Chapter 2 - Echoes and Flashing RedThe flashing blue and red strobes painted the kitchen cabinets in alternating strokes of cold neon. Deputy Harris, a veteran of two tours in the county sheriff’s department, stood by the stove, his eyes darting between the knocked-over iron, the bruise on Clara’s cheek, and the imposing frame of Sergeant Jack Vance.
In the driveway, two deputies were holding Evelyn against the side of a cruiser. Even through the double-paned glass, Jack could hear her voice: “He’s unstable! Combat fatigue! He assaulted me the moment he walked through the door!”
“She’s laying it on thick, Jack,” Harris muttered, thumb tucked into his duty belt. “Says you barged in and threatened her life, that your wife lost her balance during the confusion.”
“Look at the kitchen, Harris,” Jack replied, his voice dropping into that low, dangerous baritone that commanded silence in briefing rooms. “Clara is eight months along. The iron was hot. The cord was wrapped around the table leg intentionally—it wasn't an accident. And then look at this.”
Jack walked over to the breakfast bar, picked up the forged casualty dossier with two fingers, and laid it out on the table before the officer.
Harris scanned the document, his brow furrowing as he noticed the irregularities: mismatched unit designations, a seal that belonged to the National Guard instead of the active Army, and a signature line that bore the name of a commander who had retired five years earlier.
“Where did she get this?” Harris asked, astonished.
“My mother has connections in the county records office from her thirty years as an administrative clerk,” Jack said flatly. “She knows how to make paper look legal to someone drowning in grief. She wanted Clara to sign the deed over to the family trust before the baby was born. She told her that without me, she had no legal claim to the property or my pension.”
Clara sat wrapped in a paramedic’s blanket, sipping water from a paper cup. The medic was checking her blood pressure. “High, but stable,” the medic noted softly. “Fetal heartbeat is rapid, but strong. We need to take her to St. Jude’s for an ultrasound just to be certain.”
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Jack walked to her side, stripping off his heavy tactical vest and dropping it onto a chair. Stripped of his gear, he was just a man—tired, battered by six months in the desert, but entirely resolved. “I’m riding with her,” he told the officer.
Harris nodded, stepping outside toward the cruisers. “I’m impounding the documents, Jack. And your mother isn't sleeping in her bed tonight.”
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