Restricted components.
Optical systems.
Encrypted radios.
Hardware that should never have been outside a secure facility.
Someone was selling our equipment to the people trying to kill us.
We transmitted the discovery.
Two hours later, our position was attacked.
Not randomly.
Precisely.
Machine-gun fire from one ridge.
Mortars from another.
The enemy knew every approach.
Every exit.
They knew where our medic was positioned.
They knew where we would move if the east wall collapsed.
My closest friend, Staff Sergeant Michael Larkin, died in my arms.
Rex was hit protecting the rest of us.
The cache burned during the fighting.
The investigation went nowhere.
The official explanation was simple.
Enemy forces had captured American material from other battlefields.
Bad luck.
Coincidence.
Case closed.
I never believed it.
Neither did Larkin.
Thirty minutes before he died, he had told me something.
“Jack, this didn’t come from outside.”
“The equipment.”
Gunfire cracked above us.
He leaned closer.
“Somebody brought it from home.”
Then the attack began.
I had buried those words with him.
Now, standing in a sheriff’s department parking lot six years later, Rex was smelling the same chemical residue on a tracker attached to my truck.
Cross handed the device back to me.
“We need federal authorities.”
Emily laughed bitterly.
“That’s what people around here always say.”
“What does that mean?”
She stared toward the darkened road.
“People have disappeared in this county for four years.”
Cross frowned.
“People?”
“Drifters. Truckers. A mechanic who worked near the old quarry. A deputy who started asking questions.”
“Where’s the quarry?”
“Seven miles east.”
Rex looked east too.
We should have called someone.
Instead, we made the kind of decision people later describe as reckless because they weren’t standing there when it happened.
Cross drove.
Emily sat in front.
Rex and I rode in the back.
The road narrowed as we left town.
Trees closed around us.
No streetlights.
No houses.
Only headlights stretching over cracked asphalt.
“Tell me about the quarry,” I said.
Emily stared through the windshield.
“My father worked there.”
“Worked?”
“He disappeared four years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“They said he ran away.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“My father had never missed Sunday breakfast with my mother in twenty-eight years.”
Her voice stayed flat.
“He didn’t run.”
Cross glanced at her.
“Why were you still working at the diner?”
“Because Butch drinks when he talks.”
That answered everything.
“You were watching them.”
“For four years.”
“You should have gone to the FBI.”
“I did.”
“And?”
“Nothing happened.”
Cross tightened his grip on the wheel.
“Who did you contact?”
Emily named an office.
Cross and I exchanged a look.
He knew something.
“What?” I asked.
“That investigation was assigned to military liaison.”
My stomach dropped.
“Who?”
He stared ahead.
“General Adrian Vale.”
The name hit me like cold water.
General Vale had been at Rex’s ceremony that afternoon.
He had shaken my hand.
He had scratched Rex behind the ears.
And he had said something I hadn’t considered important.
Drive safe, Mercer. Long road south.
“How did he know I was driving south?”
Cross said nothing.
I remembered the tracker.
The phone call.
Butch.
The sheriff.
We weren’t following the conspiracy anymore.
We were moving exactly where someone wanted us to go.
“Stop the car.”
Cross looked at me in the mirror.
“Stop.”
He braked.
Gravel cracked beneath the tires.
I opened the door.
Rex jumped out beside me.
Emily followed.
“What are you doing?”
I stared into the darkness.
“This is wrong.”
Cross stepped out.
“What is?”
“Everything.”
I pointed back toward town.
“They tracked me from the base. They paid Butch to provoke me. Harlan arrived before anyone called him. Then you magically appear and get me released.”
Cross’s face hardened.
“Careful, Jack.”
“Who called you?”
“I told you—”
“No. You told me you got a strange call.”
Silence.
Cross looked at Emily.
Then at me.
Finally he said, “Vale.”
Emily slowly backed away from him.
I stared at my former commander.
“General Vale called you?”
“When?”
“After you were arrested.”
“How did he know?”
Cross didn’t answer.
My hand moved instinctively toward a weapon that wasn’t there.
Rex stepped between us.
“Jack,” Cross said quietly, “listen to me.”
“I’m listening.”
“Vale told me you’d been arrested. He said you might have stumbled into something connected to the old investigation.”
“And you believed him?”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I needed to know whether he would move.”
Cross took a slow breath.
Then he reached into his jacket.
I moved.
“Easy.”
Cross withdrew not a weapon, but a folded photograph.
He handed it to me.
The image was old.
Six years old.
Taken in Afghanistan.
Our team standing beside a helicopter.
Larkin.
Me.
Cross.
Three others.
Rex sitting in front.
Someone had drawn a red circle around Larkin.
On the back were three words.
HE FOUND IT FIRST.
My throat tightened.