Mason's POV
The wind slapped his face.
It was a cold, mean slap, the kind that felt personal. Mason stood still and let it hit him. He deserved it. Around him, white tombstones stood in perfect, silent rows like soldiers on parade. Remembrance Day. A day to remember the fallen.
People moved quietly between the stones. Some placed flowers. Some cried. An old man in a worn army jacket reached out and shook Mason's hand.
"Thank you for your service, son," the man said, his eyes watery.
Mason nodded. He couldn't speak. The words You're welcome were stuck in his throat, choking him. What was he being thanked for? For coming home? For surviving? They didn't understand. Survival wasn't a gift. Sometimes it was a punishment.
His fingers, stiff from the cold, found the small photo in his jacket pocket. He didn't need to pull it out to see it. He saw her face every time he closed his eyes.
Tessa.
Her smile was sunlight. Her laugh was his favorite sound in the world. It was the sound he held onto in the dark, in the desert, when bullets were flying and the world was screaming. Get home to her, that was the only thought that mattered.
And he had. He got home. He left the wars behind.
But the war had followed him. It just wore a different disguise.
A woman with two little kids walked past him. She gave him a small, sad smile. He looked down at his own jacket. The old military uniform. He wore it today out of respect. Out of habit. It felt like a costume now. He was pretending to be the hero everyone saw when they looked at him. Inside, he was just… broken.
His mind wasn't in the cemetery. It was miles away. It was in their kitchen, two mornings ago. Tessa was making coffee, humming. She turned and saw him watching her. She smiled that smile.
"What?" she'd asked.
"Nothing," he'd said. "Just happy to be here."
She'd walked over and kissed his cheek. "I'm happy you're here, too. Stay safe today, okay?"
She was talking about his hike. He liked to walk the old trails in the mountains. To clear his head. "Always," he'd promised.
It was a stupid, empty promise. He couldn't keep her safe. He was across town, breathing cold, clean air, while she…
The hollow ache in his chest caved in a little more. It was a physical pain, like someone had reached inside him and ripped out the most important part. Doctors didn't have a name for this wound. There was no medal for surviving it.
A gust of wind whistled through the cemetery, making the bare branches of a nearby tree clack together like bones. It sounded like laughter. Cold, cruel laughter.
Mason finally pulled the photo from his pocket. It was creased from being carried so much. Tessa was on a trail, her hair a mess from the wind, grinning at the camera like she'd just found a secret. She loved the mountains. She knew them better than anyone. She grew up here.
That's what made the phone call so wrong.
It had come last night. The ring had been too loud in the quiet house. He'd answered, his heart already starting to pound. Soldiers learn to fear the ring of a phone. It never brings good news.
Sheriff Grant's voice was on the other end. Nervous. Stuttering. "Mason… it's about Tessa. There's been an… accident. A hunting accident. Up on the Sterling land."
Victor Sterling. The billionaire. The man who owned half the county and acted like he owned the people in it.
Mason's training had kicked in instantly. He heard it. The pause before the word "accident." The slight shake in the Sheriff's voice. The too-quick explanation. In the military, they called it "the tell." It's the tiny sign that someone is lying, that the story they're giving you isn't the whole map. It's a trap.
"Where is she?" Mason had asked, his own voice flat and dead.
"We've got her at the county morgue, Mason. I'm so sorry. It was… quick, they think. Probably didn't feel a thing."
They think. Probably.
More tells.
Mason had hung up. He hadn't cried. He hadn't screamed. He had just stood in the middle of their dark living room and felt the world fracture. The foundation of everything he was, everything he'd fought for, cracked and fell away into nothing. Tessa was his foundation. And she was gone.
Now, standing in the field of white stones, the truth settled on him heavier than the cold.
He survived the war zones across the ocean. He'd dodged bullets and roadside bombs. He'd done everything right to get home to her.
But the most dangerous enemy wasn't a foreign fighter in a desert. It was a rich man with a rifle in his own backyard. And Mason hadn't been there to stop it.
The wind slapped him again. This time, it felt like a challenge.
He looked away from Tessa's photo and his eyes landed on a fresh, dark hole in the earth, not far from where he stood. A new grave. Waiting. They'd be putting Tessa in a hole like that tomorrow.
A hot, solid anger began to burn in his gut, melting some of the ice inside him. It was a familiar feeling. It was the feeling he got before a mission. A target feeling.
Sheriff Grant's shaky voice played in his head. Hunting accident.
Tessa, who could move through the woods like a ghost. Tessa, who knew every sound, every animal track. Tessa, afraid of nothing.
An accident?
His fingers curled into a fist, crumpling the edge of the photo. He slowly, carefully, smoothed it back out. He tucked the picture back into his pocket, right over his heart.
The old man was walking away. The woman with the kids was gone.
Mason was alone with the wind and the white stones and the screaming truth in his head.
This wasn't an accident. It was a kill.
And if the police weren't going to find the hunter… then he would.
He turned his back on the tombstones and started walking toward the rusty pick-up truck in the lot. His boots crunched on the frozen gravel. Each step was louder than the last. Each step beat out a new rhythm.
Not. An. Accident.
He yanked the truck door open. The inside was cold as a freezer. He didn't start the engine. He just sat there, gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.
He had a new mission now. It wasn't given to him by a general. It was given to him by a hole in his heart. The objective was simple.
Find the truth.
Find the man responsible.
The "how" of it was the part that would get complicated. The part that would get dangerous. He was one man. Victor Sterling had money, power, and probably his own private army.
Mason looked at his reflection in the rearview mirror. He saw the eyes of a soldier. A tired, broken, angry soldier.
He started the truck. The engine roared to life, a loud, angry sound in the quiet cemetery.
As he pulled onto the empty road, heading back to a house that was now just an empty building, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He ignored it. It buzzed again. And again. Someone was calling. Insistently.
He pulled the truck over onto the gravel shoulder, his heart doing a hard, painful thump against his ribs. He fumbled the phone out.
It wasn't a number he knew.
He swiped to answer, bringing the phone to his ear. He didn't speak.
A voice came through. A man's voice. Smooth, but with an edge of panic. "Mason? Mason, thank God you answered. It's Grant. Sheriff Grant. Listen, you need to come down to the station. Right now. Before anyone sees you."
Mason's grip tightened on the phone. "Why."
It wasn't a question.
Grant's voice dropped to a frantic whisper. "Because I did something stupid. I looked at the file. The real file on Tessa's… on what happened. The photos. Mason… it's bad. It's all wrong. And I think… I think they know I looked. A black SUV just pulled into the lot. They're not police."
A cold that had nothing to do with the wind flooded Mason's veins.
"Who are they?" Mason asked, his voice low and deadly calm.
"Sterling's men," Grant whispered, the terror clear in his voice. "They're coming up the stairs to my office. Mason, if they find what I took"
The line went dead with a sharp click.
Silence.
Mason stared at the phone in his hand. Then he looked up the dark, empty road ahead. The sheriff had evidence. Real evidence. And the hunter's men were about to take it and maybe the sheriff permanently out of the picture.
He had two choices. Drive home. Hide. Play the grieving widower.
Or go to war.
The engine of the old truck growled as he slammed it into gear and spun the wheel, kicking up a spray of gravel as he made a violent U-turn on the empty road. The tires screeched.
He wasn't going home.
He was going to the station.
And God help anyone who got in his way.