2. Doc
DOC
I’m finishing paperwork in the office of a private trauma-training facility outside Fort Worth when my phone vibrates across the desk.
Unknown number.
Most people ignore messages from numbers they don’t recognize.
I don’t.
There are too many ghosts in my past, and every one of them knows how to find me.
I open the message.
For several seconds, I forget how to breathe.
A woman stands on a sidewalk beneath the faded green awning of a small-town bank. She’s wearing a tan deputy’s uniform, her dark hair pulled into a knot at the back of her head. One hand rests on her duty belt while she listens to an elderly woman waving a finger in her face.
I haven’t seen Mara Ellis in fifteen years.
She was sixteen the last time I stood close enough to speak to her. All long legs, angry tears, and a stubborn chin lifted toward every Ranger who came to Grant’s funeral without bringing her brother home.
She’s not a child anymore.
But I would know her anywhere.
Grant’s eyes.
Grant’s expression when someone is testing the last thread of her patience.
Even the way she stands reminds me of him—weight balanced evenly on both feet, ready to move in any direction.
I enlarge the photograph.
A black circle surrounds the image.
Thin lines intersect directly over Mara’s chest.
Crosshairs.
Ice replaces the blood in my veins.
A second message appears.
YOUR PROMISE ENDS WITH HER.
I’m on my feet before I realize I’ve moved.
The chair crashes backward into the wall. Two instructors glance through the glass partition separating my office from the training floor, but I ignore them.
I call the number.
It rings once before a recorded voice tells me the number is no longer in service.
Of course it isn’t.
I take screenshots, save the original message, and check the photograph for anything that might tell me where it came from.
Nothing.
Whoever sent it knew what they were doing.
My hands remain steady.
They always do when someone is bleeding.
It’s afterward that they shake.
I stare at Mara’s face and hear Grant’s voice as clearly as I did in that valley fifteen years ago.
Don’t let anything happen to her, Doc.
Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. My hands were pressed against the wound in his abdomen, trying to hold together what the bullets had torn apart.
I knew he was dying.
He knew it too.
Promise me.
“I promised,” I say to the empty office.
I kept that promise the only way I knew how.
From a distance.
Over the years, I made sure Mara was okay. I knew when she graduated from high school. When she completed the police academy and joined the Eagle River Sheriff’s Department. I knew when her father died and when her mother became ill.
But I never contacted her.
I never interfered in her life.
Grant’s family blamed the Army for his death. Mara looked at every Ranger at the funeral as if we had abandoned him on the battlefield.
Maybe we had.
I was the medic.
Grant died beneath my hands.
The promise didn’t give me the right to walk into his family’s life and force them to look at the man who failed to save him.
But someone has put Mara in a rifle scope.
Distance is no longer protection.
I open the bottom drawer of my desk and remove the black metal box I’ve carried through eight moves and three states. The key hangs on the chain beneath my shirt beside Grant’s dog tags.
The lock opens with a soft click.
Inside are copies of mission reports, photographs, maps, and the bloodstained scrap of paper Grant shoved into my vest before we entered the valley.
Three numbers and a name.
The numbers are coordinates.
The name belongs to a man who died eleven years ago.
At least, that’s what his death certificate claims.
I believed the betrayal died with him.
I should have known better.
I close the box, put it inside my duffel bag, and reach for the jacket hanging behind the door.
“Shaw?”
Rick Dalton, the facility director, stands in the doorway. He looks from the overturned chair to the bag in my hand.
“I have to leave.”
“We have a certification course starting tomorrow morning.”
“Get Peterson to cover it.”
“Peterson is in Houston.”
“Then call Bailey.”
Rick steps into the office. “What happened?”
I pick up my keys. “Family emergency.”
He blinks.
In the five years I’ve worked with him, I’ve never used those words. I don’t take vacations. I don’t call in sick. I don’t talk about family because I don’t have one.
Not anymore.
“How long will you be gone?” he asks.
“I don’t know.”
I walk past him.
“Is someone hurt?”
Not yet.
The words follow me through the building, down the back stairs, and into the parking lot.
Not yet.
But someone took that photograph close enough to put a bullet through Mara’s heart.
The next one might.
I throw my duffel into the back of my truck and pull up a number I haven’t called in fifteen years.
Wolf answers on the fourth ring.
“Last Stand Tavern.”
For one second, I’m twenty-eight again, standing beside him in the Afghan dust while he argues with Grant over whose turn it is to clean the weapons.
His voice is deeper now. Rougher.
But it’s Wolf.
“Wolf.”
Silence.
Not the ordinary kind.
This silence is filled with gunfire, graves, and fifteen years of questions neither of us wants to answer.
“Who is this?”
He knows.
I hear it in the way his voice changes.
“It’s Doc.”
Another silence.
Then a chair scrapes across the floor.
“Doc?”
“I need you to listen. Is Mara Ellis at the tavern?”
“What?”
“Is she there?”
“No. Why would she be?”
“Find her.”
His voice hardens. “You disappear for fifteen years, call me out of nowhere, and start giving orders?”
“Someone sent me a photograph of Mara taken through a rifle scope.”
Every sound on his end stops.
“When?”
“Less than five minutes ago.”
“Send it to me.”
I forward the photograph and the message.
Wolf curses when he receives them.
“I’m calling Trigger and Sheriff Tate,” he says. “Where are you?”
“Outside Fort Worth.”
“Why would someone send that picture to you?”
I grip the steering wheel.
“Because of Grant.”
“What about him?”
“I can’t explain it over the phone.”
“You’d better start explaining something.”
The anger in his voice is justified.
Wolf searched for me after Grant died. So did Trigger. I ignored their calls, returned their letters unopened, and made sure no one from the unit knew where I went after I left the Army.
They thought I blamed them.
The truth is worse.
I blamed myself.
“Find Mara,” I tell him. “Don’t let her out of your sight.”
“You think we wouldn’t protect Grant’s sister?”
“You didn’t know someone was watching her.”
“And you did?”
“I do now.”
A door slams on his end, followed by Wolf shouting for someone to watch the bar.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“To find Mara.”
“Call me when you do.”
“Doc.”
I wait.
“You disappear again before telling us what this is about, and I’ll hunt you down myself.”
“If Mara is safe, you can do whatever you want.”
I end the call.
My truck engine roars to life.
Eagle River is several hours away. I can make good time if traffic stays light, but the sky to the west is darkening, and weather alerts are already flashing across my phone.
None of it matters.
Grant asked me for one thing.
I won’t fail him twice.
Wolf calls thirty-one minutes later.
I answer before the first ring finishes.
“Tell me.”
“She’s alive.”
The knot around my lungs loosens enough for me to breathe.
“What happened?”
“Someone fired through the front window of her mother’s house. Missed her head by inches.”
My vision narrows.
“When?”
“About an hour ago. Shooter escaped across the McKinley pasture in a dark truck. Sheriff Tate has deputies searching the county roads.”
“She’s still at the house?”
“No. I brought her to the tavern.”
“Is she hurt?”
“A few cuts from the glass. She refuses to go to the clinic.”
“That sounds like Grant.”
The words escape before I can stop them.
Wolf goes quiet.
“You remember his sister that well?”
I remember everything.
“She was at the funeral.”
“She was a kid.”
“She was his whole world.”
Another pause.
“And you knew she became a deputy?”
I don’t answer.
Wolf understands too much from my silence.
“You’ve kept tabs on her.”
“I made sure she was okay.”
“For fifteen years?”
“Yes.”
“Does she know?”
“No.”
“Then I’m guessing she isn’t going to take it well.”
“She doesn’t have to like me.”
A humorless laugh comes through the phone. “You really don’t remember Grant’s little sister.”
I remember her standing beside the grave after everyone else left. I remember the rain soaking through her black dress. I remember wanting to tell her what Grant’s final thoughts had been.
Her.
Always her.
I couldn’t make myself walk toward her.
“I’ll be there tonight,” I say.
“You’re driving into a storm.”
“I’ve driven through worse.”
“You always were a stubborn bastard.”
“Keep her inside.”
“I’ll try.”
“That isn’t good enough.”
“Then you tell her when you get here.”
The call disconnects.
For the first time since receiving the photograph, I almost smile.
Wolf hasn’t changed.
I suspect Mara hasn’t either.
Neither one of them knows how much danger she’s in.
Because the photograph isn’t the only reason I’m heading to Eagle River.
The message contains words no stranger should know.
Your promise ends with her.
Only five men heard me make that promise.
Grant died in my arms.
One Ranger died in the valley.
Wolf and Trigger made it home.
And the fifth man was officially declared dead eleven years ago.
If he’s still alive, the attack on Mara isn’t a warning.
It’s unfinished business.
Rain pounds the roof of my truck when I reach Eagle River shortly before midnight.
The town is smaller than I imagined, built around a main street lined with brick storefronts, old trees, and streetlamps glowing through the storm. Most of the businesses are dark.
One isn’t.
A weathered wooden sign swings above the entrance.
THE LAST STAND TAVERN.
Warm light spills across the sidewalk. Several trucks fill the parking spaces along the street, including two marked sheriff’s department vehicles.
Mara is here.
I park beneath a streetlamp and shut off the engine.
For a moment, I remain behind the wheel.
I’ve walked into burning buildings. I’ve crawled through gunfire to reach wounded soldiers. I once performed a field amputation while an enemy force closed in from three sides.
None of that took as much courage as opening this truck door.
Wolf and Trigger are inside.
So is Grant’s sister.
Fifteen years ago, I walked away from all of them because staying meant facing what happened in that valley.
Tonight, I have no choice.
I take Grant’s journal box from my duffel and tuck my weapon beneath my jacket. Rain soaks my hair and runs down my neck as I cross the street.
Voices reach me before I open the tavern door.
One belongs to Wolf.
Another belongs to Trigger.
Then I hear a woman arguing with Sheriff Tate about roadblocks, search grids, and why she should be allowed to help hunt the man who shot at her.
Mara.
Despite everything, something inside me almost loosens.
Grant’s little sister is definitely not a little girl anymore.
I wrap my hand around the door handle.
The promise I made her brother has brought me back.
Keeping her alive may cost me every secret I have left.
I open the door.
Conversation dies.
Wolf stands behind the bar, staring at me as though one of the dead has walked into his tavern. Trigger rises slowly from a table near the fireplace.
Neither man speaks.
Then Mara steps between them.
A small bandage covers the cut above her eyebrow. Her dark hair hangs loose around her shoulders, and Grant’s field journal is clutched against her chest.
For fifteen years, she has existed in photographs, newspaper clippings, and the occasional piece of information I allowed myself to find.
None of it prepared me for seeing her standing ten feet away.
She looks at my face.
Then at the dog tags hanging outside my shirt.
Her gaze drops to the name stamped into the metal.
SHAW, COLIN.
Understanding flashes in her eyes.
“You’re Doc.”
I close the door behind me.
“And you found something your brother died trying to hide.”