Stone grimaced. “That’s what I have nightmares about. Those other girls. After that first mission, the one that went wrong? It was Cervantes then, too. The innocent girls, no more than children. They haunted my dreams for…months. And now they’re back, with different faces. The same faces. I see Lisa, too. Over and over again. Lisa Johnson, naked and starving, track marks on her skin, bruises and scabs and matted hair and eyes that said she’d never really be whole again. And I see you, in that room.” His voice was low, a murmur like thunder rolling somewhere beyond a midnight horizon.
“I pray…” Wren wiped at her eye with a thumb, at the wetness leaking down that still refused to be the tears she needed to shed. “I pray, Stone. But God doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t take away the memories.”
“You know how many nights I laid awake in bed, unable to sleep for the dreams? Unable to focus on anything because the nightmares didn’t stop when I was awake. They didn’t stop, you know? They just became memories. I’d lay in bed and watch the moon move over the horizon, praying, begging to God to take the memories and give me five fucking seconds of peace. Sometimes I think I believe in God because I’ve seen His presence, but I don’t always believe like other people at church, like Nick believes. I’ve seen good things. I’ve seen the sunrise on the wide open ocean from the deck of an aircraft carrier, and that…that’s glorious. Sunsets in the Alps. A full moon on fresh snow. People banding together to help each other, doing selfless things, acts of courage and heroism. I’ve seen men who should be dead get up and walk away and kiss their wives and kids, and the only explanation is that God protected them. I’m still alive, and I’ve had some ridiculously close calls. Felt like God protected me when I should have died. So I believe in God, I believe in His existence. He’s real. That’s a fact as immutable as sunrise and sunset and the basic physics of the universe. But sometimes, I don’t understand Him. I don’t get why He lets such horrible shit go on in this world He created. Why good things happen to bad people, and vice-versa. Those questions people struggle with all the time, you know? I struggle with them, too, just like everyone else.
“Except…for guys like me, who’ve seen the most vile things humanity can offer…those questions are worse. And I don’t have any answers, Wren. I’ve never found any answers. I learned to sleep at night, over time. I try to accept that what happened, happened, and nothing I do can change it. I accept that I saw what I saw. I did what I did. I pulled the trigger. I have to own that. I have blood on my hands, Wren. So much. I can’t ever escape that. Even though the men I killed were all awful, evil men, drug dealers and killers and rapists—bad guys—they were still people. They may have had wives or kids, a mother. A father. Someone who would miss them. I ended them, ended that. And I have to live with it. The times I failed, the missions we fucked up, the bad guys who got away, I have to live with that too.” Stone’s voice quavered, and Wren didn’t dare look at him. The torment in his voice was too raw and personal. “I helped people. That leavens the guilt. I saved people. I saved entire fucking villages. Towns. Killed the cartel kingpin and freed them from his tyranny. Stopped the terrorist from making more car-bombs and killing innocent people. But…it’s all there. And you have to get up every day and live your life and not let it define you, not let it drag you down.
“Does belief in God help, all the time? No. Not really. He won’t take the memories away, in my experience. But it helps to believe that there’s a plan I’m too small to see. A plan I can’t understand. A purpose to things. Maybe that’s just blind, a salve to my conscience like the bitter, jaded nonbelievers say. But it helps, and I’ll take all the help I can get. It helps to believe in something bigger and stronger and smarter and more powerful than me, that there’s purpose in the death of guys I cared about. Brothers, men I loved like family. Dozens, Zane, Benny, Hector, Billy, Connor.” He spoke the names like a litany. “Adam. Shiny. Bradshaw. Sue. Fucking Sue, a boy named Sue. His dad named him after the Johnny Cash song, for real. Sue was a nasty ass bastard, mean as a snake. But he was loyal to a fault. Acted like he didn’t like anyone, but he loved us all. Got killed saving us all. A grenade landed at our feet, and Sue? He didn’t even hesitate. Picked it up and threw it, but it was too late. It went off a foot from his head. Blew him to fucking pieces. There’s got to be a greater purpose to that, right?”
Wren heard him swallow hard, breathe in and out deeply, deliberately. She still didn’t look up at him, kept her eyes on the wall, on his hand clenched into a fist beside her. She reached up and felt his jaw, smooth and freshly-shaven, felt his cheek. Wet.
And that broke something open inside her. Let the dam open. It was a hiccup at first, a tear down her cheek. The hiccup turned to a sob, her lip sucking into her mouth, her throat scraping.
“Yeah, babe. I know.” Stone brushed her cheek with his thumb in small, slow circles.
Her eyes burned, her chest ached, her throat hurt. Everything came apart, then. Opened up, somehow, a geyser of everything she’d held in, trapped inside her for days and weeks. The tears she refused to cry for herself in the darkness. While she was running, dodging Cervantes and his men. All of it came up and out.
Sobbing wasn’t really the word for it. It was something beyond sobbing. It was the sound of a soul being shattered, of terror and pain finally being given true vent. Wren couldn’t breathe for the wracking, wrenching sobs being torn up from within her. It was physically painful to let it out, to feel the horror. She delved deep, felt it all over again. Felt the hard fists bashing against her cheek, the kick to her ribs. The examination, being sold. Watching that girl being gagged as she went down on Miguel. The apathy in her eyes.
Death. So much death. The crack of pistols, the chainsaw ripping of AK-47s. The wet thunk of bullets hitting flesh, ending lives. So much blood. Cut throats, pierced skulls.
The kick of the gun in her fist, over and over. Watching, almost from outside of herself, as she blasted Cervantes again and again. Rage taking over, but unable to banish the guilt, the horror. His eyes, she saw his eyes, over and over. Every night, she saw Cervantes’ eyes as he died, the confusion as he felt himself dying, the way his mouth gaped and worked like a fish out of water. The pool of blood spreading, spreading.
“Am I—am I a bad person? For killing Cervantes?” The question had haunted her for days. “Am I going to hell? I killed him, Stone. I shot him, so many times. I couldn’t stop. It was like watching someone else. I know he deserved it, but does it make me like him, for killing him?”
“No, babe. It doesn’t make you like him. It doesn’t make you a bad person.” He leaned away and met her eyes. “Am I a bad person? I’ve killed more people than you can imagine. All of them were bad guys, but I still killed them. How do you justify that? You can’t dwell on it. You have to just—I don’t know…accept it, I guess. He was evil, Wren. You know he was. And really, it was self-defense, and defending me. That’s the best justification I can give you. I can’t deal with the guilt for you, but I’ll be with you the whole way.”
“Where were you?” Wren demanded. “Why didn’t you come for so long? I can’t sleep, Stone. I can’t eat. I can’t do anything. I need you. You make it so I can breathe.”
Stone sighed. “I’m sorry. I just…I needed my own time to—to deal. I’m no good to you if I’m a mess too. I needed some space to figure my own shit out. I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere.”