Chapter 9
I’m halfway through my second cup of burnt-tasting instant coffee when I decide to finish it inside. The morning sun has broken over the horizon, and the temperature has quickly grown uncomfortable. There is no breeze, just a thick desert stillness that feels dry and heavy.
When I duck back into the tent, Reese is sliding from bed and tucking her laptop under her arm.
She turns to face me, and her eyes are sharp and sleepless.
She hasn’t said much since last night. Which is a blessing.
I know her, and when that woman wants something, she could argue most men into submission.
And from the look on her face, I’m seconds from entering into a debate with her.
“Morning, sunshine,” Jagger groans, stretching. After getting out of his cot, he roams the tent shirtless to make himself a coffee, despite her rule. I’m pretty sure he’s doing it just to piss her off.
“Would you please”—she throws a shirt at him—“put on a damn shirt.”
He laughs and lets out an over-exaggerated sigh as he pulls the T-shirt over his head. “So feisty before breakfast.”
“Both of you shut it,” I bark, my voice cutting through the tent. “Reese, I think it’s time you tell us what you saw and what has you in danger.”
She drops the laptop on the crate in the center of the room and opens it. “Proof,” she says flatly. “Of what I saw.”
The room stills, the four of us crowding around her to look at her computer.
Reese takes a deep breath, steadying herself.
“I met a woman a few days ago. She told me about her daughter who had disappeared. She lived in a village about fifty kilometers from here. I went to investigate.” The screen lights up with grainy photos—long-distance shots, but clear enough, men in desert camo with rifles slung over their shoulders. “And we found this.”
“And they fired on you?” Gunnar asks with a tinge of disbelief.
“Not when we got there,” she continues, flipping through the images. “I left my escort a—”
“Reese,” I admonish, huffing.
“When I left my escort and snuck behind the barricade, I saw this.” Her fingers tremble as she works through the images.
A few clicks later, she pulls up an image of a trail of blood leading into the street, followed by another of two men in uniform lugging a woman’s body.
“Then they started firing… Well, first they tried to stop me. When I ran, then they started shooting.”
The images and her palpable fear hit like a round to the gut. There is no question, something was happening there.
“My escort was shot in the neck.” Her voice quivers before falling off. She doesn’t need to finish. We know most of the rest through Abby. “You want to know why I refuse to leave? That’s why. Those bastards are covering something up, and I need to know what it is.”
“Are we sure they’re actually military? And not mercs?” Jagger asks, suddenly breaking the tense silence.
“I know what I saw,” she snaps.
“Those were government Humvees,” Gunnar adds, ever the realist.
He’s right.
The others exchange wary glances, and then, all at once, everyone’s looking at me. Because, whether I like it or not, I’m the one who decides what we do next. I scrub a hand over my jaw, staring at the images again.
“We go back,” Reese decides for me, before I can speak. “We check the village. You’ll see I’m not crazy, and we can find out what the hell is happening.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” I tell her automatically.
She folds her arms. “I’m not staying behind.”
“Not a debate.”
“Oh, it’s absolutely a debate,” she fires back. “You said you wanted to know what happened. I was there. You weren’t. You need me.”
Damon chuckles under his breath. “She’s got a point.”
I shoot him a glare. “You’re not helping.”
He shrugs. “Wasn’t trying to.”
Reese’s jaw sets stubbornly, and I can already feel the headache building from the fight she’ll put up to get her way. I used to enjoy her fire.
“Fine,” I mutter finally. “But you stay on my hip. You don’t move unless I say so.”
Her lips curl in that smug way that has always driven me insane. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
By the time we’re rolling out, the sun is high enough to fry eggs on the Humvee hood. Heated air ripples from the sand, and the desert stretches endlessly, unforgiving in every direction.
Reese sits in the back seat, camera slung across her chest, window down, and unruly curls whipping in the wind. “So, Hawk,” she says, out of the blue, leaning forward from the rear passenger seat. “What do you think this is?”
“Wrong,” I mutter. “I think something about this is wrong.”
“How wrong?” Gunnar asks from the turret seat above us.
“The kind where everything looks fine until people are shooting at my ass.”
No one argues with that.
We reach the village in a little less than an hour. It’s eerily still, rows of buildings that are in dire need of upkeep and dust drifting in lazy spirals through the barren streets. A couple of goats graze near a broken cart, but otherwise, nothing. No people. No movement.
Reese is the first to speak. “It’s here. I swear it was full of soldiers.”
We move in formation, with Reese tucked between the four of us, sweeping the perimeter. My senses are on high alert, every sound and flicker of a shadow making my finger twitch on the trigger.
Jagger muses, “This place looks dead.”
Damon crouches near a patch of disturbed dirt. “No shell casings. No tracks. Like no one’s been here in weeks.”
Reese’s frustration spikes. “That’s impossible. I was here two days ago.”
When I glance at her, sweat beads at her temple, but her eyes are steady, fierce. “You sure it was this village?”
“Yes.” She points down a narrow alley. “That’s where they shot at me. I was hiding behind that wall.”
We move closer. The wall she’s pointing to is pitted with age, cracked and sun-bleached. No bullet holes. No blood. No sign of a struggle.
Jagger looks at me, brows lifted. “You seeing what I am?”
“Nothing,” I say flatly.
Reese runs a hand through her hair, muttering, “No, no, no. It’s not possible. I saw them. I saw her body.”
“It could’ve been cleaned up,” Damon argues gently. “If it were a hit squad, they’d want to erase it fast.”
“But this fast?” Gunnar adds from behind us. “This place looks untouched.”
I crouch beside the wall from Reese’s photograph, combing my fingers through the sand. There is no sign of any blood, but it’s so dry from lack of rain that a quick raking could have easily concealed it.
I stand, scanning the rooftops, alleys, and doorways. It’s empty. Too empty.
Reese’s breathing quickens beside me. “You think I imagined it.”
Something’s not right here. It might have been years, but I know Reese. She doesn’t lie, and she would never fabricate a story.
“I think someone doesn’t want you to prove it.”
She blinks, eyes darting up to meet mine. “You believe me?”
“I do”
She exhales, a mix of relief and fear. “So, what do we do?”
I glance at the others. Damon shrugs, and I can practically read his mind. There’s nothing here… someone made sure of it.
“We pull out,” I decide. “Before whoever did this decides to finish the job.” Reese opens her mouth to argue, but I cut her off with a look. “Now.”
She huffs, but she follows. Good enough.
The ride back to base is quiet. Jagger hums along to the static from the radio, as Gunnar bounces between staring at the horizon and shooting annoyed glares at Jagger.
Damon is dozing in the back seat beside Reese.
And my focus is on the rearview mirror. On her.
She is staring out the window with one hand wrapped around the strap of the camera.
The sunlight catches her hair, and for one dangerous second, she looks like she used to. Before I broke everything.
The last time I felt this sense of dread, the gut-deep certainty that something was about to go wrong, was the day everything went to hell.
I blink, and I’m back there.
Tugging at my belt, Jagger and I walk toward the two men and the sad set of blue eyes occupying the cot at the rear of the tent.
The man between her thighs grunts, and my stomach turns when I realize he just finished.
He pulls out and climbs from the cot, rolling off his condom and haphazardly tossing it aside.
It lands beside three others on the floor as I pull my belt free from my pants.
“She’s good and ready for you. Finally done screaming, too. ”
“That true?” I ask. “Are you all out of fight?”
“We’ve been running her through all day.” He laughs. “Trust me, she’s all out of fi—”
“Got any more?” I interrupt, outstretching my hand and glancing toward the discarded condoms on the floor.
Jagger swears we did it to save her. Maybe we did. But it didn’t feel like saving anyone. It felt like something broke in me that I haven’t been able to fix.
I glance at Reese again in the mirror, guilt clawing its way up my throat. Only, this is much darker and uglier. As years passed, the pain of what we did and leaving her behind diminished. But being this close to her again, my feelings are so raw it’s like I left her yesterday.