Page 7

CHAPTERTWO
The punching bagswayed on its chain, still twitching from the last hit.
Nash Rahim stood with his forearm braced against it, breathing slow and heavy, sweat sliding down the curve of his back in thin, unbothered lines. He rolled his shoulder once, winced, then leaned into the bag and let his forehead rest against the canvas. It was warm. Damp. Smelled faintly of leather and old effort.
His ribs ached. Old injury. Not the worst.
The garage was half-shadowed, the light coming through a narrow window above the bench press and landing across the mess like a spotlight that gave up halfway. There were dumbbells scattered in uneven pairs, a duffel tossed open on a barstool, a half-eaten protein bar on the counter beside a whiskey glass that still held one melting cube. A pair of boots lay under the chair where he’d kicked them off last night, and his shirt hung from the back of a rusted fan currently spinning just enough to sound broken.
Order didn’t make anything better. Order didn’t bring them back.
He pushed off the bag and rolled his neck until it cracked. Then he grabbed the towel draped over a pipe, wiped the sweat from his face, and slung it around his neck.
He didn’t look at the photo taped to the side of the fridge. He saw it every damn time he blinked, eight men in desert gear, half-shadowed by the angle, grins all around, young and reckless and sure there would always be another mission, another sunrise. One of them was him. Three weren’t coming home. He tried not to think about that. Tried harder not to think about the other four, the ones still breathing, still carrying their own ghosts, only a few hours down the coast in Little Creek, Virginia, but who might as well have been on the sun for how far he had drifted from them.
He hadn’t just lost teammates. He had lost the brotherhood, lost the weight of their trust, their laughter, their anger, all the ordinary pieces of connection that used to stitch him to the world, and now felt so far out of reach he didn’t even know if he deserved to call them brothers anymore. The guilt still landed, low and dull, like bruises that never fully faded, not just for the ones who were gone, but for the ones who might still look him in the eye, searching for answers he didn’t have, answers that should have been etched on his soul, written into every breath, every bone, every promise they had made to each other. But all he had was blank space. Silence where memory should live. Some days, that felt like the worst part of all.
Nash froze at the sound, hearing the footsteps before he saw the shadows.
Furtive, hushed sounds. Wrong rhythm for the usual late-night jogger or drunk kid cutting through the alley. Two of them.
The night outside was clear, the air heavy with the damp chill rolling in from the Potomac. His breath slowed. His garage hunched behind a narrow brick townhouse he owned at the edge of Georgetown, tucked off a side alley lined with crumbling cobblestones and skeletal trees.
The house had been in his family for decades, a rare thing now, grandfathered before the neighborhood went to the developers.
He didn’t have neighbors close enough to see anything. That was why he liked it.
He moved without sound, stepping lightly across the concrete floor. His hand reached up and slipped beneath the lip of the toolbox mounted on the wall. Inside was a Sig P229, .40 caliber. Slide already racked. Safety off. He’d stripped and cleaned it the night before out of habit.
The footsteps paused.
Nash waited, eyes locked on the thin gap beneath the side door. It was fractured just enough to see the bounce of motion. Then came the faint scrape of metal on metal.
Lockpick.
Big mistake.
Shirtless, he stepped to the far wall, slipping through the side door into the breezeway, a short, narrow, covered passage that connected the garage to the back of the house.
Cold air wrapped around him, sharp and damp from the river, raising goosebumps on his exposed skin. The night pressed close. He moved quickly, crossing the few steps to the back door.
From the dark kitchen, lit only by the thin spill of streetlamp light slanting through the blinds, he had a line of sight to the garage door. One of them was kneeling outside, tools in hand. The other had moved off to cover, leaner, crouched behind a hedge with a hand pressed to an earpiece.
Pros.
He opened the door fast and quiet, two steps, swinging wide and hard, catching the lockpick’s shoulder and knocking him off balance. Nash grabbed the guy by the collar, slammed him face-first into the doorframe, then pivoted.
The second one surged forward. Too slow.
Nash spun, ducked the swing, and buried a knee in the man’s stomach. He folded. Nash slammed him down on the concrete alleyway and planted a boot between his shoulder blades.
“You break into my garage,” he said calmly, gun now aimed down and steady, “I’d suggest a better exit plan.”
The first guy groaned.
Nash dragged them both inside, kicking the door closed behind him. He trussed them with two zip ties he kept looped in a drawer for moments just like this. Hands behind their backs. Knees on the floor.
His breathing hadn’t even changed.