Tully laughed, “I’m not gonna lie, it crossed my mind.” She leveled her blue eyes on him. “This place has nothing but good memories for me. I didn’t think you’d change that. That’s all.”
“You still thinkin’ it?”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“If you keep talkin.” She picked up a worm and flicked it at him.
“Fine, I’ll shut up.”
“Just kidding. Talk as much as you like. I like hearing your voice.”
“You seem…happy out here.” Luke wasn’t sure if he should bring it up, but it was too late now.
“I am.”
“Not like ‘on vacation’ happy. I feel like I’m meeting you for the first time in a parallel universe.”
She rolled her eyes then grew serious. “Nobody stares at me out here.” She reeled in an empty hook choked with soggy grass and frowned at it.
“Why does it bother you so much? Most people show off their scars.”
“Idiots,” she huffed.
“Why are they idiots?”
“Anyone who makes fun of their scars is lying, and anyone who thinks they’re cool is a knuckle dragging buffoon. They fail to grasp a basic concept. Or maybe they’re too shallow to care.” She stabbed a nightcrawler with her hook.
“What concept is that?”
“Most people get to tuck away their past and bring it out when they’re ready. In private, surrounded by people they trust. But when you can’t hide it, the most painful moment you’ve ever lived through is advertised like a billboard.” She swung and her bait hit the surface with a plunk. “Out here I’m, I dunno, normal. Like everyone else.”
“You mean ‘normal’ the way everyone pretends to be. We all go around saying we’re okay when we’re not. It’s exhausting, but no one will admit it until they’re forced to. Why would you want to pretend?”
“Why? To be able to face the world and not have them know my deepest and darkest. To make my past my own, not a public spectacle, that’s why. When people see a scar they know something terrible happened.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s none of their fucking business. I wonder every day what my life would be like if I didn’t have this scar on my face. Who would I be if I never had to endure the pity?” The words poured out of her, matter of factly, lacking any emotion.
“But you have the chance to break free of it,” Luke said. “To live honestly, with no pretense. You don’t wear the chains the rest of us do. It didn’t beat you. That’s what’s on display. You don’t have to pretend.”
“I’d rather pretend. Pretending would be a relief.”
“Trust me. It’s not.” The words came out before he could stop them.
Tully’s head came up and her eyes narrowed as she studied him. This place must be working its purging voodoo on him now. Was he really about to tell her this? Not even the men that made it out of Iraq with him knew what happened. Why was it so important that she know?
Never mind that she didn’t know what he found in her partner’s pocket; she might turn tail as soon as she found out he was a coward. It wasn’t until she shifted uncomfortably that Luke realized he’d stopped talking. His bobber dipped below the water, but he paid it no attention.
“We were pinned down in the bombed-out shell of a little tobacco shop outside Mosul.”
Tully had to turn her ear toward him to hear him. His voice barely rose above the pattering rain.
“It was early in the war. We were picking off the high value targets one by one. My team was tasked with capturing Muharib Al-Asir. He controlled that particular patch of hell and coordinated most of the roadside attacks in that region. Intel had him holed up in a compound about sixty miles outside Mosul in a small village. They were right, and we had him in our sights. But it turned out they were wrong about one thing. How many insurgents were between us and the target.
“It was still too hot for helos at the time, so we went in by vehicle. We had cover of dark, but our vehicle hit an IED outside town. Maybe several, I’m still not sure.” He took a deep breath. “It took out three of my guys immediately. We barely made it to cover at the tobacco store before the hadjis showed up. Although ‘cover’ is over stating it. It wasn’t much more than a low cinderblock wall, and they had the high ground. Two more guys went down. My best friend Rob took one in the thigh. He bled out in under a minute.”
Tully looked at the hazy river to give him a little privacy.
“The cavalry got there by sunrise, but the insurgents were dug in. And only a block away from us. Any air support would have killed us too, so we fought on and off for twelve hours. By then every one of my team including me was hit, but I was the only one that could still hold a gun up. The rest of the team was out of commission or dead. The infantry unit took enough pressure off that I was able to switch our location to a more defensible, intact building across the street. As soon as it was dark, I carried them all across.”
Luke paused and cleared his throat. It was a minute before he continued.
“I got the three still alive over first then went back for the dead. My last trip across the street, this li…”
Her forehead wrinkled when his voice broke. He dipped his pole several times while he composed himself. “This little kid runs out from the alley three doors down. Out of nowhere, he’s kicking a soccer ball in the middle of a war zone. I’m standing in the doorway, and he sees me. I swear we stare at each other for an hour.” Loathing crept into Luke’s voice.
“Maybe it was the fog, I don’t know, but I’m convinced he’s gonna run off and tell the hadjis where we are. I didn’t know how long he was there. He could have known exactly how many of us there were and how many were dead. I couldn’t take that chance. I didn’t take that chance.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her flinch. The rubber handle cracked as he twisted it between his hands. “It was us or him, and I made the wrong call.” Luke laughed bitterly. “You asked why I didn’t take the fucking medal. There you go.”
The rain beat steady on the river.
“It wasn’t his war.” Suddenly Luke couldn’t stand the feel of the rain on his skin.
Tully didn’t seem to mind it as she intently studied a million ripples beneath her feet. “Wasn’t yours either.”
“Doesn’t matter.
“Of course it matters.” She sounded defensive.
“When is it ever okay to hurt someone who doesn’t deserve it?”
“You say that like you had a choice. That choice is a luxury; a question only intellectuals in classrooms and politicians behind podiums get to ask. In the real world, there is no answer.”
“There is an answer. Never. It’s never okay.”
“But you’d be dead if you didn’t,” she said quietly. He looked over and found her looking at him. “You didn’t make the wrong call, Luke.” They fell quiet.
Collateral damage was the term. Most people could write that little boy off without a second thought. An unavoidable casualty to save more important lives. Justified.
Luke spent a lot of sleepless nights and overworked his liver trying to make himself believe what Tully and the rest of the world seemed convinced of. But he failed. Justified? Justice isn’t supposed to punish the innocent. When it does, it isn’t justice.
Two years before, he caught two separate high-profile cases he couldn’t square with his post war vows. He walked away from both when it became clear that all the wrong people would pay. So what if an accountant embezzled 50 million dollars? God forbid the rich get justice while a little girl with MS lost her only parent to the federal correctional black hole.
He never offered an apology or an explanation and never would. The first time he got slapped on the wrist. The second time Joe Long demoted him and shipped him to this steamy purgatory where Steve Simon could ‘watch’ him. It was the perfect excuse to get him out of Washington so he couldn’t make any more waves.
Tully didn
’t know any of that and she never would. And she didn’t know that she would be directly responsible for destroying him.
Last night he fell in love with this savage, fragile beauty. Any stability she retained hung on by a whiskey-soaked thread. What this cluster fuck would do to her made him physically ill. Now her fate would rest on his conscience like all the others. Last night on that hammock he realized he would have to choose his downfall. He could have Tully or a career. Not both.
“It’s not about wrong or right for people like us.” Tully broke through his racing thoughts. “It’s about surviving long enough to claw your way out of the hole that life kicks you into. Survival isn’t right or wrong. You do what you have to. Period. People who bray about right or wrong have never faced their own extinction.”
The rain picked up.
“It doesn’t have to be that way. I don’t have to be that way.”
Tully gave him bitter scowl. “What? You gonna save the world, like some damn superhero?”
Luke ignored her scathing tone and kept his voice even. “Probably not. Doesn’t mean I can’t try.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.” Tully’s fishing pole jerked as she twisted to confront him, agitated. “That’s a lie we tell ourselves to feel better about our meaningless existence.”
“Is everything a lie? Do you believe in anything?”
“Yeah, I believe in something. I believe in making yourself strong enough to stand up when you should get knocked down, and smart enough to win when you should lose. Nobody’s coming to help.”
Luke kept his voice low. “Just because everyone in your life has failed you, doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
Tully’s pole landed on the boards with a crash. She leaped up and half ran to the porch door. Luke was on her heels. When she whirled, he was ready for it. He reached up and caught her wrist in mid-swing. The rain fell hard now stinging their skin.
“You don’t know anything about me,” she yelled at him. She tried to sound mocking, but tears welled in her eyes. “Are you gonna save me?” She tried to rip her hand back.
Luke wrestled her arms down and placed his lips by her ear. “Only if you’ll do the same for me.”
Tully stopped fighting and bowed her head. Luke released her and lifted the brim of her hat from her eyes. “Why did you automatically assume I was talking about you?”
She avoided his gaze.
“I don’t have all the answers, Tully, but I don’t think it’s that complicated. Good and bad exist together. They have to. Look, I know life is shitty, but maybe if we end up with more good than bad, we can make it be enough.” He hoped he sounded convincing. If she could believe it maybe he could too.
“Look at this place. At you. A location was all it took to change you into someone I don’t even recognize. You don’t feel the need to throw yourself in front of bullets here. You’re my proof the answer is simple.”
She squeezed her eyes shut to stop the tears. It was a minute before she composed herself enough to speak. “How?” It was a whisper.
“Sorry?”
“How do you make it enough?”
He pressed his lips into her forehead. “I’m not sure yet, but I think I’m getting warmer.”
Tully’s damp hair fell over his shoulder as he picked her up and carried her through the door leaving the pounding rain behind.
TWENTY-EIGHT
John Cade flinched and glanced around as a dog barked somewhere down the street. He walked past a weedy lot flanked on three sides by one-story cinderblock houses with peeling green paint. The remnants of a chain-link fence surrounded a patchy common area littered with toys and trash.
A tiny convenience store with bars on the windows and the cinderblock houses lined one side of the street. On the other side, a decaying motel advertised rates by the half hour. Cade left his BMW parked in the motel lot. He prayed it would still be there when he got back.
Cade had gone into the motel to inquire about a room at ten pm, exactly as Wynn directed him to, and paid the clerk to hold onto his cell phone. Another item he wondered if he’d see again. The hotel was mercifully vacant on a random Tuesday. He paced the smelly lobby until he saw Wynn pull past and park. He couldn’t get out of there fast enough. The scent of cleaning solution and body odor lingered in the fabric of his three-hundred-dollar linen shirt as he walked down the street.
Ahead, parked among a hundred other vehicles crowding the shoulder, he saw Alex's ridiculous car. Cade couldn’t believe he drove that thing. So much for blending in. Then he remembered the way the toothless motel attendant looked at him and scooted down the cracked sidewalk faster.
A cigarette soared out of the slit in the driver’s window as Cade approached. It sent up a stream of sparks as it hit the ground. A woman walked by loaded down with grocery bags oblivious to him or the man in the car. Her face dripped with sweat. Once she passed, Cade grabbed the handle of the steel gray Ferrari 458 and swiftly pulled the door closed behind him. He adjusted the vent pouring cold into the car. The humid August night had him sweating too.
Without looking over, Wynn shifted into drive and screeched out of the parking spot.
“Alex, I know…” Cade started.
“Why the bloody fuck is the FBI coming to my office? And asking about a dead cop no less. I would love to know how he made that particular connection.”
Wynn kept checking the mirrors as he took several left turns to make sure they weren’t followed.
“I…I don’t know,” stammered Cade.
Wynn pulled the car into a grocery store parking lot. He downshifted, and the car lurched forward to a stop. Then he twisted in his seat so he could confront the cowering Cade. “Like hell you don’t know. How did he end up at my office?”
Cade seemed to forget his nervousness for a minute and glared at Wynn. “He found a fucking phone, Alex.”
The doctor looked surprised for a moment, then his face hardened. “Is that so?”
Cade could tell this was news to Wynn. It emboldened him. “The question you should be asking is why did he find a cell phone in Twomey’s pocket? I gave you specific instructions to take care of that little item. We’re here because of your mistake, not mine.”
Wynn recovered quickly and offered a dark smile. “You really think that matters, mate? If that FBI tosser knows about the reporter, then it’s you he’s coming after. Not me.”
Cade’s fear returned, but he wasn’t nervous this time. His eyes grew wide with terror.
Wynn sat back in his seat and lit another cigarette. “I'm not a danger to him. He's got plausible deniability on me. But you. You have the headlines to sink his considerably profitable ship. And if the FBI is poking around, he’s going to plug all the holes if you know what I mean."
Cade shook his head violently. “He wouldn’t do that. Not to me.”
Wynn flicked ash out the window. “You really believe that? No one knows better than you what he’s capable of, Johnny. Did you really think you’re his only coda?”
Cade said nothing but his chest heaved.
“You need to have your server checked, Johnny. By people you trust. And your phone too. He probably knows you’re out running around right now. Why do you think I made you leave your phone at that rancid motel? It doesn’t look good. Especially when you’re already a threat.”
“I’m not a threat. He knows that. He only got where he is because of me.”
Wynn took another puff. “That makes you a bigger risk. Somehow that fat arse got hold of your email and that was enough to have him silenced. I can’t imagine the details you have on the prick.”
Cade grabbed his knees in near panic. “I’m not a threat to him,” he repeated in a whisper.
“Everyone folds when they’re under enough pressure, Johnny. You haven’t exactly got a steel-clad constitution. I’ve seen you crack under less than this. You’re an idiot if you think he doesn’t know that.”
“What do I do?” Cade wasn’t asking Wynn in particular. H
e was just asking.
“Don’t do anything stupid. If the FBI agent had anything, he would have already made an arrest. There’s been one inquiry on my bank accounts, and my phone records were pulled. If you were paying attention, he’s probably pulled yours too. If he doesn’t even know about the offshore accounts, we’ve nothing to worry about. Sit tight and it will blow over. All you have to do is control your nerves. A tall order, I know.”
“But he knows about you.”
“We’re college mates. That’s a good enough reason for us to be in touch. He has the disadvantage here. He has to prove his case, and he can’t prove bugger all.”
“That doesn’t really help me does it?”
“Not my problem, mate.”
“Alex, you have to help me.” Cade grabbed his old college friend’s arm.
Wynn yanked away. “No, I don’t. This partnership is over. We have to let things cool off a bit. I’ve got my own problems to deal with, don’t I. This is our last collaboration, mate.”
“No, you can’t…. I don’t know what to do.”
“Get your shit checked. If I get hacked, I know about it immediately. You’d do well to follow suit. I hope you have a plan B, mate. Now get out.” Wynn flicked his cigarette onto the pavement.
“You’re not going to take me back to the motel?”
“Get out of my car. Don’t ever call me again.”
TWENTY-NINE
The quiet office soothed Luke's racing mind. Sleep had been elusive the past week. He had to make a decision, and he knew he couldn’t postpone it for much longer. Kicking this ridiculous job to the curb and running away with her was what he wanted, but it wasn’t that simple. It was never that simple.
For the last two nights, Luke stayed in his hotel room instead of with her to clear his mind. He knew that any decision he made in her presence was not a rational one. He was still lucid enough to realize that.
By the time he heard anyone moving around in the office, he’d already been there for three hours. At 8:30 the hall lights flicked on and he knew Susie had arrived. Soon, doors begin slamming and conversation drifted down the hall, probably about weekend plans. It was Friday, so they would all be gone by two. If he stayed in the office, he wouldn’t have to see anyone except Thad.
The Last Innocent Page 23