Chapter 31 #4
“You keep saying that like changing the fucking noun changes what you did. Glenna spent years raising that kid without him. Then she lost her because another piece of the same rotten fucking network you fed information into got its hands on her life, and when Kelsey was taken again, Palmer was right fucking there.”
“I didn’t know about White Shadow.”
“Maybe not. But you knew Palmer. You knew enough.”
Sullivan’s eyes flickered, and suddenly that was answer enough.
Tyrone felt something inside him finally stop fighting.
For years, Dwight’s death had become a wound he kept reopening because something about it never sat right, and now the truth stood in front of him, looking older, smaller, and infinitely more pathetic than the monster Tyrone had carried around.
“You know what the fucked-up part is?” Tyrone asked.
“Dwight trusted you.” His throat tightened, but Tyrone forced the words through it because this mattered.
“He fucking trusted you. If you’d called him and said you needed help, he would’ve come.
No questions. No judgment. You could’ve told him you were in debt up to your fucking eyeballs and he would’ve sat down with you and worked out how to fix it because that was who he was.
” He looked around the room. Every face watching him carried some version of the same pain.
“He would’ve helped you, but you got him killed him instead. ”
“I didn’t?—”
“Don’t.”
His voice never rose; it didn’t have to. “You’ve said enough.”
For several seconds, neither man moved. Then Sullivan whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Tyrone had thought it would hurt, but it didn’t.
Maybe because the apology had arrived years too late, or maybe because somewhere between Italy, Kelsey wrapping her arms around his neck, and Glenna texting him three words from a fucking spa, he’d stopped needing anything from the man standing in front of him.
“Keep it.”
Sullivan stared at him.
“I don’t want your apology. I don’t want your excuses, and I sure as fuck don’t need you to make me understand why you did it.” Tyrone took one step back. “You don’t have anything left I want.”
The door opened behind Sullivan. Nobody in the room spoke as two MPs entered. Tyrone had known they were coming.
This had never been about asking his old brothers to punish Sullivan for him. The evidence had already gone where it needed to go, and what happened next belonged to people with the authority to deal with it.
One of the MPs addressed Sullivan, and for the first time since walking into the room, genuine fear crossed his face.
The MP instructed Sullivan to turn around, but he didn’t move immediately.
Tyrone watched his gaze travel around the team room one last time, searching faces that had welcomed him less than half an hour earlier.
Men who had shaken his hand. Men who had served beside him.
Men who had probably intended to buy him a drink later and spend the afternoon telling stories about shit none of them could safely repeat in polite company.
Nobody stepped forward. Nobody defended him, and nobody looked away from what he had done.
Sullivan turned as the first cuff closed around his wrist, the sound of the ratchet carried through the room.
Tyrone’s eyes went to Dwight’s cage. He could see his brother there again, not dead in Afghanistan, not reduced to a casualty report or the photographs Glenna had carried through years of trying to keep their daughter connected to a father she barely remembered.
In his memories, Dwight was alive and laughing, with a mouth full of fucking peanut M&M’s while he tried to convince Ferguson they were electrolytes.
The second cuff closed, and Ferguson sucked in a breath. Sullivan looked over his shoulder at him. Maybe he expected decades to matter. Maybe they did. That was why Ferguson looked fucking devastated.
“Earn It Every Day,” Ferguson said.
Sullivan went still.
Ferguson’s eyes shone, but his voice held. “You taught me that, you son of a bitch.”
Sullivan looked down as another Raider spoke. “Always Faithful.” The words came from somewhere behind Tyrone.
A second voice answered. “Always Forward.”
Then another. “Humans are greater than hardware.”
Men stood shoulder to shoulder along the cages, active Raiders beside retired ones, officers beside enlisted men, generations of a brotherhood Sullivan had once belonged to and had chosen to betray. The phrases weren’t slogans in their mouths. They were accusations.
“Quality over quantity.”
“Judgment.”
“Trust.” That last word came from Ferguson. Sullivan looked at him again, and Ferg shook his head. “We trusted you with our lives.”
The MP caught Sullivan’s arm and began leading him toward the door. Nobody moved until they had to. Then the Raiders parted for the uniformed men taking their betrayer away.
Sullivan reached the doorway and hesitated for the smallest fraction of a second, perhaps realizing this would be the last time he ever stood inside a team room with these men as one of them.