"Sabine?" He sounds surprised and confused, and his eyes flick between her face and mine while he tries to process what he's seeing. "What the hell are you doing here? I heard you went AWOL and MPs are looking for you."
"I need to talk to you, Everette." Sabine keeps her voice calm, but I know how intense she probably feels under the surface."It's about Captain Bryan and what happened to our unit in Afghanistan. I know you know the truth about what he did, and I need your help to make sure he answers for it."
He sighs and looks up and down the street as he closes first his car door and then his trunk.
"We should talk inside." His eyes flick to me, and I give him a stern expression. I'm not beyond putting a bullet in this guy's head too if I think he's gonna try something fishy.
16
SABINE
Istep over the threshold into Everette's duplex and the smell of pumpkin spice hits me first, followed immediately by the low hum of a football game on the television somewhere deeper in the house. The warmth wraps around me after the biting cold outside but does nothing to loosen the knot twisted tight in my stomach.
Ham-dog looks almost exactly the same as he did two years ago. Only, now the smile wavers at the edges, and his eyes keep flicking between me and Jace standing silently behind me. Defense must've issued a memo to everyone whose information I accessed warning them, and I don't like the vibe he's giving off.
He closes the door behind us and gestures toward the living room with one hand while the other rubs the back of his neck nervously. He always did that when he was anxious or felt cornered, and a nervous man is an unpredictable man. But that's why I have Jace with me. I lower myself to the worn lower sofa where a half-finished beer sweats on the coffee table next to a bowl of orange-frosted cinnamon rolls still in their plasticgrocery sleeve. Looks like Thanksgiving breakfast for a single soldier who drew the short straw on leave.
“Sit if you want,” he says to Jace, but neither of them moves to join me. Then Ham-dog says, “You said this is about Afghanistan. Start there.”
Jace moves to the corner of the room, back against the wall, arms folded, watching everything without a word. Everette's eyes track him but then focus on me again. He's loosening up.
“Whitlock in a car wreck,” I begin, forcing the words out steady. “McAllister fell down stairs. Navarro hit-and-run. Tate electrocuted in his bathtub. Frank overdosed. Dempsey beaten to death in his own kitchen… All made to look like accidents, Ham. But none of them were."
Hamilton’s face goes through stages—disbelief first, then recognition as the names sink in, then something darker. He sinks onto the arm of the couch and stares at the carpet.
“I saw a couple of those headlines,” he mutters. “I just thought it was a cluster of bad luck." I know how he feels. I went through those same emotions when I first learned of it. The first few felt gut wrenching, like losing an old friend—because some of those guys really were my friends. Then the rest started happening, and there was no way to unsee that pattern.
“It’s Bryan,” I say. “He’s cleaning house. Every single person who was on that op two years ago is either dead or marked.”
He lifts his head sharply. “You’re telling me the captain is putting contracts out on his own soldiers?”
“I’m saying he already has. The man who was sent to kill me is standing in your living room right now.” I tilt my head toward Jace without taking my eyes off Hamilton.
Hamilton’s gaze snaps to Jace again, lingering this time. I see my former colleague switch into alert mode, assessing Jace as a threat now, not just my companion. When he looks back at me, the nervousness has turned into something closer to fear.
“What's going on, Hart?”
“Ham…" I say hesitantly. I can see he's ready to snap and I speak to him like he's a kindergartener. "Bryan was in the wrong, and we both know it. You watched him kill those women, all because he didn't want anyone to see his failure. He wasn't even supposed to be on that mission. It was supposed to be Staff Sergeant Rodriguez."
My neck hurts—that ultra-tight stress pain that promises a massive headache to come. And watching Everette wrestle with this only makes things worse. In my mind, he should be immediately wanting to help, but I know how a man's ego and pride play into the choices he makes. It's why all of them went along with Bryan back then. None of them wanted to be the nark.
“I didn’t want blow-back, you know,” he mumbles. “I sure as hell don’t want it now. I’ve got four years left to retirement and a clean record. I kept my mouth shut when we got home because nobody was listening anyway.”
“Nobody’s asking you to rewrite history,” I tell him. “I’m asking you to stop the next six funerals. Mine included. Yours included.”
He stands abruptly and paces to the window, pushing the curtain aside to stare out at the snow and put more distancebetween himself and Jace whose body goes rigid instantly. I wave Jace off and watch Hamilton toil internally. His reflection stares back—tight mouth, clenched fists.
“If I come forward, they’ll bury me,” he says to the glass. “Dishonorable discharge, Hart. Prison even… I can't do that. My family would get nothing.”
Now I'm standing, moving toward him because I can't just sit. How can he dare talk about not coming forward? How is his life more precious than the souls Bryan murdered? They deserve justice.
“If you don’t come forward, you get a closed-casket ceremony nobody talks about.” I step close enough to see the pulse jumping in his neck. “You can't escape it, Ham. Your name is on his list, and even if my friend here doesn't do it, someone else will. He wants you silent. That's why you have to talk."
Hamilton turns slowly to face me but his eyes are glassy with a glaze of alcohol and emotion. His hands are turned to fists, though I don't fear him with Jace standing right there. But I see the beginning of Ham's heart turning. I can't let up now.
“He didn’t stop at threats, Ham,” I tell him coldly. If I allow myself to feel right now, I'll break down, and the last thing I want is to cry in front of him.
“After you and the others left the tent that night, he zip-tied my wrists, dragged me to the supply shed, and raped me on a stack of sandbags while he recorded it on his phone. He told me if I ever spoke up again, the video would go to my chain of command with a story that I’d traded sex for a favorable fitness report. That’s how he buried my statement and that’s how he kept all of you quiet.”
