“She weighs a hundred pounds,” Jones scoffed. “What’s she gonna do? Sneeze on us and give us colds?”
The others chuckled.
And that was when Jake realized that his team, except for Ramirez, had no idea what they were up against.
He surveyed them all, let them get twitchy and frustrated. Then he opened up the file he needed on his laptop, spun it to face them on the other side of the table, and clicked Play.
He’d watched the video himself at least a dozen times, squinting tired eyes, pitching forward in his chair until his nose almost brushed the screen. Hunting for any clue that would tell him how Russell had pulled off the impossible: a gas line, a bit of plastic explosive, even an oil-soaked rag. He’d been over it again and again, and so far, he hadn’t been able to explain the bright fire that blazed to life in her palms.
And then there was the way she’d touched him. Healed him.
He listened to the cellphone video’s familiar sounds, watching the team go from bored, to intrigued, to a blend of doubtful and put-out.
Esposito spoke first, covering his reaction with anger. “Why haven’t we seen this?”
“I thought you had. It was a part of my briefing packet.”
Spence gulped audibly, eyes still glued to the laptop screen. “That’s fake, right? I mean…it’s fake. It has to be.”
“How is she doing that?” Jones demanded.
Ramirez snorted. “The only reason any of us is even upright right now is because we pop weird experimental drugs every day. But you all draw the line at the fire girl?”
“Could we, like…hit her with a fire extinguisher?” Spence asked.
“Ruby Russell,” Jake said, raising his voice to silence them all, “is what we’re referring to, loosely, as an individual with heightened abilities.”
“Understatement,” Flannagan said.
“It’s a working title.” He cleared his throat. “The point is: this isn’t a simple arrest.”
“Then what is it?” Jones said.
Jake turned the laptop back around and pulled up an image: a diagram of the VA center. “We’ll make our move tomorrow,” he said, and detailed the maneuver he’d spent three hours meticulously planning.
Everyone left the meeting muttering under their breath, shaking their heads. They’d been unhappy at the outset, and they still were – but now it was fear, rather than boredom, driving their attitudes.
Ramirez stayed behind, statue-still in her chair. When the others were gone, and their voices had faded, her gaze snapped from the computer screen to Jake’s face. “I know what you’re doing.”
“Of course you do.” He took an ounce of childish satisfaction in biting back, short-lived and pathetic though it was.
She smiled, slow and sharp, and there was something feline in the expression. “Your recon. You’ve been looking for a reason to apprehend them.”
He scowled at her. “I have my orders. That’s reason enough.”
“Yeah, but you don’t like the orders. You’ve been trying to convince yourself the kid’s a monster, and the guy’s a whackjob. That they’re a danger to society.” She shrugged. “You want to believe that it’s right. But you don’t, do you?”
He stared at her a moment, the infuriating curve of her smile, the way she was amused by all of this. “Were you this smug in the Army?” he asked, and the smile dropped off her face. “Did you drive your CO up the wall?”
“No,” she said, getting to her feet. “I was a model soldier,” she said over her shoulder as she went to the fridge, and pulled out the box of injections. Her fingers shook a little as she worked the clasp.
Jake knew that everyone on the team had received a medical discharge from the Army, but he had no idea what sorts of injuries any of them had suffered. He wanted to ask her, suddenly: what was it for you? Which part of you starts to fail when you wait too long between shots?
But he wasn’t that much of an asshole.
He took a deep breath and said, “Okay, I’ll bite. Yeah, I have my concerns. What’s your take on it?”
She rolled up her sleeve, applied the tourniquet with her right hand and her teeth, and gave herself her nightly injection. Only once she’d snapped off the band and put the box away did she turn to face him, rubbing her upper arm with her opposite hand.
Jake felt a sympathetic burn in his own veins.
“I think,” she started, voice careful in a way he hadn’t heard before, “that I’m not the team leader. So it doesn’t matter what I think.”
“Bullshit. I’m not asking as your team leader.”
She tipped her head from side-to-side, fingers tightening on her biceps. “I haven’t spoken to either one of them, you understand.”
“Yeah. But you can’t tell me you don’t have an opinion.”
She hesitated, scrutinizing him. He hadn’t known before that she was so cautious; he wondered if she knew how much of herself she revealed by holding back.
“I think,” she said at last, “that a person isn’t a weapon. And there’s no reason they want her other than that: to use her. I think she deserves better than that.”
“Yeah,” Jake said grimly.
“But that’s not my place to think or say. So.” She shrugged and turned to the counter, the going-cold coffee sitting in the pot there. “We have our orders.”
And they did.
30
Farley was typical of western towns abandoned once cattle ranching became more mechanized, then slowly rebuilt, caught in the middle of a refurbishment that lifted up each old relic one at a time. The VA center occupied a two-story, L-shaped corner building that had once been a mercantile store; it still bore the name Weston’s in colored tile just inside the front door. The offices occupied the top floor, and the rooms where counselors offered private meetings with vets who wanted or needed them.
The bake sale was being held downstairs, in a wide room with stacks of plastic chairs along the wall: the group meeting room, Rooster thought, and felt a prickling of unease up the back of his neck. He wasn’t going to stay for the meeting after, he told himself over and over – but he knew that he probably would. He’d do anything if Red looked at him adoringly.
He was currently holding up a brick pillar, one eye on the door, the other on the horseshoe of folding tables where the veteran’s wives, and Red, had set up a feast of baked goods and were happily selling them to the families of Farley.
He watched a woman touch Red’s shoulder and say something to her that made her smile. Saw another put an arm around her in a brief, encouraging hug. Saw Vicki watch her handle a sale with a warm, maternal smile of such obvious pride it nearly took his breath. How kind they all were to her; how welcoming and warm, when they had no reason to be.
It eased the knot of tension in his chest to see so many treat his girl the way she deserved. Like a normal person worthy of love and acceptance; like the sweet soul she was.
He was so absorbed in his gratitude for the women of this city that he didn’t hear anyone approach, and suddenly Jack was beside him, taking a deep breath that Rooster figured was more for his benefit than because the old man was actually tired.
Rooster jumped a little, but Jack didn’t comment. Just said, “Pretty big turnout.”
“Yeah.” He swallowed down the last of his startle response. “Should raise good money, yeah?”
“Oh yeah. The town likes to take care of its own.” He nodded toward Red. “Your girl looks right in her element.”
“Yeah.”
“She’s a real sweetheart. Vicki’ll miss her company if y’all decide to move on.”
Rooster spared the old man a sideways glance. “If?”
Jack slumped back so his shoulder rested against the pillar beside Rooster’s. “Oh, you know. If you decide you’re tired of being drifters and want to stay.”
Rooster’s stomach clenched tight in automatic response. Run, run, run, that old voice chanted in the back of his head.
“It’
s not a bad place to settle down,” Jack continued, oblivious to Rooster’s mental implosion. “It’s not fancy, but you could find work. So could Red. There’s even a community college if she wanted to take some classes. They just put in a five-screen movie theater last year. There’s the farmer’s market, and the new Albertsons. We’re really moving up in the world.” He sent Rooster a considering look. “Might be worth a thought, at least.”
“Yeah,” Rooster said woodenly.
But even as panic roared in his ears, stronger than his pulse, he allowed himself a moment to consider it. A little house with a yard big enough to start a garden: vegetables, and flowers, and fruit trees with pale blossoms every spring. Red could go to school, sit in chilly classrooms with other students her age, learn about dead presidents and the life cycle and how to diagram a sentence. He could get a nine-to-five, break his back on a construction site, help build a Kroger to compete with the new Albertsons. On the weekends, they’d go sit on Jack and Vicki’s porch. Or some other neighbor’s. Sweet tea, and the chirrup of cicadas, and shadows growing long on the grass. They could go to Cody, and see the rodeo. Red could build a whole wardrobe of fringed leather and dusty cowboy boots.
He saw it all in the span of a blink: normalcy. And maybe, maybe, during the long winter nights, with snow blanketing the flat Wyoming fields, he would pull Red to him and–
He cut off that line of thought abruptly. No, he couldn’t betray her trust that way. Couldn’t let his shameful fantasies intrude on their bond.
But he’d seen the possibilities. And they were sweet, and tempting as cool water on a hot day. The mirage of sanctuary. Safety. Happiness.
“Just think about it,” Jack suggested.
But that was the problem: he already had.
~*~
“This is good.” So good, in fact, that Rooster popped the last corner of his iced pound cake into his mouth without bothering to be mannerly about it.
Red glowed with pride.
“I told her she’s a natural,” Vicki said, smiling fondly at Red as she passed. “Give her a little more practice, and she could open her own bakery.”
Red blushed furiously and looked down at her boots.
The cake turned to lead in his throat, and Rooster struggled to swallow it. Yeah, a bakery, because he could keep her safe there.
“Have you decided about the meeting, honey?” Vicki asked as she was packing empty Tupperware into a tote bag, and Rooster realized two things.
One: Vicki was talking to him.
And two: people were unstacking chairs and setting them up in two rows that faced a wooden podium.
The meeting was starting.
His gaze darted between the men who’d begun to shuffle into the building: most of them older, a few of them his age, one or two even younger. Tidy hair, and straight backs…save for those with noticeable limps; but even those boys held themselves with pride.
He could have picked a military man out of a lineup from ten yards away, and here were a whole pack of them. Talking quietly with one another, some of them laughing. He smelled fresh coffee, and a few of the wives were laying out the bake sale leftovers on a low folding table against the wall.
“I…” he started, and couldn’t get any other words out. He was petrified, suddenly. He couldn’t sit down and put his back to the door like that. Couldn’t be vulnerable. Couldn’t…
But Red was looking up at him with so much hope.
Jake stepped through the front door, Spence at his side. He stood on the Weston’s tile at the entrance and looked toward Rooster; nodded.
“You don’t have to,” Red said.
But he thought maybe he did. Maybe he ought to.
“If it’s okay,” Vicki said, casually, “the girls and I are gonna borrow Ruby for just a bit and go get some supper. You can walk up with the rest of the guys for milkshakes after.”
He took a series of deep breaths, hands curling and relaxing. Looked at Red, helpless. “I have to keep you safe.”
Vicki overheard him. “Honey, it’ll be safe as houses. We’ll be just up the street at Morton’s Diner. Okay? And there’ll be a whole bunch of us. We won’t let anything happen to Miss Ruby.”
And so far, it had been safe here, hadn’t it? No funny looks, no men in black. Jake and Jack had both stressed that they knew he and Red were running, and that they understood, and that they wanted to help.
He took one last deep breath and let it out slow. “Okay.” It was maybe the hardest thing he’d ever said, but he pushed it out. “Okay, I’ll see you after.”
Red beamed at him. Stood up on her toes and kissed his cheek. And that made it all worthwhile, no matter how painful the next hour would prove.
~*~
“Hi, I’m Brian.”
“Hi, Brian,” the group said as one.
Rooster laced his fingers together between his knees and squeezed tight. He moved his mouth – “Hi, Brian” – but no sound left his lips. His lungs were too tight.
“Um,” Brian said, and licked his lips, gaze falling to the podium…where his hands gripped tight, his knuckles white from the strain. Rooster wasn’t the only one with nerves, he guessed. “I’ve been having the nightmares again.”
Nightmares much like Rooster’s own: reliving the explosion, knowing it was coming, unable to stop it. Watching his friends, his brothers, die over and over. Brian talked about them in halting, painful sentences, gripping the podium tight, sweat shining at his temples. He left out the bloody parts, but Rooster filled them in with his own. It didn’t matter which war it was, or in what part of the world they’d seen battle: every man and woman in the room had witnessed the same thing. Humans blown to pieces. Humans bleeding, screaming, dying.
Brian finished to a smattering of quiet applause and shuffled back to his chair. He sat like a man who’d just run a marathon, curled-up and shaking, exhausted.
Rooster felt himself pitching forward, mirroring his posture, nerves strung tight. He couldn’t go up there. He couldn’t.
A noble, iron-haired man who Rooster pegged as a leatherneck on sight took the mic next, his gaze oddly kind in his stern face. When he spoke, it was with the quiet command of an officer. “What Brian’s just described is something that I think we can all related to.”
Nods all around.
“Our traumatic experiences have a way of sneaking up on us. At the time, in the middle of combat, we compartmentalize. It’s a normal human response: we can’t deal with the panic and the guilt at the time, so we stow it away, and we get on with our missions. But later, once we’re home, and we know we’re safe, the memories come back sometimes. We lose sleep. We flinch when someone drops a plate in a restaurant. When a child screams.”
More nods.
“We have trouble trusting others, sometimes,” the man said, and his gaze came straight to Rooster. “I see some new faces here tonight,” the man continued, nodding at Rooster. “Some nervous faces. I hope you’ll feel welcome here. You’re among friends.”
Rooster looked down at his linked hands, the jagged pink-white scar across the back of the left one. A bit of rebar had gone through his palm, in one side and out the other; the nerves still lit up with pain when he made a fist, dulled though it was beneath Red’s magic.
“Who else would like to share?” the man asked.
“I will,” said a familiar voice, and Rooster lifted his head to find Jake walking to the front.
“Hi, I’m Jake,” he said when he was situated.
“Hi, Jake.”
“Retired Army Major,” he continued. His mouth twisted. “Medical discharge. My convoy was ambushed. I was in the lead vehicle, but I wasn’t supposed to be. I should’ve – but we had a Humvee break down, and we got a call about an incoming air strike, and – I wasn’t supposed to be in the front. The two vehicles behind me…nobody survived. I got thrown. Massive head trauma.” He tapped the side of his skull with his knuckles. “The docs didn’t think I’d ever be able to see again.” The las
t he said with a bitter little smile, a soldier’s private joke: Look at me, able to see, unable to protect my men.
“I’ve had…a lot of frustration,” Jake said, blowing out a deep breath. “I wanted to spend my whole career in the Army. And now I…” He made a helpless gesture, and there were murmurs of understanding from the crowd. “I, uh, don’t quite know what to think about it all, still. My boys…it shoulda been me instead of them. And that’s…that’s hard.” He looked like he meant to say something else, but got stuck, staring into the middle distance, poised at the edge of admission.
Rooster knew the feeling. People had said – everyone from the nurses in Germany to well-meaning civilians who’d seen him limping through drug stores – that it would help to talk about it. But they didn’t know the weight of those words on the tongue. The way they tasted of bile, and rot, jagged as a mouthful of broken glass. It was too painful to prepare them; putting them out in the world was unthinkable.
They gathered at the back of his throat now, as he watched Jake struggle with his own admissions. The sound of his own helmeted head ricocheting off the floor. The taste of blood, and gunpowder, and the stink of his own piss. That awful, awful relief of knowing that he would die, and being glad about it.
“Anyway,” Jake said, “that’s me.” He’d strode up to the podium before, but melted away from it now, sliding back down into his seat like someone only taped together at the seams.
~*~
Rooster didn’t ever go up to talk, but many of the others did. Some were still fresh from combat, and others, the older ones, mostly, offered perspective and acceptance. It was…
Well, it wasn’t as terrible as he’d thought.
And yet it was twice as much so.
He didn’t know.
When the iron-haired man – someone called him Dan – announced that they would be done for the evening, Rooster stood up and went to fix himself coffee just to have something to do with his trembling hands.
Jack appeared beside him. “Pretty terrifying stuff, huh?” he asked, without a trace of mockery.
Red Rooster (Sons of Rome Book 2) Page 30
