by Leanne Davis
For a few moments, floating in the bathtub, the water silenced the pain in her head, and with her leg stinging, she felt better. She felt a sense of release. Then with no warning, she was yanked, grabbed, and extracted from her numbing world. Will’s attempt to save her sent her brain right back into the dingy cell.
He thought she cut her wrists, and was bleeding out.
He knew what no else did, and she hated it. He knew everything now: all her pain, all her humiliation. He watched and witnessed it all, and now he knew her secret. Even hours later, the pain was starting over, eating her gut alive from the inside out. And there was no way to release the pressure. Tears? Screaming? Hitting the wall? What good did any of that do? There was nothing she could do, and no way to help her.
Slicing her leg didn’t even reflect a corner of her pain. The black numbness started to fill her body. Maybe next time she should do her wrists. Why not? Why did she keep struggling so hard to stay alive? Life was pain, and it always had been, and always would be. She couldn’t take anymore. She whimpered her physical desire not to be here, on earth. It didn’t matter where she went, nothing could help. There was nowhere she belonged, and no one who could help her. The black, gyrating fog she found herself in would forever be her life.
Then a voice broke through the thickening despair that confined her.
“I had this friend. His leg got mangled after another soldier walked into a bomb. That guy was in pieces, with barely more than an inch of flesh left on him. But my friend had his leg get massacred just below his knee. He was alive, and in shock. I sat with him, holding him, waiting for help. The whole time he talked to me as if we had just met up at a bar for a beer.”
Jessie didn’t move or answer. But the soldier knew she was listening. She was surprised to hear his voice in the shadowy, dark motel room. She thought he long ago fell asleep. His voice was low, but calming, like the way one would talk in a library.
“I assumed he was in shock, so I kept talking to him. Here he was, a bloody mess of flesh and bone, and we talked about the house he wanted to build. Paint colors. We were talking about paint colors. The thing was, it worked, and kept him calm. Kept him alive and kept him with me. Eventually, he got out and lived. Lost a leg, but he lived. He went home, built his house, and painted it. You’ll live, Ms. Bains. You may be in shock now, but you’ll come out of it, and get through this. And you’ll live.”
She was silent as she turned onto her back and looked up at the ceiling. The thing was, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to live.
“You’ve seen a lot of bad things in war, huh?”
He shifted on the bed. Was he looking at her now? “Yeah.”
“You’re used to this then. This is my pain to deal with, like your friend’s leg. My price to pay.”
He turned onto his side. She sensed him looking at her across the bed in the gloomy room. “I’ve seen a lot and done a lot. But when we go to war, we go with guns, training, and other soldiers. We go, hoping to get a chance to shoot before they shoot us. What happened to you was far different from our experience. And no one should pay the price you had to pay.”
More tears leaked from her eyes. His voice had little inflection. He spoke with a formal tone, and a coolness that made him sound like a dentist about to examine her teeth. But somehow, it worked. It made her feel something. She also knew she had to trust him, and she had to make him see her way.
“You can’t tell anyone what you know.”
“I’m not going to blog about it, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“No. My father. You cannot tell my father what you saw. How you found me. By tomorrow, I’m going to be just fine. You’re going to tell him how you found me: in a room, dressed, comfortable, maybe just a little scared and bored, but otherwise unscathed.”
“Why would I report that?”
“Because it’s no one’s business what happened, but mine. I can’t let anyone know. Especially my father.”
“Look, I’m sure you want to protect him, but you need to talk about this. You need to get help.”
“Protect him? I simply want to protect myself.”
Will was quiet at her reasoning. He, of course, wouldn’t have a clue what she really meant. He wouldn’t understand why she preferred that the great General Travis Bains never know what really happened. Will probably thought she was self-sacrificing, to avoid hurting her father’s feelings. In reality, however, it was self-preservation. If her father knew, it would just make an already horrible situation unbearable.
“Did he show you the tape?”
Quiet. Again. Will didn’t like answering her questions.
“Yeah.”
“Did he tell you about the things I’ve done?”
“Not in detail.”
“Didn’t you wonder why he showed you that tape?”
“I didn’t think. Just followed orders.”
“Right. Good, little soldier. The reason my father showed it to you was to bias you towards me. He doesn’t want you to like me. He doesn’t want anyone to like me, so he shows it, and tells everyone what I do.”
“If you don’t want him doing that, then don’t do those things. You made the tape, not him. Look, Ms. Bains I have no opinion about you. I don’t care. I was sent here to do a job. And I’m doing it like I always do. When I report to General Bains, that’s the end of the story. You go on with your life, and I with mine.”
“Please, Will. Please, don’t tell anyone. That’s all I’m asking. Just let me keep this to myself. I need to know it will just belong to me alone. What you saw, and how you found me aren’t anyone else’s business. That wasn’t your job. Rescuing me was your only job, and you did that.”
He didn’t speak, and finally rolled over. “I think you need some help.”
“My father won’t help me. Please. God, please, just give me this one thing. Trust me when I say I know what I’m doing.”
“I have no desire to get between you and your family issues. I don’t care, Ms. Bains. I’m doing my job and I’m done.”
“And your job includes reporting to my father?”
“In this case, yeah.”
A raspy laugh escaped her throat. “You won’t be done. When we come back, safe and sound, you’re going to become the most famous soldier in the United States, along with my father. He’ll broadcast the entire ordeal. Mark my words. He’ll use it if only to make himself look good. I can’t have my experience becoming public fodder.”
“It’s all a secret, Ms. Bains. My presence here… No one will ever know.”
She laughed a mean, hollow sound. “You’re in my father’s cross hairs now, Will Hendricks, and you’re life will never be the same again.”
Chapter Four
Will almost laughed at how easily he and Jessie Bains ended her rescue. They simply hopped onto an airplane and flew home. There was nothing, and no one to stop them. No one cared. They had all the legal paperwork, and were ostensibly on vacation. Now, they were going home.
He was also surprised at how well Jessie Bains presented herself. He was prepared for tears, and more carrying on. She quit talking last night, and that was that. She woke up, got ready and ate the food he brought her, then nothing. She quietly boarded the plane. They traveled as if they were any other American couple flying home. He wore civilian clothes, and she pulled herself together as if she never endured the most horrifying nightmare of her life, or anyone else’s.
She stared out the small porthole window of the airplane, saying nothing.
Just before they landed, Will sent a text to General Bains: they were landing, and all was fine. Jessie watched his fingers moving over the phone. She didn’t comment, and simply looked into his face, but her brown eyes were dull and dead. Anyone looking closely at her would sense she’d been through something pretty horrific. There was no way she could hide it.
Finally, they exited the plane, and walked through the airport with their nearly empty carry-ons. They filled them with a few
token items just to avoid looking suspicious. Will threw all of his weapons into a dumpster in Mexico. She followed him out of the airport until they stopped before his black Silverado truck. Once in, Jessie leaned her head against the window, and her posture slumped.
“Where are you taking me?”
“You need to see your father.”
She lifted her head, and glanced his way. Her eyes were shimmering with tears. “My father hates me. Hates me like you can’t even imagine. Taking me there is a waste of everyone’s time.”
Will was confused. He thought maybe she was transferring some of her pain at what happened to her, towards her father. Surely a father/daughter relationship couldn’t be that poisonous. Especially with General Bains. He was one of the most honorable men of the twenty-first century.
“Those were his instructions. Just doing my job, Ms. Bains.”
“Your job. Right. Regardless of what I need or want. Always the job. The good soldier. One of the reasons I so detest soldiers. You don’t think or act on your own. You just follow orders. And people ask how concentration camps could exist, and how the Germans turned into Nazis. Something about following orders, wasn’t it?”
Will was surprised by the venom in her voice, and the intelligence she seemed to possess. “I deliver you and I’m done. You can hate every soldier out there. You won’t see me again.”
“You’re wrong. You’re about to become the poster child for the Army. Get a clue! You performed a political power booster in rescuing me. Just wait and see.”
“Your father won’t expose you to that.”
Her cold gaze cut into him. He stared harder at the road. “My father will do just that. He hates me.”
Will again looked at her as she slumped against the passenger door. The vehemence of her tone was the only feeling she showed today. He hated to be the cause of anymore grief, he really did. She’d been through plenty. All he wanted to do was deliver her to her father, and finish the mission.
****
Will blinked in shocked, bewildered surprise when he pulled up to the residence of General Bains. In the driveway were dozens of reporters, cameras, and microphones, all of them directed toward his black truck. Jessie merely stared straight ahead, her mouth compressed.
She was right. He couldn’t believe how right.
General Bains came rushing out of his front door, running towards Will’s truck, as if his own life depended on it. Will didn’t see the resentful, spiteful man Jessie Bains portrayed the general to be. To Will, the man looked like he had just been reborn.
“It’s for the cameras,” she whispered, staring straight ahead.
When Jessie opened her door, and got out, she was instantly enveloped in her father’s arms as the crowd circled around them, snapping pictures and asking questions in rapid fire. Will was assailed by the same fanfare. He pushed through the crowd, towards the Bains’s private residence. He was trailed by the general, who had his arm around Jessie. Will stood aside, and waited for the general to open the door before going in behind them.
Being inside the general’s house had Will seriously wondering where his career would go from here. Personal level, he was now on a personal level with the most powerful man in the Army.
General Bains dropped his arms from his daughter. Will paused. My father hates me, you’ll see, Jessie’s words echoed through his head. How did Jessie know, and with such surety, that her capture and rescue would be covered by the media? How could it have happened without the general orchestrating it? He sure as hell didn’t tell a soul. Begrudgingly, Will regarded Jessie Bains with more credibility than before.
Will followed the pair through a lovely white-tiled entry, with white walls and dark wooden shelves that displayed the memorabilia and highlights of General Bains’s career. Right in the entry! There was nothing subtle about the man. The Bains’s house was undeniably stately, yet not pretentious on the outside: a pristine, white house, trimmed in black, with a perfectly manicured lawn surrounded by colorful flowerbeds.
The formal living room had a white piano that took up one entire wall. Beside it stood Lindsey Bains, her long, smooth, blond hair falling neatly to her elbows. She was a beautiful woman, standing five-foot, six or so, with a svelte, willowy figure, and classic, Grecian features on her face. Nothing marked Jessie and Lindsey as sisters.
Something was wrong. Why weren’t they all rushing forward? Hugging? Honey, are you all right? What happened? Oh God, I’m so glad you’re safe. No such comfort was forthcoming amongst the Bains. Something seemed very wrong with this reunion, as well as the entire family.
Lindsey finally stepped forward, approaching her sister, and seemed like she wanted to hug her. But she stopped several paces short. “Are you okay?”
Jessie smiled, but seemed out of place in this family. The rest of her family was blond, all of them, and very restrained and formal. She was not. Jessie was earthy. Always dark, and bold in her appearance and actions, even the way she spoke. She had way too much personality by this family’s standards.
“I’m great. It was so boring, you have no idea. I was so glad to see Will. I was dying to leave. I mean spending days in this tiny room all by myself. I thought I would go crazy.”
Lindsey’s face relaxed. It had been strained, showing her worry about her little sister. She frowned.
“That’s what Dad said, that you were fine. Just scared.”
“Of course, Dad said that. I was scared. Until I realized they were just like, I don’t know, holding me for some reason.”
Dad didn’t know. Will’s head started to pound. General Bains had no idea what Jessie endured. They kept all communication simple and limited. Will preferred to break the news in person, not by texting. But why did General Bains already announce that Jessie was fine? She was so far from fine, and Will felt his agitation growing as he stood there silently, watching the mockery they made over what this girl suffered.
“Thank you, Will,” Lindsey said as she turned toward him. She studied him and their eyes met. He smiled at her. She blushed and looked away. Jessie watched both of them. The general turned towards Will then.
“Will, I can’t even tell you how grateful I am. The sacrifices you made for our daughter’s safe return.” General Bains came up to him, and shook his hand, while slapping his shoulder. Will accepted the praise, and the empty words, which were all the right ones, as he tried to show the response they expected, but something vital was missing from it all.
Jessie suddenly turned towards the hallway. “Look, I need a shower and a hair dryer. Thanks again, soldier. Guess, I’ll see you around sometime.”
The family watched her obnoxious departure. General Bains cleared his throat. “Forgive my daughter. She sometimes doesn’t comprehend the magnitude of a situation. Or what you did for her. She’s young, perhaps we spoiled her too much. Shall we meet in my office, Will? Let you get on home?”
“Yes, sir,” Will said, following the general into his massive home office. It held an impressive desk, lots of shelving, dead animal heads, and flags.
“What did you see when you found her?”
“She was in a locked room. I got her out. To the roof, we hid for an hour or so, and I killed four guards. Then we managed to escape, and get into the car I stashed. From there, the rest was routine. Hotel room. Flight home.”
“Was there anything more? I mean, with Jessie?”
Will stared into his eyes, watching him sharply as he thought of the girl he saw chained and shivering in a ball next to the wall. Naked, covered in mud, dirt, and more, so much more. He recalled the men he watched raping her, before re-chaining her to the wall. Whatever was wrong with this family, and all that was wrong with Jessie, went much further back than what befell her during the last four days. Will didn’t understand it, and usually would not have balked at telling the truth, especially to a superior officer, but his sense of compassion prevailed over his sense duty. If he could provide Jessie Bains with any kind of comfort, he would. He
’d keep his promise and her pain to himself. Whatever her reason, she wanted people thinking worse of her than they already did.
“She was fine, sir.”
“Thank God. So this was all a ruse to get money.”
“How did anyone find out?”
“The media? I don’t know, a leak, I guess. A handful of people knew when we tried to figure out what to do. That’s how you were discovered. I know I can’t officially reward you, but son, you will be rewarded for this someday.”
Will shook his head. His personal success was so unconnected to what he experienced, he couldn’t care one bit. By the time he got past the family again, as well as the media, his mind was spinning and his nerves were shot. He looked up and noticed the face staring out one of the windows at him. Will felt sick in his gut. Twenty-year-old Jessica Bains’s life was decimated, and the only person in the entire world who knew it was a soldier who knew nothing else about her.
Chapter Five
Will didn’t believe Jessie Bains when she told him that being in General Bains’s cross hairs would change his life. Change his life indeed! Within weeks, he was transferred to serve under the general, and now reported directly to him. His entire life was unlike anything he knew before. His face appeared on myriad magazines and newspapers, while the media purported the story as a romantic jaunt between the soldier and the general’s daughter. Will was lauded and “hero-fied.” It all culminated by making him feel sick. Becoming famous over what happened to Jessie was never something he wanted, and a job he never asked for. However, it was impossible to undo what had already become public knowledge.
