PART 3
Touch me again, Dominic, and you’ll be in the bed next to her. He hesitated, then stepped back. I pushed past them and opened the door. The sound of the ventilator was the only thing in the room. Whoosh! Click! Whoosh! I walked to the side of the bed and my knees almost gave out. If the name on the chart didn’t say Tessa, I wouldn’t have known it was her.
Her face was swollen to twice its size. Her jaw was wired shut. One eye was completely sealed shut, purple and black. Her beautiful blonde hair had been shaved on the left side to make room for stitches that ran across her scalp like a railroad track. I reached out to touch her hand, but her hand was in a cast. I touched her shoulder instead.
It was the only place that didn’t look broken. “Tessa,” I whispered. “I’m here. I’m home.” She didn’t move. The machine just kept breathing for her. The door opened behind me. It was the detective, Miller. He looked uncomfortable, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Mr. Hunter Miller said, “I’m sorry. Who did this?” I asked, not turning around.
My eyes were fixed on Tessa’s broken face. We believe it was a home invasion, Miller said. “Robbery gone wrong. It happens.” They probably panicked when she came downstairs, beat her, took some jewelry, and ran. I turned around slowly. I looked at the detective. Then I looked past him through the glass window of the room at Victor and his seven sons.
They were talking to each other, laughing. Mason, the youngest, was showing something on his phone to Kyle. A robbery, I repeated. Yes, sir. We found signs of forced entry at the back door. I looked back at Tessa. I gently lifted her arm, the one that wasn’t in a cast. I looked at her fingernails. They were clean. Detective, I said, my voice dangerously calm.
My wife is a fighter. She takes kickboxing classes three times a week. If a stranger broke into our home and attacked her, she would have clawed his eyes out. There would be skin under her nails. There would be defensive wounds on her forearms. I pointed to her arms. Smooth. No bruises on the outside of the forearms.
She didn’t fight back, I said, which means she knew the person. She let them get close. Or she was held down. The detective’s eyes flickered toward the window, toward Victor. It was a micro expression, a tiny split second of fear. I caught it. We are investigating all leads, Miller said, sweating now. But the father, Mr.
Victor, he has been very helpful. He hired a private security team to watch the house now. I bet he did, I said. I walked out of the room. The seven brothers stopped talking as I approached. Victor looked at me with cold dead eyes. Tragedy, Victor said flatly. But we will take care of her. Hunter, you have done your duty. You can go back to your base.
We have the best doctor’s money can buy. I’m not going anywhere. I said she’s my daughter. Victor snapped, his voice rising. And you are just a husband who is never there. You weren’t there to protect her. I’m handling this. I stepped close to him. I was 3 in taller than him and about 50 lb of muscle heavier than his security guards.
“That’s the problem, Victor,” I whispered so only he could hear. “You’re handling it too well. You don’t look sad. You look inconvenienced.” Victor’s eye twitched. I looked at the brothers, seven of them, strong, capable men, yet not a single scratch on any of them. But I noticed something else. Mason, the youngest one. He wasn’t looking at me.
He was looking at the floor. His hands were shaking. He was holding a coffee cup and the liquid was rippling. They were hiding something. A robbery, I said loud enough for all of them to hear. That’s the story. Some junkie broke in and hit her. How many times? I looked at the medical chart I had swiped from the end of the bed. 31 times, I read aloud.
31 strikes with a blunt object. Probably a hammer. I looked at Grant, then Ian, then Dominic. A robber hits once to knock you down, twice to keep you down. 31 times. I shook my head. 31 times is personal. 31 times is hate. Watch your mouth. Dominic stepped forward again. I’m going to find who did this, I said, looking directly at Victor.
And when I do, I’m not going to call the police. I’m going to do what I was trained to do. I turned my back on them and walked toward the exit. I needed air, but more than that, I needed to get back to the house. The detective said it was a robbery, but my gut, the same gut instinct that kept me alive in the mountains of Afghanistan, told me the enemy wasn’t some stranger in the dark.
The enemy was standing in the waiting room. And they had made one fatal mistake. They didn’t kill her, and they didn’t kill me. I walked out into the cold night air, took out my phone, and cancelled my return flight to base. The war was over there, but a new hunt had just begun here. The drive back to the house felt like a funeral procession of one.
The street lights flickered past my windshield like strobe lights, counting down the seconds until I had to face the reality of what happened in my own dining room. I parked my truck on the curb, killing the engine. The house sat there in the dark, silent and accusing. The police tape that had been strung across the front door was already sagging, fluttering in the cold wind.
It felt lazy. It felt like they had already decided this crime wasn’t worth the effort of a tight knot. I ducked under the yellow tape and pushed the front door open again. The house was freezing. The heating must have been turned off. Or maybe the cold just lived here now. I didn’t turn on the main lights.
I didn’t want the neighbors to see me. I flipped the switch on my tactical flashlight. The beam cut through the darkness, illuminating dust modes dancing in the air. Dust that had been kicked up by a struggle. I walked straight to the dining room. In the hospital, I was a husband. Here, in the dark, I was an operator.
I needed to switch off the part of my brain that loved Tessa and switch on the part that analyzed kill zones. If I didn’t, the grief would drop me to my knees, and I couldn’t afford to be on my knees. I needed to be on the hunt. I shined the light on the floor. The police report said robbery. But robbery is chaotic.
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Robbery is messy in a frantic way. Drawers pulled out, things smashed in a line toward the exit. This room was different. The chairs weren’t knocked over randomly. They were pushed back against the walls, creating a circle, an arena. I knelt down near the spot where the bleach smell was strongest. The wood was warped from the chemicals, but the stain was deep.
I traced the outer edge of the splatter with my gloved finger. Low velocity, I whispered to the empty room. If a stranger strikes you in a panic, they swing wide and wild. The blood flies in long, thin arcs, cast off patterns on the walls. I shown my light on the walls. They were clean. That meant the blows were vertical, straight down, controlled.
