Backblast by Candace Irving (brene brown rising strong .TXT) 📗

Not with the initial information he was given and not with the ensuing discussion that he actively pushed on his end, abusing every embarrassing facet of the argument he'd just thrown in her face, plus a few. And, finally, Gil was anything but pleased with his own terse "Yes, sir. Understood" at the call's conclusion.

Gil severed the connection and passed the phone back.

Silence bunkered in once more, hardening down to depleted uranium as Gil turned to withdraw a form from the top drawer of his desk. He scratched out a few words, filled in her name and signed his at the bottom before handing the form over.

Bemusement set in as Regan deciphered his scrawl. Fit for duty. She jerked her chin up. Gil's seemingly blasé shrug was everything but.

"Seems I've been overruled—needs of the Army and all. Congratulations, Chief. You're back on the roster. You won't be waiting for your next case, however. It's already here—but it's not new. You'll find out the rest when you get to CID. Now go; Colonel Hansen's waiting. And for God's sake, be careful."

He didn't have to tell her twice.

She left.

2

By the time Regan reached the building housing Fort Campbell's Criminal Investigation Division, her boss was nowhere to be found. Stranger still, the man occupying Colonel Hansen's office outranked her commanding officer by a hefty trio of silver stars.

Lieutenant General Thad Palisade.

Regan stared through the sliver of glass that ran down the length of the door. The general's wrought-iron back might be to her, the formal fitted coat and trousers of his Army Greens uncharacteristically crushed and creased from what had undoubtedly been a long and tedious flight, but it was him.

According to the duty sergeant out front, the current head of the US Army's Special Operations Command had returned to Kentucky…just to see her.

For a single, blinding moment, panic flooded her entire body.

John.

Palisade was the closest man John had to a father. If the general was here, hat literally in hand, and John was not, that meant—

Damn it. This was not a death notification. Nor was John missing-in-action. If he was, Gil would be here too…to pick up the pieces. But if John was still alive and kicking—wherever he was—that meant Palisade was here about her case.

The not-so-new one.

Regan blew out her relief and pushed the door all the way open. She closed it behind her as the general spun around, his weather-beaten ascetic features splitting into a warm, deep smile as he spotted her.

"What went wrong, sir?"

The smile evaporated as he tossed his hat on the desk. Like her, Palisade blew out his breath—and cut straight to the point. "Everything."

Shit.

Palisade waved his hand toward the pair of black vinyl armchairs and couch wedged into the corner of Hansen's office. "Have a seat. The file's on the table, waiting for you. I'll get the caffeine. Don't know about you, but I could use some."

Regan blinked back her shock as the man turned and headed for the door. A general running for his own joe? And a warrant officer's to boot?

This was bad.

Curiosity overtook her surprise as she reached the coffee table. The file was there, as promised. Regan doffed her beret and camouflaged jacket and dumped them in one of the armchairs, opening the four-inch-thick, brown accordion folder marked Top Secret and hauling it closer as she sank into the vinyl cushions of the other chair.

Confusion set in as she pulled out the folder's contents and flipped through the first two reports. It wasn't that she couldn't place them.

It was the contents of each.

More specifically, the summaries attached at the ends.

The first began with a slew of information that was already painfully familiar to her. Namely, that four short weeks ago, an Afghan Islamist by the name of Dr. Nabil Durrani had murdered seven pregnant Pakistani women in a cave located deep in the Hindu Kush—a cave that was also firmly located on the latter country's side of the Afghan-Pak border. The infants had been carved out from their mothers' wombs and left atop each to die. Except three of the babies had managed to survive their horrific entrance into the world. John, Captain Manuel Mendoza and Mendoza's Special Forces A-Team had breached that Pakistani cave in time to prep the three for an emergency chopper flight to Bagram Airbase. But only two had made it aboard. Another had taken a turn for the worse at Bagram and hadn't survived the night.

But one had.

Baby Doe #6. A girl. Not only had the tyke survived that chopper flight, a week and a half later she'd been flown on to Germany. She was currently thriving in Landstuhl's neonatal intensive care unit under the watchful eye of her biological father, Captain Mark McCord. Since McCord had been subsequently cleared of orchestrating the slaughter in that cave, the captain was now awaiting his separation from Special Forces and the Army so he could take his daughter back to the States.

A mere two weeks ago, the discovery that McCord had fathered a child with one of the Pakistani cave victims had turned their entire investigation on its head. But the information in the summaries of these two reports was even more startling.

They contained the respective DNA breakdowns for two other infants from that cave: Baby Doe #3 and Baby Doe #5.

They appeared identical.

But that was impossible…wasn't it?

Regan was in the middle of her own, systematic, visual comparison of the DNA breakdown when a Styrofoam cup of steaming black coffee materialized on the table beside the accordion folder.

"It's not a mistake, Chief."

She glanced up as the general scooped up her beret and jacket, tossing both to the couch as he claimed the chair beside her. "You're certain?"

"The lab guys ran the test three times. Of the seven babies Garrison and his men found in that cave, two of the boys were identical twins."

Regan leaned back in her chair, absorbing the implications.

Because, ultimately, the brutal murders in that cave had just been the beginning. The very nature of the