Excerpt from Deception Cove by Owen Laukkanen, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

PROLOGUE

Certain moments came back to her, or maybe they never left. Images, sounds. Marshall fumbling around on some shale slope at daybreak, looking for what was left of his leg, trying his best not to scream and give away their position. Hawthorne, dropped by a sniper as he came out of the latrine, dead before he could fasten his belt, the sound of the shot coming across the valley a split second after he'd fallen.

It was Afia, though, whom Jess saw most of all.

Sometimes it was different. Sometimes it wasn't so bad. Sometimes, when Jess saw her partner again, it was when the sun was still shining. No snipers, no RPGs, no Taliban ambush.

Sometimes it was Jess and Afia bonding over back issues of Betty and Veronica in Jess's bunkhouse at the OP. Afia had confessed, teasingly, that she'd seen Jess as Veronica at first—the dark hair, sure, but she'd confused Jess's quiet reserve for something more judgmental, condescending.

"Of course, you're Betty," she told Jess six or seven months after they'd started working together. "Kind, cheerful, hardworking. I see it now, but when we first met ... " She winced. "I was scared of you, Private Winslow."

"And you?" Jess asked. "If I'm Betty, who does that make you?"

Afia cocked her head, thought about it, frowning everywhere but her eyes. "Jughead Jones," she said finally. "A good meal is more interesting to me than any romance, definitely."

Sometimes Jess remembered Afia in a village down valley, sharing a joke in Pashto with a group of local women, then translating for Jess so she could laugh too—something about the gunnery sergeant in the platoon Jess was attached to, a southern guy named Atkins, his voice like a bleating goat when he got mad or excited.

And sometimes she saw Afia with those same local women, cradling a baby, six weeks old at the latest, smiling down at him, cooing and singing softly—and then passing the bundle to Jess, who'd been surprised at first, apprehensive, afraid the women would take offense at an American sharing such an intimate moment. But she'd looked up at the women, at the baby's mother, and seen nothing but warmth and community there, women who knew next to nothing about one another sharing the one thing they all had in common.

It had been, perhaps, her favorite moment of that first deployment, of any deployment. She'd felt that little bundle in her arms long after she'd given him back, could picture his tiny hands, his scrunched-up face as he slept. She'd tried to write to Ty about it, in an email, but she hadn't found the words, hadn't been sure he'd understand anyway.

She'd shared that moment, instead, with Afia, and Afia alone. Afia, whose husband had died in a mortar attack before they could start a family; Afia, who in her grief had vowed never to marry again, and who had taken advantage of the sudden vastness of time spread in front of her to learn English, to volunteer, to work with the American marines, and with Jess in particular, her conduit to the women in the valley and the secrets they wouldn't share with men.

Those memories of Afia were painful, sure, but it was a different pain: delicate, bittersweet. It was a pain Jess savored, no matter how much it hurt, because that was how she wanted to remember Afia. Those were memories she cherished.

But mostly it was the last memory, that final, bloody day, that stuck in Jess's head and kept coming back. Afia was gone, but every night in her dreams Jess saw her friend's face again, saw the blood in the dirt and heard the screams, the screams she'd later learned were her own.

————

Something had woken her. Just what it was, Jess Winslow couldn't be sure, but she was awake now, wide awake and lightning fast, too, like she was back in that OP in the Hindu Kush, strapping on her body armor as someone triggered the alarm, listening to the sound of mortars launching, waiting for the boom.

Excerpted from Deception Cove by Owen Laukkanen. Copyright © 2019 by Owen Laukkanen. Excerpted by permission of Mulholland. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.