He doesn’t tell her to stop.

He doesn’t try to run away.

He doesn’t try to spoil her fun.

Tom stands there and takes it, and grimaces as the cold water strikes his lower back, and Denise nearly collapses she’s laughing so hard.

My Tom, my little girl.

CHAPTER 23

THE VOICE of my friend jolts me back to my grim reality.

“Amy?”

“Still here,” I say.

“First things first,” she says. “If there’s a black site in Three Rivers, Texas, it doesn’t belong to Uncle Sam or anyone connected to Uncle Sam, including any third-party contractors doing dirty work.”

I’m about to ask if she’s sure, and bite my lip. I don’t want to insult Freddy. She’s with the Second Battalion, 75th Rangers, some of the best Special Forces soldiers in the world, and highly connected to the intelligence community.

“That’s interesting,” I say.

“You want to tell me why you want to know this?”

“No,” I say.

“Okay. Now. The second request you gave me is where it goes a bit off the rails.”

“Why’s that?”

Freddy says, “The airplane registration number you sent me. Any chance it’s wrong?”

“Not a chance.”

“You sure?”

“Freddy…”

“All right,” she says briskly. “I needed to check. Amy, on the surface, the aircraft is leased to a condominium developer in the Cayman Islands. Bright Sun Lives Limited. But that’s just the surface.”

“What’s in the mud and muck, then?”

“Your Learjet belongs to First Republic Global Bank, N.A., based in Guadalajara, and with branches and sub-branches all over the world.”

Tom likes to tease me that my memory is like a computer chip, but it’s really like an old-fashioned card catalog dumped on the floor, with lots of bits and pieces of information lying around.

“I know that name.”

“You should,” Freddy says. “Back in the eighties, there was a bank called BCCI, up to its neck in laundering money for terrorists and narco-terrorist gangs. This First Republic Global is its bastard offspring.”

“Shit,” I say.

There’s a pause in the conversation, and Freddy says, “You’re not doing anything with money launderers, are you?”

I look at the frozen picture on my iPhone of my Denise and my Tom. My husband, my man. My girl, my princess.

“No, I’m not,” I say.

“Amy…”

I keep quiet.

“You okay?”

“Not really,” I say.

“You need anything else?” she asks.

“You told me this was going to be the last favor you’ll ever do me.”

“When are you going to stop believing me?” Freddy says. “And…well, I’ve always wanted to tell you this. What happened at Fort Campbell wasn’t your fault.”

“It didn’t happen at Fort Campbell,” I say. “It happened a half a world away.”

“And the other things,” Freddy goes on. “I know what horrible shit you have to see, day after day. Even most in the military don’t know that—they think all you do is file paper. But I know better, know how it haunts you. You should talk to someone, Amy.”