Chapter 6

The call to Omar Gaines's mother took eleven minutes. It was Whitfield who made it, standing at the edge of the gate with her back to the line, holding her phone in a hand that had stopped shaking. The number had come from the personnel file, and the voice that answered on the second ring was thin with a West African accent that had been in the United States long enough to soften at the edges.

"Hello?"

"Ma'am, this is Specialist Whitfield from the Montana Army National Guard. I'm calling about your son, Omar Gaines."

There was a pause, then a breath. "Is he all right? He called me last week — he said the leave was extended again, he'd be home soon — he sounded —" The voice broke slightly. "He always sounds fine. He always says he's fine. But he's been away so long."

Whitfield's stomach had gone to lead. "Ma'am, the last time you spoke to Omar, did he say where he was calling from?"

"From the base. He always calls from the base. He has a phone — a government phone, he said. The calls show up as a number I don't recognize, but he said it was safe." There was a ragged edge on the words. "Why are you asking me this? Is there something — has something happened?"

Whitfield looked at the property book, at the blank line where a signature should have been, at the rack with the wrong rifle in the fourth slot. She chose her words with the care of a woman setting a lit fuse.

"We're trying to verify his leave status." She stopped. "Ma'am, I need to ask you a question, and I need you to answer as honestly as you can. Has Omar actually come home at any point since March?"

There was a long silence. When the mother spoke again, her voice was different — flatter, as if she had been holding something back for weeks and had decided, at last, to set it down.

"His sister is sick. That's why he asked for the leave — we told him, come home, see your sister, we miss you. He was supposed to be here in March." A pause. "He never came. Every week, he calls and says the leave got extended, the paperwork is slow, but he's fine, he's safe, he'll be home soon. Every week the same call. The same words. The same number."

Whitfield's hand tightened on the phone. "Ma'am, when you say the same number —"