Quiet chuckles broke out as Raffle flipped Taff off with a smirk. Beside him, Mimic lived up to his name bymockingly copying the action, to yet more laughter. I sat back and let the brotherly camaraderie wash over me.
I’d miss this. I would. These men had been my family for the past several years, and it’d be painful to walk away from them.
But not as painful as it had been to walk away from Ryan.
Thankfully, some of them would still be part of my civilian life. Losing Ryan had taught me to find ways to keep those I cared about close.
A lesson I’d give anything to have learned earlier.
We rolled to a stop, and I barked out our code word. “Pinecone.”
A meaningless word to anyone listening, but it held a clear order for our unit.Fall in line. Follow the chain of command. Quiet.
With the flick of a switch, every one of us morphed into someone else. Soldiers. Grunts. Albeit highly trained ones.
Our mission tonight was straightforward. Sweep the base for insurgents. Secure the perimeter. Collect any intel.
It was the kind of task we’d done a thousand times before, but as I stepped out into the darkness, something felt different.
The hair on my arms stood up as my gaze swept over the apparently deserted site. There was nothing to see. No evidence of human life.
The lingering sense of unease didn’t fade though. If anything, it grew worse.
“You feel that?” Max muttered as he stepped up to my side, squinting into the darkness.
Mimic appeared on my other side, uncharacteristically solemn. “I don’t like this one bit.”
I gave a clipped nod, speaking slightly louder so mywords carried to the rest of the unit. “Keep it fast and tight, boys.”
As sergeant, the responsibility for tonight’s mission rested on my shoulders. I’d risen through the ranks quickly. Almost as fast as Ryan had. Funny how, despite our different worlds, our lives still mirrored each other.
Max nodded, peeling off to the left-hand perimeter. Mimic, Treacle, and Warren followed. I didn’t look back as I moved to the right. I didn’t need to. Raffle and Taff would be there, watching my back, just as they always did.
Many men had come and gone over the years, but me, Max, Raffle, Mimic, and Taff were the core. Max and I had met Raffle and Mimic the first day of basic at Aldershot and we’d bonded immediately. The wound in Max’s and my friendship had been open and fresh at the time. The two others—Tom and Kieran, as we’d known them back then—hadn’t stitched it up, but they had held it together enough to stop the bleeding.
The four of us had met Taff when we’d been shipped out on our first tour in Iraq. With a tour under his belt already, he’d been assigned to show us the ropes. He’d approached the task with the attitude of an older sibling having to put up with their younger ones. Always with a sigh, like we were a mild inconvenience to have around.
It had triggered something I hadn’t realised existed—a knowledge that he was treating us how Max had once treated Ryan.
HowI’dtreated him.
I fucking hated it.
Difference with Taff was that he’d genuinely cared about us. While I’d obviously come to care for Ryan, that hadn’t always been the case, especially not during those early years of knowing the Davies twins.
I hated that most of all.
Taff’s training might have been begrudging, but he always knew when to push and when to hold back. When to toss a bucket of water over us if we overslept, and when to lie to our superiors so we could get some much-needed rest. He’d rubbed Raffle’s back while he puked, pulled Mimic from a dark place when his past came calling, and patched up Max’s nose when he drank too much and started trouble with the locals.
As for me? Taff had listened to my many drunken ramblings about the boy I’d left behind.
The man I’d prayed I’d get to return to.
Taff was the only one who knew. I mean, Raffle and Mimic knew there was someone called Ryan who was important to me. The whole unit did. With my tattoos and how often we’d had to strip in front of each other over the years, it wasn’t like I could hide it.
But only Max and Taff knew the truth of who he was to me.
My Shadow.
