Page 4 of Angel's Promise
"You don't know who the man in the alley was," I said. "The one he killed."
"No. I never saw his face. He was already on his knees when I came out." She looked down at her coffee. Still hadn't taken a sip. "I don't know who he was. I don't know why the cop killed him. I don't know any of it. I just know what I saw, and I know that the people who want me quiet aren't going to stop."
I sat with that for a moment. Let the pieces settle.
"When did you eat last?" I asked.
She blinked. Whatever she'd expected me to follow up with, that wasn't it.
"I don't... yesterday, maybe. I stopped at a gas station somewhere." She frowned, trying to remember. "I had a granola bar."
"Yesterday."
"I think so."
I pushed back from the table. "Kitchen's through there. I'll get you something. Then you're going to sleep."
"I'm fine."
She wasn't fine. She was gray under the eyes, her skin had that translucent look people get when they've been running too long on too little, and her body was doing that thing where it starts to sway without the person realizing. I'd seen it in soldiers coming off seventy-two-hour ops. The body keeps going until you give it permission to stop, and then it stops hard.
"You're not fine," I said. "You're safe now. Eat, sleep. We'll talk the rest through after."
She opened her mouth to argue. I watched the fight go out of her mid-breath. Just drained away, like someone had pulled a plug. She nodded.
I took her to the kitchen, made her a sandwich because it was fast and she needed calories more than cuisine. She ate standing up, leaning against the counter, and I tried to focus on the bread knife, the mustard, the practical business of feeding someone who'd forgotten to feed herself.
I tried. But I kept seeing things I shouldn't have been seeing.
The curve of her waist where her shirt had pulled loose from her jeans. The fullness of her hips, the way her body took up space in a way that had nothing to do with size and everything to do with shape. She was built soft, all curves. Beautiful in a way that made me uncomfortable, the kind that wasn't trying to be anything, that justwas.
She was twenty-eight. She was scared. She was Ryan Mercer's little sister.
And I was forty-three years old, watching her eat a sandwich, thinking about the shape of her mouth.
I turned away. Put the knife in the sink. Cleaned the counter. Kept my hands busy because if I didn't, I'd have to deal withwhat was happening in my chest, and I couldn't afford to deal with that right now. Maybe not ever.
I gave her one of the spare rooms in the lodge, second floor, the one with a lock on the inside. Showed her where the bathroom was, put a clean towel on the bed.
"Lock the door if it makes you feel safer," I told her. "Nobody comes in here without your say-so, but no one will do you harm here.”
She stood in the doorway, and something in the way she held herself made me think of Ryan so hard my vision blurred for a second. The set of her jaw, the way she squared her shoulders when she was trying to look tougher than she felt. Her brother had done the same thing. Every time. Right up until the end.
"Thank you," she said. Quietly. Like she meant it down to her bones but didn't have the energy to say it louder.
Church wasin the back room of the lodge, same as always. Long table, eight chairs, the Forsaken Angels patch burned into the wood at the head where I sat. My chair. My table.
Ghost on my right, Hawk on my left. The founding three. We'd come out of the Army with dishonorable discharges and destroyed reputations because we'd refused to sign off on a lie. The brass wanted a cover story and we wouldn't give them one, so they buried us instead. Forsaken by the country we'd bled for, because we'd done the right thing.
After that, I'd tracked down Ghost and Hawk and started building. A brotherhood for men like us. Veterans the system had chewed up, spat out, or quietly discarded. Some dishonorably discharged for the same kind of bullshit that burned us. Some who got out clean but couldn't fit back into aworld that didn't make sense anymore. I'd found them, one by one, and brought them here. Gave them a patch, a purpose, a table to sit at with men who understood. All of us are ex-military and we had each other’s backs, always.
I still felt the weight of that every time I called church.
The rest of the brothers filled in around the table. Doc was leaning back in his chair with his arms folded. Duke was spinning a pen between his fingers, restless the way he always got before something kicked off.
"Ryan Mercer's sister is upstairs," I said.
That landed the way I knew it would. Ghost and Hawk had served with Ryan, been there the day we lost him, carried it the way I did. The other brothers knew the name because you didn't wear a Forsaken Angels patch without understanding who we'd lost and why it mattered. Ryan was part of the foundation of this club, even though he'd never set foot in it.
