Epilogue
The phone vibrated against the desk. Elijah saw the name, familiar but not at this time of night. His Ranger brothers weren’t in the habit of late night calls, all of them knowing what that kind of call usually meant, even state side.
He answered on the second ring. "Aaron."
Aaron's voice came back wrong. Too small. Too clipped. Elijah had heard breath like that more than once, before a man told him a friend was down.
"My girls. Kiley and Kelly. Gone since Thursday and the police are… They aren't. Elijah, I need you. I need what you do."
He was on his feet before he ever remembered standing. It was as engrained into him to respond to a brother in need as it was to breathe.
"Where were they last seen?"
"School. They left school and they didn't come home and now it's been-"
"Aaron."
"-seventy-two hours, more, more than that-"
"Aaron. Breathe. I'm coming. I'm coming right now."
"Don't tell... I'm not... I can't..."
"I'm not telling anyone. I'm coming."
He ended the call. He was already at the closet. The duffle came down off the high shelf. The duffel was packed. His hands knew where everything was before he did.
His family had been answering calls like this since 1864. The names changed. The dark didn't. He didn't think about how. He thought about who, and where, and when.
He thought: alone. He always went alone.
Being a sniper, both for the US Army rangers and his current team, he spent a great deal of time on his own, in the quiet and in the dark.
Alone meant no one else's body to account for, no one else's choices, no one else's grief.
He'd told himself this until it lived in him the same as the weight of his rifle case in his right hand.
He was three steps into the hallway with the case in his right hand and the duffel over his shoulder when Jack stepped out of the kitchen with a dishtowel and stood in front of him.
Six foot five. Soft in the eyes. Immovable in the legs.
"Where?"
"Atlanta. Aaron's girls. Move."
Jack didn't move.
"Jack."
"I'm getting my bag."
"You're not coming."
Jack looked at him for a long time. He folded the dishtowel once more and set it on the counter.
"Try me."
Elijah's hand tightened on the case. Go alone. That was the rule, and it was very loud in him right now, louder than the case weight and the duffel strap and the eleven hours of road between here and two thirteen-year-old girls in a dark he understood.
"Jack. I do this alone."
"You did this alone. You don't do it alone tonight."
Elijah looked at him. Six and a half feet of brawler standing in the hallway of a converted factory, a folded dishtowel on the counter behind him, hands open at his sides. Not asking permission. Jack's mouth was the softest in the room. His eyes were not.
"Aaron doesn't know you."
"Aaron'll know me by tomorrow."
He could fight Jack on this. He was Ranger-trained and Jack was an hour past dinner. He could win and leave him in the doorway. He could also stop fighting and walk out the door, which was what he was already doing.
"Get your bag."
Jack got his bag.
They were on I-75 South in the jeep. Neither of them had spoken since the hallway.
Elijah drove. Jack sat in the passenger seat with his knees pushed against the dash and his hands flat on his thighs, his eyes on the dark outside the window.
Not watching Elijah. The bulk of him was close in the cab, warm, breathing.
He was not going to say the wrong thing first. He was not going to say anything first. He was just there, the same as he was in every room Elijah had ever let him into.
Atlanta was eleven hours.
The girls were thirteen.
Elijah pressed the gas.