One September Morning

by Rosalind Noonan

Genres: Women's Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

The moment Abby Fitzgerald sees two soldiers approach her front door, she knows her husband is dead. John Stanton, who gave up his career as a star NFL running back to serve after 9/11, has been killed in Iraq. Suddenly Abby's kitchen is overflowing with casseroles brought by the army wives' club to which she has never really belonged. And her in-laws arrange a lavish funeral at Arlington National Cemetery in spite of Abby's misgivings. John had grown to hate the war even though he loved his country, and Abby can't reconcile the complex man she knew with the version being portrayed by self-serving politicians, military, and the media. Shell-shocked, Abby strives to cope with her own heartache while comforting John's loved ones, including his mother Sharice, his staunchly anti-war sister Madison, and his bitter younger brother Noah. But amidst her loss is a growing conviction that the truth about John's death is far from over. Gripping, thoughtful, and emotionally powerful, One September Morning is a story of loyalty and betrayal, of a shattered family's journey toward healing, and of the courage it takes to confront the truth not just about our enemies, but about those we love best.

Release date: January 1, 2009

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 516

Sample

Iraq, 2006

The king is dead.

Americans will no longer turn on their televisions to watch him run the ball through a pack of hulking football players, breaking free to lope into the end zone. Viewers of the nightly news will not see him in a combat helmet and desert khakis, flashing a smile and telling a reporter about a community program he facilitated to get school supplies for Iraqi children.

He won’t come bounding into the barracks to roust the guys for a race or to hand out the candy or nuts or clean cotton sheets he just received in a package from home.

No more soldiers gathering to bask in the presence of the king.

No more jokes from the big guy.

No more photographers aiming their cameras to capture the king in a battle stance, the almighty warrior.

The king is dead, slain with this weapon cradled in the hand of the man who knows him so well. Chee-ee-oom! He pumped the hero full of lead. That was all it took to bring the big man down.

Now the sweet, biting scent of oil stings his sinuses as the new king rams the cleaning rod down the barrel of his M-16, removing all traces of the crime.

Not that it matters, as no one has a clue that he fired off the rounds that spawned a flurry of gunfire in the dark Fallujah warehouse.

Nobody realizes he deliberately aimed and killed Army Specialist John Stanton, big-ass football player, All-American hotshot with a charmed life and a trophy wife.

Nobody knows that a new king will soon take Stanton’s place.

He checks the spring, and then lubes it—lightly. Oil it up too heavily and you’re in trouble—one of the tips he’s learned and heeded in military training. He learned from the best of them. His old man used to tell him, you never break the law unless you can get away with it. Well, he’s getting away with it now, and it feels damned good. He felt a surge of adrenaline when the bullets exploded from his rifle, a swell of satisfaction as the impact pushed the body back in the darkness. The first shot was nice and clean upper arm, in through the armored vest. Thank God for the NOD, the night operation device that illuminated hot spots, making it easy for him to find to his target.

Just like a freakin’ Xbox game.

And the sheer beauty, the perfection of the killing, is that no one will ever suspect him. Why would they? People thought they were friends, buds. No one could see the hatred he felt for John. The great John Stanton, football hero, patriot, and philosopher. Such a load of crap. John with his megabucks job, celebrity profile, beautiful wife. John with the picture-perfect family, the old man retired army, Mom a freakin’ saint, a brother who was his best friend, and a kid sister who idolized him. When you have it all, people adore you and want to give you more. But why should John have all those things when he has zippo?

Yeah, yeah, life is unfair. But nobody says you can’t make a few changes to even the score.

He fits the two parts of the rifle back together and replaces a pin. John’s death is just the first step in restitution. With the king out of the way, he can move in and scoop up some of the goods left behind. What guy wouldn’t want a piece of that wife…a place in the perfect family? And who knows, if he can get close enough he might have a shot at some monetary gain, too.

Rest in peace, Johnny boy.

And don’t worry about the good life you left behind. He smiles as he removes the soiled patch from the end of his cleaning rod. I’m ready and willing to jump in your boots.

Fort Lewis,
Washington Abby

It’s wrong to wish your life away.

Abby Fitzgerald knows that. Still, resting one hip against the porch rail that’s been painted over so many times it’s taken on a new, snakelike shape of its own, she wishes away a beautiful September morning. The green stretch of lawn, the yellow and orange mums bursting like a dozen suns in the community flower bed, the expanse of cerulean sky and Mount Rainier huddled on the horizon like a gentle giant—let them be gone.

Vanished.

Abby would trade them all for the grim, gray rain of December, the month her husband returns from Iraq. Gripping her hot teacup with both hands, she closes her eyes and wills away the day, the months…September, October, November, December.

Which does not work. When she opens her eyes, September reigns, dammit.

A few feet away, birds swoop onto feeders John tacked in place. Chickadees and house finches quickly snatch up black sunflower seeds, then bounce down to the bushes. At the saucer dangling from the porch overhang, the buzz of a hummingbird is slightly alarming, and Abby catches sight of the tiny bird just long enough to see the patches of iridescent violet on its head. Busy creatures. So damned chipper. She should follow their example—wake up and get to work. She needs a clear head to pull her notes together for tonight’s presentation.

But the dream absorbs her.

Last night, John seemed so real that it felt more like a visitation—a spark of contact with the warmth of his body—than a dream. Her mind replays the sequence, the sensation of John moving beside her, twisting the sheets away from her the way he always does, then flopping onto his side with a relieved sigh. Abby was so caught up in the ebb and flow of her own rhythmic breath beneath the quilt that it required great effort to open her eyes through the mask of sleep. But she did. She turned to him and observed him settling in beside her, his head a halo of dark hair, his broad back a wall of comfort for her as his solid body sank into the mattress.

The citrus scent of his aftershave clung to the bedding, and she heard him, too. Heard him calling her name, his voice a tidal wave washing through their small bedroom, breaking through her consciousness, then crashing into the street outside to resound over the neighborhood, the military base, the wide patches of green lawn and suburban sprawl that stretch north to Seattle and east to Mount Rainier.

“Abby,” he called, the tenor of his voice both heartbroken and exalted, and so heavy it rumbled the bed, shook the room, causing their wedding photo and the tiny porcelain bowls on the dresser to shimmy and clink. Abby recalls bracing herself for the earthquake, having experienced them a few times since moving to the Pacific Northwest. But it was only the ripple of her husband’s voice stirring the air.

Even as her eyes searched the dim landscape of her room, the wide expanse of pale sheets beside her, she knew John wouldn’t—couldn’t—be here. Of course not. He was on the other side of the world, where their night is our day and our day is their night. While she slept, the sun was already blazing over the desert plain of Iraq. Thousands of miles away.

And yet his presence felt so real.

“Just a dream,” Abby says aloud, for only the chickadees and nuthatches to hear. “Just a dream,” she reassures herself, knowing that it still can’t explain the vividness of the moment. The smell of sweet clove from his aftershave.

Or the warmth of her husband’s body beside her.

She’s not sure when she dozed off, but this morning she awakened to an empty bed and a beautiful morning. The golden September sun warmed the earth with one last sigh of summer, the air crisp and brash and bright. A gorgeous day, but Abby Fitzgerald has learned not to trust a beautiful morning. She’s seen tragedy dance in the arms of happiness, dance without missing a beat.

The morning her father was stricken with cardiac arrest, Abby was rolling on the grass of the junior high, playing Ultimate Frisbee with her gym class. The day John told her of his discontent with professional sports and his desire to enlist in the army began in Paris with a walk through a farmer’s market with all the color and texture of an Impressionist painting. And the most deceptive morning imaginable etched itself deep within her memory: the September day that dawned with a clear, blue sky over Manhattan five years ago, the morning she looked out from her dorm room and spotted smoke billowing from the North Tower of the World Trade Center across the harbor.

Digging her fingernails into the thick paint of the porch rail, Abby turns toward the kitchen. You can’t keep going back to that. If she’s losing her mind, she’s not about to go down without a strong cup of coffee.

While coffee brews, she flips open her laptop and checks her e-mail. Nothing from John, but then sometimes he is assigned to shifts that keep him away from the computer for extended periods. She dashes off an e-mail, telling him about the vivid dream.

I knew I missed you, she writes, but now I’m dreaming you into our bed. Sure sign that I’m losing my mind without you. December can’t come soon enough.

Although this is John’s second deployment to Iraq, this time the detachment feels more acute, the parting more intimate, and Abby still wonders how she fell into this role of military wife. It was not something she foresaw for herself when she was making plans, thinking she’d make very conscious choices, as if life were a route that could be charted on Mapquest. She’d never imagined saying good-bye to her new husband and trying to patch together a life on an army base with other women married to the military. Although Abby has always been independent and competent, this separation from the man she loves seems endless, as if she’s put her life on hold, sealed into an airtight container until the day of John’s return.

You’ve got your job to do, John e-mailed her when she mentioned her feelings. Remember the deal? Finish that master’s and study for the licensing exam.

The plan made perfect sense when John departed on the drab green bus. While he was gone, she would focus on her psych degree, finishing up her course work before embarking on clinicals. But she hadn’t expected to be distracted with worry, flipping on CNN, Nightline, the Today show in search of news that might involve John. Tuning in to NPR while driving. Naively, she’d thought it would end soon. Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad fell in 2003; wasn’t that the goal of the U.S. Army? They’d found no weapons of mass destruction. Recently, she’d heard a politician compare the use of force in Iraq to trying to fix a wristwatch with a sledgehammer. But the word was, our armed forces were in it for the long haul.

Outside, she lowers her laptop and books onto the table. Their yard backs up to a common area that John rallied residents to refurbish soon after they moved here. Japanese maples and boxwood shrubs were planted, a brick barbecue was built, and a play structure installed for children of all the military families housed here. “Don’t you think you should ask permission to do all this stuff?” one resident asked, squinting at John suspiciously. Abby sips her coffee, recalling John’s answer: “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.” Looking at the play structure, Abby can still see John drilling while Suz’s husband, Scott, kneeled on the ground with the level, ready to pour cement over the anchors.

Funny, but she can feel John’s presence here, too.

Now the scent of apple blossoms and September roses sweetens the air as Abby waves to Peri Corbett, who is mowing her lawn on the other side of the commons. Peri lifts one hand, then cautiously steers around a flower bed, and for the bazillionth time Abby wonders how the woman manages so well with three kids, and her husband deployed overseas. “You just do it,” Peri always says when she and Abby run into each other at the commissary and chat over fresh tomatoes or blocks of cheddar.

Abby sinks into a chair and drags the textbook into her lap. As if she has time to mope around and fantasize about making some telepathic connection with her husband. She’s got a Power-Point to write on solution-focused family therapy. This evening she is scheduled to present this approach to the rest of the class. She works steadily, spurred, as always, by the impending deadline. Having typed five bulleted points, she frowns, not sure where to go next.

“You know I love you, so you won’t mind my saying that you look like hell.” A familiar voice calls from the kitchen window of the attached duplex.

Her neighbor Suz.

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Abby replies to the dark window screen.

A moment later Suz appears at her back door, stepping onto the patio, hands on her hips. “I never sleep anymore, but that’s no reason to be nodding off at this time of the morning.”

It’s as close as Suz has ever come to complaining. In the four months since her husband, Scott, was killed outside the city of Baghdad by an IED, a roadside bomb, Suz has pushed herself, sometimes stoically, to “shut up and move on,” as she puts it. The army allows widows and their families to remain in base housing for six months after the death of the service member; Suz will need a new place by December.

“Where’s Sofia?” Abby asks. Suz usually keeps her three-year-old daughter within reach.

“Day care. I dropped her off for a full day today. Got some leads on apartments near here, and I figured I’d check ’em out without the mommy baggage. One of them’s supposed to have a hot tub,” Suz adds, an enticing lilt in her voice. “Want to come with and check ’em out?”

“I wish. But I’m beat. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

Suz tilts her head, the concerned mother. “You feeling okay, sweet pea?”

“Just hallucinating in my sleep. I dreamed John was in my bed last night.”

“A juicy dream, I hope.” Suz grins wickedly.

“It was sort of reassuring…except that it felt so real. I swear, when I woke up, there was a warm spot in the bed beside me. I could smell his aftershave on the pillowcase.”

Suz rubs her arms. “I’m getting goose bumps. Come with me and you can fill in all the details.”

“Can’t. I’m pulling some notes together for a presentation due tonight.”

“Well, you were in a funk when I caught you. You got to visualize success, honey.”

Abby reaches back and twists her hair into a loose knot. “Does that work for you?”

“Hell, I’m always too busy visualizing whirled peas. That and wrapping up dolls for a three-year-old. As of this morning, we’ve got another baby in the box.”

“Really?” Abby bites back a grin. In the past few months, three-year-old Sofia has insisted on having her baby dolls tucked into shoe boxes and wrapped up as if they were gifts, which she carries around in a large shopping bag. Abby suspects that the behavior has something to do with the loss of her father, but as she’s pointed out to Suz, it’s a harmless practice. “Maybe Fia is onto something,” Abby says. “I’m going to try that the next time I’m feeling blue. Wrap up something I own and give it to myself as a gift. Maybe carry it around for a few weeks so that everyone will know I’ve got something special.”

“Well, good luck with that,” Suz says. “’Cause my daughter has cleaned every last shoe box out of your closet.”

Abby smiles at her friend, who looks almost professional with her ginger-colored hair swept back with a skinny headband. She’s wearing a lime green tank with a matching polka-dotted sweater, a denim skirt and black polka-dotted flip-flops. “You’re all dressed up today.” When Suz works the counter at Java Joe’s, she sticks to shorts or jeans and a T-shirt. “What’s the occasion?”

“Just trying to look respectable for my potential landlords.” Suz yanks off the headband and shakes out her hair. “Respectable, but not loaded. Rents aren’t cheap around here.”

“True.” Abby is relieved that her friend wants to stay in the area. At first, she thought Suz might take Sofia home to Nebraska. Suz and Scott both enlisted years ago to “get the hell out of Dodge,” as Suz likes to say.

“I thought you were going to look for a place closer to Seattle?” Abby says.

“Yeah, I was, but those places are really expensive. I don’t know what to do. I’d sort of like to stick nearby and keep Sofia in the same day care. Continuity and all. But part of me wants to make a clean break and start over somewhere else.”

Abby nods, slipping her feet out of her sandals and hugging her knees. “Joe should give you a raise. You certainly deserve one.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not sure that Joe can afford me much longer. With Scott gone, I need a real job. A career. That’s the only way Sofia and I will get anywhere.”

“I like the way you’re thinking,” Abby says. “The way you’re always pushing ahead. You’re amazing, Suz.”

“Talk is cheap…a helluva lot cheaper than housing in the Seattle area. Besides, I’ve got a deadline breathing down my neck. The army wants me outta here in December, and with the holidays coming, it just complicates things for a move.” She slides the headband back into place. “You sure you can’t come along? I’ll buy you a latte.”

“Next time.” Abby leafs through the pages, searching for the chapter’s end. “And if I’ve got any say, I vote for the place with the hot tub.”

“Yeah, I’m going to need it for all those wild parties I throw…for three-year-olds.” She slides the patio door open. “Listen, I’ve got the sprinkler going out front, so’s we don’t get our own version of a dust bowl. Do me a favor and turn it off in, like, half an hour.”

“Got it.” Abby waves good-bye even as her eyes skim down a page of the textbook.

Talking with Suz has energized her, and she works more efficiently now, organizing the material, writing an outline for her presentation and inputting the presentation into the Power-Point format. When she’s done, she clicks on the Save icon, then notices the time in the corner of the screen.

“Damn! The lawn’s going to be a swamp.” Leaving her sandals on the patio, she clamps a textbook under one arm and races through the house and out the front door to find the sprinkler silently rotating. The lawn isn’t too soaked, though a puddle of excess water is now running over the sidewalk and down toward the street.

She steps off the narrow brick porch, gasping as her feet sink into the wet mulch behind a shrub John planted. Her fingers close over the handle of the spigot and twist toward the right. Right tight, lefty loosey. Out on the lawn, the fountain of water dies down as the sprinkler stops whirling. Straightening up, Abby wipes her hand on her shorts as a dark car rolls slowly up the quiet street. It’s not Suz’s boxy Volvo wagon, and not one of the neighbors’. She takes in the shiny black sedan, which slows and then parks right in front of her house.

Her focus sharpens on the two officers inside the vehicle—a man and a woman who exchange a word, then reach for their hats.

Their dress hats, she notes, as they step out in full dress uniforms, pants creased, shirts smooth and starched.

Abby is stung by adrenaline, alarm coursing through her. It’s the casualty notification team, the messengers all the army wives talk about, the sight every military wife dreads seeing outside her door.

Don’t panic, she tells herself. Maybe they’re John’s friends. Maybe someone you know on leave here, come to bring one of John’s creative personal greetings.

But she does not recognize their faces, and there’s no joke in the demeanor of this woman who stares down at her well-shined shoes, no animation in the face of this man who stands, jaw clenched, regret embedded in his eyes.

And suddenly, she knows.

She knows they bring her the absolute worst news.

“Are you Mrs. John Stanton?” the man asks.

She nods, feeling like an actress playing out a melodramatic scene. Despite the panic beating like a hummingbird’s wings deep in her breast, she wants to laugh it all off. This can’t be true. They must have the wrong information.

He gives his rank and introduces the female soldier, but it’s drowned out in the deafening roar swirling in her head and her acute awareness of bizarre details. The sergeant must have cut himself shaving this morning, and there’s a pinpoint of tissue stuck to the edge of his jaw. A flock of small birds rises from some nearby laurels. They circle, then return to their spot. The woman wears a ribbon that’s green and red, reminding Abby of Christmas. Home by Christmas, that’s what John keeps writing in his e-mails.

“Mrs. Stanton, it’s my duty to inform you that—”

“No.” The textbook slides from her grip to the wet lawn. She leans down and grabs it quickly, noticing the strangest details. The splatter of mud on her calves. A blade of grass stuck to the side of her foot. Two pairs of shiny dress shoes, facing her dirty bare feet.

It’s all wrong.

“Mrs. Stanton…”

She hugs the book to her chest, turns and lunges toward the door, hoping to find escape and safety in the house.

But he blocks her way. “It’s my job, ma’am,” he says, and, meeting his eyes, she sees that he’s not as old as she originally thought. “Mrs. Stanton, your husband was killed in the line of duty yesterday in Iraq.”

She presses her eyes closed, thinking how wrong it all is. She’s not Mrs. Stanton—that’s John’s mother. And John cannot be dead. Not the John she knows, the man with the charmed life. He’s always the lucky one.

It’s all wrong, but these soldiers are just trying to do their job, fulfill their duty to their country, just as John is doing…was doing?

“We’re sorry for your loss, ma’am,” the woman, lieutenant something, says quietly.

Abby lets the woman press the written notice into her hand, unable to stop the small cry that escapes her throat.

Iraq
Emjay

Corporal Emjay Brown is still in a daze when he steps into the orange light of the bungalow shared by eight soldiers. Despite the darkness outside, sunglasses shield his eyes against the curious gawkers who know that he was there, right beside John when he went down.

Another few inches and it would have been him.

Bam!

The slam of the door behind him sends him jumping out of his skin. His heart thuds in his chest, sweat trickling down his back.

And suddenly he is back in the warehouse, in the rapid hammer of gunfire, the muzzle-flash in the darkness, the alarm of John’s cries, and the blood…so much blood.

“Corporal Brown,” a leaden voice orders, and Emjay whirls, hands gripping his rifle.

“Lieutenant Chenowith, sir.”

“At ease,” the lieutenant says, as if he thought Emjay was moving to salute, which he wasn’t. The lieutenant removes his helmet to reveal a round mop of hair on the top, like a friar. Most guys in combat units shave their heads, best way to escape the vermin and bugs. Chenowith nurtures his grassy knoll, but it’s been a point of speculation among the platoon, some guys figuring he had rows planted in, others figuring he’s got some weird birthmark underneath, an inappropriate shape like a swastika or a dick.

“I’ve asked the others to assemble in quarters,” Chenowith says. “I’ll be addressing the platoon regarding my investigation.”

“Yes, sir,” Emjay says, and he waits for the lieutenant to pass, then follows him into the common room used for their quarters, the tiny bungalow where every inch is taken up with bunks, cots, desks, and small plastic tables and chairs, the kind they sell outside the hardware store back home in summer months for five bucks a piece.

This Forward Operating Base—FOB for short—is officially called Camp Desert Mission, though the men have dubbed it Camp Despair, because once you land in this bombed-out-highway town that is Fallujah, you’ve reached the end of the world. The base, rows of prefab bungalows that formerly served as a government retreat, sits on a desperate stretch of treeless terrain now encircled by sandbags and strung barbed wire. Although the officers were allotted more space, the rest of the platoon was packed into one bungalow—eight men sharing a space smaller than a chicken coop back home.

The Marines who were in here before nailed shelves into the plywood walls, and in the months since Bravo Company arrived, the walls have come to reflect the personalities of the men in the platoon, with pictures of half-clad girls taped to some walls, Christmas lights shaped like chile peppers to remind Lassiter of Texas, a Pacific Northwest calendar over John’s bunk, and a large mirror so Hilliard can check out his pumped muscles.

Emjay doesn’t like living in such close quarters, not at all, but he’s learned that opinions are worth shit in the army.

Doc looks up from the bag of licorice. “At ease!” he calls, as Lt. Chenowith enters the common room.

A card game is on at the table where Lassiter complains he’s got another losing hand. Doc returns to separating strands of cherry licorice, apparently part of a care package Antoine “Hillbilly” Hilliard just received from his wife.

Over in the corner, Spinelli, the greeny, remains prone on his cot, plugged in to his iPod. He must be pissed that his injury didn’t get him out of here, Emjay thinks. Spinelli can’t wait to get the hell back, back home to his mama—that’s what Doc says. But no one knows the kid’s whole story yet. Spinelli just joined the platoon a month ago, after they lost Spec. Willard Roland to a land mine. All they know is that he’s eighteen and lived with his mother, but Emjay knows that, eventually, Spinelli will spill. Everyone does.

The men playing poker pretend that they’re not tiptoeing around John’s brother, Spec. Noah Stanton, who sits on a bench organizing his gear.

Stone-faced and silent, as if sleepwalking, Noah splits his M-16 in two for cleaning. Cracked open like a Chesapeake hard-shell crab, the weapon seems useless, harmless, definitely not powerful enough to take down a big man like John.

Emjay goes to him, the elephant in the room. Trying to ignore the others who are pretending not to stare but watching anyhow, he squats down real close and whispers, “Sorry about John.”

Noah just nods, his dark eyes trained on his disassembled rifle.

Emjay wants to go on, wants to tell Noah that he was right beside John when he got hit, that the shots came out of nowhere because the power was out in the windowless warehouse and Emjay’s night-vision goggles weren’t working. Does Noah know that Emjay did everything he could to stop the bleeding? The blood…Christ, it was everywhere, smeared between his fingers, blossoming over John’s shirt so fast that Emjay knew it was real bad. Emjay wants to lean his head close to Noah’s and talk, really talk, but he doesn’t want Lassiter and Doc and the others listening, and besides that, Chenowith seems to be in the middle of some half-assed speech.

“Bravo Company lost a good man today,” Lieutenant Chenowith says. “Every casualty is a great loss, but I know you’ll all agree John Stanton was a special individual, a man of courage and moral strength, a leader and a fine soldier. He will be missed.”

Silence. Emjay lets his eyes run up to where the cheap plywood walls meet the ceiling. The air is charged with pain and alarm. Even Spinelli reacts, hunching over the side of his bunk wistfully.

“I miss him already, sir.” Gunnar McGee folds his cards, his baby face as earnest as Charlie Brown’s. Beside him, Lassiter gestures to Noah and smacks Gunnar in the arm, as if he’s said the wrong thing. But Gunnar stands firm. “It’s true. John’s the heartbeat of this platoon. Was, I mean.”

The men glance nervously at John’s brother, but Noah continues cleaning his rifle, ramming the rod down the barrel methodically, as if there is some therapeutic value in the ritual.

“Sorry, man,” Gunnar says.

Noah nods but doesn’t meet his eyes.

“Specialist Stanton,” the lieutenant begins, then clarifies, “Specialist Noah Stanton…you’ll be dispatched stateside just as soon as you’ve been debriefed. Corporal Brown, I’ll want a full report from you, as well.”

“Yes, sir,” Emjay responds, a thorny branch spiraling through his chest at the prospect of recounting the incident to his commanding officers. Part of him wants to let it all come spilling out, even as he is sickened at the prospect of reliving the event.

“And any other personnel who witnessed anything in the warehouse incident that might be helpful to our investigation should report to me. That is all.” Chenowith steps toward Noah. “Sorry for your loss,” he says, and though his voice is brusque, Emjay thinks it’s probably the kindest act of Chenowith’s sorry life.

“Sir,” Noah answers, trancelike.

The day’s events rush through Emjay’s mind like a rip cord, and he cranes his neck, writhing uncomfortably. It was a nightmare day for him, but it had to be a horror show for Noah, who’s the medic for their platoon. Christ, he was already outside the warehouse, stitching up a gash on Spinelli’s leg, when he sees his own brother hauled out of the warehouse, bloody and fading fast. That must have smacked him hard, the moment of realization that the man dying on that stretcher was his own brother. At least Noah wasn’t in the warehouse when John went down, but the sting of seeing his brother carried out, the sudden knowledge that he was unconscious, bleeding out, almost dead, the fact that Noah couldn’t save him even after the guys had carried John out of the warehouse and into the stark sunlight…

It’s all fucked up.

Somebody should have gotten to Noah Stanton first, pulled him aside, got him out of the way so he wouldn’t have to live with that image of his dying brother stuck in his head.

And Noah’s immediate reaction—the curses, growling at the other guys to stay back. The tears in his eyes. So fucking humiliating, in front of the other men. And now Chenowith telling Noah he can’t head home for the funeral until he gets grilled by the higher-ups.

“Unbelievable,” Doc says, bringing Hilliard’s cardboard box of licorice over to Noah, who shakes his head. “You should be in Kuwait already, buddy. On a flight to Frankfurt, out of here. And the COs are going to hold you back for debriefing? That sucks.” Doc, their platoon leader, doesn’t usually talk against the brass that way.

Shows you how out of control it all is, Emjay thinks. Noah’s own brother was killed and they still won’t let him go. As Lassiter always says, The only way out of Iraq is in a body bag.

“Here’s a news flash for you.” Lassiter lowers his cards beneath his homely face, those big ears and a nose like a carrot. Emjay has chalked it up to Lassiter’s insistence that everything is bigger in Texas. “The army sucks.”

“Amen to that,” Doc says, extending the licorice toward Spinelli, who peels one out and lies down again with the strand balanced on his chest. Odd bird, that Spinelli.

“Where’re the goddamned peanuts?” Hilliard digs into the care package from home, causing bags of bubble gum and chips to squeeze out and topple to the dusty floor. Hilliard likes his treats, and since Camp Despair is nearly fifty miles away from the small PX in Baghdad, he’s got to rely on packages from home. “She sends me Jelly Bellies, but no peanuts?”

“Are those the jelly beans from the Harry Potter movies?” Gunnar McGee asks. He’s the only guy called by his first name, as the guys in the platoon enjoy the irony of a soldier whose name is Gunnar. “They taste like vomit and snot and poop and shit?”

Lassiter smacks Gunnar’s shoulder with the back of one hand. “Idiot! Shit and poop are the same damned thing.”

“Is that the kind?” Gunnar’s eyes twinkle at the prospect of a taste of home, even if it is a foul taste.

“I don’t know.” Antoine Hilliard tosses a handful of foil packets to Gunnar. “Take ’em. Like I need to be popping jelly beans in the desert. I married the goddamned Easter Bunny.”

Normally the men would laugh over a wisecrack like that, but the airless room is void of humor. Emjay sits on his cot and watches unobtrusively through his dark sunglasses as Noah sets his rifle aside and turns his attention to a pair of combat boots, which he begins to unlace. There’s a dark stain on the side that extends over the toe of the boot. Blood, most likely. John’s blood? It’s possible, though with Noah’s medical assignment, it could be any number of things.

Still…as Noah rubs polish into the black leather, Emjay fights off a sickening chill at the thought of one brother cleaning off the blood of another. It seems to make this war too small and personal, and way too close. Beside the boots Noah has laid out his belongings—ammo, desert fatigues, a few canned rations and books, skivvies, and equipment like his rifle, a gas mask, and an NOD, a night operation device, goggles that clip over your helmet.

“You getting everything in line for the trip back home?” Emjay asks Noah, who nods over one boot.

Emjay shoots a look to the cot behind him, where John used to sleep. The floor beneath the metal frame is bare. John’s gear is gone.

“Hey, what happened to John’s stuff?” Emjay shouts to the room at large.

“Whaddaya think? Chenowith,” Lassiter says, venom on his tongue.

Lieutenant Chenowith, a West Point graduate, views the army differently than these enlisted soldiers, many of whom came to this career by default. Lassiter worked in a shoe store, Gunnar McGee mowed lawns, Hilliard drove a beer truck till he fucked that up by getting a DUI. Most of the guys in the platoon are here because they have no direction and they need to get out of debt, while Chenowith’s direction has always been to rise up the ranks in the U.S. Army, just like his old man, who was some hotshot in another war.

“The lieutenant confiscated all of John’s gear,” Doc explains. “Pending investigation. He wouldn’t even let Noah here go through and take out some personal items for John’s wife.”

“Goddamned army,” Hilliard grumbles over a mouthful of licorice. “They fuckin’ own you, even when you’re dead.”

Unresponsive, Noah briskly swipes a stiff brush over the toe of one boot.

Weary to the bone, Emjay shakes his head and stares at the NOD lined up with Noah’s stuff. What the hell happened to his today? Last time he used the night operation device it was working just fine, but today when he lowered the equipment over his eyes, he saw nothing—just blackness. He’d been complaining about it to John when the first shot rang out in the dark warehouse.

Now he kicks himself for not having working equipment. If the device had worked, he would have seen the shooter. Maybe he would have seen the gunman taking aim, closing in on John. Maybe, he might have saved John’s life.

His heartbeat picks up, thumping in his ears as he pictures the scene. After the two shots, Emjay had grabbed John’s NOD and soaked up everything around them. That was when he saw the soldier—one of them—walking away.

A goddamned soldier.

But John must have seen the guy. That’s why he was yelling that he was a friendly, that he was John Stanton, U.S. Army. John knew who shot him, and it wasn’t some Iraqi insurgent.

Had the raid of the warehouse been a staged mission? A way for Lieutenant Chenowith to get rid of John so that the media would stop dogging his platoon?

Crazy theories from a crazy man, but Emjay can’t think who else would have wanted to kill John. He removes his helmet and presses two fingers into each temple. Wish I had an NOD in that warehouse, a way to see the shooter.

Who was it? One of you?

Did one of you fuck with my NOD? Screw it up so I wouldn’t see your face when you took out my friend?

His eyes obscured by shades, Emjay studies the faces of the men in quarters. Hard to believe it could be one of your own. Noah and John are brothers, and Doc played football with John back in college, so those three are pretty tight. Antoine Hilliard isn’t the aggressive type. He’s been goldbricking the army since they got here, claiming a back injury so he could stay behind the wire to do paperwork—until a mortar round came through and took out an Alpha Company sol. . .