Chapter 1 - The Man Behind The Gate
Sergeant Cole Briggs ripped the patch from my shoulder before the rain had finished soaking through my uniform.
He looked at it once.
Then dropped it into a puddle.
“You’re done. Get off my course.”
Around us, twenty soldiers went quiet.
Not shocked.
Interested.
There’s a difference.
Briggs shoved my shoulder.
I moved backward one step.
Then stepped forward again.
His expression changed.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Then move.”
“No.”
That was when he pointed toward Private Tyler Boone.
Tyler was one of the biggest men in our training group.
He looked uncomfortable for maybe half a second.
Then everybody started watching him.
That helped him make the wrong decision.
He grabbed my arm.
I broke his grip and put him onto the wet ground without hurting him.
Briggs stared.
“Take her out.”
Two more men came.
Neither wanted to be the soldier who backed away after Tyler had already tried.
I didn’t blame them for following an instructor’s order.
I did blame them for smiling.
The first ended up beside Tyler.
The second joined him seconds later.
Then another man came from my right.
When it was over, he was on one knee and I was still standing.
Nobody smiled anymore.
Rain ran down my face.
Briggs looked at the men around me.
Then at me.
I could see something worse than anger beginning to form.
Embarrassment.
I bent down.
Picked up the patch he had thrown away.
Water dripped from the edge.
I wiped it once against my uniform.
Briggs stared at me.
“Put that down.”
“No.”
“You’re not wearing it again.”
“We’ll see.”
His jaw tightened.
Then the gate buzzed.
The sound cut across the training yard.
Everyone turned.
The secured steel gate started sliding open.
Rain and pale afternoon light filled the gap.
One man stood beyond it.
Dark silhouette.
Motionless.
For a moment, nobody knew who he was.
Then Briggs did.
His face changed.
Not the way a subordinate looks when a senior officer arrives unexpectedly.
Something personal happened first.
He actually took one step backward.
The figure moved forward far enough for me to see his face.
I stopped breathing.
Miles Carter.
Five years earlier, he and I had entered this same training course together.
Five years earlier, I had walked away from it with my name attached to one sentence:
RACHEL KANE REFUSED TO CONTINUE THE EXERCISE AND ABANDONED HER ASSIGNED TEAMMATE.
Miles had been that teammate.
I had not spoken to him since.
He walked through the gate.
His eyes found me.
Then the patch in my hand.
Then Briggs.
“You still doing that?”
Briggs’s voice lowered.
“What are you doing here?”
Miles ignored him.
He stopped six feet from me.
I had imagined this conversation hundreds of times.
In some versions, I punched him.
In others, I apologized.
Most ended with him telling me why he had blamed me.
Instead he looked confused.
“Rachel?”
“Miles.”
His expression shifted.
“You came back.”
“I could say the same.”
Briggs stepped between us.
“This has nothing to do with the course.”
Miles laughed once.
“That’s what you told me five years ago.”
My stomach tightened.
“What did he tell you?”
Miles looked at me.
Briggs turned sharply.
“Carter.”
Miles didn’t stop.
“He said you wrote the statement.”
The rain seemed to get louder.
“What statement?”
“The one saying I froze.”
I stared at him.
“I never wrote that.”
Miles’s face changed.
Briggs said:
“Enough.”
I looked at him.
“No.”
Miles stepped closer.
“He told me you blamed the whole thing on me.”
“I was told you blamed it on me.”
Miles went completely still.
“By who?”
Neither of us needed to look.
We did anyway.
Briggs stood between the two people who had spent five years believing the other one had betrayed them.
And suddenly I understood something worse than the patch in the puddle.
May you like
Briggs hadn’t been trying to throw me out because he remembered what happened five years ago.
He had been trying to make sure Miles and I never got close enough to compare what he had told us afterward.
