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Chapter 1
Hunter’s mouth felt like it was full of cotton. He tried to return to consciousness, but his mind was foggy.
“Hunter! Hunter, wake up.” It was Trey’s voice. His oldest brother.
With effort, Hunter fought through the grogginess and tried to open his eyes. A sliver of sunlight blinded him, and he squeezed his eyes shut again. What was Trey doing here?
“C’mon, bud. Wake up.”
It was like he was in a jungle and the tendrils of the vines were alive. He tried to hack his way through, but with every vine he cut down, a new one appeared in its place.
“Come on, dude.” Something squeezed Hunter’s hand. Trey?
Where was he? He remembered being taken to the rally point in Serbia on the helicopter. His Bravo Team had gone in to help Trent’s Bravo Team, and the mission had been compromised.
“Trent,” he mumbled. The word came out exactly right in his mind, yet when he said it out loud, it sounded muffled and far away to his own ears. Again, he pushed himself to open his eyes. “Trent.”
That was better, more understandable.
“Hunter, you just focus on you. Just wake up.”
Trey. Why was Trey here?
Hunter already knew something was very wrong. Trent needed him. He couldfeelit. They were fraternal twins and best friends. “Trent?” he asked again, his voice still muffled and his mind hazy.
“Hunter, wake up.”
Hunter jolted to a sitting position, suddenly awake and alert as if a bomb had gone off, and his adrenaline kicked in. SEALs were trained for trauma. They were trained to act when the stakes were high. They were trained for hard things. “What’s going on?”
Trey grimaced and threw a hand toward the nurse. “Well, there ya go. He’s awake.”
As if sitting up had sparked his mind to life, Hunter turned a laser-like focus on Trey. “Where is B Team?”
This couldn’t be good. It was all coming back to him.
“We were taking fire, and Trent ran toward me like some kind of idiot. Before I knew it, he had taken a shot in his flak jacket. I pushed him down, then laid down fire and chewed Trent out for being such an idiot.”
Trey had his arms crossed. His face was closed off, a commander’s expression that gave nothing away. That blankness strengthened Hunter’s suspicion that something was wrong.
“Just say it,” Hunter snapped, cursing. “Where’s Trent?” His mind sought for answers like a missile seeing a target, but he couldn’t find one.
The stone-cold look on his brother’s face suddenly softened. “I have bad news. Brace yourself.”
This was the way they were taught to deliver bad news. Just warn the person, then tell them. Give it to them. It was better than prancing around it. Usually, if Hunter heard someone say something like this, he braced for death. He braced for loss. For pain.
Adrenaline spiked through him. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and ripped out his IV. If this were a superhero movie, he’d be Wolverine, claws out and ready for a fight. “Where is he?”
“He’s dead.”
The words clocked him in the face, sucker-punched him in the gut, landed an uppercut that sent him sprawling across the room. “What?” He staggered back as if he’d been physically hit and grasped at the bed. He was woozy and confused, and the confusion of the war tumbled over him. He thought of his brother lying on the ground. “No. No. No. He wasn’t dead. The bullet hit his flak jacket. He wasn’tdead.”
“He’s dead.” Trey didn’t try to comfort him. He didn’t try to gather him and put him back together like some people would.
When Hunter tried to sit up, he saw Trey’s tight expression and a slight flutter of his eyes for the first time. A single tear slipped down his cheek. If his older brother cried, it would only be because of a nightmare like this.
Hunter swallowed back the nausea in his throat. He rushed at Trey, shoving him in the chest. “He’s not dead!”
Trey absorbed the blow. “He’s dead.”
