Page 377 of Rangers Unexpected Return

I take another drink anyway.

It’s six thirty in the morning, and I’m sitting alone at a table in the back corner with my laptop open, a cup of coffee beside my elbow, and a photograph of a dead man staring up at me.

Nathan Donovan.

My best friend.

My brother.

The man I watched walk away from a firefight in Afghanistan with blood running down his face and a grin on his mouth because the bastard had just dragged my ass behind cover.

The man who supposedly lost control of his truck on a dry stretch of Colorado highway two years ago and drove straight through a guardrail.

I don’t believe it.

I haven’t believed it from the day they called me.

I lean back and stare at the photograph.

Nathan is standing beside me outside a barracks at Fort Carson. We were both younger, meaner, and stupid enough to think we were indestructible.

His arm is thrown across my shoulders.

I’m scowling.

He’s grinning.

Pretty much sums up our entire friendship.

“You’re still ugly,” I mutter.

“Talking to dead people this early in the morning?”

I close the laptop before I look up.

Colin Shaw walks toward me carrying a coffee mug. Everybody around here calls him Doc. I knew him years ago, though not nearly as well as Nathan did.

Doc drops into the chair across from me.

“You always sneak up on people?” I ask.

He takes a drink. “You heard me.”

Yeah.

I did.

I just didn’t care.

My eyes move toward the front windows. Eagle River is waking up outside. A pickup rolls slowly down Main Street. Somebody across the road is unlocking a hardware store. A woman walking a little white dog waves through the window.

Doc waves back.

Of course he does.

Four days.

That’s all it took for me to figure out this town is unlike any place I’ve ever been.