Page 27 of The Infinite Light of Dust

Thank you, she mouthed soundlessly and began to eat.

My phone rang in my pocket. “I need to take this.”

I left the room before either of them could question me and stepped out the front door and walked down the porch. It was hard to believe it was barely fucking noon. The sun was just about over the clouds and the air had a bite to it. Karina’s nosy-ass neighbor was by his truck, dragging a mattress by a rope into the bed of it.

“What did you find out?”

“Word is he failed. But I’m telling you, he fucking didn’t.”

“What the hell?” My mind raced with potential solutions, potential reasons this was happening. Was Karina’s father trying to keep his son from leaving for basic training?

“What are we gonna do, Martin?” Mendoza asked me.

“I—” I paused, thinking about Karina and how she would be absolutely thrown deeper into hell if she knew what was happening right now, and that her father was not only not helping, but was potentially the cause of all this mess. My phone went off, the noise when someone was calling, and I had to blink to make sure I was reading the name correctly. It was Karina’s father.

“Let me call you right back,” I said as Mendoza called my name.

“Sergeant Martin.” I answered in the flattest tone I could manage. My heart was racing and that pissed me off beyond words. This measly little man should have zero power over me, but instead he could play puppeteer with two of the people I cared the most about in the world.

“Come to the station, Sergeant,” he instructed, calling me by my rank for the first time that I could remember.

“Why?” I dropped all formality.

“Because my son needs a ride home if they let him go, and you and I need to talk.”

“A ride home? So he passed the test?”

Mendoza told me less than thirty seconds ago that he hadn’t, so what the actual fuck was going on?

“Come to the station, Sergeant,” he repeated.

Fuck it.If he wanted to play games with me, then let’s fucking play.

Chapter Fifteen

Kael

Karina called me before I even made it to the stop sign. She must have heard my truck rev up and pull away from the curb. I hadn’t even told them I was leaving. I’d hung up the call from Karina’s dad and walked straight to my truck. If Elodie or Karina had said anything to try to stop me, I hadn’t heard them.

My mind roiled as I drove myself into a situation that had less than a 1 percent probability of ending well for me. On the phone she begged me to turn around, to take her with me, but I pleaded with her, told her to keep herself and Elodie home. There was nothing either of them could do right now, and seeing her distraught would only make me act irrationally. I was so used to calling in backup, to radioing my platoon to come save my ass, but this time it was just me. Though I had been on death’s door many a time, the stakes somehow felt higher in that moment driving away from her house.

For the first time in my life, I realized I would genuinely choose another person’s well-being over my own. Not in an “every soldier has each other’s backs” kind of way, but in an “I would burn this entire post down, I would go against every moral I had, I would do fucked-up, unspeakable things to anyone and everyone I had ever met for her” way.

“I’ll bring your brother home,” I said. “You keep Elodie calm and don’t answer the door for anyone, I mean anyone, in case Phillips shows up there.”

The thought chilled me to the bone. I would finish what I’d started the night before if he so much as came within a hundred feet of Karina.

“I don’t like it, Kael,” she said.

“You don’t have to like it, but listen, please.”

She said okay, and we hung up. As I pulled into the parking lot, I spotted Lt. Fischer standing against his truck with his arms crossed. I parked beside him and climbed out of mine. My leg was still sore from last night, but I’d be damned if I showed any weakness in front of him. I straightened my back and stared directly into his eyes as I approached him.

“That was quick,” he said, indicating the space behind me.

“It’s important.”

He nodded as if that mattered to him.

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