Page 264 of Broken Oath

Then gunfire.

Blood.

Smoke.

Men screaming over the comms.

The mountain burning around us.

I shoved it all back into the locked room in my mind where I kept the dead.

There would be time for ghosts later.

Right now, we had a mission.

Sarah stood across the room with her arms folded tightly over her chest.

Her eyes hadn’t left Wade’s photograph.

The image was grainy and several years old, but it was enough.

Her brother.

Alive.

After five years of wondering.

Five years of imagining what had happened to him.

Five years of visiting a grave that should never have existed.

Her father stood beside her, but there were miles between them.

His grief was quieter.

Older.

He had spent five years trying to protect Sarah from hope because hope could destroy a person when it was taken away too many times.

Now he had proof that his son was alive.

And the knowledge might have been worse than the uncertainty.

“They’re running out of reasons to keep him alive,” he said.

Sarah flinched.

The room froze.

We had all been thinking it.

Hearing Wade’s father say it made the threat real.

I turned toward him.

“For five years, they needed something,” he continued. “Information. A location. A name. Whatever Wade’s team uncovered before they were captured.”

He pointed at Wade’s photograph.