Chapter Eleven #2
Zee unfolded the letter, hungry for a clue, for Matt’s voice, for anything that felt like the man she remembered.
Instead she was staring at words that looked like sentences but possessed too many numbers and other details that didn’t look like anything she’d ever received from Matt during any of his deployments.
Those letters were full of sweet talk about missing her and jokes about base food and promises about what they’d do when he got home.
This one didn’t read like a husband writing to his wife.
She pulled her lower lip into her mouth and bit down, shaking the letter. “What does any of this even mean?” Bitterness rang in the words.
“I thought—” She stopped herself, ashamed of how childish she sounded. But she thought her husband would have sent something meaningful to her.
Church held out his hand. “Let me see the letter.”
She hesitated only a second before passing it over, feeling an odd relief that her emotions didn’t match what she had been waiting for.
She had imagined opening this box would tear her open and drown her in grief all over again. Instead there was only confusion and mystery. The pain was there, sure, but it was blunted by the fact that none of it made sense.
Then a chill crept over her. She darted a look at Church’s face.
“What if…”
He looked up from the letter, focusing on her.
“What if this is what they’ve been looking for?”
His expression didn’t change, which was worse than if it had because it meant he was already thinking it.
The pit of her stomach felt hollow and cold as Church scanned the letter quickly, his eyes moving down the page.
Then he started at the top again and read more slowly, brow furrowing in a way she would think looked sexy as hell if they’d been standing here doing anything else.
He took out his phone and started typing in some of the numbers. After a few tries, he went still.
She peered over his thick bicep. “What is it?”
He turned the screen toward her to reveal coordinates. “Syria.”
Mind reeling, she folded her arms across her middle. The place where Matt died on their last deployment.
Church kept reading the letter, then ran his finger inside the envelope. “There’s more.”
He tipped the envelope and two photographs slid out, cheap copies printed on basic copier paper. Zee took one and looked down at a photo of the team.
Her heart rocked forward with a painful slam. She skimmed the familiar faces of men she’d spent time with on evenings and weekends. In this photo, they were all grit and gear, held together by heat and dust.
“One person is missing.” Church’s voice sounded off.
She gave him a questioning look. He held out his hand, and she gave him the photo.
“Lucian isn’t in the team shot,” he said before she could ask.
The second picture filled the gap. Matt and Lucian stood side by side, both of them looking tired and windburned and alive in a way that punched her in the chest with as much force as seeing Matt’s smile.
At the bottom, typed beneath the image, were the words “Lucian’s 38th birthday.”
Church gave a small shake of his head. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Zee looked up at him. “Why not?”
“Because it was Lucian’s twenty-eighth birthday.”
She stared at him and back at the picture. “Maybe he mistyped it.”
He didn’t respond right away. His eyes moved fast over the letter, then stopped again. “He says here, ‘I’m writing this at 1300.’”
“Okay?”
He held up the photo. “The timestamp in the corner says 0400.”
Silence dropped between them. She had no idea what to do with any of this information.
None of the discrepancies meant anything to her. The more she looked, the less she felt connected to the box that was far from a final package from a husband to a wife and more like a puzzle shoved into her hands without a key.
Church folded the letter and set his gaze on her. “We need to bring this to the team.”
She could only nod because there was nothing else to do.
When they walked into the Black Heart Security office, only two people were there since everyone was in the field on security detail.
Gabe looked up from the folder opened on the table in front of him. Theo was in the corner, packing a black bag with equipment.
Church laid out everything on the table—the little black card, the letter and two copied photos. “Zee opened the package. These were inside.”
Theo crossed the room and picked up the card. Church relayed everything they knew so far.
Gabe lifted one of the pictures. “What’s the deal with Lucian?”
Church tapped the letter. “Matt buried these things for a reason. He’s trying to tell us to look deeper.”
Suddenly the strange code and numbers felt dark and twisted.
She tangled her fingers. “Someone’s been trying to get their hands on this card. That’s why I’ve had so many break-ins.”
He didn’t answer, but when the tendon in the crease of his jaw fluttered, she felt the shift in him. In the room.
She wrapped her arms around herself, a chill sliding down her spine like a ghost walking over her grave.
She grabbed the letter and skimmed over the strange names of foreign places interspersed with numbers.
Letting out a rough laugh, she looked at Church.
“Nothing in the letter sounds like Matt talking to me.” Her words came out as a quiver and stopped the men’s discussion dead.
“Nothing except the final line. All my love.”
She laughed again, feeling adrift in a sea she didn’t know how to navigate.
A single tear dripped off her chin onto the paper.
“Honey.” Church slid his arm around her, his big palm cradling her head as he drew her face against his chest. “This is too much for you. I’ll walk you to the room.”
She shook her head. “No. I want to stay.” She curled her fingers around his arm, letting the solid feel of him anchor her.
“Then let’s sit down.” He led her to a seat and took the one beside her, keeping hold of her hand as they tried to make sense of the items.
“Why didn’t he send the package to command?” Gabe wondered.
Church answered. “Looks to me like he suspected someone inside the team was compromised.”
Zee snapped her head up at that. His statement whipped through the room like an icy draft.
She stared at the team photo—one man missing. Lucian Pike. Then at the second image, where he stood next to Matt, singled out in a way that didn’t feel like coincidence.
Theo pushed out a breath through his nose. “He knew Lucian might intercept it.”
Church gave a single nod. “He couldn’t email it either. The message would be monitored.”
“And if it gets sent to command, it gets opened—maybe at the wrong time,” Gabe finished.
The men kept considering possibilities, but Zee heard them from a distance with the words—compromised, intercept, monitored—intruding now and then.
It all made sense in a terrible way.
Matt had hidden information in the only place he thought it might have a chance at surviving. With her. His wife.
Sitting there in that office, Zee felt less like the recipient of his last messages and more like a storage locker.
The thought hurt more than she wanted it to. She had been healing. Moving forward with her life. She was finding happiness at last.
Now she was just…scraped hollow.
As the meeting broke up, Church touched her arm. She pushed to her feet and followed him out of the office.
“Are you okay, honey?” He pitched his voice low.
She spun to face him. “I feel like I understand so much more about our relationship now.”
He caught her arm, concern pinching his brows. “What do you mean?”
“He clearly knew this would potentially be the last package he ever sent me—the last communication we ever had. And other than ‘all my love,’ it’s completely impersonal. Matt was more of a SEAL than a husband. I expected more, but he died a hero, not a husband.”
Church didn’t try to defend Matt. He just stood close, ready to pick up the pieces after she fell apart.
She slashed a hand through the air. “Even during 9/11 people in the hijacked plane sent voice messages to their loved ones. Special messages along with business matters like the combination to their safe. I didn’t get that. I got ‘all my love’ and a card with a useless QR code.”
The bitterness in her voice surprised even her. Meanwhile, Church watched her hurt spill over. She could feel him analyzing the situation, probably wondering if he should offer her comfort but afraid to overstep.
She didn’t wait for him to decide what to do.
She stepped right into his arms and held on tight.