Chapter 1 #3
Fucking hell. I could have helped her if I’d known.
Fuck you, Jennings, you should have trusted me.
“Oregon?” His voice was a low growl. “How did a kid from an Oregon foster home end up in an Uzbekistan trafficker’s den in fucking France?”
“That’s the million-dollar question.” Gunnar’s eyes turned to flint. “But right now, the priority isn’t the ‘how.’ It’s the ‘who.’ If that’s Jennings’s kid, she’s one of ours. Period.”
Damn fucking straight.
Tyrone swallowed down a surge of cold fury. “If she’s Dwight’s, then there’s a woman in Oregon who has no idea her daughter was shipped halfway across the world. A woman who lost everything and then lost her kid.”
“Jorja, find Glenna Harper.” Gunnar pulled out his phone, punched in a number, and put it to his ear, “Remi, get in here, STAT!”
Within seconds, the second-oldest McKinley brother strode into the room, sensing the shift in the compound’s energy. The party was effectively over.
Tyrone stood in the center of the command hub, his eyes fixed on the screen where a grainy DMV photo of a woman had just appeared.
Is that Kelsey’s mom, Glenna?
She was pretty in a tired, faded way, with dark hair pulled back and eyes that looked like they’d seen way too much shit throughout her life.
He didn’t even know her, but he felt a crushing weight of responsibility settle over him.
He had failed Jennings on that dusty road.
He’d promised him he wasn’t going to die, but then hadn’t been able to stop the bleeding.
He wouldn’t fail the woman he had loved now, and he damn sure wouldn’t fail that little girl waiting in the other room.
He waited while Gunnar gave Remi a quick sitrep and then pulled out his phone. “I need to make a call.”
“Who?” Gunnar asked.
“My old C.O., John Sullivan. He was the one who handled the unit’s final out-processing. If Dwight was hiding something, or if there was a reason the benefits didn’t reach that woman, Sully will know where the bodies are buried.”
Gunnar nodded. “Do it. Use the encrypted line.”
Tyrone stepped into the corner of the room, his hand steady as he punched in a number he hadn’t dialed in years. He waited through four rings, the silence of the war-room amplified by the humming of the servers.
“Sullivan,” a gravelly voice answered.
“Sir, it’s Power, it’s Rone.”
There was a pause on the other end. “Power. It’s been a long time. I heard you were in Italy, putting out fires and causing shit with those McKinley boys.”
“Something like that, sir. I need a favor. It’s about Dwight Jennings.”
The silence on the other end lengthened. “Dwight? He’s been gone a long time, Rone. Why are you digging up that grave?”
“Because the grave might have an occupant, but he left a ghost behind. We’ve got a six-year-old girl who saw my platoon ink and says Jennings was her daddy. I need to know why his family isn’t being taken care of.”
Tyrone heard a sharp intake of breath through the receiver. “He what now?”
Shit. He didn’t know either.
Jennings, you fucking asshole.
Tyrone’s grip on the phone tightened until the plastic creaked. “Well, sir, if what this kid says is true, then he kept his family so far in the dark, none of us have been looking after them since we put Jennings in the ground.”
“I’ll see what’s in the old off-book files, Zorro. Give me an hour. And Rone?”
“Yes, sir?”
“You guard that girl like she’s your own. If she’s Jennings’s daughter, then she’s one of us and we have a hell of a lot to make up for.”
“Understood.” Tyrone hung up the phone and looked at his teammates.
The brotherhood of the Four X’s was absolute.
They were men who had been discarded or broken by the systems they’d served, and they had built their own world here in La Spezia.
A world where ‘no one left behind’ wasn’t just a slogan on a recruiter’s wall; it was their most sacred rule.
“Sullivan is pulling files,” He worked damn hard to keep his voice even.
“Gunnar, if the mother is in a bad way in Portland, she’s not going to have the resources to get to Italy.
She’s family and I’ll cover whatever it costs, because we can’t exactly fly a rescued child back into US airspace without a gauntlet of questions we aren’t ready to answer. ”
“We’ll get her here,” Gunnar promised. “Remi, start looking at flight manifests. Jorja, keep digging into that foster care trail. I want to know exactly how Kelsey ended up on those fuckers’ radar.”
As the team moved into their well-oiled roles, Tyrone walked back toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Midas asked.
“I need a minute.” If he didn’t get out of here in two seconds flat, he was going to hurl all over the floor.
He stepped out of the war-room and the transition from the high-tech silence back to the warmth of the evening air felt different this time.
The weight on his shoulders hadn’t disappeared—if anything, it had doubled—but for the first time in longer than he could remember, the ghost of Dwight Harper didn’t feel like a burden. It felt like a mission.