Chapter 10 - The Sister I Fought For
Two days later, the morning air was crisp and clean outside the military housing complex in Fort Meade. The leaves on the maples had turned a brilliant scarlet, rustling gently in the cool autumn breeze.
Hannah stood on the porch of the small brick townhouse I had leased for us, holding a steaming mug of hot chocolate. For the first time since I had returned, she wasn't wearing an oversized hoodie to hide her bruises. She was wearing a warm blue sweater, her hair combed neatly back, a faint touch of color returning to her cheeks.
I walked up the stone steps, carrying two bags of groceries from the commissary.
"How was the meeting with the counselor?" I asked, setting the bags on the patio table.
Hannah smiled—a small, genuine, fragile thing, but real. "Hard. She told me it’s going to take time to stop flinching when a door slams. But she said... she said I'm not crazy. That everything they told me about you being a criminal, about me being worthless... that none of it was my fault."
"Never was, kiddo," I said, putting an arm around her shoulder and pulling her tight against my side. "You survived a four-year siege with no backup. You're tougher than most recruits I train."
Hannah leaned her head against my shoulder, breathing in the cold air. "Are you going back overseas, Becca?"
I shook my head. "Sergeant Miller and I put in our transfer requests this morning. We’ve been reassigned as senior combat instructors at the academy here. Regular hours. No six-month blackouts. Weekends off."
Hannah let out a long breath, a sound that carried four years of trapped sorrow, releasing it into the Maryland sky. "So... we get to have Thanksgiving? A real one?"
"A real one," I promised. "With Brooke, Miller, and whoever the hell we want to invite. No mayors, no society clubs, and no lies."
Before Hannah could answer, the sharp chirp of my encrypted military phone broke the quiet.
I pulled it from my pocket. It was Brooke.
"Sergeant Cole," Brooke’s voice came through the speaker, breathless and strained. "We have a massive problem."
I stiffened instantly, my protective instincts firing up. "What happened? Did the bail appeal go through?"
"No," Brooke said, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "It’s not about bail. Thomas Mercer’s private safety deposit boxes were opened under the federal warrant an hour ago in Philadelphia. Rebecca... he wasn't just laundering money through your father’s shell companies. He was holding collateral on a major regional human-trafficking ring connected to international shipping containers out of the Baltimore docks."
I motioned Hannah to step inside the house and closed the front door. "Go on, Brooke."
"One of the ledgers lists dozens of off-the-books identities Daniel Cole manufactured using stolen military credentials over the last five years," Brooke continued, paper rustling frantically on her end. "Daniel didn't just sell your name, Rebecca. He sold five other soldiers' identities to violent cartel fixers who needed clean American paperwork to disappear."
My blood ran cold. "Where is Daniel right now?"
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"He was being transported from the county jail to the federal holding facility ten minutes ago," Brooke said, her voice shaking with genuine dread. "The transport van just went dark on Route 15. The GPS transponder was cut. They found the escort cruiser upside down in a creek bed, both deputies executed."
***