Page 100 of The Vigilant

“It was supposed to be the end of it for all of us. We came home, buried him, and our military careers with him. There was no going back after that. Or there shouldn’t have been.”

“What does that have to do with my dad?” I asked, my voice threading tighter.

I knew they were friends. I knew he looked up to my dad. I’d learned over the last few weeks just how big of an impact Dad had made on Tynan. How he shaped him. Changed him.I thought I knew it all until fifteen minutes ago, and now the hollow in my gut warned that this thing that I didn’t know…was everything.

“Sutton—”

“You promised me the truth,” I reminded him quietly, hearing the low hiss of his breath release as his hand tightened on the wheel.

“Two months after we came home, your dad showed up at my apartment.”

My head tipped. “Apartment?”

“The cabins…garage…everything wasn’t built yet. We hadn’t found the Vigilantes yet,” he explained and then paused for a long second before adding with a low, strained voice, “Maybe that was why I didn’t think twice when I agreed to go one last round with Jon.”

I knew Tynan had been trained by my father and served under my father in the past. I knew he’d come to Dad’s funeral, his face holding as much pain as the rest of the uniformed men standing by his side.

But I didn’t know this.

I didn’t know Tynan had been there. At that last mission. In those last moments. I didn’t know he’d been in the same covert crucible that had taken Dad’s life but spared his. Suddenly, the road ahead didn’t seem to lead back to the garage, but instead, back in time.

“We were tasked to take out a known base of insurgents. Nothing I wasn’t familiar with or hadn’t done before.” Tynan’s voice rumbled around me, his tone heavy like every syllable carried an extra weight. “I came up with the strategy. I had satellite footage. Schematics. Details of timelines from a trusted source. It should’ve been simple.” He let out a deep exhale. “And if it wasn’t going to be simple, it should’ve been me.”

Should’ve been him.

The words held me hostage like a hand around my throat. I couldn’t understand what difference it made, but it made a difference. In my stomach. In my mind. In my chest. Like the fall of the first domino, I could only watch and listen as the rest of what I thought I knew came down around me.

“I came up with our plan of attack. I was supposed to lead the team into the building while your dad was anchored around the back to make sure none of the insurgents escaped that way. At the last minute, he radioed that there were hostages inside. Three young girls.”

Distantly, I heard my breath catch. I was no longer looking at the road but at the slice of Tynan’s face in the rearview mirror. The deep set of his eyes. The snap of his pulse like a rubber band on the side of his temple.

“If we went in like I planned—the six of us at once, guns blazing, they’d kill those girls without thinking twice,” he continued. “So, your dad improvised a new plan. He’d breach the back door and get the girls out first. We’d go in once they were out.”

Of course, that was his plan. That was who Dad was. A hero. And at the end of the day, the only peace I’d ever found was accepting that people were who they were. Good parts and bad. The heroic soldier and the absent father. And for that, I had the right to both admire him and admonish him. To revere him and to regret his choices.

“I should’ve known about them,” Tynan said low, breaking through my thoughts. “And if I didn’t, I should’ve been the one to go for them. Not him. Not when he had so much at stake—so much he wanted to come back for.”

“No…” My tongue—my throat—everything felt too thick. Too heavy.

I bit into my cheek and closed my eyes, anything to stop the sorrow from leaking down my cheeks. But even then, what I sawwasn’t the black of the insides of my eyelids but the black of my dress at the funeral. The black of Mom’s veil. The black of the casket. The black of all the suits of everyone who’d come to mourn a hero. And I remembered what I’d thought that day—that my father had left this world the same way he’d always left mine: without thinking about me.

I was wrong.

“All he talked about was finally coming back for you,” Tynan rasped. “It was why he’d asked me to lead his team. So, he could come back for you. And it’s my fault he didn’t.”

My eyes flung open, the hot stampede of tears rushing down my cheeks and dripping onto my locked hands. When I looked down, I expected to see my skin stained with red, as though the tears were blood from the freshly opened wound.

“What happened?” I didn’t know how I even managed to get the question out, but it was just one more domino I couldn’t stop from toppling over, just like his explanation that followed.

“It was a suicide mission,” he rasped. “There were ten of them in there. Ten to his one. And because I didn’t know about the girls…for him to get them out, he was basically the lone man standing against their gunfire, shielding the doorway so the girls didn’t get caught in the crossfire.”

My heart tripped. Stumbled. Fell flat. Every hiccup of my breath was my body’s attempt to catch my untethered heartbeats.

“I couldn’t save him, Sutton. Couldn’t protect him.” Tynan’s head fell.The very last domino. Like he’d finally lost his hold on the entire world to confess this to me.

And suddenly, all the blinders were gone.Suddenly, I knew why he needed to protect me.

The truth slid right into my chest. Right through my ribs. Right between the beats of my heart. So deep, the wound didn’thurt. Didn’t bleed. Didn’t hardly register anything before it killed me.

---