Some Gave All Read Online Free

mind with pain and fury. One of us, known as “Private X,” attempted a rescue but failed.
    We know that she never saw combat again, even though you were informed that she died in a firefight.
    We would have contacted you as soon as this happened, but we had no access to her records to find her next of kin, and so there was no way of connecting “Maurice Riley” to “Roxanne Lafferty.” We realized that she was your stepdaughter when the article about you ran in last Tuesday’s
New York Post,
and it mentioned her by name.
    We talked it over for a long time before we decided to contact you. There have been six murders in New York in the last six weeks where the injuries look similar to atrocities Private X witnessed in Afghanistan. We think someone got out of there—someone who has been mutilated like your daughter—and is out of control, like your daughter was. We think you may be in great danger—if not from this abomination, then from the government that created it. One of the six murdered people—Karl Tiptree—was one of the scientists who participated in the manufacture of the “serum” that destroyed your daughter’s life. We have been investigating the histories of the other five in an attempt to link them to this travesty. We are confident that we will succeed.
    The generals tied up loose ends in Afghanistan… with bullets. Private X barely got out alive and has stayed all these years under the radar. But he is ready to tell you everything he knows. We want justice for your daughter, and we want to stop this thing from butchering more people, even the guilty. Please join us, Mr. Riley.
    On behalf of the people of the United States, you have our sympathy, and our respect. We’re waiting to hear from you.
    Sincerely
,
    FFNY—The Freedom Fighters of New York
    At the bottom of the letter was a phone number with a 212 area code.
    Vincent had been reading over Cat’s shoulder, and she felt him trembling. She turned her head and looked up at him. His face had gone chalk white, and when she raised a brow, he averted his gaze and moved to the mantel. He stared up at Roxanne Lafferty’s portrait, perhaps unaware that his shoulders were square and his spine was ramrod straight. He was standing at attention. All that was missing was another salute.
    “I’m assuming you called the number,” Cat said to Mr. Riley.
    He scratched his forehead with skeletal fingers. Cat wondered if the rings under his eyes were from illness or anxiety, maybe both.
    “I’ve called it a hundred times. There’s never been any answer. No voicemail. I checked with the phone company and they say it’s not a valid number.”
    We’ll see about that
, Cat thought. The NYPD had resources that were unavailable to private citizens.
    “What
New York Post
article are they talking about?” she asked Mr. Riley.
    He sighed and picked up a newspaper off a coffee table that was cluttered with prescription bottles. It was folded to a small square of text that included a photograph of Mr. Riley standing beside a thin little dark-skinned girl dressed in a fuzzy pink sweater and lavender snow pants. She was holding a small, colorful piece of paper.
    FATHER OF ARMY WOMAN K.I.A. FULFILLS PROMISE TO DAUGHTER OF “LITTLE SISTER”
    Last Tuesday, Mr. Maurice Riley, a resident of the Bronx, presented Aliyah Patel, 8, also of the Bronx, with a gift certificate to Palmieri’s, her favorite ice cream parlor, good for fifty-two ice cream cones—one every week for a year. Riley’s daughter, Private First Class Roxanne Lafferty, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2002, was the “Big Sister” of Aliyah’s mother, Gheeta Patel, in the “Big Sister Little Sister” mentoring program. Lafferty promised Gheeta Patel that if she read fifty-two books before she graduated from high school, she would buy Gheeta an ice cream cone every week for one year. They wrote out a contract and both signed it. Sadly, Gheeta Patel passed away in 2010, leaving behind her