Page 9 of Rangers Last Promise

I knew he was dying.

He knew it too.

Promise me.

“I promised,” I say to the empty office.

I kept that promise the only way I knew how.

From a distance.

Over the years, I made sure Mara was okay. I knew when she graduated from high school. When she completed the police academy and joined the Eagle River Sheriff’s Department. I knew when her father died and when her mother became ill.

But I never contacted her.

I never interfered in her life.

Grant’s family blamed the Army for his death. Mara looked at every Ranger at the funeral as if we had abandoned him on the battlefield.

Maybe we had.

I was the medic.

Grant died beneath my hands.

The promise didn’t give me the right to walk into his family’s life and force them to look at the man who failed to save him.

But someone has put Mara in a rifle scope.

Distance is no longer protection.

I open the bottom drawer of my desk and remove the black metal box I’ve carried through eight moves and three states. The key hangs on the chain beneath my shirt beside Grant’s dog tags.

The lock opens with a soft click.

Inside are copies of mission reports, photographs, maps, and the bloodstained scrap of paper Grant shoved into my vest before we entered the valley.

Three numbers and a name.

The numbers are coordinates.

The name belongs to a man who died eleven years ago.

At least, that’s what his death certificate claims.

I believed the betrayal died with him.

I should have known better.

I close the box, put it inside my duffel bag, and reach for the jacket hanging behind the door.

“Shaw?”

Rick Dalton, the facility director, stands in the doorway. He looks from the overturned chair to the bag in my hand.

“I have to leave.”

“We have a certification course starting tomorrow morning.”