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Not the polished photo from the funeral.
Not the clean uniform picture on the memorial banner.
This Ethan had dust in his eyebrows, dried blood on his jaw, and fear hidden under a smile he was trying to hold together.
Behind him, somewhere far away, sirens wailed.
Rook made a sound and pressed his nose to the monitor.
Ethan looked into the camera.
“Maybug,” he said.
My knees nearly failed.
Nobody had called me that since he died.
Ethan swallowed.
“If you’re watching this, it means Rook made it home.”
His eyes flicked off-screen.
Then back.
“It also means I didn’t.”
Kelly started crying silently.
I did not.
Not yet.
Ethan leaned closer to the camera.
“Listen carefully. Don’t trust the official report. Don’t trust Maddox. Don’t trust anyone who says this is about a failed mission.”
Pike’s face hardened.
Ethan’s voice dropped.
“Rook wasn’t injured in the blast. There was no blast when they said there was. We found something we weren’t supposed to find, and Maddox made a deal before we ever reached the compound.”
The clinic seemed to shrink around us.
On-screen, Ethan flinched at a distant noise.
He continued faster.
“I hid copies in Rook’s collar because nobody searches the dog if they think he’s dead. If he reaches you, take him to the place Dad taught us to shoot cans off the fence posts. The old quarry. North ridge. There’s a second cache under the blue marker.”
My heart hammered once.
Hard.
The old quarry.
Ten miles outside town.
Private land now.
Owned by a company that had bought half the county in the last two years through shell LLCs.
Ethan lifted something toward the camera.
His watch.
The same watch from the duffel.
“If Maddox has this, it means he found one cache but not the other.”
Then his face changed.
Not fear now.
Grief.
“Maybug, I’m sorry. I tried to come home. I swear to God I tried.”
A voice shouted behind him.
Ethan looked toward it.
Rook barked off-screen.
Ethan turned back.
“One more thing. Mom can’t know until you have proof. It’ll kill her twice.”
He gave a broken laugh.
“Guess you don’t have to worry about that now, huh?”
I covered my mouth with one hand.
Too late.
Too cruel.
Too him.
Ethan leaned close enough that his face filled the screen.
“The name you need is not Maddox. Maddox is just the leash.”
The video glitched.
His next words came through distorted.
“The man holding it is—”
The clinic lights went out.
Everything died at once.
The monitor.
The lobby lamps.
The hum of the refrigerator.
Kelly screamed.
Rook exploded into motion, slamming into me, driving me backward just as the front window shattered.
Glass sprayed across the lobby like ice.
A red laser dot danced over the wall where my head had been half a second earlier.
Pike shouted, “DOWN!”
Dr. Price hit the floor.
Kelly crawled behind the counter.
Rook stood over me, teeth bared, body shaking with fury.
Outside, in the dark parking lot, an engine idled.
Not a patrol car.
Not Maddox’s truck.
Something heavier.
Something waiting.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
I pulled it out with shaking fingers.
Unknown number.
One text message.
No greeting.
No threat.
Just a photo.
It showed my brother alive.
Older.
Thinner.
Bruised.
Sitting in a metal chair under a single white light.
Today’s newspaper was taped to his chest.
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