There’s surprisingly little to do lately. Arsen has taken over some of the digital heavy lifting with Jericho’s interests. Thomas has slowed down since Noah took over. Idle hands and all that.”

She offered them a plate of chocolate chip cookies, seemingly pleased when the teens began to gobble them up like uncultured gremlins. His mother would have been mortified.

“You have quite the security setup here,” Enzo said.

She grinned. “Well, shit. You noticed that, huh?”

“I’m trained to notice things like that,” Enzo said. “It’s good that you keep yourself safe out here.”

Her smile became a smirk, her tone edged with something sharp. “I’m always safe. The other measures are to give whoever’s stupid enough to come after me a chance to change their minds before they ruin their own lives.”

“You’re so cool,” Elio whispered around a mouthful of cookie.

Enzo sighed, covering his face with his hand. He felt the gentle slide of arms around his waist, Seven, always there, grounding him. The soft press of a cheek to his back made him smile despite himself. It wasn’t just comfort; it was possession wrapped in affection, a quiet way of saying I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.

There was the sound of footsteps on the wooden stairs that Enzo only just noticed past a door off the kitchen. A woman–clearly Calliope’s wife,Lola–appeared, her hair in braids decorated with gold beads that swung past her shoulders. She wore black leggings, an oversized chambray shirt, and bright red rain boots.

She smiled when she saw the group in her kitchen, then leaned in to kiss Calliope’s cheek. “Oh, we have a full house. You must be in your bliss,” she said to her wife.

“I do love company,” Calliope said.

Enzo had to fight back a laugh when Ansel rushed to say, “Our mom does, too.”

Seven’s hand found his again, lacing their fingers together in a silent echo of the domestic ease around them. It hit Enzo then, the rare feeling that this, the chaos and warmth and family, would be just how his home with Seven would feel someday. Surrounded by kids and chaos and more nosy family members than they knew what to do with. 

“Everyone, this is my wife, Lola,” Calliope said, gesturing to the other woman like she was unveiling a rare art exhibit. “You know Seven. This is his boyfriend, Enzo, and Enzo’s brothers…Elio and Ansel, wasn’t it?”

His brothers nodded like bobbleheads.

“I’m Ansel,” Ansel said. “That’s Elio.”

“Nice to meet all of you,” Lola murmured, peering over the edge of the bubbling pan. As they watched, she took the wooden spoon, pushing around the mass of macerated strawberries and sugar. “I got this if you want to go work.”

Calliope hesitated, glancing around the kitchen before nodding. “The jars are sterilized, the next loaf is proofing, and the dehydrator has twenty more minutes before we need to put in the next batch.”

Lola rolled her eyes playfully, snagging the dishtowel from Calliope’s shoulder and snapping it lightly against her hip. “This isn’t my first day. I got it.”

“Okay, then,” Calliope said, casting one more fondly worried look around the kitchen. “Follow me.”

“Where are we going?” Seven asked.

“To her bat cave,” Lola said around a laugh. “Be flattered. I’m not even allowed in there.”

Calliope gasped, playfully swatting her shoulder. “That’s not true! You just don’t like it when I talk about all the techie stuff.”

“Uh-huh,” Lola said, expression skeptical but amused.

Calliope huffed and waved for them to follow. “Come on. I’ll show you the inner sanctum.”

Ansel and Elio exchanged wide-eyed looks like someone had invited them to view the Shroud of Turin.

They exited through the kitchen onto the porch, then down the steps into a yard bordered by chicken wire. A decked-out chicken coop sat off to the left, where eight chickens wandered around aimlessly. Behind the house–about an Olympic pool’s length away–stood a barn invisible from the road. Enzo glanced back to the house wondering what that other outbuilding was, if this was Calliope’s work space. 

She pulled the doors open and waved everyone inside.

Enzo stopped in the doorway and let out a low whistle. The old barn had been gutted and reborn, its timber ribs shot through with the pulse of a dozen machines. The original hayloft ladder still clung stubbornly to one wall, but everything else looked like NASA had moved in and forgotten to leave.

Warm amber light glowed from mismatched desk lamps and LED strips that pulsed gently behind glass racks of servers. Cables were braided neatly along beams like vines, feeding into sleek black towers that hummed beneath the sound of jazz and the occasional bleat of a goat outside.

One entire wall was a mosaic of monitors: world maps, scrolling code, traffic cams, chat feeds, a live thermal image of the property perimeter. A 3D printer sat beside a mason jar of wildflowers and a coffee mug that read Mother of Goats.

At the center sat an old barber chair. Calliope collapsed into it, sending it spinning once before catching herself and slipping on glowing pink cat-ear headphones.

Seven leaned close, murmuring just loud enough for Enzo to hear, “You think she’ll let me sit in it if I say please?”

Enzo shot him a look, fighting a smile. “If she doesn’t tase you first.”

Seven’s grin widened, the low light reflecting in his dark eyes. “Totally worth it.”

The whole thing–the high-tech fortress, the smell of old wood and machine oil, the faint sound of goats–should have felt ridiculous. But standing next to Seven, watching his brothers gawk, Enzo realized it didn’t. It felt strangely…normal. 

The contrast between her rainbow keyboard and the precision of the setup made the whole space feel curated, deliberate, alive. The air smelled faintly of ozone and machine oil, like the place itself was sentient and practicing self-care.

Enzo had defended mobsters, politicians, and thieves, but this…this was another kind of power. Government-grade clearance dressed up as whimsy. He knew better than to ask how much she was allowed to see. Whatever the answer was, it was everything.

His brothers froze in the doorway like pilgrims seeing the promised land. “Holy–” Ansel breathed. “–shit,” Elio finished.

Banks of monitors painted their faces in flickering light–maps, code, video feeds, chat windows–all stitched together into a kind of digital cathedral. The servers purred like contented cats; every cable zip-tied with loving precision.

Elio stumbled toward the wall of blinking lights. “Is that–” his voice cracking, “–a quantum co-processor rigged to a home-built array?”

“It’s tethered,” Ansel said, reverent. “She’s bleeding solar off the outbuildings to keep the backup grid isolated. That’s insane. That’s…brilliant.”

Calliope swiveled in her chair, pink cat-ear headphones glowing, an unbothered smirk tugging at one corner of her mouth. “You boys certainly know your stuff.”

They straightened immediately. “Thank you,” they said in unison.

Seven stifled another laugh. Enzo didn’t blame him, it was like watching two kids meet their celebrity crush.

“Ma’am,” Elio said.

“Your setup is art,” Ansel finished.

“Do they always finish each other’s sentences like this?” Seven murmured, just loud enough for Enzo.

“Only when they’re really nervous, which is almost never,” Enzo replied, amused.

“Damn right it is,” Calliope said, spinning back to the screens. “Now close the door. The goats mess with my signal.”

Enzo did as she asked, then leaned on the doorframe, watching his brothers try not to vibrate out of their own skin. They’d just met the woman every hacker forum whispered about like a myth–The Ghost in the Barn.

“Here’s what I found. These guys aren’t sophisticated. If anything, they’re painfully obvious–you should kill them just to put them out of their misery.”

Ansel and Elio exchanged wide eyes but said nothing.

Three pictures popped up on the screen in an inverted triangle: two above, one below. A circle appeared around the lower picture. The guy was mediocre at best, attractive only if weak-chinned, middle-aged, polo-wearing white dudes were someone’s thing. Which, of course, they weren’t.

“This piece of shit here is Grant, the director of WERC. Your Bethany’s sweetheart,” Calliope said, sarcasm threaded through her words though she never broke eye contact with the monitors. “He’s their errand boy. Practically a low-level lackey. He does most of the heavy lifting, but these are the men who take the profit.”

Seven’s fingers tightened around Enzo’s, his jaw tensing. His mother was out of the woods, but the wound was still fresh, still raw. It might take months, years even, before Seven felt safe enough to breathe easy again.

She pointed to the two men above Grant’s picture. One had graying, greasy hair pulled back in a ponytail; he wore an expensive button-down, but the left side of his face drooped like he might have suffered a stroke or had Bell’s Palsy. The man on the right was about two hundred pounds overweight and looked sweaty even in the photo. She was right. They didn’t look like criminal masterminds.

“These guys,” she said, highlighting their photos. “They’re the ones making the sales, moving the ‘product,’ and keeping ninety percent of the profits. You two were right about Grant,” she told his brothers. “He’s been pocketing money he embezzled from the charity and siphoning it to an offshore account.”

The boys looked like they’d been handed medals of valor, grinning so hard their cheeks hurt.

Calliope’s lips twitched but she didn’t dignify their hero worship with a comment. “My guess is that Tweedle-Ponytail and Tweedle-Double-Chin have no clue Grant was sloppy enough to steal from their cash cow. If they found out, they’d probably take him out for you. But where’s the fun in that?”

“Yeah, no,” Seven muttered. “These three are mine. I’m gonna peel each of them like a grape while they beg for their lives.”

“Sick,” Ansel whispered, reverent.

“I already sent you the info. Have your Bethany call Grant and tell him they’re onto her and she wants a meeting with his bosses or she’ll talk,” Calliope said, tapping a few keys. “That’ll motivate them. They’ll try to arrange the meeting on their terms, but have her demand it be somewhere quiet, preferably a location under a Mulvaney shell company, obviously.”

“Don’t you think they’ll suspect something if she wants to meet alone?” Ansel asked.

Calliope spun around to look at him. “Usually, yeah. But like I said, these guys are morons. They’ll be so happy she wants to meet somewhere secluded; they'll be patting themselves on the back right up until the trap springs and they realize they’re the ones boiling in the pot, not Bethany. Possibly literally.”

Elio looked at Seven. “You’re really going to murder these guys?”

Seven stepped in front of Enzo, leaning his weight back against him. Enzo’s arms slid around his waist without thinking. The gesture was automatic–protective and possessive–and it calmed him more than anything Calliope was saying. “Yeah. It’s what we do. You guys have done your part. You don’t have to do anything else except keep your mouths shut about what you know.”

“But…could we–” Ansel began.

“Could you what?” Seven asked.

Elio ran his top teeth along his bottom lip before saying, “Could we help?”

“Or at least watch?” Ansel added. “Please?”

Enzo’s eyes widened. “You want to watch three men be tortured to death?”

Ansel rolled his eyes. “Don’t say it like it’s weird.”

“Yeah, you’re marrying the torturer. You don’t get to marry the public executioner and then call us ghouls for wanting to watch in the town square,” Elio said.

Calliope chuckled. “They’ve got you there.”

“Ma will kill me if I take you to witness a murder,” Elio fretted.

Elio snorted. “Oh, please. If Thomas Mulvaney greenlit it, she’d probably call it a required assignment and make the whole family watch and take notes.”

“You’re barely old enough to drive,” Enzo said.

“Adam made his first kill at their age,” Calliope said, then winked at the twins. They melted like snowmen on the equator, giving her the biggest heart-eyes.

“I did, too,” Seven admitted. “It should be their decision. Well, and Mama’s. Obviously.”

His brothers suddenly clustered around him, hopping on the balls of their feet, hands clasped like supplicants. “Please. Please. Please let us watch. Please?”

Enzo rolled his eyes. “Fine, but only if Ma says it’s okay.”

“Yes!” Elio shouted, fist pumping. “She’ll totally say yes.”

“At the rate we’re going, we’re gonna have to install stadium seating at our kill sites,” Seven murmured.

She looked at the twins. “As for you two. You seemed to have no problem finding the ruby slippers, but how about you let me pull back the curtain?”

They blinked at her stupidly. 

“Say yes, and I’ll show you corridors most people don’t even know exist, how to chase a digital ghost the way trackers read broken tree branches and barely-there footprints.” They gawked at her like she was Morpheus and they were Neo and she was offering them a choice between a red and blue pill. When she sat forward, they leaned in too. They were so enthralled, Enzo half-worried they’d tip over. She smirked at them in a way that raised goosebumps on Enzo’s arms. “You want power? I’ll teach you how to hack the unhackable. I’ll give you the digital skeleton key to the entire internet. What do you say?”

They continued to gape at her, slack-jawed. When the silence stretched, she grinned. “Is that a yes?”

They both nodded vigorously.

“Excellent,” she said, the dramatic tone bleeding away, leaving only the chipperness she’d had moments ago. “Send me your school schedules. I’ll have to double-check with your mother that it’s okay.”

“We’ll give you her number,” Elio blurted.

Calliope scoffed. “No need. I already have it.”

Of course she did.

“She really is like a mythical being,” Enzo said quietly.

Seven nodded, eyes bright. “I know, right?”