Chapter Twenty-One

NICK DIDN’T SPEAK our entire ride back home to the inn. Neither did I. We’d left Karli Breecher with strained goodbyes, promises to be in touch when we’d had time to think. Thinking about what my friend had told me, about what it could possibly mean for him, me, the people of the inn, sent me into a daze. The highway before me melted away. I played Dorrich’s message over and over in my mind.

They know what we did.

Somebody knows.

And they’re coming for payback.

Our best-case scenario was that the “somebody” Dorrich was talking about was a journalist who had a tip about the massacre of the family in Afghanistan, that it had been planned and brutally carried out and was not a legitimate response to an act of aggression. In that terrible but nonetheless “best” case, Nick and his team would be exposed to the world as war criminals. There would be trials, inquiries, the great military justice machine churning into action. I saw camera crews surrounding the Inn by the Sea. Nick, grim faced, wearing his dress uniform in a courtroom, trying to explain why, in the years since, he hadn’t spoken a word about what happened. Trying to convince the world that in spite of that incriminating silence, he was not the monster that he seemed, but a good man and a faithful soldier tricked into witnessing and then covering up something obscene and reprehensible.

The worst-case scenario was that it wasn’t justice for the crime someone wanted, but revenge. A relative of the murdered family, perhaps, who had tracked down the men and woman involved in the slaughter. I knew that the likelihood of this scenario was tightly bound to whatever the reasons were that Dorrich and Master had killed that family in the first place, why they’d chosen to trick Nick and Breecher into participating.

My experience as a cop in Boston told me that mass killings like this unfolded for three possible reasons. First, that the perpetrators were sick, twisted psychopaths who enjoyed senseless murder on a grand and violent scale—the work of active shooters and spree killers. Then there were the gangs who killed as a show of power—massacring whole families to establish their territory, or make a revenge statement, with intentional collateral damage because someone had ratted them out, or because there was a stash of drugs, weapons, or money in the house. And finally, there were those killings that occurred because the shock and horror of all-family murders was meant to disguise something far more mundane. I’d just made detective when I responded to a case like this, where a jealous teenager had wanted to punish his girlfriend for carrying on with another man, so he and a friend had donned balaclavas and come at the family with baseball bats. They’d tried, unsuccessfully, to make the crime look like a robbery gone wrong.

Was the massacre in Afghanistan the work of two monsters, two criminals, or two masters of deception? The hardest part in answering this question, I knew, would be summoning the patience required to get all the answers from Breecher and Nick.

Nick was staring out the car window at the pine trees and the sea beyond as we pulled up outside the house.

“I bet you feel like a ton of bricks just fell on you,” he said.

“Yeah.” I nodded. “Exactly.”

“You have to decide what you’re gonna do now,” Nick said. His eyes followed a fishing trawler making its way slowly across the bay. “This is now your secret too. You asked for it and you got it. So you can decide to keep that secret, or you can turn us in.”

“Keeping it to myself makes me complicit in what Dorrich and Master did,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“But turning you all in would mean losing my best friend. It would mean destroying your lives. You, Breecher, Master. It would mean disgracing Dorrich’s memory.”

“Maybe not Breecher,” Nick said. “It would be tough, but she wouldn’t take it as hard as the rest of us. Her dad would soften the blow.”

“What do you mean?”

“Her father is a command sergeant major,” Nick said. “That’s half the reason she got to the front line. Not a lot of women make it there, but she passed the training and her dad gave her a nudge. I’ve always thought that’s maybe why Master…”

“Why he what?”

“Never mind,” Nick said, waving me off. “I’m tired, man. Whatever you decide to do, I can’t hear it right now. I feel like if I don’t get some shut-eye soon I’m gonna lose my head.”

“Go.” I nodded toward the house. “We can talk later.”

Nick hung back at the passenger side door before he closed it.

“You wake me up by throwing more water in my face, I’ll make you sorry you were born, Cap,” he said.

“Try it.” I managed a smile. The exhausted veteran slunk from the car toward the house. I exited the car to the sound of gentle rumbling waves and took a few steps into the bed of pine needles beyond the parking area to look out at the gray slab of water and the harbors to the south.

I didn’t realize how hardened my facial expression had become until I turned at a sound and felt it crack into another smile. A small blond boy was approaching me, with some caution, a brown bundle of fur clutched in his small hands.

“Oh, hello,” I said.

“Hi,” the boy said and lifted the creature so I could see it. “I found this big mouse.”

I recognized the fat rodent as Effie’s pet.

“That’s actually a rat,” I said. “His name’s Crazy. He belongs to one of the residents here.”

“He might not be a rat. He might be a mega mouse.”

“Ahhh, well, that’s a good point.” I laughed. “Could be. I’m not an expert.”

I went over and straightened the tiny purple collar that Effie had fashioned for Crazy the rat so that the little bell, no bigger than a ball bearing, hung at the rodent’s throat. “Where’d you find him?”

“He was sleeping in the big room with all the chairs.” The child and I stroked Crazy together, one fingertip each, until the rat clambered up his arm, making him giggle as it settled on his shoulder.

“Crazy likes it in the sitting room,” I said. “It’s the warmest place in the house. You’re a brave boy to just pick him up like that. Some of the people who live here are afraid of this little guy.”

“Well, I have a hamster at my house,” the boy said. “So I’m not scared of little animals. I really like birds. One time me and my mom saved a bird that got too wet in a storm. Its feathers got all spiky and we had to dry it off. We put it in a box and we gave it some water and in the morning it felt all better.”

“Aren’t you nice!” I laughed. The boy stifled a smile.

“I gueeeeess.”

“You and your mom must have gotten here yesterday morning. Is that right?” I asked.

“Um, yeah.”

“This inn is my place. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to welcome you.”

“That’s OK.”

“What’s your name?”

“Um…” The boy tapped a finger on his chin thoughtfully, the mock detective pondering a clue. “Today I’m going to be Shannon.”

“You have different names on different days?” I said. “That’s a fun game.”

“It’s not a game.” The child frowned. “It’s very serious.”

“OK,” I said with a nod, trying to look stern. “So what’s my name for today then?”

“Uhhh,” Shannon said. He considered me, then took the rat down and cupped it in both his hands. He began laughing at his own joke even before it had left his lips. “Mister Butthead Man.”

“Mister Butthead Man?” I roared in mock outrage, rising to my full height. “How dare you?”

The boy took off toward the house, repeating the nickname and leaping up the porch steps. He almost slammed into Susan’s legs as he went through the front doors. Susan recovered and headed down the steps toward me.

“Have you come here to insult me as well?” I asked as she put a mug of coffee in my hand.

“If that’s what you want, although I think Mister Butthead Man has a certain ring to it.”

“Cute kid.”

“Very outspoken.” Susan nodded. “He just finished telling me that my hair is all wrong. I’d be better as a brunette.”

“I don’t see it.”

“Not sure where his mother is,” Susan said. She pulled her silky blond strands up into a ponytail and secured it with an elastic band. “The child just seems to have free rein. I saw him helping Effie change a tire earlier, and then I had to rescue him from hearing all about Angelica’s brief but nonetheless illuminating foray into trading rare, discontinued shades of oil paint across southeast Asia.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. I think Angelica’s got writer’s block. She’s been at least 15 percent more insufferable lately.”

I sighed. Susan patted my hairline, where the bump Nick had given me was receding.

“Trip was that good, huh?”

“I’ll tell you about it later,” I said as we headed toward the house. “Right now I’m going to finish this coffee and then I think I need to lie down.”

“Got a hangover?”

“More like existential dread, I think.”

“Well, you’ve got half an hour. Shauna Bulger’s on her way over.”

“What?” I stopped beside her at the bottom of the stairs. “She’s coming here?”

“She just called.” Susan shrugged. “Said she needs your help.”

Desert Outside Bagram, Afghanistan, 2010

Nick might have looked at the bodies on the floor. The children. The women. He wasn’t sure. Later, visions of them would come, push their way into his brain in the cold hours of early morning, but they were always different. Sometimes, in his visions, they were so perfect it was like they were all huddled asleep on the earth floor. Other times, he saw the deaths in all their gory specificity. Eyes wide. Blood coughed like black stars onto faded fabric. He was only in the room for seconds before Roger Dorrich dragged him out of the house and slammed him into the warm brick wall of the little house, his rifle shouldered and two hands clutching Nick’s tactical vest.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, you—”

“Shut up, Jones. Shut up. Let me talk.”

“You killed them! You killed them! You killed them!”

“Jones!” Dorrich snarled, grabbing Nick’s jaw and shoving his head into the wall. “There’s no time for bullshit! We’ve gotta move fast!”

Rick Master was there, leading a stiff-legged and gasping Karli Breecher out of the house. Master was carrying a battered old farmer’s rifle with duct tape wrapped around the stock.

“Listen up,” Dorrich said as Breecher was thrown against the wall beside Nick. “What just happened, happened. Everything’s under control. All you have to do is follow our lead. The scouts will have picked up the gunfire. There will be teams on their way here any second. We need to set this up properly and call it in.”

“What the hell is this?” Breecher was huddled into Nick’s side, her rifle gripped against her chest. “What are you doing?”

“It’s what we’re doing,” Master said. “Look, everything’s gonna work out. Just fall into line. Jones, you’re going back up to the edge of the slope and fire on the house and car. Breecher, I’m sorry. But you’re going to have to be the one who takes the hit.”

“What do you mean?” Breecher asked. Her voice was quavering badly. Dorrich reached forward and grabbed the shoulder of her vest, pushed her sideways. Nick reached out to scoop her back against his side, an automatic reaction, but the shock had slowed him, numbed him. He would remember the sight of her there, silhouetted against the light of the house’s interior, bent slightly as though bracing, as though she knew what was coming. Master stepped back, actioned the farmer’s rifle and shot her in the stomach.