Chapter 3
Jake released the silver chain as if it had caught fire. His pulse roared against his eardrums, the battle-hardened survival instincts of a Tier-One operator instantly drowning the dull ache in his shattered shoulder.
"Dolores," Jake commanded, his voice slicing through the thick air like a combat knife.
The older charge nurse straightened her spine instinctively, recognizing the tone of an officer in the middle of a hot breach. "Yes, Lieutenant?"
"Take the other nurses out. Pull the blinds on the exterior corridor windows. Nobody enters this room without my direct clearance."
"This is a civilian hospital, young man—" Dolores began, but she cut herself off the moment she saw the absolute, lethal calm settling over Jake's features. She swallowed hard, nodded, and quietly backed out, pulling the heavy wood door until it clicked shut against the frame.
Jake turned back to Ava. He pushed himself off the edge of the mattress, his injured left ankle screaming under his sudden weight, but he didn't even flinch. He limped two paces forward and stood over the young mother.
"What else was in the cubby?" Jake asked.
Ava fumbled inside the deep pocket of her light-blue scrub pants. Her fingers were shaking so violently she nearly dropped her badge reel. She withdrew a folded strip of waxy, white thermal paper—the kind used in automated grocery receipts—and held it out.
Jake snatched it, using the back of his hand to keep his thumbprints off the edges.
Printed across the center in faded dot-matrix ink was a single line of text:
TELL THE WIDOW THE GHOST NEEDS HIS KEY. MIDNIGHT AT PIER 4.
Jake stared at the characters until they burned into his retinas. "Who has access to that daycare?"
"Only staff members and registered parents," Ava said, her voice small, trembling like a leaf in a gale. "You have to scan an encrypted keycard at the security desk downstairs. The guard logs every entry. Jake... what is this? Who is the ghost? Ethan is dead. You told me he was dead! You held his funeral service with me!"
"I thought he was," Jake whispered, his mind racing through the inferno of the Kunar ambush four years ago.
He remembered the smoke, the deafening crack of RPGs detonating against the mud-brick walls, the smell of cordite and burning diesel. He remembered Ethan tackling him into the irrigation ditch, taking the brunt of the secondary blast. He remembered digging through the scorched stones with his bare, bleeding fingernails until the extraction choppers forced him aboard at gunpoint.
"Look at me, Nora," Jake said softly, dropping down onto his good knee in front of the little girl.
Nora tilted her head, her big blue eyes watching him with wary curiosity, her cream bunny clutched tight against her ribs. "Are you still mad, Mister?"
"No, sweetheart. I'm not mad," Jake said, keeping his gravelly voice as gentle as a lullaby. "Did a man give you this shiny necklace today?"
Nora nodded once, her pink ribbon bobbing. "A tall man with a big hat. He smelled like winter."
Jake felt the hairs on his arms stand up. "What did he say to you, Nora?"
"He said to give Mommy the pretty star," Nora whispered, leaning close to Jake’s ear as if sharing a magical secret. "And he told me to tell you that the sand never washes out."
Jake’s heart violently slammed against his ribs. The sand never washes out. That had been the motto of their three-man reconnaissance cell—a private joke shared only between Jake, Ethan, and their command handler in Virginia.
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Before Jake could speak, his heavy black military watch chimed twice.
Down the hall, the building's fire alarm system shrieked to life in a deafening, pulsing siren.
