Innocent Blood(4)

Erin gazed at the amber in her palm, knowing that this tiny object had led not only to Amy’s field of study—but also to her death.

Her fingers closed tightly over the smooth stone, squeezing her determination, making herself a promise.

Never again . . .





2





December 18, 11:12 A.M. EST

Arlington, Virginia



Sergeant Jordan Stone felt like a fraud as he marched in his dress blues. Today he would bury the last member of his former team—a young man named Corporal Sanderson. Like his other teammates, Sanderson’s body had never been found.

After a couple of months of searching through the tons of rubble that had once been the mountain of Masada, the military gave up. Sanderson’s empty coffin pressed hard against Jordan’s hip as he marched in step with the other pallbearers.

A December snowstorm had blanketed the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, covering brown grass and gathering atop the branches of leafless trees. Snow mounded across the arched tops of marble grave markers, more markers than he could count. Each grave was numbered, most bore names, and all these soldiers had been laid to rest with honor and dignity.

One of them was his wife, Karen, killed in action more than a year before. There hadn’t been enough of her to bury, just her dog tags. Her coffin was as empty as Sanderson’s. Some days Jordan couldn’t believe that she was gone, that he would never bring her flowers again and get a long slow kiss of thanks. Instead, the only flowers he would ever give her would go on her grave. He had placed red roses there before he headed to Sanderson’s funeral.

He pictured Sanderson’s freckled face. His young teammate had been eager to please, taken his job seriously, and done his best. In return, he got a lonely death on a mountaintop in Israel. Jordan tightened his grip on the cold casket handle, wishing that the mission had ended differently.

A few more steps past the bare trees and he and his companions carried the casket into a frigid chapel. He felt more at home within these simple white walls than he had in the lavish churches of Europe. Sanderson would have been more comfortable here, too.

Sanderson’s mother and sister waited for them inside. They wore nearly identical black dresses and thin formal shoes despite the snow and cold. Both had Sanderson’s fair complexion, with faces freckled brown even in winter. Their noses and eyes were red.

They missed him.

He wished they didn’t have to.

Beside them, his commanding officer, Captain Stanley, stood at attention. The captain had been at Jordan’s left hand for all the funerals, his lips compressed in a thin line as coffins went into the ground. Good soldiers, every one.

He was a by-the-book commander and had handled Jordan’s debriefing faultlessly. In turn, Jordan did his best to stick to the lie that the Vatican had prepared: the mountain had collapsed in an earthquake, and everyone died. He and Erin had been in a corner that hadn’t collapsed and were rescued three days later by a Vatican search party.

Simple enough.

It was untrue. And unfortunately, he was a bad liar, and his CO suspected that he hadn’t revealed everything that had happened in Masada or after his rescue.

Jordan had already been taken off active duty and assigned psychiatric counseling. Someone was watching him all the time, waiting to see if he would crack up. What he wanted most was to simply get back out in the field and do his job. As a member of the Joint Expeditionary Forensic Facility in Afghanistan, he’d worked and investigated military crime scenes. He was good at it, and he wanted to do it again.

Anything to keep busy, to keep moving.

Instead, he stood at attention beside yet another coffin, the cold from the marble floor seeping into his toes. Sanderson’s sister shivered next to him. He wished he could give her his uniform jacket.

He listened to the military chaplain’s somber tones more than his words. The priest had only twenty minutes to get through the ceremony. Arlington had many funerals every day, and they set a strict schedule.

He soon found himself outside of the chapel and at the gravesite. He had done this march so many times that his feet found their way to this grave without much thought. Sanderson’s casket rested on snow-dusted brown earth beside a draped hole.

A cold wind blew across the snow, curling flakes on the surface into tendrils, like cirrus clouds, the kind of high clouds so common in the desert where Sanderson had died. Jordan waited through the rest of the ceremony, listened to the three-rifle volley, the bugler playing “Taps,” and watched the chaplain give the folded flag to Sanderson’s mother.

Jordan had endured the same scene for each of his lost teammates.

It hadn’t gotten any easier.

At the end, Jordan shook Sanderson’s mother’s hand. It felt cold and frail, and he worried that he might break it. “I am deeply sorry for your loss. Corporal Sanderson was a fine soldier, and a good man.”