Chapter 4 - The Man Who Knew My War
I hadn't spoken the word Ramadi at home in almost a decade.
I told Nora that when she called.
She didn't ask for the story.
She asked who might know it.
I gave her three names.
Two belonged to men buried at Arlington.
The third was Daniel Rourke, a former teammate who now ran a security consulting firm outside Richmond.
I hadn't called him in eighteen months.
He answered anyway.
“You sound like somebody dragged you behind a truck.”
“Close enough.”
We met at a diner where the coffee tasted like burned pennies.
Rourke listened without interrupting.
When I showed him Sentinel Trace, his expression changed.
“Where did you get that name?”
“Someone at the gym.”
“Cole, that outfit used to hire former contractors with access to archived personnel information.”
“Legally?”
“That's the question.”
He studied the invoice.
“Service record verification is a strange description for seven months of surveillance.”
I told him what Derek had said in the gym.
Rourke stopped tapping his spoon.
“Fallujah, I understand.”
“Ramadi?”
“No.”
He looked out the window before speaking again.
“There was a civilian contractor attached to the reconstruction program after our rotation.”
I remembered a shipment ledger, disputed equipment, a roadside explosion, and the months of questions that followed.
A contractor had been accused of falsifying invoices after an incident cost American lives.
I'd given a statement.
Then I'd come home and tried to stop thinking about it.
“The contractor's son took over the business,” Rourke said.
“What business?”
“Price Strategic Holdings.”
The name settled between us like a live wire.
Gavin Price.
I called Nora.
She told me not to confront him.
Within an hour, she'd found corporate records connecting Price Strategic Holdings to an entity seeking to purchase the warehouse where Apex operated.
The same entity was negotiating for several properties on our side of town.
One was a neighboring lot bordering my backyard.
It wasn't enough to prove anything.
But it answered one question.
Price wasn't hanging around Derek because he enjoyed kickboxing.
That evening, Claire called me from our house.
For fourteen years I'd known the sound of that kitchen in the background.
The refrigerator compressor.
The faint rattle of the loose window.
This time I heard another voice.
Price's.
Claire whispered, “Cole, please don't fight this.”
“Fight what?”
She hesitated.
“The paperwork.”
“Why would you care more about paperwork than a divorce?”
A pause.
Then Price spoke loudly enough for me to hear.
“Tell him the offer expires tomorrow.”
Claire said, “You don't understand what they'll do.”
The call ended.
For the first time, I wondered whether Claire was afraid of her boyfriend.
May you like
Or afraid of the men behind him.
