Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
SLOANE
Aplate stacked high with pancakes cools next to the camping cook stove. Two mugs of coffee steam, swirling with the powdered cream I bought.
I can’t explain why I did this. Cooked for this man.
I can say it’s to gain his trust. To break down his walls, get him talking.
And that’s what I will say later.
The official narrative.
But I can feel something more behind it, in the hollow that’s lodged in my chest.
Rhys Ward.
He’s supposed to be the villain. He isn’t supposed to remind me of my brother, or other veterans. He isn’t supposed to make me feel things I shouldn’t.
Like concern. Worry.
God, I can’t let myself name everything he makes me feel.
I go to his cot, picking up the photo again, thumbing over his face. He shaved this morning, and all the wild disappeared. He kept hair on his face, but there’s no denying he looks more like this.
The man who was supposed to answer my questions. Not create more.
My eyes drop to the book again, Starship Troopers. I open the front cover, and that’s when I see it.
“Phoenix Hale” in neat print.
My breath stalls. The ground moves beneath me. My brother’s book.
Why would he have this?
My fingers run over the print as if it can somehow make me feel closer to my twin again.
He’s why I became a war correspondent. I thought if I stayed close to his world, I could protect him. I realize how silly that was now.
Not even Rhys could do that.
His words crash back through me. It was me. I was the problem. It tells me everything and nothing all at once. Like so much of the research I’ve done since Phoenix died, every answer only opened another rabbit hole.
He said he’d drive me into town on his ATV. Mentioned the winch, too. Either way, I should leave. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
But leaving now feels like abandoning Phoenix. I can’t do that.
When the mountain man finally returns, he’s shirtless and covered in sweat, arms loaded with wood. His arms bulge and flex as he stacks perfect rows.
I see it again. The tattoo coordinates. Rhys catches me staring, and he turns away, striding to his dresser. There, he fishes out a white Henley and puts it on, never saying a word. Never looking in my direction.
He approaches the pile of pancakes like a predator on prey, grabbing an empty plate and stacking it with pancakes, syrup, and butter. I do the same.
Then we focus on the food instead of each other.
He shovels it in like a Marine recruit in training. If I had a watch, I’d swear he set a record. Next, he swigs down his coffee, looking miserable the whole time.
“Gonna see about getting that Jeep out,” he says finally. “Get you on your way where you belong.”
“But—” I say, heart racing. “I’m not leaving until I understand what happened.”
His gaze bores into me. “Already told you. Phoenix, good guy.” Then he points a thumb at his chest. “Me, bad guy.”
I shake my head. “It’s never that simple.”
“You want to complicate it then? Torture yourself with every detail?” His face hardens.
“I want to know what really happened. Because the more I’ve researched, the harder I’ve looked, the less any of the official narrative makes sense.”
“No, what you want is your brother back. And I can’t give him to you.” He presses his hands firmly into the counter, not breaking the stare.
“You kept his book,” I say, nodding my head toward the cot. “And a photo of the team. First Recon. Pretty sure the coordinates tie back to Afghanistan, too.”
He leans back on his heels. “If it helps, take the book. It’s yours. The picture, too.” His voice goes raw over the last sentence.
And that’s when it hits me. The man in front of me isn’t the story I came to expose. That means the real story is worse.
I lick my lips. “Phoenix had something else going on. Something that went beyond First Recon.”
Rhys’s face falls, and he looks away, brown eyes brooding.
“There are things in his records that never added up. Stories he told me, my parents that never made sense. I’ve half wondered,” I say with a strained laugh, “I’ve half wondered if he was something else entirely.”
Rhys stills. No emotion.
That’s it… his tell. No reaction. Nothing.
“Makes me wonder if he was put on your team for different reasons.”
He grimaces, running a hand through his hair.
“Because there was a point where everything changed with him,” I continue. “Where he became a different man. Different morals. Different priorities. Different drives. Honestly… the last time I saw him… it scared me.”
He still won’t meet my eyes, his forehead creasing.
“Rhys?”
“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.”
Our eyes meet.
“Do you know anything about this? Was this part of what you don’t want to tell me about?”
“I want to let those men rest with the honor they deserve. Not split hairs, dig into the weeds until it all looks bad… wrong.”
“But right now, you look wrong. That’s the official story.”
“That’s where it stays,” he says, jaw tightening.
“I can’t do that. Not without answers.”
He shrugs, turning away and pacing. “Well, you’re going to have to.”
“You’ve lived all this time carrying what happened to that team. But there had to be more to it than the official narrative.”
“Think what you want,” Rhys says, stepping closer, eyes searching mine. “But I’m done with this. Done talking to you.”
He slides past me, and I feel the storm leave with him.
He disappears with the roar of an ATV engine, and I take a seat on the cot, holding the book and staring at the photo. The coordinates have to do with Afghanistan. Where the ambush took place.
My cell has no signal. Nothing.
I could use the sat phone. Call my parents. Call friends to look it up for me.
But some part of me still needs it from him.
I press the book to my cheek, memories of Phoenix washing back over me. Blond hair in the sunlight, running through fields of buttery dandelions barefoot and narrowly missing bees.
My mom and dad called us the two terrors. Rambunctious, loud nature lovers.
I’ll never forget the day he sat us down. Told us he’d enlisted in the Marines.
Mom cried. Dad clapped a hand to his shoulder, saying how proud he was. And I started devising ways to follow him. Because that’s what we did.
But after that, everything slowly changed. He started speaking and acting differently. By his last deployment, he was a different man, though with the same team—First Recon.
I couldn’t follow him anymore, yet I refused to admit it back then. Just like I can’t follow him now.
Maybe this has all been a fool’s errand.
Me here, disrupting Rhys’s life. Bringing up things that obviously still haunt him.
Maybe when it’s all said and done, curiosity is a cold master. Because Rhys was right about one thing. Phoenix is never coming back.