CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE #2
He had held her while she cried. Relief had come first, so strong it had nearly taken his legs out from under him.
She was alive. She was breathing. She was right there in his arms. After that came the anger.
Not at her, though. His anger was directed at the faceless bastard who’d fired into an open street in broad daylight.
He glanced at the bandage on her arm again. A graze, they kept calling it. Like that made it better. It did, technically. Better than the alternative. But all Pierce could think was that she’d still been hit.
He flexed his hand once against his thigh and made himself breathe.
Charley shifted beside him, her fingers brushing lightly against his wrist. “You’re doing the jaw thing again.”
Pierce looked over. “What jaw thing?”
“The one where it looks like you’re one second away from grinding your teeth into powder.”
That got the faintest twitch out of him. “Didn’t realize I had a jaw thing.”
“You do.” Her mouth softened a little, though not quite into a smile. “It’s very intimidating.”
“I’m not trying to intimidate you.”
“I know.” She leaned into him a little more.”
He let out a quiet breath and forced some of the tension out of his shoulders. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
That was Charley. Sitting here stitched up and exhausted and still more worried about the people around her than herself.
Pierce looked at her profile, at the shadows beneath her eyes, and thought again of everything she had told him over the last hour.
Learning who Calvin was. A man who had approached Charley because he thought he could trust her. A man who’d been shot in the chest before he could tell her enough. The most recent note with the names Dr. Marwood and Colonel Reed written on it.
Pierce didn’t like how much of the story still lived in the dark.
He especially didn’t like the way Colonel Reed’s name kept surfacing.
The waiting room doors opened.
Pierce looked up automatically, expecting Ray. However, it wasn’t just Ray. Colonel Reed followed him.
Both he and Charley tensed at the exact same moment. The tension in the room thickened as the others realized who had just walked in. Jessica straightened in her chair. Seth pushed off the wall. Cole and Zane both turned fully toward the doorway, the air shifting almost physically.
Reed looked different here than he had at the foundation. He too looked tired as if he’d gone several rounds in a ring.
Pierce came halfway out of his chair before Ray held up a hand, stopping him.
“Hold up,” Ray said. “Before anybody says anything, just listen to what he has to say.”
Pierce looked at him, then at Reed, then back again. “Ray—”
“Just listen,” Ray pressed.
Charley’s fingers tightened around his wrist. That was the only reason Pierce sat back down.
Ray and Reed crossed the waiting room. Reed stopped a few feet in front of the group, his gaze moving from face to face before landing briefly on Charley’s bandaged arm. Something like regret flickered there.
“I’m glad to see you’re all right, Ms. Taylor,” he said quietly.
Charley gave a single nod. “Thanks.”
Nobody else said a word.
Ray took the seat next to Jessica. Reed took the remaining empty seat opposite Pierce and Charley.
For a second, the only sound in the room was the low hum of the vending machine.
Then Reed folded his hands and said, “Project EchoFall was a classified experimental treatment program.”
That cut through the room like a blade.
Pierce didn’t move, but he felt Charley go still beside him.
Reed continued. “Years ago, three Marines involved in Operation Storm Current came back from a mission with severe trauma. PTSD that wasn’t responding well to traditional treatment.
The details of the mission itself were so tightly compartmentalized that, even within the system, only a handful of people ever saw the full picture. I was one of them.”
Pierce watched him carefully. No hesitation. No flashy dramatics. Just the steady, grim delivery of a man who knew exactly how ugly the story sounded and had long since stopped trying to soften it.
“These men were part of a MARSOC element sent into an operation that never should’ve gone the way it did.
What they came home with wasn’t something regular counseling and medication could touch fast enough.
They were deteriorating. Sleep deprivation, paranoia, violent reactions, dissociation, and one attempted suicide that we know of.
” He paused, his jaw flexing. “They consented to EchoFall. All three of them.”
Jessica frowned. “What kind of treatment program is that?”
Reed looked at her. “An experimental trial meant to interrupt and reduce severe trauma responses through a combination of drug therapy and neurological intervention.”
Seth’s expression darkened. “Meaning?”
“Meaning it rode the line,” Reed said bluntly. “And maybe crossed it.”
The honesty of that landed harder than an excuse would have.
Pierce leaned forward, his forearms on his knees. “How does Dr. Marwood fit into this story?”
Reed nodded once. “Dr. Doug Marwood was one of the lead physicians brought in to oversee the clinical side of the trials. Whatever you may think of him right now, understand this—he wasn’t some monster in a lab coat.
He believed he was helping them. And he was.
The trials were showing positive results in all three men. ”
The waiting room went quiet again. “What happened?” Charley asked. Her voice was soft.
Reed looked at her for a long moment before answering.
“After a few months of positive results, all three began to show violent behavior. Almost as if they were reverting to when the trials started, possibly even worse off. Dr. Marwood was able to stabilize them. But then one night, all three men disappeared.”
“They vanished?” Pierce asked.
“Yes,” Reed answered. “To this day, I still don’t know how. Somehow, the security was compromised. By the time anyone understood what had happened, they were gone. We searched. But there was no sign of them after that.” His gaze dropped briefly, then rose again. “Until now.”
“What happened to EchoFall?” Pierce asked.
“It was shut down and never spoken about,” Reed said.
Reed looked toward Charley. “I believe Calvin returned to the foundation building because that was the last place he remembered with any certainty. Before it became what it is now, that building housed part of EchoFall’s clinical operations.
If his mind has been fractured by trauma for this long, it makes sense that he’d circle back to the last place he knew. ”
Charley absorbed that quietly, then said, “He was hurting.”
Reed’s face changed at that. Not much. Just enough for Pierce to catch it.
“I know,” the colonel said.
“No.” Charley shook her head. “I don’t think you do. He looked…” She searched for the words. “Haunted. Like he had been carrying all of it alone for too long and didn’t know what to do with it anymore.”
Reed sat with that for a second. “I just want to help him. I want to know what made him and the other two just up and disappear.”
Pierce watched him carefully. There was no defensiveness in the man. He didn’t try to use excuses, not to mention that Pierce could see the regret and guilt he was carrying.
Reed looked around the room. “I already spoke with the police. I’m cooperating fully. Whatever they want, they’ll get. I’m not here to obstruct anything. I want Calvin to survive this and help him if that’s still possible.”
Pierce leaned back in the chair. He felt a bit of the tension that was there when Reed first entered the room start to ease.
Having Reed sit here in the hospital, not hiding, not running, and not trying to polish the ugly truth into something prettier, caused Pierce to have some respect for the man.
Pierce believed the man meant what he was saying.
Beside him, Charley asked the question that had probably been waiting in half the room.
“Colonel Reed, right before Calvin was shot, he told him that I wasn’t like the others, the evil ones.
Do you know who he could have been talking about?
Or why he told me that our building should have been demolished years ago? ”
Reed’s mouth flattened. “I honestly don’t know the answer to either question.”
“Did Calvin by chance mention Rodney or James?” Reed asked Charley.
She shook her head. “No. He wasn’t able to tell me much before things went to shit.”
“What about family?” Alyvia asked. “Didn’t any of them have family?”
Reed shook his head. “Not that I was aware of. That was part of what made them good candidates for the trial. No wives. No children. No involved parents. Very few people who would’ve asked questions.”
Pierce ran a hand over his jaw again. “So Calvin approaches Charley because he thinks she can be trusted. Leaves notes. Then somebody puts a bullet in him before he can finish whatever he was trying to say.”
“Yes,” Reed said.
“And now Dr. Marwood and your name are on the latest note.”
Reed didn’t flinch. “Yes.”
Seth folded his arms. “Do you have any idea who could have wanted him dead?”
Reed looked at him. “If I did, I’d have brought that to the police already.
But I have a feeling that whoever is responsible for what happened today is the same person Calvin was referring to when he said the evil ones.
And I’m beginning to think that this person is also connected to his and the other two’s disappearance. ”
“So, it has to be someone who was involved in these trials,” Ray stated.
“How many people were involved in the project?” Pierce asked.
“There were only a handful. EchoFall was concealed.” He then gestured toward Ray. “I have given all the names involved to Ray as well and to the police. We need to catch whoever did this.”
Before anybody could say more, the doors at the far end of the waiting room opened, and a doctor stepped through. The whole room went still.
The doctor looked tired in the way only trauma surgeons did. He held a chart in one hand.