Girl On the Edge
Page 33
“You were always a wiseass.”
“It’s a defense mechanism.” I rolled up the pants and tucked them into a corner of my duffel bag.
“Defends you from listening to common sense.”
“I’m uncommon.” From my dresser, I picked up a small photo in a silver frame. Caden and I in our wedding gear. Tux and white gown, on the beach in San Diego. Faces full of sand. We’d stopped in the middle of the photo shoot to build a sand castle. “I make uncommon decisions and do uncommon things.”
“Like show up in the Green Zone to see your husband.”
“I’m devoted.” I put the picture back. Baghdad wasn’t the place for sand castles and wedding gowns. “What can I say?” The front doorbell rang. I leaned out into the hall and called down the stairs, “Ma? Can you get that?”
“All right!”
Dad continued as if uninterrupted. “How do you think he’s going to react to you going there?”
My mouth tightened into a wry smile, and I shrugged, picking up a hoodie and rolling it into a log. “He’s going to be pissed.”
“Why’s that make you smile?”
“I don’t know.” I jammed the hoodie in the bag and reached into my underwear drawer. “Maybe because if I was a boy and I traveled over the surface of the earth for a woman, you’d give me the same advice but you’d be proud I took some initiative.”
“That is not true.”
“It is true. I love you, but you never understood me. I never acted the way you thought a girl should.”
“No, I mean, I am proud of you. I can be proud of the decisions you want to make and think they’re stupid at the same time. You want him back? You have access to all the channels you need right here. You tell them he’s got PTSD, and they’ll put him on a plane so fast it’ll give you whiplash.”
“And the divorce will come right after.”
“Better divorced than dead.”
“Yeah… no.” I zipped the bag. “You have those in the wrong order.”
“Greysen?” Mom stood in the bedroom doorway and handed me a manila envelope.
There was no address. Just my name printed onto a sticky white label and a red stamp. CONFIDENTIAL. Once I took it, she started wringing her hands.
“They still deliver death notices personally, Ma.” I tore open the envelope.
“I know, I know.”
The cover letter slid off before I could read it, revealing the first page of a contract.
* * *
NONDISCLOSURE AGREEMENT between
* * *
BLACKTHORNE SOLUTIONS Incorporated (the Company)
* * *
And
* * *
Dr. GREYSEN FRAZIER (the Independent Contractor)
* * *
“Yes!” I threw my arms in the air, but my parents didn’t share my enthusiasm.
* * *
My family worked hard to talk me out of it, but they’d tried to talk me out of everything I’d ever wanted. Military service (too restrictive for my personality). Med school (too expensive). Voluntary deployment (too dangerous). Everything except marrying Caden. I’d stopped holding their objections against them long ago. They loved me, and they’d always tried to talk me out of things that made them proud.
Everything would be fine. The thought of taking this problem into my hands outweighed their opposition by a few metric tons.
I had work to do, and that made me happy.
* * *
The gray dot turned green, and the red camera with the slash through it disappeared. I thought the thing was broken and I was going to have to reconnect. But it wasn’t.
His face.
He took my breath away.
I think I gasped. I was sure a high-pitched sound escaped my lips. I covered my mouth.
I must have looked shocked or displeased, because he ran his fingers through his hair, and I took mine off my mouth to touch the screen. It prickled with electricity, smooth and cool to the touch. Nothing like him. He was rough and warm. If I could have run my hands over the T-shirt that clung to him, his skin and muscles would have yielded only so much, and the dog tags that dangled over his chest would have clinked softly when they moved.
“Are you all right?” The sound was a split second behind the movement of his lips.
“I forgot.”
“Forgot what? Are you sick? What happened?”
When I got close to the screen, he broke into tiny points of light. His skin color was pale yellow from the monitor. He’d lost weight. I preferred a little scruff on his cheeks to the clean-shaven, boyish look. His hair was too short, and the webcam stole the sky from his eyes.
“I forgot what you looked like.”
I must have been clenching my fist the entire time he was away. Muscles I’d learned about in anatomy, but never used, uncoiled and melted into warm relief.
The morning I’d woken up from the nightmare that I was marrying the wrong man, I’d felt the same release. Everything would be all right as long as Caden was with me. The relief didn’t come from my lungs or from my heart, but from cell and tissue. This was the man. He was mine. He was imprinted onto my neurons, triggering a hum and flash in my brain when the planes and angles of his face appeared.
He was beautiful. His smile was the answer to questions I hadn’t even thought to ask. And the response was always yes.
I was more sure than ever that I was doing the right thing, and in that whirl of optimism, I forgot that we were separate people. I let go of all my plans to tell gentle half-truths or guide him through my maze of intentions.
“I’m coming!” I shouted, imagining his skin under my fingers. His voice, his scent, his presence with mine. I could barely contain myself. “I’m coming.”
He blinked, tilted his head a little. The muscles around his left eye tightened. “I didn’t even start.”
I laughed. The English language had really fucked it up by making homonyms of an orgasm and an arrival. “I’m coming to Baghdad!”
“You’re… when? For how long?” I knew he was calculating how long he’d need to get an R&R request in. I was about to free him from that, but he got more words in first. “You just started the new job. It’s not going to look good if you take a vacation right away.”
“It’s not a vacation. It’s—”
“I’m really confused here, Grey.”
“I got another job. With Blackthorne. I’m heading out to you.”
I should have expected that to go poorly, but the sight of his face had sent me over the side of the road.
“I’m sorry.” He tried to make some kind of sense out of what I’d said. “You lost me.”
“I’m working on a deal with Mt. Sinai. It was really the plan they wanted; anyone can implement it. I—”
“Anyone can implement it?”
“It’s connect-the-dots. I’m not special.”
“Like fuck you aren’t!”
I rubbed the sweat from my palms. All my arousal and excitement curdled into sour clusters.
“What are you thinking?” he asked. “What’s going on in your mind?”
I miss you.
Those three words took up the bottom line.
I was worried about him. I wanted to check on him. I was the only one he trusted, and I needed to be there if something went wrong with the dissociation, but the last words on the matter were longing and desire.
I missed him.
“It’s going to be all right,” I said. “I’m not providing security. Just tending to the mental health of the contractors.”
“Let me get this straight.” He leaned on his elbows, getting his beautiful face closer to the camera. Since my camera was on top of my screen, he couldn’t see when I touched the bottom of it to caress his glass chin. “Ronin hired you as a private contractor because Blackthorne gives a shit about the mental health of their security guys?”
“It’s single site inside the Green Zone.”
“You expect me to believe he
came to you with this and you left a job you’ve been working to get for months to take it?”
“Yes.”
“No.” He leaned back, and his body slid away until my fingers touched the glass of his stomach. “No, no, no.”
“You think I’m lying?” Typical defense mechanism. Assume the worst. Force them to say no. Say they’re sorry. Backpedal just a little.
“Yes. I do.” Caden didn’t take the bait. I hadn’t married him because he was easily manipulated.
“Great. Thanks.”
“First, you’re lying to yourself.”
“I wish I’d never sent you that webcam.”
“Dane’s wife sent one first. Yours hasn’t gotten here yet. And that’s another lie.”
“You don’t want me to come.”
“No fucking shit, baby.”
“You don’t think I can handle myself?”
He slapped his hands on the table. “Why is everything a fucking pissing match with you?”
Don’t cry, Major Frazier. “What—?”
“You can handle yourself, okay? If there’s a person in the world who can handle herself, it’s you. But admit it to me, your husband, that you want to be here because you never wanted to leave the army in the first place.”
Don’t you fucking cry. “That’s not why.”
“But it’s true.”
“It’s true, but it’s not why.”
“So, you sold your soul to a company of douchebags to pretend you’re a soldier again.”
“Fuck you,” I whispered.
“No, fuck you. Admit it.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Admit you sold your soul to a mercenary organization—”
“No.”
“With zero accountability.”
“Wrong.” My denial was barely a breath. It was a river in Egypt.
“Admit it.”
Slapping my hands on the desk, I shouted, “I sold my soul to you, you fucking asshole!”
He fell back, slouching and staring past the camera into some middle distance inside himself.
What did he see there?
Guilt. He harbored it for things he hadn’t done and fed it meals of things he’d never intended.
“Caden.”
“Yeah, I… I don’t know what to do.”
“There’s nothing to do. I’m coming. I sold my soul to you because I love you. I need you. I can’t live without you.”
He rubbed his forehead and looked toward the window. The light washed out his features. “It’s not safe here.”
“I know.”
“The contractors. They’re not protected. Not accountable and not protected.”
“It’s going to be fine.”
“When they die, there’s no official count. Blackthorne doesn’t release numbers.”
“Caden, it’ll be all right. I’m not going out on security details. I’m just in some kind of office. They got me a house with a gate to live in.”
He huffed a derisive laugh, as if his wire trumped my gate. “I shouldn’t have done this,” he said more to himself than me. “I should have just learned to live with it.”
He was talking about the experimental soo-hoos and the shots I was becoming more and more suspicious of.
“Are you living with it now?”
The question was rhetorical. I expected him to say no. Then I’d tell him it was worth it. He’d be mollified. I’d be soothed. We could continue normally. Maybe have a little fake sex.
But he didn’t say no.
“Yeah,” he said into the light from the window before looking back at the camera. “It’s like it was. I can feel something’s off, but I know what it is now. It’s manageable.”
Manageable?
Human beings were capable of selecting memories to suit their attitudes about present circumstances. We forgot the pain of childbirth to have more babies. We leaned over the toilet, swearing we’d never drink again, then said thank you when offered a fresh glass of wine.
“You almost killed me,” I said, trying to state a fact rather than make an accusation. “You were in a constantly paranoid state that was pretty justified.”
“I was managing. It’s not worth this mess.”
“We’re going to be together. That’s not a mess.”
“It’s a mess, Greysen. We’re a mess.”
I jolted, gulping breath, trying to think through the over-firing synapses. By defining our marriage as an unacceptable result instead of a difficult evolution, he’d broken through a limit I hadn’t known I had. “Don’t say that.”
“I’m sorry. You don’t have to like it, but it’s the truth. We had something great, and we fucked it up.”
“No,” I growled through clenched teeth. “We still have something great. We’re not past tense. We are a now. We are a future. We’re happiness and hope, goddammit, and I won’t let you talk like this.”
The lips I’d been so happy to see pressed into a tight line. They lost their fullness, their generosity consumed in doubt. “I love you, Greysen.”
“I know you do.”
“This isn’t about loving you.”
“I know that too. But you’re still wrong.”
“I want you to stay home.”
“This isn’t about what you want either. I’ll see you soon.”
On the other side of the world, there was a knock at the door.
“I have to go,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Don’t come. I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
The door behind him cracked open, and a bald white guy peered. He smiled at me, and when Caden turned to him, he jerked his head as if to tell my husband his presence was required.
We said our good-byes and cut the connection. The red camera with the line through it appeared again.
Nothing Caden had said had dissuaded me. I was more determined than ever to be with him.
Some forms of madness felt more lucid than sanity.
Chapter Fifty-Three
CADEN
The contractor we’d picked out of a giant comma of blood was in the ICU. Walter Benedict’s chart put him at thirty-three, from Tucson. He’d needed two gallons of blood to replace what had been lost from his femoral artery. Agent Orange had managed to save his leg and his life. He was good, that guy.
“How are you doing?” I asked him.
“Feel like shit, sir.” He didn’t have to call me sir, but the fact that he did told me a lot.
“You lost a lot of blood.” I sat by his bed. “Your body’s busy making more.”
“They’re going to send me home, do you think?” His eyes were red-rimmed over dark circles. If he had been military, he’d have gone to Germany, then home, but he wasn’t military.
“I have no idea how it works for you guys, but you made it. That’s a good thing.”
“Sure.”
“What was your rank when you were enlisted?”
“Made it to staff sergeant. But the money… shit.”
Contractors were well paid. He probably made twice as much running security details as he had when he was a soldier. Since Blackthorne was a private company, they could provide as much medical care to the wounded as they wanted. The VA was inadequate, but Blackthorne, again, could do what they wanted, be it too much or too little.
“You’ll be on your feet in no time.”
“Thanks, doc. For coming to get me. You didn’t have to land under fire.”
“Thank the pilot.”
“Sure, sure.” His eyes fluttered half-closed.
“Get some rest.”
He obeyed almost instantly.
I didn’t want my wife here. Not as a soldier. Especially not as a Blackthorne contractor. I did the rest of the rounds with my job on the perimeter of my mind and Greysen at the center.
She wouldn’t be talked out of it. I hadn’t married a pliable woman. The very things I loved about her were the things that made her difficult to keep.
She wouldn’t come if I convinced her it would make the situation worse.
Or if she was needed at home.
Or if I wasn’t here.
Bells rang in the back of my mind.
She won’t come if I’m not here.
* * *
When I knocked gently on Colonel DeLeon’s door, the buzz of the Thing got lower and denser, as if it knew I was trying to get out of harm’s way. Its presence had increased steadily since my last medevac, growing into an infuriating distraction. I needed to make it to my next Skype with Greysen. A long-distance pain play would put the Thing away, sleeping like a guest crashing on the couch after Thanksgiving dinner.
DeLeon’s office was tiny with gray plaster walls, metal filing cabinets, and a window with white paint on the glass. She had her elbow on the desk and her fingers threaded in her hair as she hunched over paperwork.
“Yeah?” She didn’t look up.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Close the door.” She sat back and indicated the black office chair in front of the desk. The upholstery was ripped on the right armrest and the edge of the seat.
I took off my hat and sat.
“What can I do for you, Dr. St. John?”
“No Asshole Eyes?”
“You look too serious for fucking around right now.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Good.”
I didn’t want to ask her—or anyone—for anything when I had no leverage.
When I’d taken too long to speak, she said, “I don’t bite.”
“I need leave.” I didn’t sound like I’d blurted it out, but I had.
Leaning forward on the desk, she folded her hands in front of her. “Why?”
“It’s personal.”
“Yeah. I know. But I get to ask. That’s how it works.”
She did, and I knew I’d have to answer.
“My wife signed on with Blackthorne.”
DeLeon stayed stock-still except for two fingers she tapped together twice, then arched an eyebrow as she asked, “And?”