We walked in on Abby, our twenty-three-year-old support lead, being brutally assaulted in our tent. I can still feel her pained eyes as she silently begged Jagger and me to save her.
Even that wasn’t the worst.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to ward off the places my thoughts are drifting to. But as sleep takes me, my brain doesn’t listen. It never does.
Under the moonlight, I pace by the Humvee, my boots kicking up sand with every step. We are kilometers from base. From anything. Abby sits in the rear passenger seat, staring up at me through her swollen eyelid, her feet dangling out the side of the SUV.
“Are you sure you want to be here for this?”
“If you’re doing this, we’re all doing this,” she counters, her eyes flitting over Damon, Gunnar, and Jagger standing not too far behind me. The three of them standing overRobinson, Garcia, Jackson, Harris, Wright, Flores, and Baker as they finish digging their graves, literally. These men thought they could take what they wanted without paying a price, but they’re quickly learning it’s a debt they can’t afford.
“Okay.” I nod, giving a brotherly squeeze of her knee.
The knife in my hand is heavy, but I wield it without hesitation. I take the first man fast, pressing the knife to his skin and hearing the squelch when it gives way beneath my blade. Plunging deep, I cut Harris from navel to sternum. His body falls onto the harsh desert ground, life spilling from him and staining the sand beneath him a deep crimson.
His cohorts tremble beside him. Some watch in horror, others too scared to look up, and one prays to a God whose religion he apparently only adheres to when it relates to men. Harris gets off easy, bleeding out in minutes. The others aren’t so lucky. Their screams go unheard into the void as the moon crosses the night sky, as we use every tactic we know to draw information from the enemy. Only, they aren’t the enemy, and we already know everything we need to. This is about punishment. Vengeance. Penance for their crimes.
And God help me,everythingabout it feels right.
By the time the sun rises, our fatigues are no longer just stained with Mattis. They are saturated with the evidence of what we’ve done. The feeling of justice is fleeting. When I look at Abby, I’m still filled with rage. It didn’t end when they stopped breathing. It crawled inside me and took hold, readying to spill death on my life like I spilled blood in this desert.
The darkness follows me home, to Reese. And it steals the one thing I really wanted… A life with her as my wife.
“Chris…” A soft voice, barely more than a whisper, cuts through the darkness. The vividness of my dream fades slowly, but my fists are clenched so tightly my palms ache. “Chris, wake up…” My name trembles over her lips. “You’re talking in your sleep.”
Her hand touches my cheek, tentatively, shaking a little. My eyes snap open, and the tent comes back into focus, faint morning light bleeding in at the seams and Reese’s worried face hovering inches above mine.
For a second, I can’t move. The aftershocks of the nightmare still grip my body, my heart hammering hard enough I feel it under her palm, where sweat slicks my chest. “You were… saying something,” she whispers, tenderly brushing the damp hair off my forehead. Her eyes search mine, soft but guarded. “You sounded scared.”
I swallow hard, voice low and rough. “I’m fine.”
She doesn’t buy it.Of course she doesn’t.She’s seen me like this far more than I would like. “You’re okay,” she comforts, studying me for a long moment before laying her head over my hammering heart. This time, so is hers. That wasn’t the case every time she woke me; the one time I mistook her for a threat before waking fully. The night that drove me to leave.
We lie in silence, her fingers tracing aimlessly over the ink swirling across my chest as I collect my composure and find my breath. “You said…” she stammers with the uncertainty ofcontinuing her thought. “You said you were going to marry me.”
The air catches in my throat.
“Did you mean it?” She sounds fragile, like I just broke her heart again. “Or were you dreaming?”
I stare down at her, at the woman I never stopped loving, and feel the words crawl up my throat before I can stop them. “Yeah,” I rasp. “I meant it.”
Her face tips toward mine, and her eyes glisten in the dim light, but she doesn’t press. She just exhales quietly, her thumb tracing a line along my jaw like she’s memorizing me all over again. I catch her hand before it falls away, holding it against my chest as my pulse stutters beneath her fingers.
“Go back to sleep,” I whisper, my voice rough.
She nods, shifting closer until her temple rests against my collarbone, her breath warm on my skin. “I would’ve said yes.”
The cursor blinks on my laptop screen, the little line taunting me as I struggle to write this article.
It’s been three days since we found the grave. Three days of sleepless nights, digging through encrypted archives, hacking—and stealing—classified reports, and reading every obscure government record I can access from a tent in the middle of nowhere. Mattis—miracle-working, caffeine-addicted Mattis—is still with me, even from half a world away. He hasn’t slept much, either. If at all.
My eyes burn from staring at the bright screen, but I refuse to give up. Not when we are this close. Chris is sitting on the other side of the tent, watching over me and stewing. The tension is radiating off him. He is itching to say something, but whatever it is has him holding his tongue.
I click through another series of digital folders Mattis uploaded, scrolling past troop lists, shipment manifests, and coded internal memos. None of it makes sense until one small, innocuous line catches my attention:
Authorization Order 7072-PD. Signed: Gen. Phillip A. Pollock.
“Mattis,” I anxiously call his name, leaning closer to the screen. “You seeing this?”
