Darkfall by Denise A. Agnew Read Free Book Online Page B

rotate out to the UK. I was a sergeant at the time. Anyway, there was this Lance Corporal Brody. He was an excellent medic, and I admired his skill. I saw him treat wounded on more than one occasion. Until this one night. One night he did the most fucked-up thing, that to this day I can’t get it out of my head.”
    He stopped, remembering the pain both physical and mental that had occurred because of that night.
    “Ian?” her soft voice questioned.
    He glanced up but didn’t meet her eyes for more than a second. “Sorry. Brody was young but not wild. He didn’t fuck around a lot or get into trouble. None of us really did, but he was particularly clean-cut and straight-laced. Everything spit-shined and as it should be with him. He called his parents as often as he could. But he was always cool.”
    “Not friendly?”
    “Not friendly but not unfriendly. He always seemed happy to do his work, but I felt like there was something…missing with him.”
    “Missing?”
    “Yeah. I don’t know how to explain it, and if I’d brought it up to the other men they would have thought I was mental. It bothered me that I couldn’t verbalize it.” He put one hand to his stomach. “It was gut instinct. When I looked at his eyes, it always creeped me out.” He rubbed his hands together, growing tenser as he told the story. “That night there was an attack on the base by insurgents while my team was eating at the dining hall. We were there with a few civilians and American troops in the mix.” He closed his eyes and remembered the scene. “I was eating this God-awful spaghetti. The sirens went crazy and everyone began to retreat to the bunkers. When we got to the bunker I realized Brody wasn’t with us. Everyone said he obviously went into another bunker. He hadn’t.” Damn, how did he describe what had happened next without throwing up? He closed his eyes and tried to settle his heart, which suddenly started to pound. “After the attack stopped, we went looking for him. We walked by this one area where we figured we might find him. He’d been interested in this American Army nurse. We thought maybe he’d be concerned about her and her quarters were close by. Her door was ajar.” Nausea rose in his stomach. He reached for the bottle of water he hadn’t yet finished and took a deep swallow. “We found her dead. Her throat cut.”
    Penny gasped. “Oh, no.”
    “Yeah. Brody was standing over her body. He had the knife and it was dripping blood. His eyes…he always had these cool gray eyes…there was no remorse in them. None at all. I understood right then what was missing. He wasn’t a human, at least not the type with empathy or a conscience.”
    “A sociopath?”
    He nodded. “Exactly.” Ian finished the bottle of water and stood. He found the recycle bin against one wall and pitched the bottle there from halfway across the room. The action interrupted the pictures that wanted to assault his mind, that wanted to make him sick to his stomach. When he returned to the seat he continued his story. “Brody wiped the knife on his thigh and shoved it back into its sheath. We were all quiet, just staring at what he’d done to this woman. I was so angry I was shaking and couldn’t say a damned thing. I wanted to take out my weapon and blow him away. Here was another woman brutalized by a man and I hadn’t done a fucking thing to stop it.”
    He glanced at her again, and Penny’s face was pale with a type of shock and amazement at what he’d described.
    “What happened next?” she asked, her voice soft.
    “We could see the woman was dead. One of the other men called for help from the MPs while we all tried to figure out why the hell he’d done it. To say we were disgusted is an understatement.”
    “I can imagine.”
    “That’s not all. He asked us to help him cover up the murder.”
    He saw the question on her face, the dawning horror he might have done exactly that. “You didn’t.”
    “You know me