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THE END
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THE PROTECTOR’S SECOND CHANCE
26
LOGAN
The ringing phone changes everything.
One moment, I’m standing outside a military airfield with Sean Campbell and Holt Lawson, arguing about which one of us is buying the first round when we finally get home.
The next, my entire life is gone.
I stare at my mother’s name on the screen.
She knows I’m traveling today. She knows I’ll call as soon as we land in Nevada. Mom never calls when I’m moving between assignments unless something is wrong.
“Logan?” Sean’s smile disappears. “What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
But my hand is already shaking.
I answer the phone and lift it to my ear. “Mom?”
All I hear is crying.
Not ordinary tears. Not the soft sniffling she does when one of us leaves after a visit. These are broken sounds filled with a kind of agony I’ve never heard from my mother.
Cold dread crawls through me.
“Mom, talk to me. What happened?”
“Oh, Logan.”
My knees weaken.
I reach for the hood of the vehicle beside me, needing something solid beneath my hand.
“Is it Cathy?” I ask. “Is she hurt?”
Sean and Holt move closer.
Neither of them speaks.
“It was an accident,” Mom says.
The world stops.
“What kind of accident?”
“A train. Their car was on the tracks, and—” Her words disappear beneath a sob. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Their car.
Not Cathy’s car.
