Chapter 1 - Three Feet Away
I hit the concrete and screamed, "Rex, stay!"
Colonel Marcus Hale rushed forward and saw a black training baton beside my shattered knee.
Three shallow scratches had been carved into its handle.
XIII.
This wasn't a training accident.
Pain has a strange way of changing time.
One second, I was standing in the center of Training Bay Four with twelve soldiers watching me demonstrate a close-quarters disarm. The next, something struck the side of my right knee with enough force to turn the entire room white.
Before I could fall, the second strike came.
Left knee.
A hard crack.
Then concrete.
My name was Captain Mara Vance, and I had spent eleven years learning how to function while injured, frightened, exhausted, or outnumbered.
None of that training prepared me for the feeling of realizing both of my legs were no longer obeying me.
I tried to push myself up.
My arms worked.
My legs didn't.
That frightened me more than the pain.
The masked man stood above me.
He wasn't one of ours.
At least, he wasn't supposed to be.
Training exercises at Fort Calder sometimes used masked aggressors so soldiers would focus on movement rather than identity. But every instructor had a colored identification strip around one wrist.
This man had none.
Around us, twelve members of Falcon Unit had gone completely still.
Sergeant Cole Mercer stood closest to me. His hands were half raised, as though his brain couldn't decide whether to attack or help.
Lieutenant Ava Brooks stared at my legs.
Someone behind her whispered, "Jesus."
The masked operative turned toward them.
"Nobody moves."
Something in his voice made my stomach tighten.
It wasn't fear.
It was recognition.
Several of them knew him.
I looked from face to face.
Cole wouldn't meet my eyes.
Ava looked terrified.
Staff Sergeant Daniel Ruiz had gone pale.
That was when I understood.
Whatever was happening hadn't begun when the baton hit me.
It had begun long before I entered the room.
The attacker crouched.
His black mask revealed only his eyes.
Cold eyes.
Familiar eyes.
He leaned close enough that I could smell coffee on his breath.
"Stay down, little girl."
I heard a low sound behind him.
Not a bark.
A warning.
Rex.
My Belgian Malinois stood three feet away.
Eighty pounds of muscle, discipline, and loyalty.
His ears were forward.
His body had become completely still.
Most people misunderstood working dogs. They expected rage to look loud.
With Rex, the opposite was true.
The more dangerous he became, the quieter he got.
I had trained him for four years.
I knew every movement.
The slight lowering of his head.
The weight shifting onto his front paws.
The fixed stare.
He was waiting for one thing.
Permission.
The masked man hadn't noticed him.
He was too busy looking at me.
"You're finished," he said.
I swallowed against the pain.
"Am I?"
He smiled beneath the mask.
Then he raised the baton again.
Rex moved.
I never gave the command.
He didn't attack the man's throat.
He didn't lose control.
He did exactly what he had been trained to do when his handler became physically incapable of issuing instructions.
He intercepted the threat.
Rex launched forward and clamped onto the attacker's baton arm.
The man screamed.
The baton hit the floor.
Every soldier in the room reacted at once.
"Rex!"
"Hold!"
"Weapon!"
The attacker tried to shake him loose.
That was a mistake.
Rex tightened his grip.
The man stumbled backward.
Colonel Hale entered through the north doors with two military police officers behind him.
"What the hell happened?"
Nobody answered.
Hale saw me.
His expression changed instantly.
"Mara."
He crossed the floor.
"Don't move her," Ava warned. "Both knees may be compromised."
Hale knelt beside me.
For twenty-three years, Marcus Hale had been the kind of officer who could watch chaos unfold without showing emotion.
I had never seen his hands shake.
They shook now.
"Who did this?"
I looked toward the masked operative.
Rex had released him after Cole finally gave the command.
Two soldiers restrained the man.
"Take off his mask," Hale ordered.
Nobody moved.
Hale looked around.
"I said take it off."
Cole stepped forward.
The masked man suddenly laughed.
It was quiet.
Almost amused.
"You really don't want to do that, Colonel."
Hale stood.
"Remove it."
Cole pulled the mask upward.
I stopped breathing.
The man's name was Major Grant Kessler.
He wasn't supposed to be at Fort Calder.
He wasn't supposed to be in the country.
According to the briefing I'd received six weeks earlier, Kessler had been killed during a classified operation in Eastern Europe.
Yet there he stood.
Alive.
Bleeding from Rex's bite.
Smiling at me.
Hale stared.
"Kessler?"
"Hello, Marcus."
The use of Hale's first name changed the room.
Hale walked closer.
"You were declared dead."
Kessler shrugged.
"Paperwork is a wonderful thing."
Military police moved to handcuff him.
Kessler didn't resist.
Instead, he looked at me.
"Ask her."
Hale frowned.
"Ask her what?"
"Why we broke her knees instead of killing her."
The room went silent.
My pulse accelerated.
"We?"
Kessler smiled.
That single word had slipped out deliberately.
He wanted me to hear it.
He wanted me to understand there were others.
Hale turned toward me.
"Do you know what he's talking about?"
"No."
Kessler laughed again.
"Liar."
Rex growled.
"Easy," I whispered.
His eyes flicked toward me.
Good boy.
Stay controlled.
The medics arrived.
They cut through the fabric around my knees.
One of them swore under his breath.
"Captain, we're going to stabilize both legs."
"How bad?"
"We need imaging."
"How bad?"
He hesitated.
That hesitation told me everything.
Kessler watched from across the room.
I refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing fear.
As the medics worked, Hale picked up the baton.
He examined it.
Then his thumb stopped.
"What is that?"
He turned the handle toward the light.
Three scratches.
Except they weren't random scratches.
They formed Roman numerals.
XIII.
Thirteen.
Hale's face changed.
I saw it.
"You recognize it."
"No."
"Colonel."
He looked at me.
"Marcus."
That was the first time I'd used his first name in uniform.
His jaw tightened.
Before he could answer, Kessler spoke.
"She deserves to know."
"Shut up."
"Eleven years serving you, and you still haven't told her?"
Hale crossed the room so quickly two soldiers stepped aside.
He grabbed Kessler by the vest.
"Told her what?"
Kessler smiled.
"About her father."
Everything inside me went cold.
My father, Captain Elias Vance, had died when I was nine.
Helicopter failure.
Training accident.
That was what I'd been told my entire life.
Hale had served with him.
He was the reason I joined the Army.
Kessler looked directly at me.
"Your father didn't die in a helicopter."
Hale punched him.
Hard.
Kessler hit the floor.
"Colonel!" Cole shouted.
Hale stood over him.
"Get him out."
Military police dragged Kessler toward the doors.
He twisted around.
"Mara!"
I looked at him.
"Ask Hale about Unit Thirteen!"
The doors closed.
Silence.
Every face turned toward Colonel Hale.
I stared at the scratches on the baton.
XIII.
"What's Unit Thirteen?"
Hale didn't answer.
The medics lifted me onto a stretcher.
"Colonel."
His eyes met mine.
For a second, I didn't see my commanding officer.
I saw the man who had attended every birthday after my father died.
The man who taught me to shoot.
The man who handed me my commission.
The man I trusted more than almost anyone alive.
And he looked afraid.
"Mara, not here."
"Then where?"
"Hospital first."
"Tell me."
He leaned close.
"Your father discovered something he wasn't supposed to discover."
My throat tightened.
"What?"
Hale glanced toward the twelve soldiers.
"Not everyone in this room is who you think they are."
The medics began rolling me away.
Rex walked beside the stretcher.
At the doors, my phone vibrated inside my vest.
Ava pulled it out for me.
Unknown number.
One message.
DON'T LET HALE TAKE YOU TO THE MILITARY HOSPITAL.
A second message appeared.
YOUR FATHER SURVIVED THE CRASH.
Then a photograph loaded.
A gray-haired man sat behind a steel table.
Older.
Scarred.
Alive.
My father's face.
May you like
Below it were four words.
HE IS WAITING DOWNSTAIRS.
