He whispered her first name.
Not her rank.
Not Shaw.
“Natalie.”
The colonel slowly turned toward her.
Her throat went dry.
She had never told this man her name.
And when he reached weakly beneath the blanket, trying to show her something hidden in his closed hand, everyone in the room realized the interrogation was no longer the only mystery waiting to be answered. 👇
Natalie saw the prisoner’s fingers tremble before they opened.
Something small lay against his palm.
Not a weapon. Not a device.
A bent metal identification tag, darkened along one edge, hung from a broken chain.
Natalie recognized the name before Colonel Reeves did.
Private Eli Brooks.
Nineteen years old.
The same soldier whose blood she had seen on her gloves that morning.
Her body went still.
“Where did you get that?” she asked.
The prisoner’s lips moved, but almost no sound came out. His oxygen level dipped. Natalie put one hand near his shoulder and looked at the monitor instead of the tag.
“Do not make him talk,” she said.
Reeves stared at the metal in the man’s hand. “Captain—”
“If you want answers, keep him alive long enough to give them.”
The physician moved to the other side of the bed. The prisoner tried again.
“Eli,” he whispered.
Then his eyes rolled closed.
The monitor alarmed.
Every question in the room became irrelevant for the next several minutes.
Natalie and the physician worked without speaking more than necessary. Blood pressure. Oxygen. Medication. Position. Another unit of blood. Reeves stepped back because there was nothing rank could contribute to a crashing patient. The investigators stayed outside the curtain.
When the numbers finally stopped falling, Natalie realized her hands were shaking.
The identification tag was still in the patient’s loose fist.
