Ray shook his head, planting his boots firmly on the floorboards.
“I'm not leaving without you. Not this time.”
“You have to.”
“You disappeared on me once, you son of a bitch. I’m not losing you twice.”
Thomas almost smiled, a tragic, broken expression.
“Then this time, if you make it out, you know where to look. Read the files.”
Ray grabbed Thomas’s forearm in a vice grip.
“No. We fight our way out. Together. Just like Fallujah.”
Ranger suddenly barked viciously toward the front window, the fur on his spine standing straight up.
A heavy boot stepped onto the wooden porch outside. A shadow crossed the window blinds.
Marcus drew his blade fully, moving silently to flank the front door. “Someone's on the porch, Ray. Multiple tangos in the tree line.”
Thomas pushed his hand harder against Ray's chest, trying to force him backward toward the hall.
Ray stared at the man he had mourned for two decades. His mind was screaming. There were a thousand questions he desperately needed answered.
Who had forced Thomas into hiding?
Who exactly was outside right now, risking a noisy hit in the American mountains?
And why, after twenty agonizing years of silence, had Thomas finally decided the truth could no longer remain buried?
A knock sounded at the front door.
Three slow, deliberate, perfectly spaced taps.
*Knock... Knock... Knock.*
Thomas went completely, terrifyingly still.
Ray noticed something change instantly in Thomas’s expression. The tactical readiness faded, replaced by a cold, sickening realization.
Recognition.
“You know who that is,” Ray said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper.
Thomas didn't answer. He just stared at the heavy oak door as if he could see through the wood.
Another three knocks. Slower this time. Taunting.
Ranger bared his teeth, letting out a low, rumbling growl from deep in his chest.
Thomas looked at Ray, his eyes welling with unshed tears, then down at the bulge of the envelope in Ray’s vest.
“Get in the cellar, Ray. Please. If they see you, you’re a loose end. They will kill you, and they will kill Marcus.”
Ray held his ground, unmovable as a mountain.
“I'm not leaving without you.”
Thomas's eyes glistened in the dim light.
“You always were a stubborn bastard, Hammer.”
“So were you.”
For one brief, transcendent second, standing in the gloom of the cabin with death knocking at the door, they were nineteen-year-old soldiers again. They were standing in the motor pool, arguing beside a broken diesel engine as though they were invincible, as though there would always, inevitably, be another morning.
Then the porch board creaked loudly under a heavy boot.
Thomas looked toward the door, raising the Glock.