A long pause.
Then softer:
“Jess, if you ever hear my voice, I need you to know I wanted to be your father. Not a ghost. Not a name under stone. Your father. I carried your picture through dust storms and gunfire. I kissed it before every mission. I am sorry my love reached you as a mystery.”
Jessica began to cry then, silently, her shoulders shaking.
I put a hand near her but did not touch her until she leaned into me.
The recorder clicked.
“One more thing. Do not trust—”
The sound cut off.
Jessica lifted her head. “No. No, no.”
She rewound it. Played it again.
“One more thing. Do not trust—”
Nothing.
The file had been damaged or erased.
A beam of headlights swept across the cemetery.
I killed the recorder and ducked.
A black SUV rolled slowly past the church gate.
Jessica whispered, “They followed us.”
The SUV stopped.
Two men got out.
I grabbed the cylinder, the photos, and the recorder. “Move.”
We ran low between the headstones, keeping the sycamores between us and the road. My bad knee screamed. Jessica stayed beside me, refusing to leave me behind even when I hissed at her to go faster.
A voice called from the gate.
“Mr. Mercer. Miss Burton. We only want to talk.”
Colonel Voss.
Jessica’s face hardened in the dark.
“This way,” she whispered.
She led me through a break in the fence I had not seen. Beyond it was a drainage ditch, then a line of trees. We stumbled through mud, branches whipping our faces. Behind us, flashlights sliced through the cemetery.
My lungs burned like Fallujah smoke.
At the far end of the trees, another set of headlights flashed twice.
I pulled Jessica back.
Then a window rolled down.