f and felt so fucking terrible. Boo-hoo. But it worked out. Because John decided he’d tell Barrett that his victim had lived.
See, that’s the beauty of it.
That one night, two hit-and-runs.
Mine, and Barrett’s.
His victim: some nameless woman with dementia, living in a shack in the forest. She wasn’t found for weeks due to the snow-packed ground and when she was, no obituary. Just a little news brief.
How would Barrett know Gwen wasn’t his victim? He’d been so drunk, John didn’t think he remembered the correct road name. They’d left a dead victim, but who’s to say the dead never come back? That John hadn’t simply been wrong? In fact, the stories in the papers later said she’d done just that: died and returned. A murder with no dead.
Lucky.
So lucky.
John cared so much for his friend, he helped his own brother. Only one of his accomplices, General Broomfield’s son, Michael, known in ACE as Bluebell, questioned the location of the wreck when John told all of them the victim had survived. But Bluebell—Michael—had been drunk as well. They’d all been drinking. And who questioned John—their honest, valiant Breck?
Breck was a hero.
When he died and it came out that it was Barrett’s fault—the pussy couldn’t shoot some desert rat and so the operation that day went to shit, with John covering for Barrett—it made more sense to me. There, the type of man who drove intoxicated, hit a woman, ran.
Barrett—not me.
I told myself that it made sense, the way fate played things. Up until the time when Barrett tracked his victim down in Gatlinburg, it all made so much sense to me. And after that, the nervousness. The fear. The fury.
I tried hard to keep tabs on them. I tried to get Gwen to talk to me. I even used the fence-jump trick John taught me. I used his sed dart concoction. I failed, but things were still okay until she told Jamie about her dreaming. She remembered things about that night.
The team I’d hired to watch Gwenna and Barrett came in contact with another team of snoops: this one far superior, a team of ghosts. As it turns out, they had an agenda, too. They were working for General Broomfield, Michael’s father, who was trying to keep an ACE scandal at bay.
Those men told mine that they weren’t authorized to shoot and kill, but that’s what they thought their boss wanted. A tragic accident.
Something awful.
What’s worse than a veteran who’s lost his mind, who kills his girl and then himself?
THIRTY-ONE
Gwenna
March 30, 2016
It’s something that I couldn’t think about. Not didn’t want to. Couldn’t. It wasn’t possible for me to think of Barrett as a murderer.
He was mine. I’d stamped my love on every inch of him. Even the damaged parts of him, I wanted. Needed. I was damaged too, living a pseudo-life, and loving Barrett made me real again. It made me me again.
How could I hate him? How was I to label something he’d done unforgivable?
Maybe in a moment I did. I attacked him in the snow. And in that moment, maybe the deepest part of me, the animal, wanted to take him out—the way he took me out. Wanted to get him back: life for a life. But conscious Gwen? Thinking, feeling Gwen? She could never, ever hate him. I just loved him. Kept on loving him. Because it’s all my heart could do.
Love doesn’t give choices. It’s like an avalanche. It just happens. When it does, all you can do is hope you’re strong enough to live through it.
Dove told me that Barrett tracked me down because he felt that we were linked. Like, karma. Somehow, ours became entangled.
What he did to me, he felt, was done to him in turn. My life was wrecked. I couldn’t sing. I couldn’t act. I couldn’t even pursue Taekwondo semi-professionally. So, no shred of my former life remained.
And same for Barrett. His life as an Operator: over after Syria. His best friend: gone.
He tracked me down as penance. It would be the ultimate atonement. He could confess everything, release his awful guilt. He’d planned to let me decide what should be done to him. If I wanted him to turn himself in, if I didn’t object to him doing so, then he would. He’d come completely clean, and maybe then, he’d feel clean too.