“Exactly.”

“Thanks for the heads-up, Blue, but it’s time to pull!”

Bishop and Knight’s parachutes deployed like gunshots, ripping open one thousand feet from the desert floor. Seconds later, they were rolling on the ground, gathering their chutes, and running toward the faint glow of the nearby valley, where large shadows danced in the firelight.

Sometimes, after completing a HALO jump, rookies stumbled on shaky legs or fell to their knees, wobbly from adrenaline. But Bishop and Knight had long ago overcome the post-jump shakes, so when both men suddenly found themselves off balance, they knew something was wrong.

They paused.

“That was a little more than a tremor,” Bishop said.

Knight placed his bare hand on the ground. The sand was shaking, as though to the steady rhythm of a bass-laden hip-hop song. Either that or something—

Knight’s head shot up as a distant squeal rolled over the desert. “Was that a car?”

Bishop shook his head, cautiously moving toward the valley ahead. “I don’t think so. It sounded more like a—”

The scream came again, this time shrill and very human. Both men slid their weapons from their backs and ran as fast as they could to the cacophony of terrified cries pouring from the valley, praying someone would still be breathing when they arrived.

NINE

Richmond, Virgina

KING’S JAW HURT from fifteen minutes of grinding teeth. The drive back to his childhood home had been slowed by traffic and had taken ten minutes longer than usual. All the while, he worried about having to have his father, who he’d just been reunited with, committed to some kind of mental institution. And with ten years of anger and frustration yet to be expressed, let alone forgiven, King was not happy about his father getting the clean slate a mental illness would provide.

He reminded himself that when his father left, he’d been sane. That, at least, provided him with some anger to hold on to. He glanced over at his father, who watched their hometown pass in a blur as they rounded Swanson Drive, the last in a series of suburban streets that led to the house. The man’s face was older, more wrinkled, but at peace.

A day after burying Mom and he doesn’t have a care in the world, King thought.

“Ignorance is bliss, right?” King said under his breath.

To his surprise, his father had heard. “That’s why crazy people are so happy.”

“Exactly what I was thinking.”

Peter grinned at him. “Except I’m not crazy.”

“Mom’s dead, Dad.”

“Buried her yesterday.”

King nodded, glancing quickly at his father. The man was certifiable. “Open casket.”

“Did you look at her wedding ring?”

The rock in his mother’s engagement ring had been red. A ruby. Given to Peter by his soon-to-be fiancée’s father, a German jeweler. King thought about his mother’s body, about her hands folded over her chest. He couldn’t recall seeing the ring.

“Didn’t, did you?”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” King said, becoming annoyed with the insanity of this conversation and the disrespect it showed his mother.