He’d plowed through the rotting corpses of dead babies and naked old ladies, strong men and pregnant women, looking for clues as to which of the warring tribes was responsible for this particular massacre. He’d been under orders to find out. Not that the answer mattered all that much, because the guilty faction soon would be subjected to retaliation that was just as horrific.

He’d failed to gather any intel. All his search had produced was a canteen of water that miraculously had escaped the hail of bullets fired into the pit from automatic weapons. His own canteen had been running low, so he’d slid the strap of the canteen off the shoulder of a dead man, a boy really, no more than twelve or thirteen by the looks of him, and had slipped the strap onto his own shoulder as he climbed out of the mass grave.

That had been a lot worse than this. But Honor didn’t need to know about it.

“Where’s Stan’s room?”

Two hours later, Stan Gillette’s house was in a state similar to Honor’s when Coburn had finished with it. The yield was also the same. Nothing.

He’d thought perhaps Stan’s computer would contain incriminating information, but getting into it didn’t even require a password. Coburn had searched through his documents file and found little beyond letters to the editor, which Stan had composed either in support of or opposition to political editorials.

His emails were mostly exchanges with former Marines, relating to upcoming or past reunions. There was a progress report on one former comrade’s prostate cancer, the death notice of another.

Likewise the websites Gillette routinely visited were devoted to the Corps, veterans’ organizations, and world news, certainly nothing pornographic or relating to the trafficking of illegal substances.

The hoped-for treasure trove turned out to be a big fat bust.

Finally, the only place that hadn’t been searched was the garage. Coburn had never lived in a place with a garage, but he knew what they were supposed to look like, and this one was fairly typical, except for one major difference: its extraordinary organization.

In the extra bay, a spick-and-span bass fishing boat sat on its trailer. Hunting and fishing gear was so nicely arranged it looked like a store display. Along the back of a work table, carefully labeled paint cans had been perfectly lined up. Hand tools were neatly arrayed on a pegboard wall. A power lawnmower and edger, along with a red gas can, were sitting on a pallet of bricks.

“Shit,” Coburn said under his breath.

“What?”

“It would take days to go through all this.” He nodded toward the small loft that was mounted just under the ceiling in one corner. “What’s up there?”

“Mostly Eddie’s sporting gear.”

A ladder constructed of two-by-fours had been built into the wall. Coburn climbed it and stepped onto the loft. “Hand me a knife.” Honor got one from the work table and passed it up to him. He used it to slice through the packing tape on a large box. Inside, he found an archery target, baseball, basketball, soccer ball, and football.

“Watch out.”

One by one, he tossed them down. A bowling ball was in the bottom of the box. The finger holes were empty. Coburn opened a second box to find uniforms for each of the sports, a baseball glove, a football helmet, shoulder pads. He searched them all. Found nothing.

When he came down, Honor was holding the football, turning it over in her hands. She ran her finger along the leather lacing. Smiling, she said, “Eddie was quarterback of the high school team. His senior year, they went to district. That’s when we started dating. That season. He was too small to play college ball, but he still loved the game and would go out and throw passes whenever he could get somebody to catch them.”

Coburn held out his hand. Honor gave him the football. He plunged the blade of the knife into it.

She cried out and reflexively reached out to take the football back, but he worked the knife to increase the size of the hole, then shook it so that anything inside it would fall out. Nothing did. He tossed the deflated ball onto the work table.

When he came back around, she slapped him. Hard.

“You’re a horrible person,” she said. “The coldest, most heartless, cruelest creature I can imagine.” She stopped on a sob. “I hate you. I really do.”

At that moment, he pretty much hated himself. He was angry and didn’t know why. He was acting like a complete jerk and didn’t know why. He didn’t understand his compulsion to want to hurt and rile her, but he seemed incapable of stopping himself.

He took a step toward her and made it intentionally intimidating. “You don’t like me?”

“I despise you.”

“You do?”

“Yes!”

“Is that why you sucked my tongue down your throat last night?”

She seethed for a count of five, then spun away from him, but before she’d taken a single step he reached out and brought her back around. “That’s what you’re really pissed about, isn’t it? Because we kissed.” Lowering his face closer to hers, he whispered, “And you liked it.”

“I hated it.”

He didn’t believe that. He didn’t want to believe it. But he forced himself to appear indifferent to whether she had liked it or not. He released her arm and stepped away from her. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. Humans are animals, and animals mate. They also sneeze and cough and fart. And that’s about as much as that kiss meant. So relax. You didn’t cheat on your dead husband.”

She hiccupped a sound of affront, but before she could articulate a response, he took out his cell phone and turned it on. By now Hamilton would know about this morning’s close call on the shrimp boat. Coburn wanted to know what the fallout of that had been.

He placed the call. Hamilton answered immediately. “Coburn?”

“Good guess.”

“You pulled a fast one this morning.”

“By the skin of my teeth.”

“Which was enough. Where are you?”

“Try again.”

“I’ve set it up with Tom VanAllen for you and Mrs. Gillette to come in. He’s as solid as Gibraltar. It’ll be safe. I give you my word.”

Coburn held Honor’s stare. His cheek still stung where she’d slapped him, where hours ago her daughter had left the wet imprint of a goodbye kiss. He wasn’t used to dealing with people who wore their emotions on their sleeves, and these Gillette women had made it an art. No wonder he was cranky.

“Coburn?” Hamilton said, repeating his name for the third time.

“I’ll call you back,” he said, and clicked off the phone.

Chapter 32

He lied to you.”

Tom VanAllen made a motion with his shoulder that could have been either a shrug of indifference or of concession. “Not outrightly.”

“He deliberately misled you,” Janice said. “What would you call it?”

He would call it lying. But he didn’t want to use that term with Janice to describe how Hamilton had manipulated him. Essentially, he was defending Hamilton’s manipulation, and he hated himself for it. But to admit how gullible he’d been would make him look even more ridiculous to his wife.

He’d come home to help her with Lanny, who’d kept them up most of the night moaning. It was a distress signal they knew well. Those pitiable sounds were his only means of communicating that something was wrong. Sore throat? Earache? Muscle cramp? Headache? He wasn’t running a fever. They checked him daily for bedsores. Because they didn’t know why he was suffering, they couldn’t do anything to relieve it, and, as parents, that was torture.