Chapter 2 - THE DEAD MAN’S MESSAGEBy noon, everyone on base knew something had happened on the training yard.
They didn’t know the whole story.
Military installations are excellent at protecting classified information and terrible at stopping rumors.
By lunch, I had apparently been a CIA assassin, a hostage rescuer, a general’s secret daughter, and—my personal favorite—a former prisoner who had escaped a foreign black site using a spoon.
None of that bothered me.
What bothered me was the phone in my locker.
General Grant ordered Colonel Pierce to suspend Marcus from instructor duties pending an investigation. Marcus was escorted away without looking at me.
I should have felt satisfied.
I didn’t.
I changed into a replacement blouse and sat alone on a wooden bench inside the women’s locker room.
My phone rested in my palm.
The message was still there.
YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT ME.
The number belonged to Captain Nathan Cole.
Raven Six.
Dead for eighteen months.
At least according to the government.
According to me too.
I had watched the mountainside explode underneath him.
I had heard his final transmission.
“Go, Emily.”
Then static.
Then nothing.
I had spent eighteen months learning how to live with that nothing.
Now someone was using his number.
There was another message beneath the first.
YOU LET THEM CALL ME A TRAITOR.
I stopped breathing.
Nobody outside Raven Team knew about the accusation.
Not even most of the investigators who had questioned me afterward.
Nathan had been accused of compromising the operation because somebody transmitted our extraction coordinates over an unsecured channel sixteen minutes before the ambush.
His access code appeared in the transmission log.
The official investigation concluded that Captain Cole had either made a catastrophic mistake or deliberately revealed our location.
Nathan died before he could defend himself.
I never believed it.
Neither did Reyes.
But the government sealed the report.
Families were given medals.
Speeches were made.
Raven Team disappeared.
I typed two words.
WHO IS THIS?
The answer arrived immediately.
ASK GRANT ABOUT HOLLOW RIDGE.
My blood went cold.
The locker-room door opened.
General Grant entered, followed by Colonel Pierce.
Pierce stopped awkwardly.
“Carter, do you have a minute?”
I stood.
General Grant noticed the phone in my hand.
“What happened?”
I gave it to him.
He read both messages.
His expression changed at the second one.
Then he reached the third.
Hollow Ridge.
General Grant slowly looked up.
“Where did you get this?”
“Three days ago.”
“And you didn’t report it?”
“I thought it was someone trying to scare me.”
“Were you scared?”
“No.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I met his eyes.
“Yes.”
Colonel Pierce looked confused.
“What’s Hollow Ridge?”
Grant handed the phone back.
“Something we should discuss privately.”
“Sir, with respect, this is my installation.”
“And with respect, Colonel, you don’t have clearance.”
That ended the argument.
Grant gestured toward the door.
“Come with me.”
Twenty minutes later, we were inside Pierce’s office with the blinds closed and two military police officers stationed outside.
Grant stood at the window.
“Hollow Ridge was never part of your mission briefing.”
“I know.”
“It was a secondary site six miles northeast of your extraction point.”
“What was there?”
Grant didn’t answer immediately.
“An intelligence relay station.”
“Ours?”
“Yes.”
That surprised me.
“Why wasn’t Raven Team told?”
“Because officially it didn’t exist.”
I laughed once.
No humor in it.
“Neither did we.”
Grant ignored that.
“The relay station intercepted communications from several hostile networks. Two days before your mission, analysts discovered evidence that someone inside our command structure had been feeding information to the enemy.”
“Who?”
“We never proved it.”
“Then why is someone messaging me about Hollow Ridge?”
Grant turned.
“Because the compromised transmission that exposed Raven Team didn’t originate from Nathan Cole’s equipment.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“We discovered that four months after the operation.”
The room tilted slightly.
“You knew Nathan was innocent?”
Grant’s jaw tightened.
“We knew there were inconsistencies.”
“You let his family believe he betrayed us.”
“We had no choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
“Not when exposing the truth could have compromised an ongoing counterintelligence investigation.”
I stepped toward him.
“Nathan had a six-year-old daughter.”
“I know.”
“She grew up thinking her father got people killed.”
“I know.”
“His wife moved away because reporters were standing outside their house.”
“Carter—”
“No.”
My voice rose.
“I carried Nathan’s blood on my hands for six miles, General. I listened to him ask me to tell his daughter he loved her. You don’t get to stand there and say you know.”
Grant absorbed it without defending himself.
That made me angrier.
Finally, he said, “Nathan Cole was officially declared dead because we found enough biological evidence at the blast site to establish presumed death.”
“Presumed?”
That word caught me.
Grant saw it.
“No body was recovered.”
I had known that.
The explosion had collapsed half the ridge.
We couldn’t reach him.
But military casualty officers had assured us DNA evidence confirmed he couldn’t have survived.
I looked at my phone.
“You think he’s alive.”
“I think someone wants you to believe he is.”
A knock came at the door.
One of the MPs entered.
“Sir, we found something you need to see.”
He carried a small padded envelope.
“No return address. Delivered to the south gate this morning.”
My name was handwritten on the front.
EMILY CARTER.
The MP placed it on the desk.
Grant opened it carefully.
Inside was a metal identification tag.
Dog tags.
My stomach turned before I even touched them.
NATHAN J. COLE.
Below his name was his service number.
I rubbed my thumb across the dent in the metal.
I remembered that dent.
Nathan had caught the tag against a helicopter door in Syria and complained about it for weeks.
These weren’t reproductions.
They were his.
There was also a photograph.
Four men standing outside an abandoned concrete building.
The image was grainy and probably taken from a distance.
Three faces were unfamiliar.
The fourth made my knees weak.
Nathan.
Older.
Thin.
A scar crossed the right side of his face.
But unmistakably Nathan.
A newspaper was visible in another man’s hand.
Grant picked up the photograph.
The date on the front page was six weeks earlier.
Colonel Pierce swore under his breath.
I stared at Nathan’s face.
Eighteen months of grief collapsed inside me.
He was alive.
Or had been six weeks ago.
On the back of the photograph were coordinates.
Grant recognized them.
“Hollow Ridge.”
My phone vibrated.
A new message.
COME ALONE OR THE TRUTH DIES WITH ME.
I reached for my jacket.
Grant blocked the door.
“No.”
“Move.”
“You are not going anywhere.”
“If that’s Nathan—”
“It may be a trap.”
“Then it’s a very convincing one.”
“That is exactly what traps are supposed to be.”
I looked at him.
“You left him there once.”
Grant flinched.
“I won’t.”
For several seconds, neither of us moved.
Then Colonel Pierce spoke.
“Carter.”
I turned.
His expression had changed.
He was holding the photograph beneath the desk lamp.
“What?”
He pointed at the corner.
“There’s somebody else in this picture.”
A fifth figure stood partly hidden behind Nathan.
Only an arm and shoulder were visible.
On the wrist was a watch.
Black band.
Silver face.
A deep scratch across the bezel.
I knew that watch.
I had seen it that morning.
May you like
On the hand gripping my uniform.
Marcus Hale’s hand.
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