Cornwall’s hair is disheveled, her eyes are swollen and red-rimmed, and she smells of little sleep, bad food, and long hours on the road.

“Talk,” she orders.

Rosaria keeps quiet. Maybe somebody out there heard something. Maybe a library worker or even an off-duty cop might walk by.

The muzzle is shoved harder. “Talk. You know my name, I don’t know yours. Doesn’t seem fair, does it?”

The steel barrel is twisted into her skin. “Who are you? Army? FBI?”

Rosaria doesn’t like the woman’s look or her tone of voice. “Warrant Officer Vasquez. CID special agent. Out of Quantico.”

That gets Cornwall’s attention. Her eyes sharpen and she says, “Why are you after me?”

Rosaria says, “You’re absent without leave, Captain.”

Cornwall has a sharp, bitter laugh. “AWOL? For real? I’ve been gone from base less than three days and I got a CID officer from Virginia tracking me in Texas? That’s crap. Why are you after me?”

Rosaria’s not sure what she can say, so she tries the truth. “Orders.”

“From whom?”

“My boss,” she says. “Who else?”

“And what has he told you?”

Rosaria doesn’t want to say any more, but Cornwall checks her watch. “About thirty seconds left. Make your time count.”

And then, in this small alcove in an out-of-the-way library in the middle of Texas, so far away from home and the Army, Rosaria makes a decision.

“My boss has hardly told me anything,” she says. “Besides what I’ve learned, they’ve been tracking your movements.”

“Of course they have,” she says. “Hell, I made an ATM withdrawal yesterday, stayed logged on my private email account here, practically sent up a goddamn flare.”

Rosaria thinks that through. “You…you did that, knowing you’d be tracked.”

“That’s right,” she says. “I got a crew following me already. I wanted to know who else is dogging me, and now I know. Civilians and military. I’m surprised you guys haven’t bumped into each other yet. Now, you said you’ve learned stuff on your own. Like what?”

A hesitation, and then Rosaria goes all out.

“I know you hit a house yesterday in Three Rivers. I know you took someone from there. And I also know you shot and killed two men.”

She was hoping that last bit of news would shock Cornwall, but her expression doesn’t change.

“They were bad men,” she says. “I’ve been fighting bad men for most of my adult life. I really don’t care.”

Rosaria says, “Maybe you’ll care about this. The man being held at that house, the one you took…he was supposed to be turned over to your husband, Tom Cornwall.”

Now there’s a shocked look on the Army captain’s face.

Even though she’s handcuffed and has a revolver pointed at her, Rosaria feels a sense of satisfaction at doing that.

CHAPTER 74

THIS DAMN CID officer has just confirmed something I found out less than thirty minutes ago, that my Tom has been involved in some very dark and dangerous work.

I try not to show my shock or dismay, and I say, “How do you know about my husband?”