When he turned his piercing gaze on Hunter, training and habit had Hunter sitting straighter. “And what about you, Major Jackson?” Meadow’s deep voice was tinged with curiosity. “When you think about your career so far, what do you envision for your future?”
Hunter could’ve prevaricated or given the standard response.“I’m a military man through and through. I plan to keep on keepin’ on climbing those ranks, sir.”But, like the ranger, he went with the unvarnished truth. “To be honest, I don’t think much about yesterdayortomorrow. Yesterday is full of shit…” He winced. The military was known for cursory cursing. Sometimes he forgot to sensor himself around civilians.
“Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “What I should’ve said is yesterday is full of things I’d just as soon forget. And tomorrow may never come, so there’s no use wasting my time on it.”
“Mmm.” Meadows nodded and then continued around the table, asking each man a slightly different question, and getting back the same kind of response.
When he got to the end of the line, he sat back in his chair, steepling his fingers under his freshly shaved chin. “I have a proposition for you gentlemen.” His tone made the hairs on Hunter’s arms stand on end. In dread or anticipation, he couldn’t say. “I hope each of you will seriously consider it.”
Hunter listened intently to the chief of staff as he offered them a deal that seemed almost too good to be true. And when Meadows finished his pitch, silence cloaked the room. The only sound to break it was thehumof the air conditioner and thethudof Hunter’s own racing heart.
Exhaling slowly, he practiced box-breathing and felt the beginnings of…maybe not excitement, but something a lot like it.
1
Starke County, Indiana
Three and a half years later…
“Some nights are so dark the dawn seems impossible.”
The words Grace Beacham’s father spoke to her that awful evening her husband filed for divorce came back to her as she used the outdoor spigot to wash the blood from her hands. Hands so shaky she could barely perform the task. Hands so pale the brightness shining from her lit cell phone screen made the skin appear translucent. She could see her veins snaking beneath her flesh like holding a leaf up to the sunlight.
Her father had been talking about the depths of her despair and the weight of her failure. But now she felt the simple truth of his words.
If she believed that text message, this moonless night may very well be her last.
Rubbing her wet hands on her thighs, she snatched her phone off the ground and forced herself to look at the screen again. Hoping the text had magically disappeared.
No such luck.
Who would think six little words could have terror weighing her down until her body felt like a bag of wet concrete?
Orpheus is hunting you. Run. Hide.
“Who’s out there?”
When the porch light snapped on, she thumbed off her phone and crouched next to the bushes. They still had a few late summer blooms, and the smell from the flowers was sickeningly sweet.
She’d been sure no one was home. The house had been dark. There’d been no cars in the gravel drive. No bark of a dog on the lookout for trespassers.
“I heard the water running!” the raspy voice called again. “I know you’re there. Show yourself!”
This command was followed by a sound Grace would recognize anywhere. For as long as she could remember, her father had carried a Glock 22. The weapon made a very specific metallicshnickwhen a round was chambered.
Damnit!
“FBI! Don’t shoot!” She thrust her hands in the air at the same time she stood to her full height. When the yellow porch light beamed into her eyes, she squinted and scolded herself for stopping.
It’d take a full minute for her eyesight to adjust to the darkness after this. And on such a night, a minute could be the difference between life and death.
A ratty terry cloth robe covered the man who stepped through the open front door of the creaking old farmhouse that was nearly as bent and grizzled as he was. The few tufts of snow-white hair atop his liver-spotted head waved gently in the warm breeze.
The end of August in the upper Midwest was a capricious creature. Sometimes it held onto summer with tenacious fingers. Other times it slipped quickly and quietly into fall.
This August was shaping up to be one of the hottest on record.
As if on cue, a bead of sweat cut through the dust on the side of her face. The warm drop reminded her of the blood she’d washed into the man’s flowerbed. How hot it’d been when she pressed her hands over the wound in Stewart’s back. And then how quickly it’d turned cool and dried into a sticky crust that had stained her cuticles and coated the undersides of her fingernails. The iron-rich smell of it had made her retch anytime she’d breathed too deeply.
