General Henderson leaned across the seat. “Get in.”
I hesitated.
He saw it. “You don’t have time to decide whether I’m a good man.”
That was true.
We got in.
Henderson drove without headlights for the first half mile, then turned onto a gravel road and accelerated. In the rear window, distant beams swung wildly through the trees.
No one spoke until the cemetery was gone behind us.
Henderson glanced at the cylinder in Jessica’s lap. “You found it.”
“You knew?” I asked.
“I suspected.”
“That grave is empty, isn’t it?”
His silence answered.
Jessica turned toward him. “What happened to my father?”
Henderson’s hands tightened around the wheel. “I don’t know.”
“You said he never came back out.”
“He didn’t,” Henderson said. “Not that I saw. The official report listed him killed in action. But there were no remains recovered. There was pressure to close the file fast.”
“From Voss?” I asked.
“Among others.”
Jessica held up the photograph. “It says one of you sold the road.”
Henderson glanced at it once, then looked back at the road.
“I have spent twenty-two years afraid it was me.”
The words landed heavily.
“What does that mean?” Jessica demanded.
“I signed the route change,” he said. “I was a captain then. The order came through proper channels. I didn’t question it.”
“And men died,” I said.
“Yes.”
His voice was raw now.
“Burton confronted me before the convoy. Told me something was wrong. I told him to follow the order. An hour later, he pulled me out of a burning truck.”
No one spoke.
Henderson drove us to a hunting cabin deep in state forest, a place he said belonged to a friend who owed him his life. There was no electricity except a generator, no neighbors, and no cell signal unless you climbed the ridge behind it.
Inside, Jessica sat at a wooden table beneath a lantern while Henderson examined the black sliver from the bracelet.