No introductions had been made when Gerald told them to climb into the van. Will found the kids so similar that he thought of them as One, Two, Three and Four. Each young man had a sidearm on his hip. They were all no more than eighteen, all dressed in black, and their expressions kept ricocheting between boredom and terror. They must’ve been exhausted from keeping their knees tucked up to their chins. They were clearly scared that their feet or legs would accidentally brush the wrong person in the wrong way.
Beau was that wrong person. Will was that wrong person. The two of them together took up as much space as One through Four.
There was a kind of electricity coming off the kids. The quick glances they kept giving across the van, the nods they exchanged between themselves. Will could only describe it as a kind of awe. These kids were looking at genuine war heroes. They were going to do a mission alongside real soldiers. They had guns on their belts. They had dressed for the part. They were clearly eager to start the mission.
Which made Will very worried. He assumed the fanboys would probably know more about the Army than he did. Every branch had its own lingo. All it took was one wrong phrase and Will would find himself on his knees with a gun pressed to his head.
Gerald was clearly not convinced of Jack Wolfe’s usefulness, but Will had to think that being four men down had made Dash desperate for qualified fighters. Still, Gerald had appraised Will like he was a side of beef. He’d clocked the Sig Sauer at Will’s back. He’d taken Beau aside and rapid-fired some questions. If Beau was going to rat out Will, he was waiting for the right moment. Gerald had seemed satisfied with the answers he’d been given. He’d nodded once, and the young man Will thought of as Four had scanned Will with a wand. He was searching for a signal from a GPS tracker. Beau hadn’t been wanded. Which meant that Will still had a lot to prove.
And that Beau was a fucking liar because these people clearly thought of him as part of the team.
Will’s time in the van had given him ample opportunity to consider all the ways that Beau could fuck him over. But Beau was only part of the problem. Gaining Gerald’s trust was Will’s only path to finding Sara, but there were too many unknowns about their destination to generate a meaningful strategy.
North Carolina.
Were they going to rob a bank? It was too late in the day for that. Were they going to knock-off a quickie mart or a check-cashing place? Why go out of state when there were thousands of stores closer? Were they being driven into the mountains where Gerald would throw open the doors and shoot them all with his AR-15?
Always possible, especially once they had finished the mission.
Will assumed that Amanda was looking for him. She was probably spitting nails at the team. Faith was probably spitting just as many. She wasn’t much of a rule-follower. Will had seen her exploit the baby seat in the back of her car on more than one occasion. She would have set herself up somewhere in that school parking lot just in case.
But she hadn’t, so the fake jogger, the pretend mother with the stroller, the couple in the parking lot, the chase cars—none of them would’ve seen Will disappear into the woods. Even if they had, there was no way they could predict where he would come out. The nursing home on the other side of the football field had not come up in the briefing.
Faith would have figured it out in two seconds.
Will leaned his head against the side of the van. The vibrations from the road drilled into his skull and tailbone. His headache had returned. He closed his eyes. He breathed in the thick, putrid air. He thought about getting Sara back. What he would say to her. How their lives would look after this.
Here was the problem: Sara’s family was the most important thing in her life.
Cathy clearly hated Will. There was no sugar-coating it. Eddie was making more of an effort, but Will wasn’t sure that would last for much longer. The truth was that he had never expected to fit in with Sara’s family. His only hope had been that eventually, possibly, he would end up like that stray piece of a jigsaw puzzle that no one could find a place for, but no one could bring themselves to throw away.
The last time Will had seen Cathy Linton, she couldn’t even say his name.
The van hit a rut in the road. Beau sniffed himself awake. He scratched his balls, used his sleeve to wipe the drool off his mouth. He opened the cooler. He slammed it closed. “Which one of you pencil dicks drank the last Gatorade?”
“There’s one by the door,” Three said. “It’s a little warm.”
Beau saw through the trick. He kicked Three in the shin. “You think I’ve never had to drink piss, boy?”
No one laughed. They were contemplating how desperate a man had to be in order to drink his own urine.
Four asked the question Will had been dreading. “What was it like over there?”
Beau nodded toward Will. “He’s the one who saw the real action.”
Will kept his body still so that he wouldn’t punch Beau in the neck.
Three said, “Come on, dude. What was it like?”
Will looked up at the dome light. He cleared his throat. These kids were armed. They were heading into a possibly dangerous situation. Their biggest fear was making a mistake because their buddies would laugh at them. Death was not a concept they could hold in their little minds. They hadn’t been hurt enough by life to understand that it was precious.
He told them, “I didn’t watch my buddies die so I could entertain a bunch of pissants with stories.”
Beau chuckled. “True dat.”
Their disappointment was palpable. Four groaned. Three tapped his head against the metal wall. Two started biting his fingernails. One shifted, trying to stretch out a cramp in his leg without making physical contact with anyone else.
The back of the van was tight, but One through Four had left inches of space between them. At that age, you didn’t touch another guy unless you were hurting him. You talked about screwing girls who had never even heard your name. You bragged about flipping your skateboard or crashing your bike like you hadn’t almost shit yourself when it happened. You were still trying to figure out what to do with all the rage and lust and anger that sparked up like a forest fire for no reason.
Will had been exactly like them at that age—so damn desperate for someone to show him how to be a man. He’d see a cool guy strolling down the street and try to match his gait. He’d hear another man flirt with a woman and try out the line on an unsuspecting girl. Or at least Will would tell his friends that he’d tried out the line. And that it had worked. And that she had been amazing.
“It sucks,” Will said. “Killing somebody. It sucks, and you hate yourself.”
Beau didn’t crack a stupid joke. He was listening. They were all listening.
Will considered his words. He was supposed to be Jack Wolfe right now, ex-Army soldier, disillusioned with life. On paper, the man’s experiences were not his own, but they shared some qualities. Will had no remorse for shooting Sebastian James Monroe, but Monroe was not the first man he had killed.
He told the boys, “There’s no glory in taking another human being’s life.”
The air was tense. The only sound was the tires droning against asphalt.
“People say you’re strong, or that you’re a hero, but you’re not.” Will wiped his mouth with his shirt sleeve. “Even if the guy deserved it. Even if what it came down to was that you had to kill him before he killed you, you feel like shit.”
Beside him, Beau started flexing his hands.
Will said, “People ask you about it all the time, but you can’t tell them the truth, because that’s not what heroes do.”
“Damn straight,” Beau mumbled.
Will leaned forward, because he wanted these stupid kids to hear him. “It’s not cool when it happens. The blood sprays. It gets into your eyes. You can see bone and cartilage. You think you’re ready for that shit because you’ve played Call of Duty ten billion times, but it’s not the same in person. The blood smells like copper. It gets into your teeth. You taste it in your throat. Sniff it into your lungs.”
“Damn,” Three whispered.
Beau was looking down at his hands. He shook his head.
Will said, “The man you shot, he had a family, just like you have a family. He had a life. You have a life. Maybe he had kids. Maybe he had a fiancée or a girlfriend or his mother was sick or he ached in his balls to go home the same way you ached to every second of every day.” He looked at each of them, One through Four. Their eyes were wide. They were hanging on every word. “That’s why it sucks. Because—”
Will shook his head. He had told them the because. He hoped to God they would never find out for themselves.
Beau sniffed again. He wiped his nose.
Two was the first to break. “Because what, dude?”
Will stared at the blacked-out window. He could hear Beau’s raspy breathing.
Two repeated, “Because what?”
Beau said, “Because when you kill somebody, you kill a part of yourself.”
The tires droned in the silence. There were no more questions. Will marked the passage of time on his watch. Ten more minutes. Fifteen. He felt the van take a soft turn. They were leaving the highway, merging onto an exit.
He stared at his watch.
7:49 p.m.