Hamilton reared back with his foot again. He lashed out to hit me square in the chest. This time, I dropped my left arm, caught his foot midkick, and rolled. Caught off guard, Hamilton was jerked forward, falling to one knee in the snow.

So he stopped hitting me with the Sig Sauer and pulled the trigger instead.

The sound deafened me. I felt immediate searing heat, followed by immediate searing pain. My left side. My hand falling down, clutching my waist, as my gaze went up, toward my commanding officer, a man I’d been trained to trust.

Hamilton appeared stunned. Maybe even a little shaken, but he recovered quickly enough, finger back on the trigger.

Just as Sophie crested the knoll and spotted us.

I had a vision. My daughter’s pale, sweet face. Her hair a wild tangle of knots. Her eyes, a bright, brilliant blue as her gaze locked on me. Then she was running, the way only a six-year-old could run, and Hamilton did not exist for her and the woods did not exist for her, nor the scary fire, or the threat of night or the unknown terrors that must have tormented her for days.

She was a little girl who’d finally found her mother and she tore straight toward me, one hand clutching Gertrude, the other arm flung open as she threw herself on top of me and I groaned from both the pain and the joy that burst inside my chest.

“I love you I love you I love you,” I exhaled.

“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy.”

“Sophie, Sophie, Sophie …”

I could feel her tears hot against my face. It hurt, but I still brought up my hand, cradling the back of her head. I looked at Hamilton, and then I tucked my daughter’s face into the crook of my neck. “Sophie,” I whispered, never taking my gaze off him, “close your eyes.”

My daughter clung to me, two halves of a whole, finally together again.

She closed her eyes.

And I said, in the clearest voice I could muster, “Do it.”

The darkness behind Hamilton materialized into a man. At my command, he raised his rifle. Just as Hamilton placed the barrel of his Sig Sauer against my left temple.

I concentrated on the feel of my daughter, the weight of her body, the purity of her love. Something to carry with me into the abyss.

“You should’ve done what I said,” Hamilton hissed above me.

While in the next heartbeat, Bobby Dodge pulled the trigger.

Chapter 45

45

By the time D.D. made it to the top of the property, Hamilton was down and Bobby stood over the lieutenant colonel’s body. He looked up at her approach and shook his head once.

Then she heard crying.