The day after that phone call a letter had arrived. That one was in the very front of the box of letters.
Dear Chloe,
I heard you were looking for me. I'm not really supposed to be sending any letters right now, but I need you to stop looking. I'm on a mission and I can't write you, so this is the best I can do. Know that I keep that picture of you and Scout on that camping trip with me always. Let Mom know not to worry.
Love, Blake
She knew he was in trouble the moment she opened it. Scout was their "duress code". When they were kids, if Blake was in trouble but didn't want Mom to know, he would ask her to please feed their dog, Scout. Since that was already one of her chores, it had been the perfect cover. To see Scout's name mentioned in the letter told her that something was terribly wrong.
She stopped calling the base and actually went there. The members of his unit pretended that he had just been shipped off to a different platoon, but every one of them seemed edgy and unwilling to talk. Someone mentioned Afghanistan and the others nodded, everyone jumping on the lie as though numbers would make it true. She had gone back to her motel room disappointed.
She had been packing her bags to leave when one of the men from his unit showed up at her motel door. She remembered him saying his name was Roberts. He was wearing a ball cap and had the collar of his jacket turned up. He nearly bowled her over to get inside when she opened the door, but then he hid behind it and out of sight of the windows as though he were afraid that someone might see him.
"I don't know much about it, but if it were my brother, I'd be looking too. They gave us all this genetic test. It was just a swab on the inside of our cheek. We all had it done, but he was the only one they came back for," he had said, his voice low and quiet.
"What was the test for?"
Roberts shook his head. "I don't know. But I do know they were super excited when he agreed to help them. The men in the unit were all junior officers or senior enlisted, but something about that didn't seem right to me. I got the feeling we were talking to a bunch of majors and colonels."
"I really appreciate you telling me this. Do you have any idea where I should start looking?" She bit her lip, hoping he had some idea to get her started.
The man glanced out the window and pulled his ball cap lower. "You need to know that Madison would have done anything if he thought it would help this country. He's a good soldier."
She nodded. "I know. That's just how he is. Loyal to almost a fault. Do you have any ideas?"
He suddenly looked very nervous. "I gotta go." He glanced out the window again, a sheen of sweat breaking out across his face. Her shoulders sunk slightly as she opened the door to let him out. He paused for a moment and then turned, wrapping his arms around her as though he were giving her a hug, despite only knowing her a couple of minutes.
"The Lycan Project," he whispered in her ear, letting her go and stepping out into the parking lot as quickly as he could. She stared out after him, playing with the words in her head, but they didn't make any sense. She shook her head and went back to packing, trying to figure out the puzzle.
Four months later, sitting on her bed and looking at a picture of her brother, she still didn't know what "The Lycan Project" meant, but she knew it was important. Two days after meeting with her, she had heard that a young Sergeant Roberts had been hit by a car. The driver hadn't stopped and witnesses said it looked as though the driver had actually sped up to hit him. The whole thing made her feel sick to her stomach.
Chloe flipped the phone over in her hands, playing with the hard plastic for a moment before getting up and grabbing her laptop. As it booted she ordered a single cheese pizza with mushrooms and olives. She opened up an Internet browser as she completed her order with the pizza company and began looking up information on Fort Baskerville.
Chapter 3
Captain Jackson Wolfe sat gingerly down on the ancient office chair, afraid that it might collapse under his weight at any moment. It wasn't that he was particularly heavy. He was actually in the best physical shape of his life, but the chair was so ancient that it looked like it might disintegrate if the sun hit it too hard.
Luckily, the chair held. It was actually more comfortable than he had expected and it had lasted him the entire week without falling apart. He leaned back tentat
ively, listening for a squeak of hinges that would foretell his doom, but the chair held. He let out a slow sigh, glancing around at the small room.
The "office" in the Records Building of Fort Baskerville the Army was giving him to work out of wasn't much better than a glorified broom closet. There was the ancient chair with an equally old wooden desk, an Army cot that looked like it had been made in the 1970's, and piles of brown boxes full of paperwork for him to work on. There was only a tiny vent of a window letting in the last of the fading light from the sunset. It wasn't much, but at least he didn't have to share it. Being in close proximity to another human being was something that he wanted to avoid as much as possible at the moment.
Jackson rolled his shoulders, trying to straighten out the hunch in his back from leaning over old files for hours at a time. As a Psychological Operations Interrogator, files were a part of his job, and despite the fact that they were boring, for once he was actually glad to have them. He had requested to be sent somewhere stateside and out of the action while they evaluated his case.
His eyes glazed over as he thought of the reasons he was here. The fire had burned the bodies, but there were still questions. His superiors sent him to Fort Baskerville to go through files while they cleared him for duty. He hoped he could just stay with the files. They gave him a job without having to be around humans. Around people he could hurt.
The fading light shone across a single picture frame sitting on the edge of his desk. It was all he had unpacked since arriving, leaving the rest of his box of personal affects in a corner under as many boxes as he could pile on top of it. The one picture was enough. It was why he was here.
Wolf Squad. The men in his unit had been the only family he had since his own parents had died. Nine men that had trusted their lives to him. Two and a half tours in Afghanistan together. They had teased him that being "Wolf Six," captain of Wolf Squad, was simply fate for the handsome Captain Wolfe. Several of them had even gotten tattoos of a wolf's head onto their chests.
The men had loved him and trusted him with their lives. Captain Wolfe's intel was never wrong. They used to say that Jackson was a walking, talking polygraph machine, that he could smell a lie a mile away. His brain shied away from the memory like it was still made of fire. It was his uncanny ability to be able to detect the truth that had destroyed them all.
They were gone now. They were gone and he was here, having to face exactly what their loss had done to him. Had made him. Things were different now and he had no idea how he was going to survive.
Chapter 4
Jackson's head rested on his arm like a pillow, his face twitching as he fell into the nightmare that always seemed to come as soon as he closed his eyes. He had his hand fell to his side, sending the papers on the desk into a gentle shower to the floor.