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I heard the worry in his tone. Each step to where he stood was a green mile. The smoke cleared, and I saw my spotter holding something in his hand. A picture. And I fucking knew that picture. I fucking took that picture. Zane. Zane in Devin’s arms.
My hands wouldn’t fucking stop shaking as I took it from Bones and stared down. “Where the fuck is he?” I asked through my thick throat. Bones said shit all. A radio command came through, telling us to regroup.
Bones led me back to the rest of the troop, and we listened as Sergeant Lewis spoke. Six men taken by the insurgents, including Lieutenant Deyes. The entire time Lewis—Devin’s best friend—was speaking, I stared at Zane’s face, at Devin laughing as Zane laughed too. And I felt it. I felt something in my heart that told me nothing would be the same from that day on. I could just feel it . . .
My legs were numb as they lay out in front of me, my hands still clutching the picture. I rolled my throbbing head to the side and rooted through the pictures until I saw the jagged edge of the one I sought most. I pulled it from under an album. The edges were torn and singed. But Zane’s smiling face still greeted me. Devin’s laughing smile still stood proud. I lifted it to my nose and closed my eyes. It still smelled of that fucking desert. That enclosure when everything changed. I still heard the RPGs, the shouting of both enemies and Marines . . . the sound of my rifle firing shot after shot, Bones telling me they were direct hits.
“Dev.” I felt my stomach twist. My head dropped and I cried. I fucking cried and cried, soaking my cheeks and chest. I cried, holding the two fucking pictures.
I didn’t hear her come out of her room, but when I felt her arms come around me, I couldn’t fucking push her away. Scrambling into her embrace like a pussy, I let all the years of pent-up emotion pour from me like a river. And I just fucking held her.
Phebe rocked me in her arms. “I am sorry,” she said in a cracked voice. “I am sorry I looked . . .” Her words just made me fucking break down even harder. But I held on to the pictures in my hands like they were my lifeline. My only link left to the family I adored, would have done anything for.
I didn’t know how long we sat there, Phebe holding me, wiping my cheeks as I fucking broke apart. Her fingers pushed my damp hair from my face as I choked. She moved the Jameson aside without even looking at it.
“Come.” She lifted my head from her lap. I felt heavy. Every part of me felt too fucking heavy. “Lie down with me.” She rose to her feet. I kept the pictures to my chest as I forced my legs to move. Phebe led me to the room I slept in. The one that held too many memories for me to ever sleep well. I kicked off my boots and sat on the edge of the bed.
I couldn’t let go of the pictures.
“Lie back and rest your head.” Phebe lay back first. She held out her arms, and needing someone to just fucking take the lead for once, I lay beside her, my head on her chest. “Shh,” Phebe soothed, running her hands over my hair. “Sleep.”
Using her voice to calm myself down, I closed my eyes.
I was tired, so fucking tired.
“Sleep. I will be here when you wake. I will keep you safe.” I heard her words. But I was already being pulled under by darkness. When I smelled the putrid scent of blood and piss, I knew it was to visit a dream I never wanted to see again . . .
“Four weeks.” My knee bounced up and down in the back of the armored truck. “They’ve had him for four weeks.”
“He’ll be good, X,” Bones said. “He’s strong. He’ll be one of the two.”
I nodded, wanting to believe it but unsure I could. Intelligence had come back to the camp. Torture, the report had said. Four dead—two beheaded, one hanged and one shot through the head.
Two survivors.
Only two Marines left alive . . . but tortured.
Badly hurt.
And we were going in.
I held on to my gun as the truck came to a secluded spot. We filed out and took our positions. Bones and I found the highest point we could—an old derelict tower.
“You got eyes yet?” Sergeant Lewis asked through our earpieces.
“Yes, sir.”
Bones went quiet as I braced myself to shoot. “Three,” Bones said, and I caught the hint of excitement in his voice. He gave me the coordinates, and I sent my bullets flying.
“Direct hit,” Bones said and directed me to another position.
“Direct hit,” he repeated. Then all hell broke loose as the ground men moved in. Guns fired, screams and shouts echoed around the barren town. But I listened to Bones’s commands, firing and hitting, firing and hitting, keeping my focus like a good little sniper should.
“Clear!” Sergeant Lewis said through the radio. Disregarding my orders to keep on my spot, I ran from the tower and into the building where the captives were being held. I ignored Bones’s voice behind me telling me to stop. I couldn’t. That could be my fucking brother in there.
Fellow soldiers tried to stop me as I entered the building and followed the sound of the medics thrashing out orders. The ground was littered with dead bodies, and I heard the sounds of the surviving insurgents screaming and hollering in another room. My heart beat in tandem with my running feet until I came to a back room. I flinched at the smell that met me. Piss and shit and blood.
Steeling my nerves, I stepped into the room and looked to my left. Two men were being worked on by the medics. Both nothing but skin and bones, covered in blood and beaten to a pulp.
But I had to know. I had to know if my brother still lived.
I pushed past the men in my path, and I froze when I saw a familiar pair of eyes staring back at me. Dark, just like mine. But that was all I recognized. His face was black and blue. Knife marks and gunshot wounds marred his naked skin. Some of his teeth were missing, and two of his fingers were gone.
Cut clean off.
“Dev.” I dropped down to the ground. Even as gone as he was, when his eyes met mine, a pained sound came from his chest. I dove forward and took hold of the hand that wasn’t injured. “I’m here, Dev. I’m fucking here.”
I squeezed Dev’s hand and fucking broke when he tried to squeeze back. “I ain’t going anywhere.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the picture of him and Zane. “Bones found it, Dev,” I said and watched his eye that wasn’t swollen shut fill with tears. “I kept it for when we found you.”
“Son,” a gruff voice said from beside me.
“Sarge.” I looked up at Lewis. His face was fucking devastated too.
“We need to airlift him out. It?
??s urgent.”
“Okay.” I leaned forward to kiss Dev on his head. “I’ll catch you soon, Dev, yeah? Hold on.”
Releasing his weak hand, I placed the picture there instead. Dev’s fingers held onto it as tight as they could. As the medics lifted him, I said, “Don’t let him lose that picture. Make him look at it if things get bad.” My voice was barely there. The medic assured me he would.
“Outside, son.” Lewis indicated for me to leave the room. I did as he said, walking like a damn ghost through the hallways.
All I could think of was the state Dev was in. His missing fingers, his knocked-out teeth, the knife marks, the bullet wounds, and his fucking tear-filled eyes when he saw me . . . when he saw the picture of his son.
Those fucking cunts. What the fuck had they done to him? Hacking him up, starving him, making him lie in his own shit.
Motherfucking cunts!
I came to a dead stop when I heard a noise to my left. The muted sounds of the insurgents came from behind a nearby door. I listened to their fucking muffled voices and felt my blood boil.
They had hurt my brother. They had touched Dev.
I looked at the closed door, and my feet moved without thought. My hand reached into my pocket and took hold of my knife. I didn’t even look back as I entered the room and shut the door behind me. Three men looked up at me. Three men who were tied up and sitting against the wall.
From behind their gags, they started spewing some babbled shit at me, but I couldn’t understand a word. And even if I did, I wouldn’t give a fuck. I just saw their corpses in my head. I saw their blood pooling beneath them on the floor.
I tightened my grip on the knife in my hand. My feet moved forward, and red misted over my eyes as I came to the first man. He started shuffling on the floor, trying to get away. But he was mine and going nowhere.
I raised my knife and sliced it through his thigh, making sure to hit his femoral artery. I slashed the blade across his stomach and smiled as his innards spilled from the wound. I struck again and again. Blood spattered my face as I moved on to the next man, slashing his throat and hearing him gargle on his own blood. Then the third. I hacked away at their bodies, causing them more pain than was possible in the short time I knew I had, and all the time, I did it with a fucking smile on my face.
