Mateen’s lower lip wobbles. He runs to me, crawls into my lap, and regards my sister with wide, watery eyes.
“Oh,mon chou, Auntie Noele did not mean to frighten you. Everything is all right.” I rub his back, rocking him gently. “You can go back to drawing.”
He shakes his head. “I’m hungry. Can I have another corndog?”
My laugh brings a lightness to my chest I have not felt in years. “That depends. Did you eat all your fruit at breakfast?”
“Uh huh. Even the yucky ‘taloupe,” he says, looking so serious, I fight my smile.
“Well, any boy who suffers through cantaloupe for breakfast should get whatever he wants for lunch. Say goodbye to your friend, and we will go back to your room and look at the menu, okay?”
As soon as he climbs off my lap, I lean closer to Noele. “We will talk more when Mateen has his scans this afternoon. Until I find a way to tell him about his father, no one else can know.”
* * *
Nomar
Major General Austin J. Pritchard, in full dress uniform, stands when I walk into his office at Fort Liberty. Medals and awards line his bookshelves, along with photos of him with the President, Vice President, and half the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“About damn time.” He tucks a folder under his arm and heads for the door. “Follow me.”
“Listen, Pritchard, I got on the damn plane. The least you could do is tell me what the fuck is going on.”
“I could say the same thing to you,” he calls over his shoulder. “Hurry up. If you keep him waiting, POTUS will have both our asses.”
The President? Fuck.
Three turns later, Pritchard shoves through the door to an empty conference room.
“So much for POTUS waiting onme. Why am I here, Pritchard? I’m retired. Or didn’t you get the memo?”
He takes a seat near the head of the table, and points to the chair next to him. “Men like us don’t retire. You know that.”
The bitter edge to his voice sets me off. “Men likeus?We arenothingalike. You sit in your plush leather chair in your private office, drinking ten-dollar coffee your secretary brings you whileIgo after terrorists, drug runners, and rapists, then spend a month cleaning sand out of everything I own. Which isn’t much.”
He levels me with a stare that warns I’m on thin ice. “I did my time until my brother…died. So when I had a chance to get out, I took it. Don’t be a dick because you stayed in the field all these years. You knew what you were doing.”
Pritchard’s holier-than-thou attitude usually drives me up a fucking wall. But he’s right. I could have retired. Gotten some cushy consulting gig. Maybe even an appointment like his.
“I didn’t know about your brother,” I say, stifling my wince as I drop down into the chair.
“Only half a dozen people in the world know. And it’s going to stay that way. We clear?” His blue eyes narrow on me.
“Crystal. So what’s the deal in Kabul?” If he suspects I was involved in Faruk’s death, I could be in a world of hurt—or prison—before the end of the day.
“Cut the crap, Nomar,” Pritchard says. “You and I both know where you spent the past week. Getting Faruk’s wife and son—along with one Dr. Josephine Taylor—out of Afghanistan. And if you say one goddamn thing about it to any of the men about to enter this room, I will personally shitcan you so fast, you won’t know what hit you.”
Fuck. I need to warn Ford. But before I can pull out my phone, the door opens, and the President of the United States walks in. He’s followed by the CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations and another man I don’t know.
Pritchard and I both snap to attention. Technically, I haven’t been on “active duty” for more than ten years, but some things are beat into you. “Mr. President,” Austin says. “You remember Nomar Garcia?”
“Unofficially, yes.” President Campos unbuttons his suit jacket and takes his seat at the head of the table. “On the record, I’ve never seen the man before. He’s not here in this room right now.”
Of course not. Because I’m a ghost.
“Amir Abdul Faruk. His name ring a bell?” the President asks, his gray eyes locked on me.
“One of the biggest human traffickers in Afghanistan. He also runs drugs, weapons, cash. If it’s illegal, he’s got a hand in it. I’ve had run-ins with his men a time or two over the years.”
