Page 10 of Rangers Last Promise

“Get Peterson to cover it.”

“Peterson is in Houston.”

“Then call Bailey.”

Rick steps into the office. “What happened?”

I pick up my keys. “Family emergency.”

He blinks.

In the five years I’ve worked with him, I’ve never used those words. I don’t take vacations. I don’t call in sick. I don’t talk about family because I don’t have one.

Not anymore.

“How long will you be gone?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”

I walk past him.

“Is someone hurt?”

Not yet.

The words follow me through the building, down the back stairs, and into the parking lot.

Not yet.

But someone took that photograph close enough to put a bullet through Mara’s heart.

The next one might.

I throw my duffel into the back of my truck and pull up a number I haven’t called in fifteen years.

Wolf answers on the fourth ring.

“Last Stand Tavern.”

For one second, I’m twenty-eight again, standing beside him in the Afghan dust while he argues with Grant over whose turn it is to clean the weapons.

His voice is deeper now. Rougher.

But it’s Wolf.

“Wolf.”

Silence.

Not the ordinary kind.

This silence is filled with gunfire, graves, and fifteen years of questions neither of us wants to answer.

“Who is this?”

He knows.

I hear it in the way his voice changes.