Page 31 of Broken Love

“That guy?”

“Yup.”

“The man named Boxcar?”

“That’s the one.”

“Are you crazy?”

He laughs. “It’s not that crazy, Caleb.”

“Did he put you up to this?” I ask. “I don’t need you trying to incept me, Fox. You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“Says who?” I glare at him and he laughs again. “Caleb, I’m not not on your side here. But I do think you’re jumping the gun a little bit with the suspicion that this guy is somehow a criminal mastermind sent to infiltrate the US Army and kill us all.”

“Then, what is he doing here?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

“I will.” I cross my arms. “As soon as I find him.”

Fox points over my shoulder. Boxcar sits about twenty feet away, leaning nonchalantly against a crate with his laptop once again balanced on his thighs.

I look at Fox. “You planned this,” I accuse.

He spins around with a smile on his lips. “I’ll be inside.”

“Really?”

His eyebrows bounce as he leaves, jaunting back to our tent with a slight hop in his step.

I sigh and walk over to the crates where Boxcar lounges.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey.” His hand juts out and grabs mine before I can react. “Check this out.”

With a quick yank, he pulls me down to sit beside him on the crate.

“What?” I jerk my hand free, annoyed.

He adjusts the screen on his laptop to give me a better view. “So, while we were out earlier, I took some photos of the license plates on the vehicles of that convoy.”

I look at the screen over his shoulder as he clicks through his photos. “Uh-huh…”

“Then, I modified the Army’s facial recognition software to recognize numbers and letters instead of facial features so that—”

“The Army gave you their facial recognition software?” I interrupt.

“Well, no…” He shows a slight grin. “I borrowed it. Anyway, the military has surveillance feeds all over Kabul, so I ran the software against the last forty-eight hours or so of footage, and…”

I wait as his fingers rush across the keys. “And?”

He stops and tilts the screen even more in my direction. “Do any of these faces look familiar to you?”

The footage is blurry but the hairs quiver on my neck. I lean forward to get a better look.

Three trucks sit on the side of the road near the center of town. A dozen men linger nearby, each one wearing black tactical gear, loading large boxes into the truck beds. One of them catches my eye. He’s tall, wide-set, pale-skinned, with a neck nearly as thick as his shaved head.

---