Chapter 1 - The Three Boys Outside Her Door
The doctor tapped the X-ray with the tip of his pen.
One fracture.
Two.
Three.
By the time Dr. Mercer reached six, I had stopped looking at the screen.
My daughter was nineteen years old.
Six fractures had turned one side of her jaw into something surgeons would have to rebuild with titanium.
“Colonel Walker,” Mercer whispered, “this wasn’t to scare her.”
His eyes moved toward the half-drawn curtain.
“They wanted to destroy her.”
Destroy her.
Behind him, Lily lay beneath cold hospital lights, head bandaged, oxygen tube under her nose. Bruises covered both eyes. Her jaw had been wired shut.
I sat beside her.
“Daddy’s here.”
Her fingers closed weakly around mine.
For nineteen years, those hands had known me only as Daniel Walker.
Widower.
Security consultant.
Overprotective father.
She did not know that Daniel Walker had been manufactured after Colonel Daniel Voss disappeared from classified military records.
She did not know about Task Force Specter.
Or the places where men called me the Ghost Colonel.
I thought those things had died when I chose her.
Then laughter came from the hallway.
Three young men stood outside Lily’s room.
Ethan Cole.
Brandon Hale.
Tyler Whitmore.
All twenty or twenty-one.
All smiling.
Tyler looked through the glass and raised his coffee cup toward me.
Brandon said something that made the others laugh.
I opened the door.
Ethan did not even lower his voice.
“Our families will bury this.”
Lily squeezed my hand.
Not anger.
Fear.
She was begging me not to leave her.
So I stayed.
A campus detective arrived ten minutes later, glanced once at Lily and closed his notebook.
“No witnesses. Cameras malfunctioned. These cases are difficult.”
“Then your investigation is finished,” I said.
Relief crossed his face.
That told me more than his report ever would.
I stepped into the hallway only after Lily fell asleep.
From my wallet, I removed a black challenge coin.
A silver skull gleamed beneath four words:
SPECTER NEVER DIES.
The number on the reverse side had not been called in nineteen years.
A man answered after one ring.
“Colonel?”
“Major Reyes.”
Silence.
Then: “What happened?”
“My daughter was attacked.”
“Names?”
I gave him three.
Keys began clicking.
“What do you need?”
“Everything.”
His voice changed.
“Should I activate the team?”
I looked through the glass at Lily.
“No. A father is calling.”
Reyes answered quietly.
“Task Force Specter awaits your orders, sir.”
Across the hall, Tyler Whitmore’s phone suddenly began to ring.
May you like
He looked at the screen.
And for the first time that night, one of the three boys stopped smiling.
