Chapter 2 - THE WIFE WHO KNEW HIM BEFORE THEY MET
Christine Walker had always been a good liar.
Not because she enjoyed lying.
Because she had been trained to survive people who punished truth.
Frank Walker’s house operated under one simple rule while Christine was growing up:
Whatever protected Frank became reality.
If Frank broke something, Christine had done it.
If Brian stole money, nobody saw him.
If Scott hit someone at school, the other child started it.
If Frank disappeared for three days, he had been working.
There were no arguments.
Only approved versions of events.
Christine learned early that truth did not make people free.
Sometimes it merely told dangerous people where to aim.
Ethan stood beside Jake’s hospital bed now, staring at her as though she were a stranger.
Maybe she was.
“Start with 2004.”
Christine shook her head.
“You’re going to hate me.”
“I already don’t know who you are.”
That landed harder than shouting would have.
She sat.
“In 2004, my father worked as a civilian logistics contractor.”
“For whom?”
“I didn’t know then.”
“And now?”
“People who didn’t exist on paper.”
Ethan’s jaw tightened.
Christine continued.
“I was sixteen. Dad took me to a facility once because my mother was sick and he didn’t want me home alone.”
“Site Twelve.”
“Yes.”
“What was it?”
“A transit site.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know everything.”
“Tell me what you do know.”
Christine looked toward Jake.
Ethan understood.
He asked the nurse to sit with his son while they stepped into the hallway.
Jake objected, but Ethan promised he would remain close.
The moment the door closed, Christine whispered, “Prisoners.”
Ethan’s face became expressionless.
“What kind?”
“Foreign assets. Informants. Contractors. Sometimes Americans.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“What happened to them?”
“I don’t know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I was sixteen, Ethan.”
“Then tell me what you saw.”
Christine swallowed.
“One night I got lost.”
“In a facility your father supposedly brought you to once?”
“He brought me more than once.”
Another lie exposed.
Ethan waited.
Christine looked ashamed.
“There was a lower level.”
Ethan’s chest tightened.
“Go on.”
“I saw a man strapped to a chair.”
She looked directly at him.
“You.”
For several seconds, Ethan did not understand the sentence.
Then he laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“That’s impossible.”
“I know what I saw.”
“I was in Afghanistan.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You thought you were.”
Ethan moved closer.
“Be very careful.”
Christine’s voice broke.
“You were bleeding. You had bandages around your head. Dad was arguing with two men outside the room.”
“What men?”
“I never learned their names.”
“What were they saying?”
Christine closed her eyes as memory returned.
“One said you remembered too much.”
Ethan’s breathing slowed.
“The other said the reconstruction had failed.”
His eyes sharpened.
“What reconstruction?”
“I don’t know.”
“And your father?”
“He told them you could still be useful.”
Ethan stared through the hallway window.
Fragments of forgotten headaches came back to him.
Months in 2004 he remembered only through military paperwork.
A helicopter crash that no one else from his supposed team ever discussed.
A hospital in Germany.
A rehabilitation center.
Blank sections.
Ethan had always assumed trauma had erased details.
Now he wondered whether trauma had been only part of it.
Christine continued.
“I saw you again three weeks later.”
“Where?”
“At our house.”
Ethan turned sharply.
“You’re lying.”
“You were unconscious in Dad’s basement.”
Ethan grabbed the wall beside her.
The hospital corridor suddenly felt too narrow.
“What did he do to me?”
“I don’t know.”
“You lived there.”
“I was terrified.”
“What did he do?”
“I heard machines. I heard you screaming. I heard Dad talking about memory conditioning.”
Ethan closed his eyes.
A headache arrived instantly.
Not ordinary pain.
Something deeper.
A flash.
White light.
Concrete.
A voice saying, again.
Again.
Again.
Ethan opened his eyes.
Christine was crying.
“Why did you marry me?”
She looked devastated.
“I didn’t plan to.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I found you years later by accident.”
“Nothing about you feels accidental anymore.”
“I was working at a bookstore in Boulder. You walked in.”
“I remember.”
“You asked for a book about mountain trails.”
“I remember.”
“I nearly fainted.”
Ethan’s voice lowered.
“And you said nothing.”
“What was I supposed to say? Hello, I watched my father keep you unconscious in a basement when I was sixteen?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you had forgotten.”
“I had.”
“That was the point.”
Ethan stepped back.
“So you married me because you felt guilty.”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because I fell in love with you.”
He stared at her.
It should have sounded ridiculous.
Instead, that was what hurt most.
Because he believed her.
At least partly.
The encrypted phone vibrated.
The gravelly voice called again.
Ethan answered.
“What?”
“Site Twelve isn’t a storage unit.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“My wife finally decided to tell me she met me ten years before our first date.”
Silence.
Then the voice said, “Jesus.”
“Who are you protecting?”
“Right now? You.”
“Try again, Mason.”
Christine looked up.
The name meant nothing to her.
Colonel Daniel Mason had been Ethan’s commanding officer once.
Or at least Ethan remembered him that way.
Mason said, “Frank is gone.”
“Where?”
“Unknown.”
“Brian?”
“Gone.”
“Scott?”
“Gone.”
Ethan looked toward Jake’s room.
“They ran.”
“No.”
“What?”
“They left deliberately. Cameras caught them taking luggage, hard drives, documents.”
“So they’re running.”
Mason paused.
“They left Christine’s car behind.”
Ethan looked at her.
“Why does that matter?”
“Because there was a body in the trunk.”
Christine’s face drained of color.
Ethan went still.
“Whose?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Christine whispered, “What happened?”
Ethan ignored her.
Mason continued.
“But the body was wearing an old military identification tag.”
“Name?”
Another pause.
“Ethan Walker.”
Christine stared at her husband.
Ethan felt something cold move through his chest.
Mason said, “That’s not the worst part.”
May you like
“What is?”
“The dental records match you.”
