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  I choked. The one thing I’d prided myself on being all my life was being Greg’s protector. I was the enforcer working closely with insane Shane because I wanted my brother nowhere near him. I was the one that endorsed Greg for the cushy but well-paying job of clean up after the bullets and knives stopping tearing through the air. Minimum wage at McDonald’s wouldn’t have fed us let alone housed us.

  Yet, I failed to protect my brother. I. Failed. Miserably. It didn’t matter that he was an adult, his life fated to end this way the moment he continued to work for Shane. I didn’t care that Greg’s choices were his to live with or die with. He was gone. I wasn’t there to save him or die with him, comfort him in his last moments. And there were no redos. All I could do was be there to lay him to rest beside my parents and make sure his killer would be brought to justice one way or the other. Regrettably, that was all that was left for me to do.

  Resolved, I rocketed up out of my chair. “Sergeant Major, I need grievance time of at least a month to bury my brother and see to his affairs. I need to talk to the cops, the district attorney, and find out what went down, who did this.” I wouldn’t come to terms with my brother’s death until I knew everything that happened that day.

  Lindon dropped his elbows on the desktop and thumbed his eyes. “This is where I tell you the second unpleasant thing, Graham. I can’t give you leave. You’ll have to handle your brother’s funeral and affairs over the phone because your team is getting ready to deploy to Korea. Things are going sideways over there, and we, this country needs you to straighten it out.” Needed me to kill someone he meant.

  I started to hyperventilate. I couldn’t go home, I couldn’t see my brother one last time, who needed me more. I couldn’t be there for him, with him because of a conflict instigated by the greedy and powerful on both ends. A roar of “NO!” echoed throughout the room, startling the Sergeant Major.

  “Son,” he started.

  I didn’t want to hear it. “I’m not your son. I’m not anyone’s son, grandson, father, uncle, or nephew. Neither is Greg. He has no one else to make sure his body makes it into his final resting place. He has no one else to make sure his killer faces justice, but he has me. I am his brother. I am all he has. He was all I had, so don’t speak unless you’re ordering me home to see about my brother.”

  “Graham,” he breathed out, “we wouldn’t ask you to lead the charge if it wasn’t absolutely imperative in Korea.”

  “I’m not the only one who can lead. You have Marines coming out the ass who can take my place until I get back, so stick one of them in my place and let me go home.” I pounded my fists on his desk. “I’m going regardless.”

  Sitting openmouthed and as still as a corpse, Lindon was thoroughly shocked that a lower-ranked officer would dare address him in such a manner. I was practically foaming at the mouth without any fucks to give for how he felt about my insubordination. Nor that it put me at risk for being court-martialed at the least, dishonorably discharged from duty at the most. If it was his brother, I had a high degree of certainty that he would act the same. Since he was a desk jockey that could be replaced for pushing paper up the chain with no fear of being ordered back to active duty, he wouldn’t have to decide if duty or his relatives mattered more.

  Lindon began to blink rapidly as if waking up from suspended animation. “Graham, I’m going to let all that slide because I know you’re in a lot of pain right now.”

  “And yet, you don’t really give a shit, do you, Lindon?” I snarled.

  “I care, Graham,” was forced through his gritted dentures. “But, we both have our orders, and there’s a reason we are called Marines, not soldiers. Our loyalty and morale are the highest of any branch of service.”

  If he thought I was going to fight a war while Greg lay dead on a cold slab alone, he was sadly mistaken. “It’s been a long time since you’ve been a real Marine, but we both have families that we’re loyal to, too. No one would expect you to go to war when one of them is dead. You wouldn’t stand for it either. I hope you wouldn’t, anyway. So, you can take your orders and shove them where the sun does not shine. I’m going home!”

  Done with talking, I snapped to attention, saluted him with as much contempt for him as I could assemble in my expression, and then about-faced to quit the room without his permission.

  “Graham!” he bellowed as my back turned. “If you go AWOL, you are forsaking your duties, and I have to follow up with punishment fitting of such actions.”

  In other words, he was going to have my ass locked up until a military judicial system declared what to do with me. Any government agency that wouldn’t let a Marine or soldier go home to grieve the only family member they had left was not a place that would benefit from my skills in combat again. I twirled around slowly on my heels to let him know just that in my own special way.

  Every inch of Lindon’s skin was blood fused. He was damn near rabid, huffing and puffing air like an overweight dragon with mustard on his company-issued undershirt. If he thought he was having a bad day, he hadn’t seen anything yet.

  I marched over to his desk where I spat, “Let me help you with the decision I think you should make concerning my duty here, Garrett!” Use of a higher ranking officer’s first name was about as disrespectful as it got in the military, never mind calling a Marine a soldier.

  A long ‘fuuuckkkk’ discharged from the other side of the glass panes encasing Lindon’s office. I didn’t have to look back to know Andre had shadowed me here. I never doubted he’d try to be there for me even if that regulated him to standing outside a door, eavesdropping because he didn’t have consent to enter. About to test the miles our friendship could endure, I proceeded to mule kick the chair I’d just gotten out of. It sailed across the room, striking the wall. A long black streak emerged in the white paint as a pointed end of the chair’s backrest scrubbed down it until crashing to the floor.

  Lindon scrambled to his feet, wagging his finger and yelling, “Tobin, I advise you to cease the tantrum before you don’t have to worry about going to war or anywhere else!” Riding a desk had taken his ability to jump up a long time ago when he became a company man and began kowtowing to the Generals. No one here believed he knew what standing up for the men under his command was anymore.

  His ambitions of becoming a general himself had gotten in the way of his compassion and fitness. It was no longer my business to make him look good on paper. Putting foot to the chair was the slightest amount of the damage I was about to do. The chair and desk needed to be moved to the side of the room for unlimited access to my main goal: Garrett himself.

  I smiled. “The brig is the lesser evil compared to going to war for a coward behind a desk who doesn’t give a damn that I have someone, whether alive or dead, counting on me stateside too.”

  “That’s not true, Tobin!”

  We both knew that was a lie because he had just proved it. Countering his statement of pure fiction was less interesting than striding to the side of his monstrosity of a desk built of real teakwood. I crouched to grip the bottom, heaving it over. A sonic boom reverberated through the small office as the desk cartwheeled on its side. The overturned top of it collided with the two windows, breaking them into mere shards that rained down with the hailstorm of paperwork swirling about the room.

  With the furniture out the way, my next mark for putting hands on was Garrett himself. He knew it. As I turned to him, he turned to run. Attempt to run anyway. He was capable of a brisk walk for a few seconds at the most. He hadn’t got a full foot away when I lunged forward to reach for him.

  Andre rushing the room snagged my concentration from my mission. “Tobin! Stop goddamnit! If you do this, you won’t get to go home period!”

  I hawk-eyed Lindon shuffling over to the standing desk for protection. “That’s how it’s going to be anyway, Andre. This overseer won’t let his slave go home to bury his brother, but you can bet your ass I won’t be going anywhere else he wants me to either. If I have to p
unch this tub of lard into oblivion to keep both of us from getting what we want, I will.”

  In true fear for his safety, Lindon’s eyes bugged out of his head. “Get him out of here, Underwood! Take him to the brig!”

  Andre had the authority to do just that. I would forgive him for doing his job if I got my hands on Lindon first. Our friendship was null and voided if I didn’t. Andre didn’t know that when he stretched long arms out to grab for me moving in Lindon’s direction anyway. Because hitting Andre would be like hitting Greg, I let him grab me by the arms, hauling me out of the office. We exited the barracks, crossing the parking lot to the jail with him barking in my ear all the way.

  “Making me do my fucking job. Motherfucker, I’m not supposed to arrest you for trying to assault a superior. That’s for the other Marines.” Oh, he was pissed if spitting mad and cursing. Andre thought getting emotional enough to blaspheme was a waste of his energy when there were so many women who could benefit from his heightened emotions and dirty language more. “I swear to God, Tobin, if you leave me here with these weak-willed generals by myself, I’m going to hunt your ass down in New York the next time I go on leave.”

  I chuckled. “Well, you better start planning a flight because I most certainly am trying to get fired. I will not fight for a country that won’t let me go to my brother. Lindon’s so stuck up the generals’ asses, he’d find a way to kiss them all at the same time if they told him to.”

  Andre escorted me past officers staring slack-jawed from their desks to one of the mostly empty cells lining the wall. “If you had kept your damn cool, I could have found someone to speak to some of those generals on your behalf or did it myself. You just had to be hot-tempered and not ask for help.”

  After walking off some steam, I entered my cell calmly to lie back on the neatly-made cot with one arm folded under my head as he slammed the door shut behind me in a fit of anger. “You and I both know, Andre, that my infiltration team is one of the best. No amount of chatting on your behalf or anyone else’s at a boring dinner with boring people talking shop would have changed their minds. Being the best has come back to bite me in the ass, but my ass will be right here and not on foreign soil doing their dirty work.”

  Andre palmed his hips. “So everybody loses? Is that your answer?”

  “Better than it being just me and Greg losing. If my brother has to be buried in a pauper’s grave because I can’t be there to make sure he’s laid to rest right the first time, then the generals and their flunkies will not get one iota of assistance from me to break into a country they’re scared of. This is their choice, and they’ll have to make compromises just like I have to because I am done fighting for them. Let me know when they’ve decided what to do with me.”

  In for the long haul, I rolled over on my side to face the gray wall, intending to get some sleep. I could always have my brother’s body exhumed from wherever the state buried him, saying my goodbyes whenever I got out of here. The Generals couldn’t undo losing wars. Those losses would follow them throughout their careers. They would be mentioned every time Korea was brought up in conversation by soldiers, Marines, and civilians alike. The Generals would learn today that I fought harder and longer for my blood than for them.

  It wasn’t a long waiting game for their decision. The next day, the presence of the highest-ranking official at my base, four-star General Ellis, standing outside my cage, woke me. A wrinkly, shrunken but powerful old man at seventy-one, his dark glower from behind bifocals tried to penetrate my skull when I eased up to a sitting position to gape back rather than standing and saluting him. Fuck him. Fuck all he stood for. Fuck his efforts to cower me down with just his will.

  When he realized I wasn’t going to give him his due, he got to the point of his visit. “What’s it going to be, boy? Defend your country and apologize to Lindon or throw your oath of enlistment in the trash and lose your pension?”

  “I’ll take the last option. I can always get another job, another pension. You know, the FBI is always looking for good men. This whole outfit has lost my respect by putting your wants above my pain and needs, so being here is pointless for me. Fire me already.”

  Appalled that I’d say such a thing, General Ellis wrapped frail hands around the bars. “You’ll throw away your career, retirement money you’ve earned to go home for a month? You probably won’t even be over in Korea three days at the most.”

  If I was crazy, I’d think he was pleading with me, but Marines didn’t plead. We pushed through until we got what we wanted or death.

  “I’ll give up my life for my brother right this instance. You and I both know how long I’ll be gone is never a certainty. Coming back isn’t either, so yes, I’ll throw away all I’ve worked for with the Corps to bury my brother and watch his killer lose his freedom, maybe his life, forever. Some things matter more than yours and the others’ ambitions.”

  Ellis swiped a hand down his face wearily. “We are sorry for your loss, son, but your brother’s gone, his body just a shell.” Whether he meant for that to sound callous or not, that was how I took it and flipped out.

  Actually, I flipped the cot over and raced to the bars to scream in the General’s face. “I’m not your son either! If I were, you’d let me go home to honor my brother’s memory! If it was your brother, would you risk dying on foreign soil first to lay him to rest last?”

  General Ellis favored putting distance between us more than answering me.

  “That’s what I thought!” I hollered after his retreating back, beginning to bend under the burden of its long years on this earth. “You want to go to war so bad, go your damn self!”

  Andre raced past the General with a quick salute given so fast he might as well had saved the gesture for another time when the General cared to salute back. “Tobin, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Well, I’ll need another job after I get out of here,” I threw out there just for the sake of it. “How many contacts do you have in the New York FBI offices?”

  “Dude, you just got up in the face of the highest-ranking officer you could ever hope to meet at thirty-six, and you’re in the brig for almost beating the shit out of your superior. You’re worried about my contacts? You have no hope in hell right now of passing an FBI mental evaluation and proving you have respect for authority.”

  I thought about that. “What if I went to anger management classes before putting in an application?”

  Andre face-palmed himself and groaned loudly as a response.

  Cherise

  Long Island, New York

  Working as my own boss might be the best thing I had ever done for myself. Having three million people to get lost in, in case my stalker came looking for me, was great too. What was not great was inviting Malaysia to view my handiwork before a client’s appointment. She squinted distastefully over my shoulder. Silly me thought after I was done decorating, she’d grow to like it if not love it. She hadn’t.

  “There is nothing wrong with baby blue, mint, and white leather, Malaysia,” I defended my décor, to the death if I had to. The strategically-hung flowerpots in front of the supersized windows in one wall made this place feel cozy yet opened. There would be no walls closing in on patients here.

  Sucking air through her teeth, she primed up to voice her opinion for the hundredth time. “I love the arrangement, but I still say you should’ve went with the tan walls, olive green chairs, and cherrywood furniture in here too. I’m telling you there’s a relaxing effect to that color scheme, and those colors are in right now, Cherise.”

  I cut my eyes sharply her way. “You just don’t quit, do you?”

  She shrugged.

  I mocked her movements. “You do know if someone is really angry, no color scheme, pattern, or even retail therapy truly relaxes them right. Only time does that for some, pills for others.” We’d had this argument a dozen times over the last month while picking out things for the four-room space. Then, we argued about it some more while promot
ing my business’s grand opening. I was the first to open in a newly-constructed, L-shaped commercial building in Long Island’s business district. The heart of the city was a hotbed of traffic. I was taking advantage of that along with surprisingly low rent for the area.

  Malaysia threw her hands up in surrender. A huge gift bag she brought with her swayed from her fingers. “Okay. You’re the psychiatrist. It’s your office. Your first business. Congratulations. You’re a boss lady now, sister.”

  “Thank you.” I really was a boss, accomplishing a dream I didn’t have a month ago. I couldn’t help strutting in a circle to face her, who was cheesing like a cat.

  Handing me the gift bag, she hugged me tight. “I’m so proud of you. If your parents were here, they’d be proud too.”

  My parents couldn’t come because of health issues with them both. When they felt better, I’d fly them up. Until then, I needed to relax before meeting my first client, Tobin Graham. He had more than anger issues if he let loose on his superiors. That was somewhat suicidal. Understandable to me after the death of a loved one. Not so much to the FBI. Until he resolved his anger, he wasn’t getting anywhere near a badge. Worse, the adrenaline was pumping just a little too fast through my veins to be an effective listener.

  Malaysia backstepped to point at the bag in my hands. It didn’t take more encouragement to rob the bag of its contents. I lifted up an expensive Louis Vuitton attaché case inside with a matching pen set. She shouldn’t have with her own start-up business to grow. However, I would not insult her by telling her to take the gift back and buy me something cheaper. If she wanted me to have a cheap gift, she’d have brought one.

  “This is beautiful, Malaysia. Thank you. I will carry it with me, with you always in mind.”