Prologue

PROLOGUE

A ster walked into the living room of the small ranch house he grew up in. On leave, he had nowhere else to go. It's not like he owned any property and he went where the Army sent him. He'd arrived yesterday afternoon and had to figure out what to do with himself for two weeks.

"Hey," his sister Daphne said, opening the front door. "Did you just get up?"

"No," he said. "Why would you ask that?"

It was almost four in the afternoon. "Your hair is wet like you just got out of the shower. I know you're not sleeping much. I heard you walking around last night. I thought now that everyone was out of the house and it was quiet you could sleep."

His younger sister by six years was good at catching things like that.

"It's all good," he said. "I'm not used to getting that much sleep. I've been cleaning up some. Or trying to."

He looked at the comical expression on his sister's face. "If you clean too much then Mom and Dad won't do anything."

"Like they ever do," he said.

The living room had been littered with dirty dishes and plates, ashtrays too. It drove him nuts, but nothing he could do about it. He'd grown up like this. The amount of dust in the corners and on the windowsills was making him sneeze just walking into the room worse than when he'd been deployed in the desert for a year.

"Some things never change," Daphne said. "And speaking of changing, I've got to be at work in a few hours and I'd like to get out of these clothes."

His sister worked two jobs. Full time at a daycare center that paid shit, then she was a waitress a few nights a week. He knew she hated doing that, but she made more at her part-time job and needed the full-time one for benefits.

"I was going to see if there was anything to make for dinner," he said. It's not like he'd done much checking of things yesterday. Daphne had picked him up at the airport because his parents couldn't be bothered to take time off of work to do it. He hated that his sister was going to use her time off for that and offered to get an Uber.

"Good luck," she said. "There might be pizza leftover that Mom brought home last night."

"No," he said. "I picked up the empty boxes this morning and heard Mom and Dad talking about bringing them for lunch." He hadn't been able to sleep with all the noise in the house and he was too jet lagged to sleep when he went to bed last night. He'd probably crash tonight.

"What did you eat for lunch?" Daphne asked.

"Coffee and toast," he said, shrugging.

"That's not much of a lunch. I'm going to change."

Aster moved to the small kitchen that he'd spent three hours cleaning earlier and repairing loose handles and a leaky sink. That was him—he was a fixer of pretty much anything. He'd want to say he got that from his father who worked maintenance for one of the oil companies in the area, but his father never fixed anything that he wasn't paid to do.

He opened the fridge and saw it didn't have much more than condiments on the shelf that looked months past expiration. There was a full shelf of beer because they were never short on that in this house, but food was slim pickings like when he was growing up.

They never went hungry; his parents picked up takeout if they couldn't throw together spaghetti and sauce from a jar. They weren't poor; his parents were just lazy. The older he got, he'd make what he could from what he could find.

He opened the freezer next and there was nothing but ice cream, frozen dinners, and a couple of bottles of vodka.

"Find anything?" Daphne asked. She was in shorts and a T-shirt right now. He was positive it wasn't her work uniform because she complained about the men looking at her chest even though it gave her bigger tips, so she sucked it up.

A few times he'd transferred money into her account without her knowledge. It's not like he had anything to spend his salary on and had more in the bank than he ever thought he would.

Daphne would only reach out and give him hell, but he didn't care. He had enough guilt that he should have stayed around to care for her. He'd needed to get out of the area before he got sucked in and never left.

"No," he said. "I'm going to run to the store and get a few things. What are you in the mood for?"

"Anything you get that isn't frozen is great. I gave up buying things and leaving them in the fridge. Mom and Dad would eat them on me."

Aster sighed. He knew Daphne paid rent to live here, but she didn't make enough to live on her own. The fact that she was doing that and his parents were still eating the food his sister bought for herself was selfish.

"You should keep it in a fridge in your room," he said.

"I have a mini fridge in there," she said, grinning. "I keep lunch foods and some things in there, but even then Mom has grabbed food out of it when I'm not around."

He rolled his eyes. "Why am I not surprised? I'll at least stock up while I'm here."

"That's your choice," Daphne said.

"I'll be back in twenty minutes if I can use your car?"

She grabbed the keys that were on the counter. "It's your car, not mine."

He'd left it here for her. It's not like it was a new car, but it was free for his sister and he never thought of it as his at this point.

He drove to the store and parked. It wasn't that busy at this time on a Tuesday. Barely four and he'd get in and out quickly.

When he was walking around he noticed some young girl on her phone the whole time. She appeared out of place to him. Too fancy for the likes of this area with her diamond bracelet and earrings that stood out more than they should. Her long blonde hair was perfectly styled, her nails professionally done with designs on them as her fingers typed into the phone.

She didn't seem to know where things were either as if the grocery store was foreign to her.

She'd passed him a few times, almost zigzagging while her face was buried in the screen.

The third time he'd seen her he noticed the same guy watching her too. Older, dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, a hat on his head and pulled down low so his face was shielded.

He felt tingles up his spine and had to tell himself to shut his brain off and not be looking for enemies lurking in corners but rather ground beef for dinner.

By the time he checked out with a few bags of things, the girl had five items and was being rung up next to him.

He was putting his cart in the stall and grabbing his two bags when a black van came speeding toward the front door just as the girl was walking out not paying attention.

The man that had been following behind rushed the girl to shove her into the van, but Aster was close enough to jump in and start fighting the guy off as the girl was screaming and kicking and putting up one hell of a struggle to not be taken.

He yanked her out of the way and shoved her to the ground, then threw punch after punch as he was yelling, "Run!" to her. She wasn't moving, and before he knew it, the guy he'd been fighting off pulled out a gun and all he felt was a burning pain in his chest.

Then he hit the pavement and blacked out.