“I’ll be back.”

“No reason. And maybe a better reason not to.”

“I’ll tell the old man you said hello.”

The men rose and shook hands. Robert reached out and patted his brother on the shoulder. “You miss the Middle East?”

“No. And I don’t know anybody who served over there who does.”

“Glad you came back in one piece.”

“A lot of us didn’t.”

“Got any interesting cases going?”

“Not really.”

“You take care.”

“Right, you too.” Puller’s words were empty, hollow, before they even left his mouth.

He turned to leave. On cue the MP came to get his brother.

“Hey, John?”

Puller looked back. The MP had one big hand on his brother’s left upper arm. Part of Puller wanted to rip that hand off and knock the MP through the wall. But just a part.

“Yeah?” He locked gazes with Robert.

“Nothing, man. Just nothing. It was good to see you.”

Puller passed the scan MP, who jumped to attention when he came by, and hit the stairs, taking them two steps at a time. The phone was ringing when he reached his rental. He looked at the caller ID.

It was the number for the 701st MP Group out of Quantico, Virginia, where he was assigned as a CID special agent.

He answered. Listened. In the Army they taught you to talk less, listen more. Much more.

His response was curt. “On my way.” He checked his watch, swiftly calculated flight and drive times. He would lose an hour flying west to east. “Three hours and fifty minutes, sir.”

There was a slaughterhouse in the boonies of West Virginia. One of the victims had been a full colonel. That fact had triggered CID involvement, although he wasn’t sure why the case had landed in the lap of the 701st. But he was a soldier. He’d gotten an order. He was executing that order.

He would fly back to Virginia, grab his gear, get the official pack, and then it was burnt rubber to the boonies. However, his thoughts were not on the murder of a colonel, but rather on that last look on his brother’s face. It perched in a prominent corner of Puller’s mind. He was good at compartmentalizing. But he didn’t feel like doing it right now. The memories of his brother from a different time and place slowly trickled through his thoughts.