The Problem with Peace: Greenstone Security #3

by Malcom, Anne

  But it wasn’t refrigerated.

  Maybe that’s why it went off.

  Maybe that’s why it was used for transporting humans.

  Or just one lone human.

  I couldn’t go off, could I? But my insides felt like that’s what was happening. They were rotting, decaying, turning into something rancid and not at all pleasant.

  It was off-putting.

  But there was not much I could do about it, was there? It had happened, and I was here. Most likely there was worse in store for me. Or at the very least more of the same.

  The thought provoked that lust for a quick death I had brushed away because of the people it would hurt.

  My family.

  I wondered how they were. I wondered how long they’d look for me until they gave up.

  Never.

  I knew that Lucy would never give up.

  Neither would Rosie.

  Them and their respective husbands would tear apart the earth for me. Because that’s what they did. They might find me, rotting in a shallow grave. I hoped not.

  I smiled thinking about their babies. They’d have them in sorrow, of course. And I hated that I would involuntarily have a part in that. I wanted so much joy and love for them. Because they deserved so much of that. I wanted to meet my niece or nephew. Wanted to cradle the new warmth of life in my arms, and feel my heart grow with love for such a tiny being. I wanted to babysit when Lucy and Keltan were sleep deprived and going crazy. I wanted to save Luke from Rosie murdering him when he didn’t let her go back to work immediately.

  I could’ve been that cool aunt. Because I’d never be a mother, even...if everything didn’t happen.

  But everything did happen. I was wearing the evidence, body and soul. I should’ve been in pain. A lot of it.

  And I was, somewhere amongst the layers. But I’d sunk down to someplace inside of me that was rather quiet and vacant and at peace with all the horrors that I’d gone through. Or maybe in denial. I knew it was a temporary place. One I’d likely get wrenched out of the second the truck stopped and my life—as I knew it at least—stopped too.

  And my death might start.

  Craig had sold me.

  Sold. Me.

  Like I was a commodity. Something that he had the right to throw at men, half-conscious and sullied and talk about being ‘even.’ As if my life, my soul was something that weighed just the right amount to even whatever scales he’d disrupted in the first place.

  I couldn’t muster up the appropriate disgust for this right now. Because underneath the layers my emotions were muted. My panic. My sorrow. My fear. All still here, but manageable. They were quietly eating away at my insides, but it wasn’t as unpleasant as before.

  Yes, before had been unpleasant if there was ever a word for it.

  The truck stopped.

  My breath might’ve too.

  But no, I was still awake and alive when the truck doors opened, so I was breathing.

  A pity.

  I waited for them to climb in. Unchain me. Maybe hurt me. They hadn’t done that yet. It’d just been Craig so far. But the way they’d handled me was not giving promises to gentle treatment. It was a precursor to abuse.

  But no one climbed in.

  Because people started yelling. There was a flashing of lights. A thump of bodies against bodies. Grunts.

  Ah, I must’ve been dead.

  Or at the very least hallucinating.

  Because this was it. The scene when the damsel is saved. But the scene was too late. Because the damsel wasn’t meant to go through...that.

  If I was going to be saved, it would’ve already happened.

  That was how it worked.

  I read that people constructed different kinds of reality when the real one suddenly became too horrific to live through. That must’ve been what I was doing.

  It made sense.

  I was Polly, after all, wasn’t I? I excelled at creating realities different from the ones I existed in.

  The doors were wrenched open.

  Light stabbed at my eyeballs and I flinched away from it. I didn’t like that. It was too bright, too real, too urgent, it tried to tug me away from all my layers.

  I squeezed my eyes shut.

  “Fuck,” a voice clipped, the one curse full of pain and relief.

  It was familiar.

  Too familiar to be real.

  Steps across the interior. Hurried. Urgent.

  I kept my eyes squeezed shut, making sure there were no crevices where the light could come in. I didn’t want the light anymore. Not ever.

  “Oh, baby, fuck.” The voice was still a murmur. It was soft. Broken.

  Just like me.

  Hands went onto my body.

  I couldn’t remember if I still had clothes on, but a bare hand went onto my bare skin and that was not okay.

  I flinched away violently, even though the hands were familiar like the voice. Because it wasn’t really those hands touching me. No, I was just pretending. Obviously, there were rougher, dirtier hands on me right now and I couldn’t handle that, so I was pretending it was the one I wanted.

  Needed.

  “Polly,” he whispered, voice strained and full of pain. “Polly, baby, I’m going to uncuff you now, that means I’m gonna touch you.”

  There was a pause. An exhale. It sounded like he was struggling with something. Struggling to breathe. Struggling to keep himself together.

  Ah, I knew how that felt.

  “I’m not gonna hurt you, baby,” he whispered. Again, the words were broken. Fractured. Bleeding. “I promise you, you’re not gonna be hurt anymore.”

  I didn’t reply.

  Even if no one laid a finger on me for as long as I lived, it didn’t matter. The way I’d been hurt couldn’t be erased, and worse, it wouldn’t dull. It would continue to stab at me forever. I knew that.

  There was more touching. I kept my eyes squeezed shut through it.

  My hands were free now.

  They fell down like lead.

  I imagined they, along with my body, might’ve hit the ground.

  But he caught me.

  His body was warm. Hard and soft. He smelled like blood and death and comfort.

  I wanted to nuzzle into him.

  But it wasn’t really him.

  So I stayed still.

  He cradled me in his arms. I felt lips on my head and he began rocking me back and forward. “Baby,” he choked. “Polly, fuck. I’m sorry baby, I’m so fucking sorry.”

  I didn’t reply.

  What if I spoke and my words fractured this beautifully ugly reality?

  “You’re okay, you’re okay,” he chanted.

  But I didn’t believe it.

  And I could tell that he couldn’t either.

  We stayed like that for a long time. I wondered what was really happening, outside of this reality I’d constructed. Was someone really holding me with this love and tenderness, rocking me back and forward and clutching me like I was encased in a cocoon?

  Of course not.

  But it was nice.

  I couldn’t move. It might tear this reality. Disappear it.

  But he could. And he did. In one fluid movement, he was standing. We moved across the truck.

  There were more voices. They were familiar too. Smells. Burned rubber. Smoke. Blood.

  I would’ve thought blood didn’t have a smell before. But I’d scented my own against my pain...before, so I knew it smelled coppery and wet. Like rancid meat and old pennies.

  “Heath, is that—” someone began, and then his voice broke, I imagined as we came into view.

  As I came into view.

  I imagined I looked bad on the outside. Even if it betrayed an ounce of the hurt of the inside, it would’ve been bad.

  “No,” the voice murmured. Or maybe pleaded.

  I should tell him that didn’t help. Pleading did nothing but chip away at your dignity while everything else was carved off your body. You
r soul.

  “I’m gonna hand her down to you, Luke,” Pretend Heath said.

  “Yeah, brother,” Pretend Luke said, voice quiet. Kind.

  Luke was always kind.

  The arms around me tightened just a little. A kiss on my forehead. “I’m gonna let you go for just a second, Polly, I can’t climb down with you in my arms. I don’t wanna hurt you. Luke’s gonna take you. He won’t hurt you, ‘kay?”

  It was nice he was talking me through it.

  This was all so very nice.

  Well, nice amongst the horror, of course. But I didn’t focus on the horror. I focused on the nice.

  The arms squeezed tighter, but not actually tight. Like someone trying to hug an egg without breaking it. I guessed maybe he didn’t realize I was already broken. Maybe in this reality, I wasn’t broken.

  That would be nice too.

  I was jostled slightly, and the move sent a pain so sharp and so visceral it stabbed through all my layers and got me in my safe place. Or what I thought was a safe place.

  I didn’t cry out. Or even flinch.

  Interesting. I didn’t have a good tolerance for pain normally.

  But normal was dead. Buried. Never to be resurrected.

  My eyes were still squeezed shut but I was in new arms. They felt different. Still warm. Still safe. But they didn’t smell so much like death. Maybe clean linen and the ocean. Clean would’ve been nice.

  But I’d never be clean again. Not even if I scrubbed my skin from my body.

  “I’ve got you, honey, you’re okay,” a voice murmured.

  “Thank you, Pretend Luke,” I whispered, still staying still.

  I knew it was a risk to talk in my faux reality, but I felt Luke needed thanks. He needed something. He sounded so hopeless.

  His arms flexed with my voice. I didn’t blame him. It was raw and ugly. I guessed I must’ve been screaming at some point.

  “Give her back to me,” a voice growled.

  There was a pause. “Brother,” Pretend Luke warned. “We need to check her over. You gonna be able to hold it together? She needs you to hold it together.”

  “I’m holding it together. I know what she needs. And I need you to give her to me.”

  Another pause.

  The air was wired.

  A strange thing to have in my pretend world. Wasn’t it meant to be easy and lacking that conflict that was the thing I was escaping? The pain?

  There was a lot of pain here. Not inside me, I was thankfully still numb to that. But on the outside. In the air. In the way both of these pretend men spoke.

  In every syllable that Pretend Heath seemed to rip out from his very soul. It was very strange I was able to construct such pain. I had a powerful imagination, everyone told me that, but not that powerful. But maybe it was that powerful because now I knew pain really well. Intimately. That must’ve been it. Before I injected happiness and love into my fantasies because I was lucky enough to know it very well. Now it would be pain and ugliness.

  No more happiness and love. Not ever again.

  Yes, that was it.

  I decided it just as I was jostled into another set of arms. They did that thing where they squeezed me like an uncracked egg. But I was already cracked. Shattered, leaking out through the broken pieces.

  Gravel crunched under boots.

  My eyes flickered as I decided it might be time to open them, because this might be the last time I was strong enough to create a fantasy this strong, this real, and this might be the last time I could see Heath. So I should feast on him before I get taken away from my mind.

  “No, Sunshine,” he murmured. “Keep your eyes closed.”

  He must’ve been watching me, staring at me pretty hard to see the tiny movement under my closed eyelids to signify that I was about to open them.

  I kept them squeezed shut. If he didn’t want me to open my eyes, it was for a reason. He was protecting me from something, maybe. I let out a little giggle at that. He was protecting me from something when there was nothing left to protect.

  We stopped.

  “Fuck.”

  The third male uttering that word and somehow using it as a cry of sorrow instead of a curse.

  More familiar.

  This was Keltan.

  “Set her down, we need to see her injuries.”

  “You can see them from here,” Heath hissed.

  “Brother, you need to let her go.” Keltan’s voice was gentle, tentative, like he was trying to talk a man off a ledge.

  “Letting her go is what got her here in the first place.”

  I sensed this might go on for awhile. Again, this puzzled me as to why my pretend reality might be full of such things. Something tickled the edge of my mind, tried to coax me out of my layers with the seductive thought that maybe this was a reality. Maybe this was the true one.

  Maybe they were really all here, wherever here was, and maybe I was getting saved.

  Much too late of course.

  This thought and the men’s argument was cut off by the sound of tires.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Luke’s furious voice clipped out from somewhere near.

  A door closed.

  “I told you to sit fucking tight,” Luke said, his voice almost a shout.

  “And since when did you think that what you told me to do is what I’m going to actually do?” a woman’s voice asked.

  Familiar.

  Too familiar.

  She began to yank me out of the thought that this was all pretend. Because if I was imagining this, I would never bring her here. No, I would never want her to see me like this. I would never hurt her like that. I was already hurting, scarring the man I loved beyond belief. But I didn’t have the strength to save him, because I needed him before I was lost altogether.

  “Since you’re four months fucking pregnant,” Luke continued, voice hard.

  “I waited until you stopped the killing.” The voice was closer. “Which I could’ve done. Viking women gave birth on the battlefield, Luke, and I’m much tougher than they—”

  She stopped speaking at the same time the gravel stopped crunching when her voice got nearer and nearer.

  It was an abrupt knife through her words, the ensuing silence. I guessed it was when she saw me.

  The pain was coming back quickly now because I was beginning to sicken with the realization that this was real. How was it that I was having a more violent reaction to being saved than when I thought that I was still being tortured?

  “Baby.” Luke’s voice immediately softened, all of the previous anger leaking out like my soul did through the cracked pieces.

  His voice was broken too.

  I didn’t want to open my eyes now.

  Because his voice told me he saw something on Rosie’s face.

  Pain.

  Because of me.

  “Polly,” Rosie croaked.

  More gravel crunching.

  I smelled her perfume.

  My hair moved and a soft hand trailed across my forehead.

  It took all of my strength to open my eyes.

  The pain came back then. With Rosie’s tearstained face.

  All of it.

  The outside and the inside.

  I looked behind her, not at the people around her. No, at the yawning desert around us. It was dusk or dawn. Did it matter if the day was ending or beginning? Maybe it used to.

  Not anymore. Endings and beginning were the same now.

  Meaningless.

  “We’re in the desert,” I whispered. “I’ve always liked the desert. It’s a nice place. A nice place.”

  And then I was gone.

  One Month Later

  Heath

  They were in the conference room.

  The one he couldn’t walk into without the chill of what felt like someone was walking over his grave.

  But every step in a place that he’d existed in before was a step over the dead remains of his life a month ago.
Before he’d died the second he opened the doors to that truck. Saw her chained, bloody, brutalized beyond belief, beyond comprehension. Wearing his torn fucking tee shirt. And wearing nothing on her face.

  The woman who wore her heart on every inch of her body, in her expressions was wearing nothing. That hit him as hard as her physical injuries. And they hit him pretty fucking hard.

  He hadn’t lost that much of himself in those two seconds in three tours in the desert.

  No war could take from him what those moments took from him.

  And though she was back, she wasn’t back. No, he couldn’t even find comfort in the fact she slept in his arms every night and he woke to her every morning because it wasn’t her. Not really.

  So everywhere he went, when he had to leave her, when he forced himself to leave her, it haunted him with what was there before.

  The conference room was the worst because that was where they got the news. That’s where they finally got her location and he hoped, like a stupid motherfucker that they’d find her.

  Whole.

  That was the last place he entertained the idea of an unbroken Polly.

  So it was fucking torture to sit at the same seat he’d sat in one month ago.

  But he did it. He welcomed torture. He needed pain, he craved more of it. Because he could never go through in a lifetime what Polly lived through.

  They met here once a week. Well, all of them did, the women included. But the men met every single fucking day since it happened, usually with a member of the Sons of Templar either by Skype or in residence.

  The whole club had come when Polly had been found.

  As a show of solidarity more than anything else.

  They’d been out for blood, of course, but Heath and Keltan’s men had spilled it all. Including Craig’s.

  He’d wanted to make it slow, painful. Agonizing. But he couldn’t waste time killing someone when it was more important to bring Polly back to life.

  It hit the Sons too, what happened to Polly.

  Scarred them.

  And they had renewed motivation to try and end Fernandez.

  The energy Heath had left to spare was spent on that.

  But this meeting with the women was for everyone to coordinate their shifts. Their shifts with Polly.

  She had not been left alone since it happened.

  Not even for her benefit, she hadn’t made a show of not being able to be alone, hadn’t made any kind of show, hadn’t shed a fucking tear. But not one person who knew and loved Polly could stand the thought of leaving her alone.