“We went back to Carver’s apartment. Vance kept replaying the clips. He was laughing at first.”
Hale’s breathing quickened.
“Then one of the videos caught my face.”
“What about it?”
“I wasn’t laughing anymore.”
Maya leaned closer.
“He noticed.”
Hale nodded.
“He sent Nash out for more alcohol. Then he started asking questions about me. About where I’d been going after duty.”
“What happened next?”
“I left.”
“You remember leaving?”
“Yes.”
“And after?”
Hale squeezed his eyes shut.
“I got to my truck. Somebody came up behind me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t see them?”
“No.”
“Anything else?”
Hale opened his eyes.
“One sentence.”
Maya waited.
“They said, ‘You should have remembered what happened to Holt.’”
Her skin went cold.
“Daniel Holt?”
Hale nodded.
“My father never believed Holt’s death was an accident.”
Maya sat perfectly still.
Officially, Daniel Holt had died during a training mishap six months after the Red Lantern mission.
Vehicle rollover.
Mechanical failure.
No enemy action.
No criminal findings.
Maya remembered hearing about it and feeling the strange grief reserved for people you had saved only to lose later anyway.
“What did your father believe?”
Hale’s voice dropped.
“That Holt was going to report something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“Hale.”
“I swear.”
His eyes filled.
“My father said Holt came home different after Afghanistan. Angry. He kept saying somebody had left men behind that night on purpose.”
Maya felt the floor disappear beneath the chair.
“Who?”
“He never said.”
Hale looked toward the door.
“But the last person Holt called before the crash was Derek Vance.”
The words hung between them.
Maya thought of the photograph.
The wrecked helicopter.
Vance bleeding into the dirt.
Holt refusing morphine.
Eight kilometers through darkness.
And now a dead Ranger twelve years in the past had reached into the present.
Hale gripped her wrist suddenly.
“There’s more.”
“What?”
“Locker 118 wasn’t mine.”
Maya frowned.
“The message said—”
“I know what I wrote.”
His fingers tightened.
“I said locker 118 because that’s where Vance keeps the Brotherhood records.”
Maya’s eyes narrowed.
“But investigators found only the photograph.”
Hale nodded slowly.
“Then somebody reached it before they did.”
“Who had access?”
Hale looked directly at her.
“Only four people.”
He named Nash.
Carver.
Vance.
Then himself.
Maya stood.
Hale caught her sleeve.
“Chief.”
She looked down.
“If Vance realizes you were on Red Lantern…”
“What?”
Hale’s voice cracked.
“He won’t be scared of what you remember.”
Maya waited.
“He’ll be scared of what you don’t.”
Chapter 4: THE RECORD INSIDE THE RECORD 001
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