“Thank you, sir.”
“No, thank you, Fletcher. Good men are hard to come by out here.” He paused for a second, glancing back down at his intel papers. “You know, out of the two of you, I was always sure your brother would be the one to build an exemplary military career for himself, Ronan. Don’t get me wrong. You were always an excellent soldier. You’d never have made it to captain otherwise. But when Sully left, you really began to shine. I suppose sometimes a man needs to step out of his brother’s shadow in order to show his true colors, hmm?”
Five months later, I was on my back in a desert just outside of Kabul. My body was burned, my lungs raw from smoke inhalation, and Colonel Whitlock was calling me a crazy bastard, ordering men to get me onto a chopper before I bled out and died.
On the other side of the world, Magda was giving birth to my nephew. His name was Connor. On his birth certificate, under the section titled “father,” a nurse in bright pink scrubs, exhausted from a fourteen hour shift, wrote the name Sully James Fletcher in neat blue ink.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Trigger
The funeral was gray and grim. The sun never seemed to stop shining in California, but somehow the world was a dark, black place, and the cheerful weather couldn’t do anything to change that.
Mom hadn’t stopped crying. I hadn’t stopped either. It was all too much. Dad was gone. Sully had been dragged off by the military police, and no matter how many times I’d called to find out what was happening with him, no one would tell me anything. Eventually I found out that he was being held at Camp Haan Army base in Riverside, and that he was awaiting a hearing. I still couldn’t believe any of it.
Impersonating a commissioned officer. That’s what the soldier had said when they arrested Sully at the airport. There was no way he had impersonated a commissioned officer. No fucking way.
We held Dad’s wake at the restaurant. Half of the neighborhood turned up to bid my father farewell. We drank, we ate, and we told stories. The afternoon was bittersweet—a true homage to a wonderful, kind and generous man who had touched so many people’s lives. My aunt, Simone, organized absolutely everything. She was a godsend. She greeted everyone at the church. She coordinated everyone, making sure they knew where and when to show up for the wake. She arranged the flowers. She made sure everyone was comfortable and had enough to eat and drink. She corralled people away from Mom and me whenever it looked like we were on the brink of total breakdown (which was often). Without her we would have been lost.
As the day was winding down, I busied myself collecting plates and glasses from the restaurant, trying to keep my head—it was lovely that so many people had come to show us their love and support, but I really couldn’t take another person telling me how sorry they were for my loss. I was carrying a stack of plates through the back into the kitchen when I saw a tall, bird-like figure dressed in black, stood apart to one side.
Robert Linneman.
He gave me a small, sad wave when he saw me. What on earth was he doing here? I put down the load I was carrying and made my way over to him. “Mr. Linneman? You came here for my father’s funeral?” Even as I was saying it, I knew it made no sense.
Linneman shook his head slowly. “No, Miss Lang, though I was terribly sorry to hear of your loss. I also have to apologize for showing up here like this, but I came on Mr. Fletcher’s request.”
“Sully? You’ve seen him?”
“Yes. I’ve represented both Sully and Ronan for a very long time now. I represented their father before them, too. Anyway, I was called and informed of Sully’s situation. I’ve been out here trying to resolve the matter for a couple of days now. Sully asked me to bring this letter to you. Against my advice, I might add.” He held out a small envelope, which looked like it had once been sealed and then ripped open again.
Linneman sighed when he saw me brush my fingers against the torn edge of the envelope. “Yes, unfortunately the military police did read it before I could take it off the base. I’m afraid the contents of Sully’s letter probably haven’t done his case any good.”
I took out the letter and began to read. It explained everything. As I read, eyes scanning quickly over the pages Sully had written to me, things began to make a lot more sense. At the same time, they were far more confusing, too.
“So…Sully was the one who pulled those men out of the wreckage, not Ronan?”
Linneman nodded.