Prologue
Adrenaline surged through Dylan Wright’s blood, making every cell in his body vibrate.
Overhead, the roar of military jets ripped through the skies. Seconds later, their bombs exploded somewhere nearby, lighting up the night sky.
Dylan and his fixer, Amir, raced through the demolished roads of northern Syria in an ancient SUV, dodging debris and death on their path directly into the heart of the conflict.
“They’re getting closer to the safehouse.” Amir leaned into the steering wheel and peered up at the sky through the windshield. “Out of all your bad ideas, this is definitely your worst. We should be in a bunker with Ezra.”
There was no way in hell Dylan would turn back now. With every blast, dozens of innocent civilians evaporated, and far too many of those lives belonged to women and children.
The injustice of these barbaric attacks drove him toward every battle. Many said his passion pushed him too far. That he risked too much. Tonight, even his seasoned ex-military cameraman, Ezra, had surrendered his precious equipment to Dylan, determined to bow out of this expedition.
“This is insane.” Dylan shined a penlight on a paper map with rage and disbelief pulling every muscle tight. “Are you sure you heard it right?”
“Um, yeah.” Amir’s trademark sarcasm came through loud and clear. “I’m pretty sure I’ve been speaking Arabic my whole life.”
After years in and out of the Middle East, Dylan had learned his share of the local language, but he’d repeated the communications he’d caught over the military radio frequencies to Amir because Dylan was hoping he’d heard it wrong.
The radio clipped to a strap on Dylan’s flak jacket crackled. “More military jets coming from the east. Stay alert.”
The static-threaded warning came from a member of the Syrian Defense Volunteers, also known as White Helmets, Nobel Peace Prize-nominated search and rescue teams dedicated to saving civilian lives threatened in the ongoing Syrian civil war. The group valiantly rescued tens of thousands of people trapped in the rubble of bombed buildings, but tonight, they were fighting for their own lives.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, unaffectionately known as Assad, was now targeting the very people who saved the lives of those he hadn’t killed in the first round of bombing. Taking out the White Helmets ensured there would be no one to provide first aid to the injured. Which meant there would be no way for the injured and dying to reach medical aid in time to save them.
This was one of those stories that moved the needle. The kind that could create an outraged uprising in the international community. An outpouring of condemnation that had the potential to pressure other countries into joining forces to end the slaughter.
And Dylan was the only mainstream correspondent left in the area. When news of the latest round of air strikes had been predicted, every other reporter had gone to ground.
Dylan wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t even reckless. Not exactly. He just didn’t have anything to live for outside this fucking job. The one that scarred him a little more every day, mind, body, and soul. So he stayed when others left. He ventured where no one else would go. He dug into the humanitarian cost of war when others shied away from the grit.
Some called him insane. Some called him a hero. Dylan couldn’t care less what others thought of him. All he cared about was getting these stories out. Shining a light on the depravity of war and the toll it took on innocent civilians.
Amir slowed the truck.
“Why are you slowing down?” Dylan scanned the landscape in search of a threat. But the sky was dark, barely lit by a sliver of moon. “Their compound is still half a mile awa—”
The night split with the ear-shattering roar of jet engines. The truck shuddered so hard, Dylan’s teeth knocked together. A high-pitched whiz cut through the air. A second later, a bomb connected with earth half a football field away from the nearest White Helmets’ compound.
Dylan and Amir dropped to the footwells of the truck, arms over their heads while the earth roared and rumbled beneath them. In seconds, the earth settled, but a steady high-pitched whine filled Dylan’s ears. He and Amir uncurled themselves from the footwells and eased back into their seats. As they caught their breath, sounds began to filter in again, garbled and distant, as if they were underwater.
Amir cranked the steering wheel, turning the car around. “Fuck this.”
“No, stop.” Dylan grabbed his door handle. “Amir, stop.”
Amir stomped on the brake and looked at Dylan. The terror and intensity on Amir’s face was something Dylan couldn’t ever remember seeing during their five-year partnership.
He’d been aware of the way a little more fear crept into Amir’s eyes after the birth of each of his three children. His youngest, Fatin, had been born on the same day as Dylan’s nephew, Cooper, three months ago, and Amir hadn’t been the same since. He expressed more concern over the stories Dylan chased, counseled him against going that extra mile or giving that extra push. Yet despite Dylan’s continued drive to expose the human cost of war, Amir had stayed by Dylan’s side every step of the way.
It looked like that was about to end.
“I can’t.” Shame twisted his expression. “I’m sorry, I just…”
“Okay. It’s okay.” Dylan understood. If he’d had a wife and kids at home, he’d probably be back in the bunker with Ezra. But Dylan had missed out on his only chance at a wife and a family years ago. Now he found purpose in this soul-sucking career. One that gripped him by the throat and wouldn’t let go. Dylan lost a year of his life for every day he spent here. But exposing massacres like the one raining down on these Good Samaritans tonight—Dylan had been born to get stories like this out to the world.
These people deserved to be seen and heard. They deserved to be safe and valued. Their lives mattered. Their deaths mattered. If Dylan didn’t get this story, it would go untold, and that was utterly unacceptable.
He grabbed the camera bag and scanned the area, which had been decimated in the airstrikes earlier in the week. The partially demolished buildings lining the road stood as broken shadows against the night, knee-deep in their own rubble.