Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

Across the bottom glitter-glue lettering read WE MISS YOU, UNCLE RAFFY!

When a sniffle sounded from the passenger seat, Evan and the MP looked over with equal startlement to see Joey’s bottom lip wavering, tears spilling from her eyes.

“I promised Mom we’d check on him before her last chemo,” she said. “I can at least do that. I know I’ve sucked as a daughter—”

“We never said that,” Evan assured her, warming to the role of Harold Blasley, prospective traveling brush salesman. “Your mother never thought—”

“—but if I could just do this one thing for her. And now with the rectal cancer spreading to her lymph nodes…” Joey sucked in a wobbly breath and broke down sobbing.

It was so convincing that Evan barely had to act at all to comfort her, patting her knee. The MP looked past him at Joey. “Hey,” he said. “Hey.”

Joey looked up, eyes brimming.

“I’m sorry about your mamá ,” he said. “Lost mine to breast cancer when I was in high school.”

She nodded stoically.

He withdrew a small tablet from a belt holster and scrolled through. Evan watched him pull up their scanned passports. He caught Evan looking and tilted the screen away.

“Pop your trunk.”

As Evan obliged, the MP made a circle with his upraised finger, and two more officers came out and searched beneath the car with under-vehicle inspection mirrors.

The MP checked the trunk, slammed it, and came back around. “Magnolia South Residential Building, room fifteen,” he said. “Edge of the compound that way. Next time bring ID.”

The gate ahead of them rattled open. Evan thanked him and drove through, keeping his gaze ahead. As the guard station receded, he said, “Rectal cancer?”

Joey’s tears evanesced, and she smacked the radio to turn it off. “Of course. Who would ever make that up?”

He slotted the car into a space outside the residential building. “You.”

“And— wa-la —look where it got us,” she said. “What would you do without me?”

“I would arrange for proper ID instead of badly singing karaoke with Bicks.”

He was out of the car before she could retort.

Another MP guarded the entrance to the building, wanding them down even after they’d stepped through a metal detector. They padded their way along a carpeted hall. A few doors opened into spaces with a dorm-room vibe, veterans slouched in beanbags, reading books or playing first-person shooter video games.

The door to Room 15 was closed.

Evan knocked.

A voice issued from within. “Harry! You made it!”

The thump-thump of footsteps, and then the door swung inward to reveal Rafael Gomez. Lean, muscular build, clean-shaven, backward baseball cap. His boyishly handsome face registered them, the smile flattening into shock, and his features contracted.

“So you motherfuckers finally got to me.” He showed his palms, backing away. “Go on, then, and kill me quick.”

41A Dark-as-Fuck Rabbit Hole

Evan and Joey stepped inside, Evan pulling the door closed behind them. Rafael backed to the far wall, head lifted with dignity, still glaring.

The small space was neatly kept, photos thumbtacked to the walls in perfect parallel, shirts precision-folded on shelves, stack of Air Force Times newspapers on a nightstand, edges aligned. The room’s conformity—so opposite the wreckage of Andre’s place—felt soothing to Evan, the environment of a like soul.

“We’re not the ones who killed Jake Hargreave,” Evan said. “We’re trying to figure out who did. We need your help.”

Rafael held his position flattened to the wall. Then his ramrod posture softened, a breath easing out of him. He sat on the bed, joined his hands between his knees, and lowered his head. His arms started shaking uncontrollably.

Joey said, “You okay?”

Rafael said, “Don’t talk.”

He sat like that for a time, limbs vibrating, until the tremors receded. He cleared his throat, tugged at his mouth, and finally looked up. “You’re not here to kill me?”

Evan said, “No. We want to—”

Rafael held up his hand, a hard stop. “It’s not safe. They could be listening.” He reached beneath the bed, dug out a soft black pouch the size of a binder, unzipped it, and held it open. “Phones.”

Evan and Joey dropped their phones into the flexible metallic fabric of the Faraday bag, and Rafael closed it and tossed it on the bed.

“You have no idea the reach of these people,” he said. “What they’re capable of.”

“Why don’t you tell us?” Evan said.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I promised someone I would look into Jake’s death. That’s all I can tell you.”

“You know they’ll kill you.”

“I’m willing to take that risk,” Evan said. “If it gets me to the people who murdered Jake.”

Rafael sat back down on the mattress, yanked off his baseball cap, and worked the brim in his hands. The San Diego Padres emblem, gold against brown, looked worn and faded. “No one listens to me anymore, man. Got me locked up in here. A cot and three squares. Once a week I get a pass, go to the shooting range, get some trigger time just to remember I’m still alive. Then they put the horse back in the stable. These four walls.” His shaved scalp was sweating, beads standing out against the taut skin. “They ruined me, man.”

Joey said, “How?”

“Hacked my social media, put up fake posts.” Rafael raised his stare, a sudden anger edging his words. “Islamophobic shit. Red Pill MGTOW male-power psycho stuff. QAnon. Then a rant on my Facebook page that sounded like some kinda delusional schizophrenic snap. Doesn’t take nothing to ruin a guy’s reputation. A shitty-ass hacker with twenty minutes on his hands can take a motherfucker down. Think how ready you all are to believe.”

“Believe what?” Evan asked.

“That us military guys are fucked up, one Tinder rejection away from losing our shit. Internet’s a dark-as-fuck rabbit hole, and they made it look like my stupid ass dove down there. All of a sudden, I’m discharged, diagnosed, all my pay and benefits tied up unless I take accountability for some shit I never said and prove I’m fit to reenter society. They wanted to take me off the board, you copy? Make it so no one would believe anything I have to say.” Rafael ran his hand over his head. “It’s not like I don’t have … it’s not like I don’t get it that my head isn’t always right, you know? But I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve this. No one’ll listen, and anytime I talk, I dig a deeper hole, and I have no one to talk to, and they got Jake, man, they got Jake.”

He lowered his head, pinched his eyes. His shoulders shook.

Joey started to say something, but Evan cut her off with a look, wanting to give Rafael more space. He’d been locked up inside his own thoughts for months and needed them out.

When Rafael lifted his head again, his eyes were dry. “You know how hard our job is? Flying hunter-killer drones? How fucking confusing ?”

“Tell us,” Evan said.

“You kill so much it gets monotonous . Think about that. You’re playing a video game that never ends, man. You live at home, sleep in clean sheets. Drive through Starbucks on the way into base. And there they are. Ground control stations lined up like fancy-ass shipping containers. You walk into your GCS and you’re not in California no more. You’re in Fallujah. You’re in Kunar. Or Al-Baghuz Fawqani or Mosul or … or fucking Yemen. Cushioned seats, man, A/C, and your latte right there by your mouse pad. And you don’t have fear, right? Your own life’s not on the line. So you don’t get that … dunno, that skin in the game, that you might lose an arm or get your guts spilled all over your lap. I mean, some Taliban motherfucker ain’t gonna come here and snuff you in the Starbucks drive-through, right? So what are you doing? To you it’s target practice, putting warheads on foreheads. But on their end? Feels like fucking war.”