Chapter 4
BLAKE
I run the rag over the parkerized steel anyway.
The smell of CLP—chemical, sharp, biting—is the only thing that clears my head.
It cuts through the pervasive scent of dust and unwashed bodies that clings to everything in this country.
It doesn't matter how comfortable they make this camp, it's still pretty basic.
Three minute showers and dust coating everything all the time means you're dirty all the time.
But not the weapons.
I push the rag into the firing pin recess. Twist. Pull. Inspect.
Carbon buildup is the enemy. Friction is the enemy. If the machine isn't perfect, it jams. If it jams, you die. Or worse, the guy next to you dies.
I focus on the metal. Cold. Unfeeling. Predictable. If you treat it right, it works. It doesn't have complicated feelings. It doesn't fall in love with its best friend's girlfriend. It doesn't destroy decades of brotherhood from weakness.
"You're going to rub the finish right off that thing, Moore."
I don't jump. I felt him coming.
Hatch stands in the doorway, filling the frame. He’s thirty-nine, but he’s built like he’s twenty-five and angry. Six-foot-four of corded muscle that stretches the seams of his black t-shirt. He doesn't look like a CEO of a private military contractor; he looks like a breaching tool with a pulse.
And he's a giant pain in the ass. Why does he keep doing this? He doesn't show up to other jobs this often.
He walks to the table, steps quiet now. He pulls a chair out—not dragging it, but lifting and placing it with deliberate silence. He sits, and the table shudders slightly under his forearms.
He places a pack of cigarettes on the table but doesn't light one. He just taps it.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Who the fuck carries around cigarettes a decade after they've quit? It's either a crutch or he thinks it makes him look cool. Either way, he can take his tap, tapping ass out of here.
"Go to bed, Hatch."
"Can't. Too quiet." He leans back, crossing arms thick as tree limbs.
He studies me. I can feel his eyes cataloging me.
He won't find anything. Physically, I'm in better shape than I've been in years.
Three squares a day and too much time to think means extra gym time.
I'm a fucking monster. "Anderson tells me you volunteered for the convoy to Kandahar on Tuesday. "
"They need a lead gunner."
"They have twelve guys who can run a fifty-cal. Most of them are twenty-five and think they’re immortal. They don't need you."
"I'm better at it."
It's true, and he knows it. "You're overqualified. And you're exhausted. I see it in your eyes tough guy." Hatch stops tapping the pack. His voice is a low rumble. "You're trying to die."
I stop cleaning. The rag freezes in my hand.
I look up at him finally. Hatch hasn't aged a day since he was my CO. He’s still the same immovable object.
The man who started this whole company because he got out of the Corps, looked around, and realized half his unit was bagging groceries or drinking themselves to death.
He built it to give them a paycheck and a purpose.
When I was in the service, I thought he was crazy. He could have stayed in, ended up a two star general by the time he's fifty. Instead, he leaves, without a full pension. Stupid.
But I guess I'm benefiting now. Because without this job, someplace to go, I would be dead.
"I'm doing my job," I say, keeping my voice flat.
"No. You're not." Hatch leans forward. "I built this outfit for a reason, Blake. I built it so guys like us had a place to go where we didn't have to explain ourselves to civilians. But the point was to keep you alive. To give you a living. Not a grave."
"I'm not suicidal, Hatch." Not now anyway. There's something to do every day. Enough shit, enough stress, enough life or death to keep my mind off my fucked up life. Well, almost enough.
"Maybe not consciously. But you don't care if you come back.
And that makes you dangerous." He points a thick finger at the disassembled weapon.
"I've watched guys do this. They take every shift.
They take the point. They stop sleeping.
They convince themselves it's about duty.
But it's not. It's about finding a way out that looks like an accident. "
I reassemble the bolt carrier. Click. Slide. Snap. The mechanical sounds are grounding. "I'm here to work. If you have a problem with my performance, fire me. Send me home."
"I'm not talking to you as your boss. I'm talking to you as the man who dragged your ass out of a burning Humvee in Fallujah.
I'm talking to you as the man who promised you I’d bring you back in one piece.
" His voice drops, losing the command edge, becoming something quieter.
Something worse. "You're hiding, Blake."
I scoff, shoving the rag into my pocket. "I'm in a combat zone, taking fire on the regular. Pretty shit place to hide."
"It's the perfect place. No questions. No complications. Just orders and targets. It’s simple. It’s numb." He locks eyes with me. "You think you're doing something noble by being here. Falling on your sword. Protecting the people back home from your... what do you call it? Your darkness?"
He fucking went there. All the other visits, he did the fucking tango around this subject. Now, there's no more dancing.
"I am poison to them," I say. The words taste like bile, but they’re true. I’ve run the calculations a thousand times in the dark. "You know what I did. You know how I left things. I broke the only rule that mattered."
"You fell in love. It happens."
"I coveted," I correct him sharply. "I wanted what wasn't mine. And then I lashed out like a wounded dog and tore everything apart because I couldn't handle the fucking guilt and I didn't have the strength to walk away. I didn't just break a rule, Hatch. I broke them."
I stare at the rifle on the table. "Me being gone is the best thing that ever happened to Reid. He doesn't have to worry about me anymore. He doesn't have to look at me and remember that I betrayed him."
"Is that what you tell yourself?" Hatch asks. "That you're doing this for him?"
"Yes. He's free of me. He can breathe."
Hatch sighs. It’s a short, sharp exhale through his nose. He looks frustrated. "I went by the station last week. Spoke to the Chief. I checked on Reid, just like you asked me to."
My heart hammers against my ribs. A sudden, violent kick. The name is a physical blow. Reid.
I shouldn't ask. I don't have the right to ask. I forfeited that right the moment I walked out the door. But the hunger for news is a physical pain, sharp and twisting in my gut.
"And?" The word slips out before I can stop it.
"Reid's working."
"See? He's fine."
"He's working doubles as often as he can, Blake." Hatch holds my gaze, refusing to let me look away. "The Chief says he’s practically living at the station. He sleeps in the bunk room. He picks up every overtime slot, every holiday, every graveyard shift. He’s running on caffeine and anger."
I stare at the fluorescent light humming overhead, trying to blink away the image of Reid, exhausted, gray-faced, sitting in the back of an ambulance staring at nothing.
"He's doing exactly what you're doing," Hatch says softly. "He won't admit it, but he's burying himself in work because he doesn't know how to exist in the quiet. He goes home to that big house you two bought, and it’s empty. So he stops going home."
I look down at my hands. They're stained with gun oil, the smell sharp and metallic. "He's supposed to be with Laine. They're supposed to be taking care of each other."
"He's alone," Hatch snaps. The anger radiates off him now, hot and controlled. "You didn't fix anything by leaving. You didn't 'restore' the situation. You just gutted the building and walked away from the wreckage."
The words hit like a punch to the gut. I'd told myself Reid kicking me out was the right thing—that without me poisoning everything, he'd go back to Laine.
They'd work it out. He'd be happy again, safe in that perfect little life I'd destroyed.
I'd pictured them together, maybe talking it through over coffee in their kitchen, Reid's hands steady again instead of shaking with rage.
But that's not what happened. Instead of fixing the problem, I tore the fucking walls out of it.
"I can't go back." My voice cracks. Just a fracture, but I hear it. "I can't look him in the eye. Not after what I did. If I stay away, there's a chance he can fix it with her. She loves him. She'll be there for him. He's supposed to be there for her."
His eyes narrow, and that tapping starts up again. "So that's it? You're just going to stay here in the sand until your luck runs out? Let Jared’s brother rot while you play soldier?"
This motherfucker. "Don't bring Jared into this."
"I'll bring him into it. Because if he were here, he'd kick your ass.
" Hatch stands up. He looms over me, a mountain of muscle and judgment.
"You think you're serving some great penance. You think if you suffer enough, if you bleed enough, it balances the scales. But that’s not how it works, Moore.
You're treating yourself like a tool, not a fucking human being. "
"I am a tool," I whisper. "That's all I've ever been good at. Point me at the problem. Let me fix it. Let me break it. Just don't ask me to be... human. I suck at being human."
"That's the coward's answer."
My head snaps up. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me. It’s easier to be a weapon than a man. Weapons don't have to say sorry. Weapons don't have to sit in a room with their best friend and say, 'I messed up, and I don't know how to fix it.' Weapons don't have to do the hard work of rebuilding trust."