The Years Between (17 page)

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

“Because it was all based on money I knew you would think of as blood money. I don’t know much in this world, Jess, but I do know you.”

She nodded. Her voice was soft when she spoke. “I know you do. I know why too. I know why you didn’t tell me. I just wish you wouldn’t feel the need not to.”

“Well, me too. You’re my wife. Not my child. I know that. No matter what you think, I want to tell you this stuff. I want to tell you everything and not worry that it’s going to send you off the deep end. But if it does, I’m here for that too. And I see now, in hindsight, I should have just told you.”

She cleared her throat. “No. You probably shouldn’t have.”

“You’re becoming stronger the longer we’re together. You really doubted me at first.”

She flinched. “Okay. I did. I worried if I did something wrong, you would take it as a reason to flee again, all in the spirit of doing what was
best
for me.”

“I knew I wasn’t going to leave you ever again. But I had to convince you first. So here I am doing that.”

“You really want to do all those things?”

“Yes. Does that interest you?”

She finally let a slow, big smile fill her face. “Yes. It sounds like all I want to do.”

“Nine months. Nine months until we can do it.”

“If we use my father’s money.”

He shrugged. “Or we could call it your
mother’s
money.”

Her eyebrows furrowed. “I never, ever thought of it like that.”

“Well, you could.”

She slowly shook her head. “Yes, I really could think of it like that. Holy shit! I really could.”

He nodded his head with her. “Yes, we could.”

“I love the thought of my mother’s money.”

He took another huge breath. “There’s more. You said you wanted it all.”

Her jubilation dimmed. “Yes. What? What else could there be? He’s dead. He’s gone. We’ve been through it all.”

“Not all of it.”

“What?”

“They’re still there.”

Her eyebrows
lowered in confusion. “Who is still there?”

“The people that did that to you. They are still in the same location in Mexico.”

Her entire body froze up. “H-how do you know?”

“I checked.”

Her face went blank and all the color drained. She turned her head from him as if he hit her. He got up and went around the table to kneel right beside her. He took her hands in his. They were cold. “I stopped through on my way home from Africa.”

“How did you just stop through?”

“I took a few days and went down there.”

Her mouth was a giant O. “That’s why you surprised me?”

He nodded, holding her gaze, guessing what that betrayal would feel like to her.

She shook her head over and over. “How could you do that?
Why
would you do that?”

“Because I remember his face.”

“Whose face?”

“The leader. I think it was the leader. The only one that wore a suit.”

Her body convulsed. “I-I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”

“I’m telling you: I know who it is. I know where they are. And I can’t let it go.”

“Let what go?”

“What was done to you, right in front of me.”

She kept her eyes tightly shut. “You didn’t watch all of it. You said you couldn’t stand to watch it. You said you were there, and did reconnaissance, but you didn’t watch that.”

“
I saw enough. I heard enough. I heard
you.
You think it affects you? Well, it does me too. It about broke me in half. It’s why I left you. I couldn’t stand the guilt. I dream about it. I think about it too. I think about it almost as much as I think about spending a full year only with you. I spend all my time defending people in other countries. I can kill people I’ve never met who’ve done nothing to me, but the ones who did, and ruined your life, I did nothing about.”

She gasped, her voice rising in anxiety. “What are you
talking
about?

He held her arms in his and stared right into her eyes. “I’m talking about going back there and killing them.”

She started shaking her head. “You’re sounding crazy. That was in the past. We are moving on. We are moving forward. We’re talking about our life together, and you tell me you want to go back to Mexico? How could you even say that to me? How could you? I can’t believe you would do that to me.”

“I don’t want to. But I can’t stand it,” he said finally after several moments of taut silence.

“What can’t you stand?”

“That no one ever paid for what happened to you. Not one fucking person who ever hurt you ever got punished.”

She started to stand up. “My father hung himself. Don’t you think that was paying?”

“That was him avoiding disgrace. That was his own decision. That was not justice. God damn it, Jessie, you, we, I, deserve some fucking justice.”

She stared hard at him. “There is no justice. There will never be. Not from day one.”

He stood up too. “I need it. I can make it.”

“You’re talking about murder, Will Hendricks. I will not even have this conversation. You sound crazy. Usually, that’s reserved for me.”

He caught her elbow. “I am crazy. It’s made me crazy for years. I want to go down there when I’m off active duty. I want to go down there and finish things, and then… we would be free. The rest of our life would be ours. Finally. Forever. I just need to do this one thing.”

“That one thing could destroy everything! You don’t want to do that for me, you want to do it for you! So you can feel like the big, macho soldier who saves everyone.
It’s for you!
” she spat out.

He nodded slowly and crossed his arms over his chest. “It is. It is for me. I don’t deny it. But it also could allow us to finally finish it. Move forward. I can do this, Jess. I can do this with my eyes shut. Let me. Let me do this and I promise you, I’ll spend the rest of my life making you happy. Doing whatever you need from me. You’re right, this is for me. I can’t stand what I didn’t do for you. It haunts me. Sometimes, I think it’s going to break me. I can’t let it go. Just let me do this one thing for myself.”

She leaned onto the table as if too exhausted to stand up. “I can’t believe you’re even saying this.”

“You can’t imagine the guilt I live with.”

She slowly turned, “I don’t blame you. I love you.”

“I love you too. But I do blame me.”

“The dream you talked about…”

“Is the one thing I can’t let go of; I can’t shake it.”

She suddenly shook her head as she stepped forward and grabbed his shirt in her fist. “You will let it go. You will shake it. If I can, you can. Do you understand me? If I can live with it, and what was done to me, then you can live with it too. You can damn well live with it!”

“You remember his face too. I know you do,” he said softly, cruelly.

She drew in a sharp breath as if he knocked the breath out of her. Her brown eyes glazed over strangely. She remembered them all. He only remembered the one. He didn’t see the hooded one without his hood, and the others blended together for him. He remembered the one who first touched her.“Don’t make me go back there. We’re all about moving forward. Our future. Us. Now. Why are you doing this to me?”

“You wanted me to trust you with what I’m thinking about. This is what I’m thinking about.”

“Why? I just don’t understand why. You can’t commit murder.”

He could. He could easily commit cold-blooded murder. “If I killed them then, at that moment in Mexico, would you have felt this way?”

She tried not to cry, but the tears welled up in her eyes. They slipped over her eyelids despite her deep sniff to hold them in. “No. I would have done anything to watch you kill them. I would have wanted you to kill me then too.”

He pulled her into his arms. “I know that. That’s why I need to do this.”

She pushed against him. He let her go. “But that is why I don’t want you to go back. I did not die. I don’t want to die. I finally
want
to live with it.”

“Me too. But I can live with it better knowing someone paid. You must know you weren’t their first or only victim. They had permanent ties concreted into the floor. That wasn’t solely for your benefit.”

Chills coursed through her body. “I know,” she said with a hiss.

“Let me stop them. Let me stop them from doing that to others. If not for you or me, then for them. They had cells down there. You know what that means. Let me do this, Jess. Please.”

She turned away from him. “I will not stand here discussing murder. Even I know the difference between right and wrong.”

She stomped towards their bedroom and he followed her. She started picking up her clothes and hanging them neatly back in the closet. He watched her for a few minutes. “What if I don’t go there with the intent to kill? What if I just bring them to the authorities’ attention?”

She started to put the sheets back on the bed. He stepped forward and took the other side. She paused and stared at him. He stared back. “I don’t believe you. You’re lying to me.”

“No. I’m not. What if I go down there with the intent to shut them down permanently? It’s some kind of drug-trafficking ring, and sex-trafficking seems to be a side business. Or maybe the sick fuck who runs it just likes rape for his personal gratification.”

Her gaze burned into his. She swallowed and finally asked, “How did
he
know them?”

Will knew “he” had to be the general. Her voice nearly broke anytime she said anything in reference to the man who so ruined her.

She never asked for the full details before. Will had gotten them from Lindsey who had learned them from one of Bains’s former associates. When he approached Jessie with it in the past she had not wanted to hear them. Will nodded and kept his voice low and calm as he said, “He must have run across their arms runners. They shipped weapons and drugs through the border and a motorcycle club served as their front. They took the goods from Mexico for distribution around the United States. The DEA caught on to the American end of things about a year before you were taken. The general have any friends in the DEA?”

She fell onto the bed and nodded. “He had friends everywhere.”

“Well, that’s as far as it was figured out how he would find that group.”

“What do you think he expected to happen to me? I’ve always wondered that. He sent you there to get me out, bring me home, so he wasn’t outright selling me to them. So… what did he think would happen?”

Will sat next to her, lulled into their history.

“I think he hoped to get you to start behaving. Probably thought you’d be so grateful to be home, you’d stop embarrassing him.”

“How could he not know they’d hurt me?”

He reached over and took her small hand, engulfing it in his. He shrugged. “I don’t think he cared all that much. I think he rescued you for Lindsey. I think he realized how upset she’d be if you didn’t come home. He tried never to hurt her. I’m sorry. This is not easy to hear.”

She shrugged. “Actually, it’s kind of nice to discuss it like adults. Quietly. Without crazy emotions or reactions, or you having to talk me out of hurting myself. What you say makes sense.”

“What I want to do also makes sense.”

“No. It doesn’t. I want to move forward. Not commit murder.”

“I won’t. I won’t do anything in cold blood. What I’m proposing isn’t as dangerous as half of the things I’ve done since then. You know that.”

“I hate your job.”

He laughed softly. “But you love me.”

She nodded her head. “I do. I love you.”

He waited a long moment, but finally ended with what bothered him more than anything he didn’t do for Jessie. “I walked away from your father. I could have taken him down over two years before you did. I could have destroyed him. I could have at least done that for you. But I couldn’t risk what it would do to you. I was petrified about your mental state. I called everyone I could think of to help you. And I could not let your father’s actions do more to you than what he already had. I let it go. I just can’t let this go anymore. I need to make up for it all.”

“By letting it go, you did make up for it all! I have a semblance of a normal life because you let it go. You let me find a way to heal. I would have ended up in a mental sanitarium if not for you. I truly know that. And believe that. So no, it’s not true.”

He sighed. “It’s enough for today. I told you the truth. The truth that you shouldn’t be able to handle well. There, you see? I trust you now. As my partner. My wife. Welcome to marriage, Jess… there are all kinds of shit you might not want to hear.”

“But I need to hear it.”

“Okay, you need to hear it. Now you know what I think about.”

She turned suddenly and put her hands on his cheeks. “I love you,” she said so intently, he felt his breath catch. He leaned in and her mouth found his in a kiss as deep and intense as their previous conversation.