When HEROES don't come HOME

Chapter Thirty-Four — Old Ghosts

The private room was small enough to feel like a secret. A red vinyl bench wrapped around three sides of a round table; the fourth side was sealed by a heavy curtain that let in only the suggestion of light from the hallway. A tulip-shaped sconce above them gave out a low hum and a cone of gold light, just enough to illuminate the table but not the corners. The bass of the music outside pressed through the walls like a second pulse.

Emily sat very still. She had asked for Room Three with the precision of a surgeon requesting an instrument. It wasn’t comfort she was after—these rooms weren’t comfortable. They were made for brief encounters, not long conversations. Which was why they were perfect.

Her back hovered just off the bench. Hands folded in her lap, pressed together so tightly her nails left crescents in her skin. She had dressed like she didn’t want to be remembered: a plain dark sweater, jeans that made no noise, boots soft-soled enough that her footsteps wouldn’t echo. Her hair was pinned tight, the way she pinned it during surgery, so not a strand would fall across her cheek and force her to touch her own face.

A laugh rolled past the curtain, throaty and practiced. A man’s apology, all baritone charm, followed it. The curtain stirred and settled again. Emily inhaled slowly. Her heart hadn’t learned calm.

The curtain parted with the quiet of a held breath. Reeves slipped in sideways, his shoulders turning just enough to avoid brushing fabric. He didn’t greet her. He didn’t smile. He checked. His hand grazed the sconce. His knuckles tapped wood trim. His gaze lifted to the ceiling corner, then down to the floor. He made a slow circle of the booth like a man walking a perimeter. Only when he returned to the opposite chair did he give her a glance that scanned her whole face in a heartbeat, the way a medic scans a wound to decide how deep it goes.

“You called,” he said. His voice was low, pitched for secrecy.

“I did.” Her voice betrayed her once, a small swallow between the two words. “Thank you for coming.”

“It had better be worth it.” He nudged the chair back half an inch with his boot, then sat, then stood, then sat again. A restless man who wanted to move and hated being seen moving. His jawline tensed, a notch visible where muscle refused to relax.

She didn’t waste time. “Three from the list are dead.”

The silence that followed wasn’t emptiness. It was shape, pressure, a fist held in the air.

“Names,” Reeves said. No softening. No I’m sorry. He went straight for the marrow.

“Ortiz,” Emily answered quietly. “He was first. They buried him two days ago. The report said ‘complications.’” Her mouth hardened. “Two more in the last forty-eight hours. Different wings. Different explanations. Same administrative erasure. The charts—gone. The rooms empty.”

Reeves moved. He shoved back from the table and paced the length of the booth twice, then returned, planting both palms on the wood as if bracing himself against gravity. “Times?”

“Two nights ago. And one before dawn today.”

He swore under his breath. Not theatrical. Not for her. Flat and ugly, the kind of word a man says when he stubs something deep in his soul. One hand raked his hair, froze mid-motion as though he no longer had permission to touch himself.

“They’re clearing the board,” he said. “Fast.”

Emily felt the chill slide down her spine. She had seen it in the files already—the way one by one, the names she had memorized like dosages were vanishing. Ortiz. Halpern. Brennan. Their charts re-filed as if they had never existed.

“I was suspended today,” she added. The confession came like a second incision: sharp, controlled, necessary.

Reeves’s head snapped up. “Why.”

“Standard procedure. Psych eval. Until clearance, I’m off the floor.”

His answer came like the c***k of a whip: “Name.”

She hesitated a second too long. “Lang.”

The reaction was immediate. His pupils narrowed. His shoulders drew back as if braced for impact. A flinch, quiet but profound, the kind a body gives when it hears an old, hated sound. He didn’t shout. He didn’t strike the wall. He exhaled a single, guttural curse and turned away, jaw tight enough that she thought he might c***k a tooth.

“You know him,” Emily said. It wasn’t a question.

Reeves paced to the curtain, hand hovering near the fabric as though he might push through it and leave. He didn’t. He came back to the table. Sat. Rose. Sat again. His body was a pendulum of conflict.

“Michael,” she said softly, not softly. “Look at me.”

He did. The stare was raw, not tender, not cruel, simply the unmasked exhaustion of a man too tired to keep hiding.

Finally he spoke. Each word was laid down like metal on wood. “Lang. Hudson. Harris. I know all three.”

Emily felt her chest tighten. “You know them—how?”

“Because they were there,” he said flatly. “They were the table legs under the case they used to break mine.”

Her breath caught. She had asked this question of others, in other rooms. No one had ever answered.

Reeves’s eyes flicked away, then back. His tone shifted into contempt so practiced it was almost casual. “Hudson you’ve met. He calls blood the cost of doing business. He wears patriotism like cologne strong enough to cover rot. Harris—he’s a mouse who thinks he’s cheese. And Lang…” His mouth curved in a cold half-smile. “Lang turns people into paperwork. It lets him sleep.”

“He asked me about nightmares,” Emily said, voice low, as if naming it would change what she’d felt in that chair. “He kept writing while I answered.”

“Of course he did,” Reeves muttered. “Ink is how he makes his knives.”

Emily leaned forward. Her forearms pressed the table, her hands open. “I need you to tell me why his name hits you like that. I’m not asking for a confession. I’m asking for survival.”

“You’re asking for both,” he shot back, voice still a whisper but edged like glass.

“They’re killing them,” she said. She didn’t raise her tone; she made it weigh more. “Three in two days. This isn’t shadows anymore. It’s open air. If you know something, if you’ve seen something, give me one thing. Don’t make me keep guessing when you have the words.”

His jaw shifted like he was grinding down something that wouldn’t break. “Careful,” he murmured. “You’ll like me less afterward.”

“This isn’t about liking you.” Her voice came out hotter than she intended. “This isn’t romance. This is triage.”

Something flickered across his mouth—humor, bitter and fleeting. He looked down at his own hands, palms flat against the table. When he finally raised his eyes again, they were stripped bare of pretense.

“Lang called me unstable,” Reeves said. “Harris called me compromised. Hudson called me disloyal. They decided on the words before they decided on the reasons. That’s the truth.”

Emily held still, afraid to breathe.

Reeves inhaled, exhaled, as if weighing whether the next sentence would destroy them both. Then he said it, with no buildup, no cushion, no apology:

“I saw five soldiers pumped full of drugs to make them into super soldiers.”

The words hung between them like smoke, refusing to dissipate.