he was dead.
Would anyone answer at the number? Did he still have a staff of people working for the same things he had?
Anne pulled her phone out of her purse and stared down at the icon for her text messages. She didn’t want to look at them. Everything had been fine until she’d started receiving the texts.
She pulled up her contacts list and dialed the number Halverson had given her, not knowing if anyone would actually answer.
The line rang several times.
Anne was about to give up when the ringing stopped and a woman answered, “Hello?”
Not knowing what to say, Anne blurted, “I know John Halverson is dead, but I need help. He gave me this number and said to call if I ever needed anything. Please tell me you can help.” She stopped and waited for a response, her heart thudding, her gut clenched.
“This is John’s wife. Are you in a safe place?”
Anne nodded and then said, “For the moment, but this place closes in thirty minutes. I was being followed and I’m afraid to leave.”
“Stay there. I’ll have someone come to collect you.”
“But you don’t even know me.”
“You’re a human being in need of assistance. I don’t care who you are. I’ll have someone see you to your home or the police station. Wherever you need to go.”
“Thank you,” Anne said, sagging with relief. “I’m sorry for what happened to your husband. He was a good man.”
“Me, too. If he gave you his number, he would have wanted me to help you. Rest assured, I’m sending someone. Give me the address.”
Anne had to ask the bartender for the address. Once she’d relayed it to Mrs. Halverson, the widow insisted she stay on the phone until the person she sent arrived.
“That won’t be necessary. As long as I can remain in the pub, I’ll be all right,” Anne said.
“Then I’ll get right on it,” Mrs. Halverson said. “I’ll text with an expected time of arrival as soon as I have one.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Halverson.”
“Don’t call me Mrs. Halverson. I go by Charlie,” the woman said.
“Thank you, Charlie,” Anne said, correcting herself, and rang off.
A moment later, a text came across.
Jack will be there in twenty minutes.
That was a text Anne could live with, though she wondered who Jack was, what he looked like and what he’d be driving.
JACK SNOW HAD left his apartment in Arlington an hour earlier, too wound up to sit in front of a television and watch mindless shows or even more mindless news reports.
Much too jittery to find a bar and drink away the anxious feeling he got all too often since returning from deployment and exiting his Marine Force Recon unit, he climbed onto his Harley and went for a ride around the cities. He ended up in the Capitol Hill area near the war memorials. After the sun set, the crowds thinned and the lights illuminating the Lincoln Memorial made the white marble stand out against the backdrop of the black, starless night.
He’d ridden to the Korean War Memorial, parked his bike and stood near the nineteen steel statues of soldiers in full combat gear and waterproof ponchos. They appeared as ghosts, emerging from the shadows. Haunting.
They reminded him of so many operations he and his team had conducted at night, moving silently across rough terrain, like the ghosts of the men the statues had been modeled after.
His heart pinched tightly in his chest. It was as if he were looking at the friends he’d lost in battle, the men he’d carried out only to send home in body bags.
No matter how long he’d been separated from active duty, the images of his friends never faded. Often they appeared in his dreams, waking him from a dead sleep in cold sweat as he relived the operations that had claimed their lives.
He’d get out of his bed, dress and go for a ride on his motorcycle in the stillness of night, letting the wind in his face blow the cobwebs from his memories.
Tonight was different. He’d dreaded even going to bed. Tonight was the anniversary of the death of his high school sweetheart. Yet another reason to lose sleep.
He’d met Kylie in the eighth grade. They’d been together throughout high school and had big plans to go to the same college after graduation.
Though Jack had made it to graduation, Kylie had not. The weekend before the big event, they’d gone to the local mall. Kylie wanted a special dress to wear beneath her cap and gown. Jack had gone with her to help her choose.
That day, a man who’d been dumped by his fiancée days before their wedding had entered the mall, bearing an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle with a thirty-round magazine locked and loaded. Tucked into his jacket pocket was a .45 caliber pistol with a ten-round magazine. He’d come to take out his anger on his ex-fiancée working in a department store. But he didn’t end there. Once he started firing, he didn’t stop until he ran out of bullets in the rifle’s magazine.
Jack and Kylie had just left an upscale dress shop when the bullets started flying. Before they could duck back into the shop or even drop to the ground, the gunman turned the barrel of his AR-15 on them, firing indiscriminatingly.
Jack grabbed Kylie and shoved her to the ground, covering her body with his.
When the first volley of bullets slowed to silence, he looked up.
The rifleman fumbled with another magazine for the AR-15, dropped it and bent to retrieve it.
Jack didn’t stop to think about what he was doing. He lunged to his feet and charged the man before he could reload, hitting him with his best linebacker tackle, knocking him to the ground. The rifle flew from the gunman’s hands, skittering to a stop several yards away.
The man tried to reach for the handgun in his jacket pocket but couldn’t get to it with Jack lying on top of him, pinning him to the hard tile floor.
The mall security cop had dashed to the scene but hadn’t wanted Jack to move for fear the shooter would manage to get to his feet and regain control of his weapon.
The police had arrived shortly after, taking over from Jack.
That was when he’d turned to find Kylie still lying where he’d left her, facedown and unmoving.
She’d taken a bullet straight to her heart and died instantly.
Jack had been devastated.
Her death was the main reason he’d chosen to join the Marines rather than go on to college like many of his classmates. He needed the physical challenge to burn away his anger and the feeling he should have gotten her to safety sooner. He should
