Hero (Alpha Mountain 1)

Except I hadn’t known what hurt was really like until Buck died. And now, when I thought being with Ford was healing both wounds, I’d been completely wrong. He didn’t trust me with the truth. Didn’t think I was an equal. That I was the woman for him because he expected me to stand behind him instead of by his side.

I ignored the texts Ford sent and focused on getting ready for my trip. I watered my houseplants, packed my bags and took a long, hot bath.

I climbed out of the tub and dried off. I must’ve been too rough with the towel because I somehow tugged on the necklace Buck gave me. It broke and clattered on the tile floor.

“Fuck,” I muttered, staring down at it. Well, that was adding insult to injury. Like I needed any more painful reminders of Buck’s death today.

I bent down and picked up the pendant, which now had a loose centerpiece. I tried to reset the blue stone, but it wouldn’t lie flat. It was broken.

Dammit.

Grief welled as I studied it. This had been the last thing I’d received from Buck. The last gift that he’d taken the time to pick out for me. It was a weird gift choice since I didn’t really wear jewelry, but the stone color wasn’t lost on me. If he hadn’t died just a few weeks later, I probably would’ve set it on my dresser and saved it to wear only when he came home.

But he had died, and it felt like I still had this little piece of him. Like he’d sent it ahead of time to comfort me through the shock and grief of his death. I’d put it on the day we were told and hadn’t taken it off since.

I brought the pendant closer to inspect the loose stone. I used my fingernail to pry it up, and the damn thing sprang up, dropping onto the bathroom floor.

“Buck,” I croaked because at this point it felt like he was trying to tell me something. Maybe that I was a fucking mess or that things with Ford were going to fall apart, too?

I knelt on the bathmat to collect the stone, but there was something else that had fallen. I picked up what looked like an SD card. A small memory card that stored pictures and files that were kept on a phone. I drew in a shocked breath.

“Buck!”

My hands shook as I held it in front of my eyes to inspect. Oh my God! Buck hadn’t sent me a necklace to wear! He’d sent some kind of information. To me. Me!

But what?

I threw on a sleep shirt and panties and dashed to my laptop to put the chip into the reader.

I was half-terrified of what I would find. Please tell me Buck wasn’t a spy.

Or a drug dealer.

Or a murderer.

Please let this be something—anything—that explained his death.

I waited as the computer pulled up the card’s window. There was only one file in it. I double-clicked, and it opened a low-resolution video. The footage was shaky, and the room was dim, so it took me a moment to realize what I was watching. Until I heard Buck’s deep voice speaking Farsi, at least I thought it was Farsi. And then I realized the footage was filmed from his point of view—like a bodycam or some such device. From the angle, it must’ve been attached to Buck’s torso. Added somewhere on his gear.

An Afghan man in a uniform was tied to a chair. A US soldier stood in front of him with a gun pointed in the center of the guy’s head.

I felt sick, and my heart was frantic. This was real. Not a TV or movie. This had actually happened. Buck was questioning the prisoner, and the man was responding in pleading, urgent tones. He tried to look around the soldier with the gun to Buck. His face was bloodied and swollen, and he appeared afraid, like they’d been torturing him.

I drew back, shocked and disgusted. Was this what our government had done over there?

And then I screamed.

Because the soldier shot the prisoner right through the head. CGI or special effects were very realistic because I… oh my God.

“What the fuck?” Buck barked in English.

“Make it look like an accident,” a commanding voice said from off-screen.

“This isn’t right,” Buck replied. I could hear the shock in his voice. “What the fuck? This was to get intel not kill the guy. What the hell are we doing here? We can’t—”

“You listen to me.” The camera was suddenly obscured by camouflage material, like the speaker was so close to Buck the mystery man had his hands on him.

I heard the scrape of Buck’s breath and muffled sounds like the mic was being knocked around.

“This is US government business here. It’s not for you to question what’s right and what’s not. You’re here to do a fucking job, do you understand me?”