Instead, I found my bedroom door wide open, my bank statements spread across my bed, my dead mother’s house deed under a desk lamp, and Tessa Collins standing in the middle of my room wearing my Army hoodie like a guilty secret.
When she saw me, every drop of blood left her face.
Then she whispered the sentence that turned my homecoming into a crime scene.
“You weren’t supposed to see this.”
PART 1
“You weren’t supposed to come home alive enough to catch them,” Tessa said, and the room went colder than Afghanistan at 3 a.m.
I stood in my own doorway at 11:43 on a Tuesday night, frozen with my hand still on the duffel strap.
The apartment smelled like lemon cleaner, stale coffee, and something burned in the kitchen. The porch light outside flickered through the blinds. A little American flag Tessa had stuck in the planter by our front door tapped against the window in the late November wind.
