PART 2 — THE RECORD THEY LEFT BLANK
Holloway froze with his hand above the register. Lyle kept his palm on the page until the sergeant stepped back.
“Close the book,” Lyle said. “And not another word about a dead soldier.”
Holloway stared at me. “You're saying the story isn't true?”
“I'm saying you should have checked before repeating it.” Lyle looked toward...
Part 2
My breath caught in my throat as General Kesler closed the distance. The crowd parted for him like the Red Sea. Constance was speed-walking behind him, her heels clicking frantically on the polished concrete.
“General! The press is waiting—” Constance started, her voice shrill with panic.
He ignored her completely. He stopped dead exactly three feet in front of me....
PART 2 — THE HELMET THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN GONE
I hadn't heard that call sign spoken with such disbelief in years.
“General,” I said, straightening instinctively. “Sir.”
Howard Kesler turned toward me. His eyes were on the thin scar beneath my hairline, then back on the helmet. “I thought that helmet was gone.”
“So did I.”
Constance hurried over, her heels clicking furiously....
Part 1
My name is Rowena Vance, a twenty-four-year-old clinical research analyst in Chicago, and right now I am choking on my own blood at the bottom of our foyer staircase.
Seconds ago, my upper spine slammed violently into the sharp edge of the mahogany stairs, the sickening crack of breaking bone echoing off the ceiling like a gunshot. Blinding agony...
Part 1
The sickening snap of my ribs against solid mahogany was the last sound I heard before my world flipped upside down.
My name is Rowena. At twenty-four, I spent eighty hours a week crunching clinical trial data under fluorescent hospital lights, surviving on black coffee and stubborn ambition while sleeping on a sagging cot in my parents' damp basement....
Part 1
My name is Rowena, and at twenty-four, working eighty-hour weeks as a clinical data analyst, I never imagined my own home would become an active crime scene. The air in our suburban Connecticut foyer was freezing at two in the morning, smelling faintly of lemon cleaner and old wood. I had stepped out of the basement—where my parents...
PART 2
The blaring emergency tone stopped as abruptly as it had started. The red screen on the massive TV above the bar shifted, revealing the sleek, urgent graphics of a global news network. The banner at the bottom read: BREAKING: MASS EVACUATION COMPLETE IN WEST AFRICA.
My mother turned around, squinting at the screen. The entire bar fell dead silent.
The...
PART 2 — THE BOX BEHIND THE BAR
“Lieutenant Colonel Rachel Novak,” the anchor said, “helped lead an evacuation that brought more than eleven hundred civilians to safety.”
I stared at the screen. The footage had been filmed two weeks earlier, but I could still feel the elderly woman's trembling fingers in mine. The camera caught me helping her across the...
Part 2
I didn't say a word to my mother. I didn't look at Doug. I stepped right over the scattered quarters and dimes on the wooden deck, grabbed the bright orange float coat the petty officer tossed to me, and zipped it up.
"Sit-rep, Petty Officer," I barked, my tone shifting instantly from exasperated daughter to the Captain of the...
PART 2 — THE STORM AND THE SECOND SECRET
For one heartbeat, nobody spoke. Even Mom seemed to understand that forty-one missing people mattered more than her joke.
“Current positions?” I asked the lieutenant.
“Scattered across the racecourse. Several boats have capsized. Sector's tried reaching you for two hours.”
“My phone's in a drawer,” I said. “Get me a life jacket and the...
