The gun felt heavier than it should have.
Jax’s arm shook as he aimed at the night guard, the red dot of the laser sight trembling over a pair of terrified brown eyes that looked too much like a deer he once hit on an empty California highway.
“Freeze,” Red hissed behind him. “Take the shot if he moves.”
The guard’s hands were in the air, his whole body vibrating. Somewhere beyond the warehouse walls, Los Angeles crackled with police sirens and distant freeway noise. In here, Jax could hear nothing but the frantic thud of his own heart.
He saw flashes that didn’t belong to this moment: a hospital room, his little boy’s bald head, the oncologist’s calm voice saying “stage four”; the bill with the deposit circled in red; his ex-wife’s shoulders shaking over the kitchen sink.
“C’mon, Jax,” Red whispered. “We don’t have all night.”
The guard’s voice came out as a ragged whisper. “Please… I’ve got kids.”
The barrel of the gun dipped. Jax’s fingers went numb.
He couldn’t breathe.
The warehouse walls pressed in like a closing fist. His vision tunneled. Somewhere far away, Red was swearing. The guard’s face blurred, then sharpened again.
Not a guard. Not a problem. A man. A father.
Just like him.
“Call it off,” Jax croaked, lowering the gun.
“What?” Red grabbed his arm. “Have you lost it?”
“I said it’s off.” Jax stepped back, ripping the ski mask off his face. Cool air hit his sweat-soaked skin. “We’re done. We’re leaving. Now.”
Red stared at him, jaw tight, then jerked his head toward the others. “Fall back! Everybody out!”
Three shadows melted out the side door into the Los Angeles night. The guard sagged against the wall, sobbing in relief. Jax didn’t trust his voice enough to apologize. He just turned and walked away, the weight of the gun now sitting somewhere directly on top of his lungs.
“You’re having another episode.”
Red said it over the steering wheel like he was diagnosing an engine problem. The SUV rolled down a quiet industrial street in East L.A., orange sodium lights dragging across Jax’s worn-out face.
“I’m fine,” Jax muttered.
“You’re shaking.”
“It’s cold.”
“It’s seventy-two degrees.”
Jax stared out at the empty asphalt. “I said I’m fine.”
Red sighed. He was older, grayer around the temples, with the permanently unimpressed squint of a man who’d seen every mistake twice. “Look, I vouched for you with the crew because of your reputation. You never missed a mark. You never froze. You never… cared.”
“Yeah, well, people change.”
“Not in our line of work,” Red said. “They get sloppy, or they get dead. Or they get everyone else locked up with them.”
Silence stretched between them. The freeway hummed in the distance.
“You’re seeing him tomorrow, right?” Red asked.
“Who?”
“The therapist.”
Jax made a face. “I’m not going to some shrink to talk about my feelings.”
Red pulled a folded paper from his jacket pocket and slapped it against Jax’s chest. “I already booked it. You’re going. You want me to keep backing you up on these jobs? You want that money for your kid? Then you go sit in that chair and you talk.”
Jax looked down at the appointment slip. Beverly Hills address. Neutral name. No hint of what it really was.
“What’d you tell him I do?” he asked.
Red smirked. “Consulting.”
The office didn’t look like the kind of place that had ever seen someone like him.
Soft gray walls. Framed degrees from UCLA and Stanford. A massive window looking out over Wilshire Boulevard, where Teslas and SUVs glided past palm trees and tourists taking photos of nothing in particular.
Jax sat on the leather chair like it might bite him.
Across from him, Dr. Keller—forty-ish, brown hair, wire-rimmed glasses—folded his hands over a yellow legal pad.
“So,” the doctor said, “Jack Morrison.”
“Everyone calls me Jax.”
“Jax,” Keller corrected smoothly. “Red said you’re in… consulting?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of consulting?”
“The kind that pays cash.”
The doctor smiled, not surprised. “Red told me you might not be eager to share details.”
“Look,” Jax said, leaning forward. “No disrespect, Doc, but I don’t need a life story session. I just need something to shut off… whatever this is.”
“You’re having panic attacks,” Keller said calmly. “Flashbacks. Difficulty breathing. Shaking. Freezing under pressure.”
“I’m having a bad month.”
“You’re having anxiety,” Keller said. “Probably guilt. Possibly depression.”
“I’m not depressed,” Jax said automatically.
“When was the last time you woke up excited for your day?” Keller asked. “Or the last time you had fun without alcohol? Or the last time you went twenty-four hours without thinking about death?”
Jax opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked away.
“I’m not here to judge you,” Keller said gently. “But I can’t toss you a bottle of pills and send you back out into your life without understanding the environment I’d be medicating you for. So help me out a little.”
Jax scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “I do a few different things.”
“I’m listening.”
“If someone owes money,” Jax said slowly, “I… strongly encourage them to pay up.”
“A debt collector,” Keller said, jotting something down. “For a collection agency.”
“Something like that.”
“Go on.”
“I help people get into places.”
“Like… a locksmith?”
Jax remembered the feel of a lockpick sliding into a high-end safe downtown. “Yeah. Like that.”
“And you mentioned watching people,” Keller prompted. “Making sure they’re safe?”
“Sure.”
“A babysitter.”
Jax snorted. “Not exactly.”
Keller leaned back. “When you’re collecting a debt, do you ever think about what it feels like to be on the other side of the door when you knock?”
“That’s not my job.”
“When you’re picking a lock, do you ever imagine what it’s like to lose whatever’s behind it?”
Jax swallowed.
“And when you’re watching someone,” Keller continued, “have you ever imagined being the one watched? Vulnerable. Trusting. Afraid.”
A flash of his son’s face in a hospital bed knifed through his chest.
“Why would I do that to myself?” Jax growled. “I don’t have the luxury of feeling bad. My son’s sick. His mother is barely holding it together. They need money. Feelings don’t pay hospital bills.”
“No,” Keller agreed. “But ignoring them doesn’t make them disappear. They just come out as panic attacks and frozen moments at exactly the times you can’t afford to be frozen.”
He uncapped his pen. “Here’s my suggestion. When you feel that tightness in your chest, instead of fighting it, acknowledge it. Ask what it’s trying to tell you. Anxiety often shows up when your morals and your actions aren’t aligned. The more you ignore that misalignment, the louder your anxiety gets.”
“I don’t have morals,” Jax muttered.
The doctor’s eyes were kind. “You do. Or you wouldn’t be here.”
Damien’s hospital room overlooked downtown Los Angeles, high enough that the skyscrapers looked like toys and the freeway traffic looked like a slow-moving river of red and white.
His son looked too small in the bed.
“You’re late,” Regina said without looking up from the chair. She had shadows under her eyes that hadn’t been there eight months ago.
“Job ran long,” Jax said. “How’s he doing?”
“The same.” She stood. “Doctor wants to talk to us.”
The oncologist—Dr. James—was practiced calm in a white coat and sneakers. He pulled up a chart on the tablet and didn’t waste time.
“The chemo isn’t enough,” he said. “We need to start him immediately on an experimental protocol at our partner center in Orange County. It’s his best chance.”
“How much?” Jax asked.
“Total treatment cost will be around a hundred thousand,” Dr. James said. “Your insurance covers some. There’s a hospital grant that can help. But we still need a $25,000 deposit to start.”
Regina made a small sound, like someone had stepped on her chest.
“And if we don’t?” Jax asked, even though he knew.
Dr. James hesitated for only a second. “Then we focus on comfort care.”
“You said you had something big.”
They sat in the back booth of a dive bar in Boyle Heights, the kind where the neon beer signs buzzed and the Lakers played on the dusty TV above the counter even in the off-season.
Red slid a folder across the table. “Guy named Richard Cross. Tech investor. Bel-Air house, downtown office, likes to keep a lot of cash on hand. Paranoid about hackers. Old-school. Our kind of old-fashioned.”
Jax flipped through the photos: a glass-and-steel tower in downtown L.A., an office with floor-to-ceiling windows, a smiling man in his forties shaking hands at a charity gala.
“There’s a meeting on Thursday,” Red said. “He’ll be at the office with one assistant. We get in, we get what we came for, we get out. No one gets hurt.”
Jax’s throat went dry. The memory of the security guard’s eyes still stalked him.
“And the kid?” he asked.
“What kid?” Red frowned.
“We’ve been talking about breaking into a rich guy’s office, not a daycare,” he added. “Why are you asking about a kid?”
“Forget it,” Jax muttered. “What’s the plan?”
The lobby receptionist at Cross Capital had the kind of bright, polished smile that made Jax feel like a smudge on glass. He wore a suit that back in his Angels days would’ve been second-tier at best, but now made him feel like he was in costume.
“Mr. Morrison?” she chirped. “Mr. Cross is just finishing a meeting. If you’ll wait here, I’ll let him know you’ve arrived.”
Consultant, he reminded himself. Head of security. That part was real—technically. Richard Cross had hired him to upgrade building security. Jax needed a legitimate paycheck to keep suspicion off his back.
The other part—the part where he was supposed to escort Richard into the office alone, disable the cameras, and give Red the signal—that part stayed in the dark corners of his mind, like mold.
The elevator dinged. A boy barreled out first, curly-haired and eleven at most, clutching a plastic Harry Potter broomstick.
“Dad!” he cried. “You promised we’d go to Universal today! Colton said he got to go twice this year already—”
“Kade,” Richard laughed, catching the boy with one arm while balancing a laptop bag in the other. “I told you, we’re going. I just have to finish this meeting first.”
He glanced over, spotted Jax, and held out a hand. “You must be Jax.”
“Yeah,” Jax managed.
“My head of security,” Richard told the boy proudly. “This is the guy who’s going to make sure nobody gets into this building who shouldn’t.”
Kade pushed his glasses up his nose and studied Jax. “You look like you used to play football.”
“Baseball,” Jax said before he could stop himself.
“For who?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Jax said quickly. “I’m retired.”
Richard smiled. “Come on, I’ll be right back. You can hang with Macy out front, okay, champ? And no wandering. There’s a lot of crazies in downtown.”
“Yes, sir,” Kade sighed, dragging his broomstick back to the chairs.
Richard led Jax into the office. Glass walls. City skyline glittering in the afternoon haze. A digital clock on the wall read 2:49 p.m.
Eleven minutes until the signal.
Keller’s voice floated up in his mind. Imagine yourself in someone else’s shoes.
He looked at the framed photos on the shelf. Kade at a Little League game. Kade in a Gryffindor robe at Halloween. Richard and his wife at the Grand Canyon.
“Something wrong?” Richard asked, settling behind his desk.
Jax swallowed. “You, uh… always take afternoons off for your kid?”
“When I can,” Richard said. “Look, I put in the grind to get here. I missed enough bedtimes and school plays. You realize pretty fast that the money doesn’t hug you back.”
He opened a folder. “Okay, so the current security vendor is charging us an arm and a leg and still using hardware from 2014. I want your honest take.”
The phone buzzed in Jax’s pocket. Three short vibrations: ready.
His hand clenched around the device.
If you don’t hear the signal by 3:00 p.m., Gage had said, we’re coming in anyway.
Keller’s voice again: Anxiety shows up when your morals and your actions aren’t aligned.
“Jax?” Richard asked.
“Call it off,” Jax said.
Richard blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Not you,” Jax muttered, hitting Red’s number with trembling fingers and raising the phone. “Red. It’s a no-go. Stand down.”
“What?” Red barked. “You better not be—”
“There’s a kid here,” Jax said quietly, staring at the 8×10 of Kade in a baseball uniform. “We’re not doing this. End of story.”
Silence on the line. Then a string of creative curses. “You know what? Fine,” Red snapped. “We’ll talk later.”
Jax hung up and forced a smile. “So. These cameras,” he said, pointing at the grainy black-and-white feed on Richard’s monitor. “Let me show you where they’re failing you.”
“Your boss mad at you?” Keller asked, scribbling something on his pad.
“You could say that,” Jax muttered. “He likes money. I keep not making it.”
“How’s Damien?”
“Chemo’s working,” Jax said. “For now. Regina calls me every time the bills come in like it’s my fault the system’s broken.”
“And do you think it is?” Keller asked.
“What, my fault? No. I didn’t price the chemo like a luxury car. But if I don’t find the money, it won’t really matter whose fault it was, will it?”
Keller nodded. “And yet you called off another job.”
Jax stared at his hands. “He had a kid. You should’ve seen this boy. Harry Potter broomstick, whole thing. He was excited about a theme park, man. The only thing Damien’s excited about is the days he’s not nauseous.”
“Sounds like that empathy’s still growing,” Keller said quietly.
“Yeah, well, empathy doesn’t pay for clinical trials.”
“No,” Keller agreed. “But it might keep you out of prison long enough to find another way.”
“Another way,” Jax echoed, like the words were written in a language he used to know but hadn’t spoken in a long time.
He went to the liquor store after that, because old habits die loud.
The convenience store on the corner of Alameda and 7th smelled like stale coffee and cleaning spray. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. A baseball game played muted on the tiny TV above the Lotto machine—Angels versus Dodgers in a freeway series, the kind of night that used to mean something to him.
“ID?” the cashier asked.
He slid his worn California license across. The woman behind the counter was in scrubs under her apron, her hair pulled back in a tired ponytail.
“You look familiar,” she said, squinting. “You ever play ball?”
“Long time ago,” he said quickly.
“My son would have a heart attack if he was here,” she said, grinning. “He’s got posters all over his room. Angels, Dodgers, even Yankees. Baseball saved that boy’s life.”
She rang up the bottle. Jax watched his own blurry reflection in the curved glass.
“What do you do?” he asked.
“Me? Bartender mostly. Graveyard shifts. This is my ‘fun job,’” she joked. “But I’m almost done with residency.”
He blinked. “Residency?”
“Mm-hm. Internal medicine. Couple more months of rotations and I’ll be Dr. Monique Cruz, M.D.” She mimed the title with invisible cursive.
“How’d you manage that?” he asked before he could stop himself.
She smiled, but there was steel under it. “Got pregnant at seventeen,” she said matter-of-factly. “Parents kicked me out. Baby’s dad disappeared. I worked at bars, diners, whatever would pay cash. Took one online class at a time when my boy was in school. Took me ten years to get that degree, another four to get into med school, and now here we are.” She shrugged. “Life throws curveballs. I just kept swinging.”
The muted TV above them showed a replay: a perfect swing, a ball cracking over the outfield wall, a stadium rising to its feet.
“I used to hit those,” Jax said softly.
Monique followed his gaze. Recognition dawned in her eyes. “Jackson Cole,” she breathed. “The Slugger.”
He tensed, waiting for the usual questions. The why’d-you-quit, the what-happened, the can-you-sign-this.
She didn’t ask.
“I’m sorry about your wife,” she said instead.
It felt like the floor had dropped out from under him. “How—”
“It was all over the news,” she said gently. “Drunk driver. Little girl in the backseat. They said you’d been drinking too, but just under the limit. Everyone argued whose fault it was. I just remember thinking it didn’t really matter. You lost your world either way.”
He hadn’t known people still remembered.
“I still have my son,” she said. “He’s twenty now. Works nights, goes to community college. Life didn’t turn out the way I planned, but I’m still chasing the dream. The dream just looks different than it did at seventeen.” She slid his ID back. “You don’t look done yet either.”
He looked at the bottle. At the Angels game. At his own reflection.
He left without the alcohol.
The kidnapping happened two days later.
He was at the hospital when his phone buzzed, screen lighting up with an unknown number.
“We’ve got your boss’s kid,” a disguised voice said when he answered. “Tell Cross if he doesn’t wire five hundred grand in the next hour, he’s never seeing him again.”
The world spun.
“Gage?” Jax said softly. “Knox? This you?”
Silence. Then a nasty laugh. “Should’ve never called off that last job, Cole. You owe us. Now you’re going to help us get paid.”
They sent the proof-of-life photo a moment later: Kade on a dusty floor somewhere, hands tied, eyes wide with terror.
Jax’s heartbeat turned to ice.
He called Richard. He called Red. He called anyone who might know the warehouse in the background of the picture. It took fifteen frantic minutes and two favors he never thought he’d use.
The warehouse was in Vernon, south of downtown. Industrial, empty streets, a row of loading docks like missing teeth.
He didn’t call the police.
He did send one text to Keller: This empathy thing is about to get me killed.
Then he went inside.
Gage was pacing behind Kade, gun waving as he shouted into a phone. Knox stood by the door, lookout. The boy sat on the floor, duct tape around his wrists, broomstick discarded beside him like a broken wand.
“I’m here,” Jax said, stepping out of the shadows, hands raised.
“You’re late,” Gage snarled. “Your rich friend got the money?”
“There is no money,” Jax said. “You think a guy like that is going to wire half a million dollars to some random account without the FBI all over it?”
“Then he can come beg for his kid in person,” Gage snapped. “We’ll up the price.”
“This isn’t you,” Jax said quietly. “We scared guards, we cracked safes, but we don’t take kids. We don’t cross that line.”
“There is no line anymore,” Gage said. “You drew it when you started getting soft.”
Knox shifted, uneasy. “He’s right, Gage. This is… bad.”
“Shut up,” Gage snapped.
The gun swung toward Kade.
Jax moved without thinking.
Later, he’d remember only flashes: the scuffle, the gun skidding across the concrete, Knox yelling, Kade crying, the feeling of his fist connecting with Gage’s jaw, the sharp crack of bone.
When it was over, Gage was on the floor groaning, Knox was disarmed, and Jax had the gun pointed at both of them.
“Leave,” he said.
“You’re done,” Gage spat. “You hear me? You’re done with us.”
“Yeah,” Jax said. “I know.”
He tossed the gun into a corner, tore the tape from Kade’s wrists, and pulled the boy into his arms.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, voice shaking. “You’re okay. I got you.”
For the first time in years, he meant every word.
He expected prison.
He expected handcuffs, court dates, Regina’s disappointed silence, Damien visiting him through glass.
Instead, three days later, his parole officer knocked on his apartment door with a surprise guest in tow.
Richard Cross stood in his hallway in a perfectly pressed suit, hands in his pockets, eyes taking in the peeling paint and secondhand furniture.
“Mr. Cross,” Jax said, stunned. “Look, I’m sorry, I—”
“I decided not to press charges,” Richard said.
Jax stared. “Why?”
“Because you saved my son’s life,” Richard said simply. “And because I did what my therapist suggested and put myself in your shoes.”
“You have a therapist?” Jax blurted.
“Two, actually,” Richard said dryly. “Who do you think suggested we hire you as security instead of just another tech firm? They said we needed someone who understands how criminals think.”
Jax almost laughed. “Guess I proved them right.”
Richard’s expression softened. “Red told me about your son,” he said quietly. “About the hospital. About the deposit.”
Jax’s shoulders sagged. “I’ll pay you back for—”
Richard pulled a folded check from his pocket and held it out. “This isn’t a loan,” he said. “It’s my thanks. Consider it an investment in Damien’s future.”
Jax took the check with shaking hands. Five zeros blurred in front of his eyes. It wasn’t everything they needed, but it was enough to start. Maybe enough to save his son’s life.
“You don’t have to do this,” Jax said hoarsely.
“I know,” Richard said. “But empathy goes both ways, doesn’t it?”
Damien’s hair thinned but never fully disappeared. The broomstick they brought stayed propped against the hospital wall like a promise.
“You still going to take me to Harry Potter World when I’m better?” Damien asked one afternoon, voice small under the beeping machines.
“Of course,” Jax said, adjusting his son’s blanket. “We’ll go all day. Butterbeer until your stomach protests, every ride twice.”
“And Kade,” Damien said. “He should come too.”
Jax smiled. “I think he’d like that.”
A nurse came in then, the same one who’d checked his blood pressure in the ER when he’d nearly drunk himself to death after Rebecca’s funeral years ago. Now she wore a white coat, stethoscope around her neck, a badge that read MONIQUE CRUZ, M.D.
“You again,” she said, grinning. “I knew you weren’t done.”
“You made it,” he said.
She tapped her badge. “Told you. Dreams change shape. They don’t die.”
He looked at his son, at the IV drip, at the broomstick leaning against the wall with two kids’ names written on it in Sharpie.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m starting to get that.”
The last inning of the championship game smelled like cut grass, cheap nachos, and a miracle.
“Eyes on the ball, Charlie!” Jax yelled from the dugout, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Just like we practiced!”
The Boyle Heights Bombers were tied 3–3 with one out, two men on. Parents leaned forward on aluminum bleachers, phones out. Kids chanted in uneven rhythm. Dusk settled over the small Los Angeles park, turning the sky into a watercolor smear of pink and gold.
At the plate, Charlie shifted nervously, knuckles white on the bat. His old grocery-store name tag—CHARLIE—was still clipped to his belt for luck.
The first pitch sizzled past. Strike one.
Charlie flinched, stepped out of the box, fidgeted.
Jax jogged up the foul line. “Hey,” he called softly. “What did we say?”
“That I… that I can do hard things,” Charlie murmured.
“And that trophies don’t make you good,” Jax reminded him. “You already are. This is just the world’s way of catching up.”
Charlie took a deep breath. Nodded. Stepped back into the box.
The next pitch came in slower. Hanging. Tempting.
Charlie swung.
The crack of the bat echoed off the cheap metal bleachers and up into the wide California sky. The ball soared over the left fielder’s head, rolling to the fence as the crowd erupted.
“Run!” Jax screamed, laughing. “Run, run, run!”
The Bombers cleared the dugout as Charlie rounded third, helmet askew, grin splitting his face. He slid into home in a cloud of dust, safe by a mile.
Game. Over.
Kids piled on top of him in a wriggling heap. Parents screamed. Someone’s abuela waved a homemade sign that said GO BOMBERS in glitter glue.
Jax stood there in the chaos, heart so full it ached. He could still hear Rebecca in his head, teasing him about his soft spot for underdogs. He could still feel Damien’s small hand wrapped around his fingers in hospital corridors, now stronger, now steady, now ready to run the bases with the Little League team on weekends.
“Coach!” Charlie barreled into him, nearly knocking him backward. “We did it! We won!”
“You did it,” Jax corrected, ruffling his hair. “You’re the one who hit that rocket.”
The league director walked over with a small gold trophy in his hands, the kind that would have seemed laughable next to his old Major League awards.
“For you,” he said, handing it to Charlie. “Most Valuable Player.”
Charlie stared at it for a long moment. Then he looked up at Jax.
“I don’t… I don’t need any trophies to know I’m good,” he said shyly. “You already taught me that.”
He pressed the trophy into Jax’s hands. “You keep it. For coaching.”
Jax felt his throat tighten.
Around them, kids shouted and laughed. Somewhere a car stereo thumped through an open window. Above the ballfield lights, an airplane blinked its way toward LAX, carrying people chasing their own new lives.
Ten years ago, he’d thought his story was over the night the drunk driver ran a red light and took his wife away.
Now, standing on the chalked lines of a dusty community baseball field in Los Angeles, with a kid who’d never won Employee of the Month but had just won something much bigger, Jax realized Keller had been right.
You couldn’t change the past.
But if you were willing to feel the weight of what you’d done, to stand in other people’s shoes, to keep stepping up to the plate even when life kept throwing curveballs—
You could change everything else.
