“Xavier!” I faintly recognized Bones’s voice, but I didn’t stop. Nothing would stop me now.
“Deyes!” a louder voice boomed, then someone grabbed me around my waist, yanking me off my kills. I fought whoever pulled me back until I was restrained on the ground, my knife ripped from my fingers. I looked to the side and smiled wider when I saw the corpses slumped against the wall. Corpses that barely resembled humans anymore. Fuckers that had paid for taking my brother.
“Take him!” Lewis ordered, a note of panic in his voice, and I was carried outside. Blood from my kills covered my hands. I was thrown into a small shack. The door slammed shut behind me. As I sat in silence, I looked down at the blood on my hands and felt nothing but pride. But it wasn’t long before my steady hands began to shake. Wasn’t long before thoughts of Devin and the state he was in hit home. Wasn’t long before the tears came thick and fast, adrenaline fading and reality hitting me.
The door opened and Lewis stepped inside. Sergeant Lewis—Devin’s closest friend and my superior. He began pacing, losing his shit. He kept looking down at me then shaking his head, repeating, “Shit!”
I watched him, numbly. They could lock me up. I didn’t fucking care. Those fuckers were dead. That was all I gave a fuck about right now.
“Here’s what’s gonna happen.” Lewis stilled. His face was red, and his eyes darted from side to side like he was debating something in his head. “All those fuckers were killed in the raid. No survivors.” I blinked, unfeeling and uncaring as he crouched before me. “What the fuck were you thinking, X?”
“They hurt him,” I snarled. “They needed to die.”
“Your brother is the best fucking Marine I know, and, more than that, he plays by the rules, has honor in the flag. He would never have pulled a stunt like that if your roles were reversed. You know what could happen to you if this is found out?”
“I don’t care. They fucked with him. They deserved to die. Don’t give a fuck about what happens to me now.”
Lewis ran his hand down his face, exasperated. “Clean up. I gotta figure all this shit out. We all gotta get our stories straight. Forget this ever happened. Yeah?” I got to my feet, not saying shit. Lewis grabbed my arm and wrenched me back to face him. “Dev saved my ass more times than you’d know. That’s the only reason I’m going against every ethical and moral code here, X. I owe Dev, and after what’s happened, I’m sure as shit not gonna have you court-martialed.”
I stormed through the door, only to see the building that had held my brother on fire, flames licking high and smoke tunneling into the air. “Fuckers lit it up when we arrived, but we managed to get our men out first,” Sergeant Lewis said from behind me. I knew that was the cover they were using to hide my crimes.
But as I washed off the blood from my kills in a nearby stream, I couldn’t help but feel pride at the deaths. Those assholes had deserved to die. And if I’d had more time, I knew I would have done much worse . . .
I gasped awake and shot upright. I looked at the end of my bed. There they were. Lined up to visit me again. The fucking insurgents, dripping in blood, their innards falling out and throats slit. They stared at me with black voids for eyes. “Go away,” I ordered and scrambled to the head of the bed. But they didn’t move. They just stared. They always just stared.
And then I saw them come up behind, ripping my heart in two. These ones I cared about. “No,” I begged, arms outstretched. “Please. Please don’t come to me again . . .” My voice faded to nothing as they took their usual space beside the insurgents.
They all stared at me with dead eyes, their skin gray and crepe-thin. “Please.” I felt the last of my resolve, my strength, break. My cheeks grew wet as I faced them all, the terrors that hadn’t left me in years. My guilt come back to life. “Leave me alone,” I screamed. “Please . . . just leave me alone,” I croaked, no energy left, and tried to breathe.
The door to the bedroom flew open and Phebe came running in. “AK?” She looked about the room in panic.
“Take them away.” I pointed at the end of the bed. “Make them go away. Please . . .”
“Who?” she said softly.
“Them.” I pointed at each of their fucked-up faces. “The blood is all over the floor.”
“AK,” she whispered, then carefully climbed into bed.
“Where were you?” I asked as her hand came to my face.
“I was getting some water. I had only just left the room. But I am here now. Calm . . .”
I looked into her blue eyes, and confessed, “I killed them.” Phebe tensed beside me.
“Who?”
“Them,” I said and pointed at the end of my bed. “They hurt my brother. They nearly killed him, so I killed them too. I killed them like they deserved. But now they won’t go away. They never leave. Neither do they . . .” I pointed my shaking hand at the two people that haunted me most.
“AK, you are not making sense.” She moved closer to my side. She took my hand and squeezed it tightly. I looked down at her slim fingers in mine.
“He had PTSD,” I said, my voice barely loud enough to hear. “They took him to a hospital in the months I was still serving out the rest of my tour. I couldn’t see him—he was brought back to Texas. I didn’t know how bad it was until I got back home. And I came back to find my brother was fucked up . . . beyond fucked up.”
Phebe kissed my hand, and I looked up into her face. “I didn’t know what to do. He was there in body, but he wasn’t there in his head. He drank, but worse . . . he was on heroin. I came home to find my brother was a junkie, had been for fucking months and no one had told me shit. He was still living in Iraq in his head. Still in that fucking room, losing his mind. Living the torture day by day. It never ended for him.”
“I do not understand,” Phebe said.
“My brother.” I felt the pain from simply saying that word. “I killed my brother, Phebe. The boots . . . his boots are by the door, his guns are in the trunk. This is his cabin, the one he brought me to as a kid. He’s dead, and it’s all my fault,”
I cast a glance to him standing at the bottom of my bed, his wrists and throat dripping with blood, his body too thin and frame weak. His hand was held out for me to take, but no matter how many times I tried to take it, to keep him safe, my hand just fell through thin air. I couldn’t reach him.
“It was all my fault,” I said again. “I fucked up. I lost everything because I fucked up.”
Phebe’s hands tightened in mine. “Then tell me. Tell me what happened. You need to, AK. I am here. And I will not let you fall. I will not let them hurt you.”
I stared into her eyes and, having no more strength left to fight, told her it all. For the first time in my life, I told someone.
I told it all—joining the Marines, the kidnap, the torture.
What I did.
And then . . .
She waved at me as I came through the airport. I shifted my bag higher on my shoulder and smiled when I saw the little man break away from Tina’s legs. Zane darted through the crowd and threw himself into my arms.
“Zane!” I hugged him tightly to my chest. “I missed you, buddy!” Zane squeezed me back.
“I missed you too,” Zane said.
I drew back my head to look at him. “Shit! How big have you gotten?”
He shrugged. “Pretty big.” The kid wasn’t kidding. I couldn’t believe how much he’d changed in nine months.
“Hey stranger.” I turned to see Tina standing beside us. I smiled at my sister-in-law, but quickly lost my smile when I really looked at her. She was thin. Her face was drawn, and fuck, she looked tired.
“Hey.” I looked around the airport for Devin. “Where is he?”
Tina looked away. When she looked back, her eyes were filled with tears. My heart sank. “Daddy’s in the hospital,” Zane said, and I froze.
“What?” I asked Tina.
She took hold of my arm. “Come home. I’ll explain everything there.” I follo
wed her through the airport. We stayed silent in the car, letting Zane tell me about the last nine months and what I’d missed. But all I could hear was “Daddy’s in the hospital.”
When we got home, Tina sent Zane into his room. I sat down in the kitchen, and Tina made coffee. She leaned against the counter, and it wasn’t until I saw her back shaking that I knew she was crying.
I jumped from my seat, still dressed in my fatigues, and spun her around. I towered above her, but her tiny body leaned into my chest. And she fucking broke her heart. She sobbed and sobbed until she was able to breathe enough to say, “He never came back, Xavier. The man who returned was not my husband. He was not your brother.”
I clenched my eyes shut, remembering him on that floor in the back room of the insurgents’ building. “What happened?”
“He came home, but he would sit at our door every night with a rifle in his hand. He said he knew they would be coming back for him. He said he was gonna kill them before they got to us.”
“Fuck,” I said and heard my own voice crack.