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“I’m fine,” said Bradan stiffly.
I waited a moment, then said gently, “Sometimes, just now and again, it seems like you’re somewhere else. Remembering things.”
“I told you,” said Bradan. “I’m fine.” He passed me the binoculars and suddenly he was off, creeping down the slope towards the soldiers.
I cursed, taken by surprise, and scrambled to find him with the binoculars. Even knowing where he’d be, it was difficult to follow his moves. I’d never seen anyone move so stealthily: he seemed to melt into the shadows and then slide out of them somewhere else, graceful and silent as a cat. I watched one soldier fall, tumbling soundlessly backwards into the jungle, Bradan’s arm around his neck. Then another. The guy was incredible.
And then…nothing. Bradan just disappeared.
Minutes ticked by but there was no sign of him. Shit. He must have frozen up again and there was a third soldier somewhere down there. Maybe this had been a bad idea…
A rustle of clothing behind me. I rolled over onto my back and saw the third soldier standing at my feet, his gun just coming up to point at me. I scrambled for my rifle but there was no time—
Bradan stepped out of the shadows and cut the soldier’s throat in one quick move. The body fell to the ground right beside me and I recoiled, gaping up at Bradan.
“Saw that one wandering up here so I circled back,” Bradan said casually. “C’mon.”
He set off down the slope again and I raced after him. A moment later, we were sitting in the cab of one of the trucks. I stared at Bradan in wonder as he started it up. “Thanks,” I said at last.
Bradan glanced across at me…and something happened. He gave a little nod and a shrug, like saving my life was nothing, but I saw him relax just a little bit. Like this was the first real connection he’d made in a while. I suddenly felt even more sorry for the guy. Leaving the cult must have meant leaving everything he knew behind. That adjustment would be hard enough but he’d had something much worse to deal with. As he was counseled or deprogrammed or whatever they called it, he must have become aware of what he’d done, what the cult had made him into.
How do you cope when you wake up and realize you’re a killer? How many deaths did he suddenly have on his conscience: five, ten, a hundred? How hard would it be to make friends after that? You’d either have to lie to everyone, or tell the truth and have them be scared of you.
And suddenly, I knew what I had to do.
I’d learned it from my dad, the barber. Sometimes, his clients talked and talked and sometimes they sat there in silence and he could tell they wanted to let something out, but if he started talking to them, they'd just clam up or talk small talk. He had to give them silence, but the right sort of silence. Not the uncomfortable, cold silence that makes people nervous and twitchy. A warm, soothing silence that expands to fill the room, that feels like sliding into a hot bath. The sort of silence that draws out the poison people are keeping inside, the way a warm poultice on a wound can draw out the splinter. With a slow snip-snip of his scissors, my dad could create the sort of comforting silence that therapists, with their couches and book-lined offices, could only dream of.
So as we pulled away and drove, I just…stayed…quiet.
And after a few minutes, Bradan muttered, “I've started getting memories. Out of nowhere. Something sets it off: a voice or a smell or something I see, and suddenly I’m back there.” He swallowed. “Killing someone.”
I thought of his girlfriend, back in Colorado. “You talk to Stacey about it?”
“Stacey has her own problems. She’s from LA, she had a business there, and she followed me all the way to Colorado, to this tiny little town. She hasn’t found a job yet, she doesn’t know what she’s going to do there. She’s done enough for me.”
“Not sure that’s how it works, when you love someone,” I said gently. And suddenly, without meaning to, I was thinking about Olivia. I felt myself flush.
“When I froze up,” said Bradan haltingly, “back on that lawn…it was because I saw that fountain. I’d seen one just like it before, in Colombia. There was this guy, a politician. Young guy, people liked him. I shot him. Made it look like one of the cartels did it. He died slumped over the fountain.” Bradan glanced across at me and in his eyes, I could see the scared kid who’d been taken by the cult as a teenager. “It’s like I’m waking up, remembering a nightmare. Only all of it’s real.”
