Chapter 1 #2
Tyrone’s breath hitching was a physical pain in his chest. He didn’t care who was watching. He didn’t care about the party.
“Kelsey,” even he heard the tremble in his voice. “What’s your daddy’s name?”
“Dwight,” she said simply. “But Mommy called him Dee.”
The name hit him like a .50 caliber round to the sternum.
Dwight.
Dwight Jennings. His brother and teammate. The man who had been standing three feet to his left when the IED went off in the Kunar Valley. The man whose blood had soaked through his gloves, whose chest he’d cracked open in a desperate, futile attempt to massage his heart when it stopped beating.
Tyrone had spent years carrying the weight of Dwight’s death.
He’d rostered out of the Corps and been immediately recruited by Gunnar shortly after.
He’d gone to Dwight’s funeral. He’d stood in the pouring rain in Oregon and watched them fold the flag.
But Dwight had been a loner, or so he’d said.
There had been no wife or kids listed on his Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance (SGLI).
Just a distant aunt who hadn’t even shown up to the service.
“Dwight?” Man, it hurt to say that name. “Dwight Jennings?”
Kelsey nodded, her lip wobbling just a fraction. “He went away. Mommy said he had to go help people, and then he didn’t come back. But he had that magic bird.”
Tyrone’s hands were shaking so hard he had to grip his own knees to hide it. Dwight had a daughter. A daughter who had been snatched by human traffickers. A daughter who had been living a horror-filled life, while he played war games and lived in a comfy-as-fuck former nunnery in Italy.
Jesus, she must have only been Ember and Jules’s age when we lost him.
“Rone? You okay, man?” Remi walked over, his expression moving from curious to concerned as he saw the look on Tyrone’s face. “Zorro, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I fucking have.
It just punched me right in the balls.
Tyrone didn’t answer him. Instead, he stared at Kelsey, trying to see Dwight in the slope of her nose or the set of her jaw. Then he saw it, in the stubborn tilt of her chin. It was identical to the man who had died in the dirt while Tyrone screamed for a Medevac that was ten minutes too late.
“I know who she is,” Tyrone whispered, more to himself than to Remi.
“What? She’s Kelsey. We know that,” Remi stepped closer, his voice dropping an octave as he sensed the gravity of the moment.
Tyrone stood up abruptly. The movement was so sudden, Kelsey flinched back a step. Immediately, he softened his posture, holding out a hand but not touching her. "It’s okay, Kelsey. It’s okay. Why don’t you go back and play with Chaos for a minute? I need to go talk to Gunnar.”
The girl searched his face for a long second, seeing something there that seemed to satisfy her. She nodded once and turned, running back toward the other girls.
Tyrone turned to Colt, his eyes burning with a cold, fierce light. “Where’s Grizzly?”
“War-room. He and Jorja had a call with someone stateside for intel on who Kelsey might be.”
Tyrone stood up, “Then I need to be there.” He turned right out of the kitchen door into the courtyard.
Mason del Tempio was beautiful at dusk, the ancient stone glowing with a golden hue, but Tyrone saw none of it.
He saw a dusty road in Afghanistan and the red splash of blood and a tattoo on a dying brother-in-arms’ arm.
He reached the heavy, steel door of the war-room and slammed his palm against the scanner.
The lock clicked, and the door hissed open.
Inside, the atmosphere was a stark contrast to the party.
The room was bathed in the blue glow of high-definition monitors, and the walls were lined with maps, data streams, and tactical displays.
Gunnar was filling out a report at the head of the war-table and Jorja was tucked into a chair in the corner, a laptop on her knees, her fingers flying across the keys. They both looked up as Tyrone stormed in.
“Rone? Party’s still going?” Gunnar’s voice was level, but his eyes narrowed in confusion at the ‘combat glide’ in his step.
“Kelsey,” his voice sounded weird even to him. “The girl. We need to run her DNA. Full search. National databases, DEERS, VA records, everything.”
Gunnar cocked his head to one side. “We already did the intake, Ty. She came from France, remember, from that fucking Uzbekistan cell. We’re waiting for the NGO to finish the paperwork for the foster transition.”
“Forget the foster transition,” He paced the length of the table like a caged predator. “She just drew her fingers all over my ink. My Raider tattoo.”
Jorja closed her laptop, her expression sharpening. “A lot of kids like tattoos, Tyrone.”
“It’s not that. She told me her father had the same one. She gave me a name. Dwight.”
Gunnar’s face went stone-cold. He knew Tyrone’s history. He knew the names of the men Tyrone had lost. “Jennings?”
“Dwight Jennings. My unit brother,” Tyrone slammed his hand down on the edge of the glass table. “He died in my arms. He told us he had no one. We all thought he was a ghost. But that little girl just told me her ‘Daddy Dee’ had the same magic bird and sword on his shoulder as I do.”
The silence that followed was heavy. Jorja moved to her main computer at the bank that ran along one wall and logged in, her eyes scanning the screen with clinical intensity. “Dwight Jennings. Give me his service number if you have it.”
Tyrone rattled off the digits without hesitation. They were burned into his brain from when he’d written the number on the casualty card.
“Checking,” Jorja said. “Jerk-God, I’m bypassing the standard CPS filters. If he’s the father, there should be a link somewhere—dependent records, even if they were suppressed.”
Gunnar walked around the table and put a heavy hand on Tyrone’s shoulder. “Easy, Zorro. If she’s his, we’ll find out. But why wouldn’t it be in his jacket? The Corps is thorough about benefits.”
“Maybe it was a secret he kept from the Corps.” His jaw ached from the force of clenching his teeth against the pain that radiated from deep in his chest. “Maybe it was a secret he kept from everyone to protect them. We were doing high-value target snatches, Grizz. We were the guys people wanted to get even with.”
“I’m in,” Jorja’s voice cut through the tension.
Her eyes flickered as she read through a wall of text.
“Dwight Jennings. Marine Raider. Honorable discharge... post-mortem. No spouse listed on the SGLI. But wait...” She tapped a key, and a new window popped up.
“There’s a civil filing from three years ago in Portland, Oregon.
A paternity suit that was dismissed because the respondent was deceased. ”
Tyrone’s heart hammered against his ribs. “The mother. Who is she?”
“Glenna Harper.” Jorja read, her voice softening.
“Tyrone... there’s a lot here. Social services reports.
Housing instability. Looking at the timeline, she lost her apartment two years ago.
She was working three jobs. She went into the system, and Kelsey went into the foster care loop in Oregon eighteen months ago. ”