“Why are you here?” she demanded again.
All the way here I’d been rehearsing how to answer that question. Came up with a few good ones, too, but when I looked in Auntie’s wise, fierce old eyes, I knew that the truth was my only play. Dangerous as that was.
“I’m here to take you back home,” I said.
“Why?” She wasn’t going to make it easy for me, and I could see something flicker in her eyes. A kind of fear? The specter of mortality? Sounds dramatic, but it wasn’t — it was merely sad.
“Because no one who cares about you wants you to die,” I said. “Because as much as I appreciate you coming down here to try and save my neck, it’s not worth you making yourself sick over it. Not on my account.”
“This ain’t about you, sonny boy,” she snapped. “This is about the DMS not getting pissed on.”
“Shakes out to the same thing,” I said. “The White House has it in for us, and they came after me to make a point. We’ve got lawyers, Auntie. Good ones. Literally the best that money can buy. Let them rack up billable hours with this. Big Tobacco and Big Pharma aren’t the only ones who can play that game. Let the sharks be sharks and let’s us get the hell out of here. Neither of us needs to get shit on our shoes.”
D.J. edged a little closer to Aunt Sallie. “Joe has a point, Auntie. You rattled some cages. You made your point. Let’s go home.”
He and I were both braced for a tirade, maybe for actual physical violence. And, sick as she was, I didn’t like our odds if she made a fight of this.
But then something happened that truly broke my heart.
I saw two tears grow into jewels in the corners of her eyes and then fall down her brown cheeks. She slumped against a pillar and I swear to God I could see the fight go out of her. It was like watching a ghost leave a body. It was at that moment that Aunt Sallie realized that she had no fight left in her. That the war had passed her by and she was no longer able to take up her sword and shield. It was one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen. I wanted to hug her. Not kidding. I wanted to take her in my arms and tell her how much I admired her, how much I…
Loved her?
Yeah.
Fuck. That’s where I was going.
And thinking that opened up a door of insight inside my head. When I first met her I’d been scouted by Church to be the new top gunslinger for the DMS. I represented the power and potential that used to be hers. And it meant that if I was this year’s model, then she was past her use-by date. Being the one who sends other fighters into battle is mighty damn hard on the soldiers who used to be on the front line. She knew it at that first moment, and she hated me for being what she no longer could be.
When I held out my hands to her, I could see that Aunt Sallie knew I knew it. That I understood. There was a moment, a flicker of a smile that held no animosity, no resentment. It was a smile shared from one soldier to another. Accepting the reality, acknowledging that the war was bigger than either of us, than all of us, and sometimes we best serve by stepping out of the way so the shooter behind us can take better aim. It also said that we both knew my day would come, as it inevitably does for all warriors. The war was the war, and in the grand scheme of things, we were day players in an endless drama.
But then Aunt Sallie slapped my hand away, screwed on a familiar scowl, and said, “I can walk on my own two legs, damn it.”
She marched past me and I stood for a moment, watching her. At that moment I would have walked through fire for her. Maybe that was always true.
INTERLUDE EIGHTEEN
Valen stood in the open doorway to Ari’s cottage. He held a flashlight in one hand and a pistol in the other.
The room was a wreck. The lamp overturned, bulb smashed; the laptop stomped into useless debris; the bed soaked with blood.
And the girl.
“Ari,” breathed Valen, “what have you done?”
Ari Kostas knelt naked on the floor. His thighs and cock were smeared with blood and his hands were so thoroughly drenched they looked like red gloves. It was clear Ari had been masturbating there, using the girl’s blood as a lubricant.
“Leave me alone,” snarled the burly Greek. “Get the fuck out. Can’t a man have some privacy?”
Drool hung from his lower lip and there was a cocaine glaze in his eyes. Empty bottles of wine and vodka were everywhere.
And the girl.
The girl.
The things he had done to her.
Worse this time than before. Worse than back in college. Worse than the secretary four months ago. At least she had died whole.
“What have you done?” whispered Valen, stepping inside and closing the door so that no one in the camp could see.
“Go away, you fucker,” growled Ari. “Go away. I’m not done here.”
“Not… done…? Ari, what in God’s name are you talking about?”
“God?” Ari spat on the floor between them. There was red in the spittle. “You don’t believe in God. Not in my God or any god. You fucking Communist atheist prick. You don’t believe in anything.”
Valen came and crouched down in front of Ari. The man stunk of booze, sex, blood, and piss. Valen took him by the shoulders and shook him. “Ari… Ari… listen to me, you idiot. This girl isn’t some college bimbo to use and throw away. She’s part of our team. People will know she was in here. Are you out of your mind?”
Ari grinned at him.
“Of course I’m out of my mind. We all are, Valen. The world is mad.” He began to laugh. A hitch-pitched cackle like a witch from some old production of Macbeth.
Valen slapped him across the face. Hard. It rocked Ari so violently that the Greek fell onto his side. Valen grabbed him by the hair and jerked him back onto his knees and struck him again. And again.
And again.
He could not stop hitting him.
Valen became suddenly and acutely aware that he could not stop hitting Ari. His hand moved as if it no longer belonged to him. The blows came harder and harder. So hard Valen felt the muscles in his hand bruising and tearing. He felt a bone break in his hand. One of the carpals. The pain was explosive but he could not stop. Ari’s head rocked back and sideways and up and down with the erratic angles of the blows. His nose disintegrated into red pulp, his eyebrows split, his lips tore against his teeth. Two big caps broke from his gums and flew over Valen’s shoulder. Ari vomited and still Valen hit him.
Outside, in the camp, Dr. Marguerite Beaufort stood in her own cabin. The door was locked and her iPad was running through her playlist of Puccini arias. Marguerite took great care in laying out all of her many combs and brushes, making sure they were in a perfectly straight line, like cutlery on a dining table of a great manor house. When she was satisfied, she picked up the large hand mirror, considered her reflection, turning this way and that to study her complexion, the orientation of her freckles, the way in which her blond hair accentuated her cheekbones.
“Beautiful,” she told the face in the mirror. Then she began humming along to the aria. “Vissi d’arte,” from Tosca. She listened to the words, able to understand the Italian. Floria Tosca sings about how she and her lover were at the mercy of the vile Baron Scarpia. Tosca begs God to tell her why He has abandoned her. Sad as the song was, its beauty always made her smile.
Marguerite was still smiling and humming when she shattered the mirror against the edge of her bureau, selected the largest piece, and began cutting her wrists.