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Zak was married to Sheriff Ash Rawlings’ twin sister, and they were good friends. He knew just about everything that went down in and around town.
Or maybe they all knew because… he, himself, had known. Hadn’t he? Three days ago, when another day came to a close with no survivors found, he’d felt it. Like a stone lodged in his chest. The hard, cold certainty that Rhiannon wasn’t coming back.
Izzy had only confirmed for him what they all had already known.
“Rylan.” Concern was etched deeply into Zak’s sharp features. “You don’t have to be here.”
“I need to…” His voice came out rough, the words scraped from deep in his chest. He trailed off and cleared his throat. “I need work, distraction.”
Anything to drown out the silence.
But he didn’t tell them that because he was supposed to be the steadfast foundation of their team.
Always the goddamn rock.
Donovan reached over to pat his shoulder in silent support.
Lucy offered him a kind smile, her eyes welling up with empathy. “I’m sorry about your sister, Rylan.”
Sawyer slipped an arm around Lucy protectively. “We all are.”
He didn’t want their sympathy. He wanted normality. A semblance of routine. Something to occupy his mind and keep the encroaching shadows at bay.
He looked down at the documents on the table. “What are we looking at?”
Zak studied him for a moment too long before finally nodding and pulling out a chair for him. “Sawyer was about to brief us on Pierce’s background.”
Yes, this was exactly what he needed. He could throw all of his focus at finding Pierce St. James and ignore the pain of knowing?—
No.
He couldn’t think of Rhia dead at the bottom of the ocean or under a pile of rocks.
Not yet.
He dropped into the offered seat. “Did you find something interesting?”
“Interesting is an understatement.” Sawyer gently set Lucy away from him before rolling his chair over to the large desk filled with several computer monitors. His seeing-eye dog, Zelda, was asleep under the desk, and he gave her a quick ear scratch before waking one of the computers. “Okay, so since we kept hitting dead ends in our search for him, I decided to go back and dig into his background…”
“And?” Zak prompted when Sawyer trailed off.
Sawyer turned in his seat and looked toward Zak’s voice. He shrugged. “And he’s a ghost. He doesn’t exist. There was never a Pierce St. James in the army in Iraq when he claims he was there.”
Rylan blinked in surprise at that news. “Impossible. There’s no way he wasn’t there. Or, at least, in combat somewhere. His trauma—he couldn’t fake that. It was too real.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen his panic attacks,” Zak added. “If he was faking those, he deserves an Oscar.”
Sawyer nodded and turned back to his computer. “Exactly what I was thinking. Hewasin the military, and I know he was injured because we met at the military hospital in Germany right after I lost my sight. So… I broke a few laws and hacked thehospital’s records.” He pressed a key on his braille keyboard and projected his monitor onto the wall screen.
A military ID appeared. The man in the photograph had the same sharp jaw and focused intensity as Pierce. His dark blonde hair was neatly trimmed, his uniform pristine. Yet there was a lightness to his eyes that didn’t exist in the man they knew today, and he didn’t have the ragged scars on his throat.
“What the fuck?” Donovan muttered and stood up, moving closer to the screen.
Sawyer motioned toward the ID with a flourish. “Meet Chief Warrant Officer Jameson Pierce. He was an engineer on something called Project Iron Horizon. Can’t get any details on that without breaking several more laws. It’s highly classified. After his injury, he was sent to the hospital in Germany, where we met.” He frowned. “I only ever knew him as Pierce, and I guess I just assumed it was his first name. I never asked for his full name.”
“Hey,” Lucy said and crossed to him, running a soothing hand over his hair. “You had just lost your sight. You can be forgiven for not asking for details. You had your own trauma to deal with.”
He smiled at her and caught her hand, bringing it to his lips before returning his attention to the briefing. “According to official records, Jameson Pierce died in the hospital. His official status with the military is KIA. He disappeared, and Pierce St. James didn’t exist until two years later when he was involuntarily admitted into the Milvian Bridge Rehabilitation Center outside Stockton for drug and alcohol dependency. That’s when I met up with him again. He had my contact information, and they called me when he was admitted.”
