She folds her arms. “I’m not staying behind.”
“Not a debate.”
“Oh, it’s absolutely a debate,” she fires back. “You said you wanted to know what happened. I was there. You weren’t. You need me.”
Damon chuckles under his breath. “She’s got a point.”
I shoot him a glare. “You’re not helping.”
He shrugs. “Wasn’t trying to.”
Reese’s jaw sets stubbornly, and I can already feel the headache building from the fight she’ll put up to get her way.Iused to enjoy her fire.
“Fine,” I mutter finally. “But you stay on my hip. You don’t move unless I say so.”
Her lips curl in that smug way that has always driven me insane. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
By the time we’re rolling out, the sun is high enough to fry eggs on the Humvee hood. Heated air ripples from the sand, and the desert stretches endlessly, unforgiving in every direction.
Reese sits in the back seat, camera slung across her chest, window down, and unruly curls whipping in the wind. “So, Hawk,” she says, out of the blue, leaning forward from the rear passenger seat. “What do you think this is?”
“Wrong,” I mutter. “I think something about this is wrong.”
“How wrong?” Gunnar asks from the turret seat above us.
“The kind where everything looks fine until people are shooting at my ass.”
No one argues with that.
We reach the village in a little less than an hour. It’s eerily still, rows of buildings that are in dire need of upkeep and dust drifting in lazy spirals through the barren streets. A couple of goats graze near a broken cart, but otherwise, nothing. No people. No movement.
Reese is the first to speak. “It’s here. I swear it was full of soldiers.”
We move in formation, with Reese tucked between the four of us, sweeping the perimeter. My senses are on high alert, every sound and flicker of a shadow making my finger twitch on the trigger.
Jagger muses, “This place looks dead.”
Damon crouches near a patch of disturbed dirt. “No shell casings. No tracks. Like no one’s been here in weeks.”
Reese’s frustration spikes. “That’s impossible. I was here two days ago.”
When I glance at her, sweat beads at her temple, but her eyes are steady, fierce. “You sure it was this village?”
“Yes.” She points down a narrow alley. “That’s where they shot at me. I was hiding behind that wall.”
We move closer. The wall she’s pointing to is pitted with age, cracked and sun-bleached. No bullet holes. No blood. No sign of a struggle.
Jagger looks at me, brows lifted. “You seeing what I am?”
“Nothing,” I say flatly.
Reese runs a hand through her hair, muttering, “No, no, no. It’s not possible. I saw them. Isawher body.”
“It could’ve been cleaned up,” Damon argues gently. “If it were a hit squad, they’d want to erase it fast.”
“Butthisfast?” Gunnar adds from behind us. “This place looks untouched.”
I crouch beside the wall from Reese’s photograph, combing my fingers through the sand. There is no sign of any blood, but it’s so dry from lack of rain that a quick raking could have easily concealed it.
