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jail with a bunch of guys that wouldn’t be happy to see him—he felt like he was jinxing himself.
    “It’s that bad?” Nick asked.
    “Worse. It wasn’t a legit shot, Nick. I’ve tried to tell myself it was, but… yeah, it wasn’t. Turns out, the guy had a fucking cell phone, but he was making threats and when I saw him reach for it—”
    “I get it. You remembered the sandbox.”
    Iraq. Goddammit. He’d traveled to a lot of shitty places in the world throughout his military career, but that place held top spot on his shit-o-meter and as much as he tried to shut it out of his head, it always found a way to creep back. It was in Iraq that his commanding officer, Sully, took a nearly fatal bullet to the chest. Iraq was where their special ops squad experienced its one loss, K.C Archer, to a RPG. Iraq, where you couldn’t even trust the kids not to want your head on a platter, where your brothers could be walking next to you one second and blown sky-high by a IED the next, where he’d almost lost his own life, was where his nightmares returned time and again. Not the jungles of South America, the mountains of Afghanistan, or the hellhole that was the whole continent of Africa. No. Goddamn Iraq.   
    “That place fucked me up.” He’d never admitted that to anyone, but since this seemed to be the convo for show-and-tell, he told Nick about the lighted pumpkin on Main Street coming from within an inch of breaking his skull: “I froze. I dove out of the way and I froze. All I could think was IED. For a second, I was right back in the sand and heat.”
    “You can’t go through what we went through over there and not change some, Alex,” Nick said softly after a moment. “And I don’t be meanin’ to play devil’s advocate, but Webster was right to put you on leave. You need a break.”
    I know. He would never confess to such a weakness aloud, yet deep down he knew his boss had done the right thing. He wasn’t sleeping and wasn’t functioning at one-hundred percent. But he’d been on the knife edge for so long, he wasn’t sure what to do with himself now that he didn’t have to play that dangerous balancing game.
    When the silence stretched into uncomfortable territory, Nick let out a long breath. “You need me, pal, you call. Day or night.”
    “Thanks, but I’m fine.”
    “Last time you told me that you had a maggot infested wound in your side and a mean case of blood poisonin’. I mean it. Day or night.” He hung up before Alex had a chance to comment.
    Alex closed his phone and looked away from the pathetic fire, toward the lighthouse perched on the edge of a cliff in the near distance.
    Déjà vu.
    It slid greasily through his gut as the cold beam of light twisted around and around, slicing through the gathering clouds. Without thinking, he stood and started down the slick hill toward the beach, never taking his eyes off the lighthouse. The trees dropped away as he descended and he spotted a small yacht riding out the angry waves at the base of the cliff.
    Weird. The back of his neck prickled with warning. Why wasn’t the boat in the safety of the harbor? At any moment, a wave could smash the vessel into oblivion on the jagged rocks. Did someone need help?
    He picked up his pace and stumbled when his cell phone shrilled. Heart thudding, he caught himself on a jutting rock and snatched the phone from his pocket before it could ring again. He checked the caller ID, expecting Nick again. Nope. His brother.                     
    “Dammit.” Alex silenced the call and looked toward the lighthouse.
    The yacht was gone.
    He blinked, then scanned the choppy ocean and saw nothing but a slate gray sky melding into black water on the horizon.
    Eyes playing tricks again. He shook his head, stuffed his cold fingers into his jeans pockets, and trudged uphill to his tent. It was stupid enough for him to be out here like this. He didn’t need to go wandering around. The locals would