Chapter 2 - The Missing Wife
My wife Harper was supposed to be at a real estate conference in Chicago.
I stared at the unsent text message on the burner phone in absolute disbelief.
My hands began to shake with a cold and terrifying rage.
I pulled out my own phone and checked the GPS tracking app we used for family emergencies.
Harper was definitively not in Chicago.
Her phone was pinging from a cheap roadside motel just four miles away from our house.
I left the useless police officers taking notes in my ruined living room.
I got into my truck and drove toward the motel with my foot pinned to the floor.
My mind raced through fifteen years of classified deployments and enemies I had made.
I had always kept my dangerous work completely separate from my family.
But someone had crossed the line, and my wife was somehow deeply involved.
I pulled into the flickering neon parking lot of the Desert Inn Motel.
Harper's white sedan was parked near the back stairs under a broken streetlamp.
I bypassed the front office and walked straight to room 114.
The door was slightly ajar, identical to how I had found my own front door.
I drew my concealed carry pistol and pushed the wooden door open with my boot.
The room was completely destroyed.
Chairs were smashed, and the mattress was flipped onto the dirty carpet.
Harper was nowhere to be found.
But she had not been alone in this miserable room.
A man was slouched against the bathroom wall in a massive pool of his own blood.
He was wearing a heavy tactical vest and holding a suppressed pistol.
I kept my weapon raised and kicked the gun away from his hand.
I grabbed his shoulder and rolled his face toward the dim bathroom light.
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My breath caught in my throat.
It was Elias Thorne, a sniper from my old Ranger unit who had supposedly died in an explosion three years ago.
