The Cornwalls Are Gone (Amy Cornwall #1)(4)

Afghanistan.

Like a stone-and-dirt avalanche, the memory of the “incident” pours over me. The grueling hours interviewing a captured Taliban member who shouldn’t have been in the government-controlled territory we were supporting. The grin, the joking from the prisoner…his utter assurance that nothing would happen to him, especially with me—a woman!—in charge of his questioning. The heat, the sand, the dust that got into everything, the messages from on high demanding to know why the Taliban member was there, what I was going to do about it, what I was going to learn. Come on, Captain Cornwall, we’ve got lives depending on your skills. Get to it!

Yeah. Right up to the point where I went to pick him up in his cell for another go-around and found him huddled in the corner, blood and foam around his nose, lips, and beard.

Dead.

On my watch, under my control.

“You sure, sir, oh-eight hundred?”

“That’s right, Amy.” His voice lowers. “Just so you know, the colonel is increasingly going apeshit over this matter. So far it’s been kept out of the news, but the more people know about it, the better the chances it’ll get leaked. He really wants you to…cooperate with the CID officer as much as possible tomorrow. To nip everything in the bud.”

And relieve my superior officer of any troubles from his superior officers, I think.

“Okay, Major, message received,” I say. “I’m on it, sir.”

“Good,” Bruno replies, almost in relief. “Amy…this could be a career-ender. Or worse, if your meeting tomorrow doesn’t go well.”

Yeah, I think. Worse means exchanging my usual uniform for a brown, heavily starched outfit at Leavenworth, joining other prisoners who are in there for rape, murder, drug trafficking, and, at last count, two for treason.

“Thanks for the reminder, Major. May I go, sir?”

“Very well, Captain.”

I disconnect the call, shove my iPhone back into my leather bag along with the Ruger and burner phone, grab that and my purse, and toss my duffel bag over my shoulder.

In the movies, this would be where the frightened yet determined heroine would stand mournfully in the hallway outside of the door, recall and flash back to all those happy times in here with her strong and smart husband and her precious and also smart young daughter, ready to start those fearful steps from childhood to growing into a young woman.

To hell with that.

I don’t have time, so I open the front door and get the hell out of this place that used to be a safe home.





CHAPTER 5



AND THEN this brave heroine, off on a quest to save her family, comes within inches of bowling over an elderly woman standing on the concrete steps.

I do a half dance and jig, and then land with both feet on the lawn. Shirley Gaetz, our next-door neighbor, utters a mixed laugh and cry of surprise as she steps away.

“Oh, Amy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s okay, Mrs. Gaetz, honest,” I say, rearranging my duffel bag, which nearly fell off my left shoulder. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, it’s this, my younger son, Timmy, ever since his father passed on years back,” she begins, and she starts a long and winding tale of how her son had agreed to help take care of the house after Shirley’s husband, Roger, had passed on after serving more than thirty years in this man’s army, and on and on and on…

Mrs. Gaetz is the oldest resident in the development. She’s watched over Denise when Tom and I were out on our respective jobs, and she looks adorable in black stretch slacks and a floral top that could camouflage a dirt mound into a flower bed.

I look longingly at my black Jeep Wrangler, and I interrupt her and say, “Mrs. Gaetz, I’m terribly sorry, but my office called. I need to get back to the base, straightaway. How can I help you?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, reaching up to adjust her white-rimmed eyeglasses, secured by a thin gold chain around her fleshy neck. “It’s just that I’m curious if you and Tom were pleased with your carpet-cleaning service, the one that stopped by a few hours ago.”

I stand there like the proverbial dopey wife who doesn’t know what’s going on with her family. With our weird work schedules and occasional separate trips, organizing our lives and that of our daughter’s sometimes feels akin to planning the invasion of Normandy. Lots of moving parts, lots of time-sensitive schedules. I’m ashamed to say it, but twice poor Denise has been left abandoned at soccer practice because Tom and I each thought the other had it covered.

But a carpet-cleaning service?

“Ah…well, I haven’t talked to Tom yet, so I really don’t know,” I say.

“Oh,” she says with disappointment. “I was hoping you could give me a recommendation.”

Then it clicks, just like that. “You know, I didn’t really notice. I’ll have to ask Tom when I see him.”

“Oh,” she says, glancing at the CR-V. “He’s not here?”

“Ah…he’s out with Denise.”

“I see.”

“Tell me, did you get the name of the company?”

She shakes her head. “No, I’m sorry. It was a bright-red van, and I saw letters on the side, advertising some carpet-cleaning place. Funny thing, I saw it drive in, and then turn around and back in, right up to the garage door.”