And why was everybody letting this Army asshole and his bitch wife tell them what to do? They were all grown-ass adults. They didn’t need outsiders coming in and pushing them in this direction and that.

As he walked past Mr. Hamilton’s truck, Caine deliberately turned his head away from the open back doors. He didn’t want to see a dead man. He’d seen too many of those, as it was. He’d lost track of the number of friends that meth had taken from him.

Now there was something to be proud of. He and Kyle had screwed up plenty over the years. They’d drunk themselves blind. They’d messed with whores. And, yes, they’d stolen plenty of shit, but they’d never done the meth. That shit made you ugly and stupid. Like Kyle said all the time, they had plenty of both of those in their lives already.

What was that?

He swore he heard people talking, but apparently, he was the only one because nobody did anything. He couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from, and he couldn’t make out the words, but there was definitely something. He held up his hand the way he saw the major do it and stopped walking, hoping that the others would do the same. But he must have been invisible because Eric Lofland just kept advancing from behind, while George Simmons increased the distance.

“What are you stopping for?” Eric asked.

“I thought I heard talking.”

“Other than the voice inside your crazy head?”

If Eric hadn’t smiled just right when he said that, Caine would have busted him in the mouth. He’d been called crazy too many times—by people who were being serious—to take it from anybody as a joke.

Up ahead on the right, someone shouted something from the woods. George dropped to a knee as a rifle boomed. George brought his rifle up to his shoulder and fired one shot. Two more answered in return as he dove into the woods to his left and settled in behind a tree. Bullets tore into the trunk and launched puffs of mulch from the forest floor.

“I’ve got contact!” George yelled.

“Yeah, no shit,” Caine said, and he took off to join his brother across the street, who’d made himself one with the ground.

Caine slid in beside him. “You okay?”

“Yeah, where are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Joey!” McCrea yelled. “Get those kids out of the road!” Then he turned away and fired into the woods.

Caine felt his shirt pull tight as Joey grabbed his collar and pulled him along the pavement and gravel into the softer leaf-covered mulch. “You’re supposed to be with your team,” Joey said.

“I’m with my brother.”

“Then both of you get in the fight.”

Up ahead, McCrea was windmilling his left arm to get them to move up to join him.

* * *