Chapter 2 - THE MESSAGE WAITING WHEN I LANDED
General Hale helped arrange compassionate emergency leave and put me on the first available military airlift heading stateside.
Two men from my old unit were already scheduled to rotate home.
Jonah Reyes.
Malik Turner.
They changed their onward travel plans before I ever asked.
Fourteen hours later, our aircraft descended through gray Virginia rain.
The moment my phone found a signal, messages flooded in.
The first came from the hospital.
Emily stable after surgery.
I finally breathed.
Then an unknown number sent a photograph.
Emily’s hospital room.
Taken from outside her door.
My stomach dropped.
A second message appeared.
WELCOME HOME, SOLDIER.
Jonah leaned over.
“Problem?”
I showed him.
Malik’s expression changed.
Then Jonah looked through the airplane window.
Two sheriff’s cruisers were parked beside the military terminal.
Waiting.
The aircraft had not even stopped moving.
Malik muttered:
“That’s not subtle.”
I felt something dark rise inside me.
Jonah saw it.
“Blake.”
“I know.”
“No, listen.”
He waited until I looked at him.
“We didn’t come with you to help you kill somebody.”
“I know.”
“We came because you shouldn’t have to walk through this alone.”
That mattered.
More than I admitted.
The ramp opened.
Cold rain blew inside.
We stepped onto the tarmac.
Two deputies stood beneath the terminal awning.
One older.
One perhaps thirty.
Neither touched his weapon.
The older deputy held a folder.
“Blake Dean?”
“That’s me.”
“Deputy Hal Ferris.”
He nodded toward the younger man.
“Cole Bianchi.”
I stopped.
“Cole?”
“No relation to the sheriff.”
Bianchi looked irritated that the clarification had become necessary.
Ferris held out the folder.
“We’re not here on Sheriff Nathan Cole’s orders.”
Jonah shifted half a step closer to me.
“Then why are you here?”
Ferris looked exhausted.
“Because I saw your wife brought into St. Jude’s.”
Rain ran down the brim of his hat.
“And I’ve spent three weeks pretending I didn’t see what came before it.”
He opened the folder.
Inside were dispatch logs.
Vehicle-assignment sheets.
Copies of radio traffic.
Two names had been circled.
Cameron Voss.
And:
Travis Cole.
I looked up.
“The sheriff’s nephew?”
Ferris nodded.
“Travis isn’t a sworn deputy.”
“What?”
“He was never certified.”
“Then why was he driving a sheriff’s cruiser?”
Ferris looked toward the pavement.
“Because his uncle gave him a badge wallet, radio access and an auxiliary designation that should never have existed.”
I stared at him.
Ferris continued.
“Everybody knew.”
“Why didn’t anybody stop it?”
His answer was simple.
“Richard Voss.”
Cameron’s father.
“Voss donated vehicles. Equipment. Campaign money.”
Ferris’s jaw tightened.
“And somewhere along the way, our department stopped remembering who we were supposed to work for.”
A woman in a dark raincoat approached from across the service road.
She displayed a federal badge.
“Mr. Dean?”
I turned.
“Special Agent Dana Price.”
She looked at Ferris’s folder.
Then at me.
“The corruption around your wife’s assault is bigger than Cameron Voss.”
May you like
And ninety minutes later—
the FBI intended to prove it.
