“There’s nothing you can do about it, is there?” Gloria sighed. She’d known. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t pissed.

“There’s no specific threat,” Ty said diplomatically.

“He tried to kill me. He spent the last decade beating the life out of me.” Gloria couldn’t quell the red rush of fury that swept through her body.

“The law’s the law,” Ty said, bravely stepping into her anger. “I’m not saying it’s right. And I’m definitely not saying that he has the right to keep on torturing you. You need a personal protection order. We can turn letters like this into a crime.”

“And the law will do what the next time he threatens my life?” Gloria demanded. Nothing. They would do nothing.

“Not much,” Ty admitted. “But every brick you add to this case, every piece of evidence keeps him away from you.”

“Why is it my job to prove that he’s a monster?” She collapsed back against the cushion. “Why does it fall on me to fight to be safe?”

“I’m fighting with you, Gloria.” Ty’s eyes were serious. “I’m not going to let him anywhere near you ever again. But I have to operate within the law. So, why don’t you come on down to the station tomorrow, and we’ll start the paperwork. I’ll do what I can, I promise you that.”

Gloria nodded numbly. It wasn’t enough. She wondered, if anything would ever be enough as long as Glenn Diller was still alive. Would she ever feel confident in her safety?

“Mind if I hang on to this?” Ty asked, tapping the letter against his palm.

“Knock yourself out.”

19

“Move that ass, private,” Aldo bellowed as a freckled white guy from Omaha, Nebraska, chased fruitlessly after Corporal Talia Williams, a woman with seven inches of leg and two deployments on him. “Move! Move! Move!”

He cracked a grin from his vantage point—a cobbled together lifeguard chair made by a bored maintenance crew—as the private took a nose dive into a muddy trench that Williams vaulted like a gazelle.

The cheering from the tire flip zone caught his attention, and he pulled out his field glasses to watch Luke hefting a truck tire that came to chest height. “Nice job, captain,” Aldo announced through his bullhorn.

All around him, men and women challenged themselves with physical feats of strength. Gritted teeth, dirt and sweat mingling on skin of every color. Accented “fucks” and “son of a bitches” rose up from the desert floor.