Triple Team: A Military Reverse Harem Romance, page 28
I shook my head.
“It is not something a person can explain,” Michael said. “It is something you must learn for yourself. But it is a difficult reality to accept. That hole you feel in the pit of your stomach? The place where you have reserved all of your hate, your anger, your desire for revenge? Now it is empty. There is nothing to do. And the pain still remains. It will continue to remain as well. No matter how many people you kill, you cannot make the pain go away. Only time can diminish it.”
Gregor took my hand and squeezed it. “You did good, kiddo.”
The physical touch and their words were comforting. Until I remembered.
“You lied to me,” I said.
“Jules…”
“I thought I was a member of the team,” I said. Tears were in my eyes now, which frustrated me most of all. Why did my numbness have to disappear now? “I thought I was special. But I was nothing more than a contractor to you.”
“No!” Donovan said. “You mean so much more to us than that.”
“You lied to me,” I repeated. “And for what? So you could steal a bunch of Blanco’s money for yourselves? How selfish can you be?” I kicked the pack full of cryptocurrency on the ground, spilling the coins across the tarmac. “You’ve fattened your bank accounts. I hope it was worth losing my trust.”
Gregor put a hand on my arm. “Kiddo, that’s not…”
I knocked his hand away. “I’m so stupid. I should have expected that from a mercenary group. You care about nothing but your payday!”
Michael rounded on Donovan. “I told you.”
“You’re right,” he said, resigned. “We shouldn’t have kept it from her.”
“It’s too late now!” I said.
“Not that,” Michael said. He pulled out his cell phone and held it up. “We have something to show you. If I can get a signal here…”
I wanted to scream some more and insist that there was nothing he could show me to change my mind, but the words wouldn’t come. My throat was tightening, making it difficult to breathe. Michael came over and held the phone out to me. I took it from him.
“What is this?” I asked, skimming the page. “The Veterans for Mental Health organization? I told you I don’t want to call them. I’m fine. What does this have to do with you guys lying to me?”
“He’s not suggesting you go there,” Donovan said. “We’re telling you: we are the founders. We formed the VMH ourselves.”
“We keep it anonymous because we don’t want anyone digging into how we get our money,” Gregor said, lighting a cigar and puffing smoke into the air. “Simpler that way.”
Donovan nodded. “Every contract we take goes toward the VMH fund. This cryptocurrency will go toward that fund.”
“Minus our salaries, of course,” Gregor said. “A man’s gotta eat.”
“All of the money we earn helps other veterans suffering from PTSD and other issues integrating back into civilian life,” Michael said. “Juliana, everything we did was because we believed it was best to—”
“Don’t talk to me,” I interrupted. It was too much to process right now. “I don’t want Ernest’s margaritas. Let’s go back to the hotel.”
He was disappointed we weren’t hanging around for drinks, but he gave me an extra-long hug and told me to, “Keep on keepin’ on like the badass bitch you are.” In spite of all the other pain I felt that put a big smile on my face.
We were completely silent on the drive back to downtown Quito. From the back seat I examined my three comrades. My lovers. My teammates—or at least I thought they were my teammates. They hadn’t treated me like that at all.
But they weren’t soldiers of fortune. They were soldiers of charity. And although that made me feel a little better about being lied to, it was still just another thing they had kept from me. I’d trusted them with so much, revealing my deepest, darkest secrets about my father and the revenge I’d wanted, and they had kept stuff from me.
It hurt. And I didn’t know how to deal with that.
I stared out the window and wished life were so much simpler.
44
Donovan
I fucked up.
We should have told her the truth from the beginning. We’d been desperate to recruit a hacker, and dangling JGB in front of her seemed like the only way to get her on the team at the time—even though he was only a secondary objective. It seemed like a sign: this wonderful hacker fell into my lap at Defcon East, and she just so happened to have a personal connection to the man whose drug empire we were hired to destroy. Telling a small lie seemed prudent at the time.
I never thought I would be falling in love with her.
We had done our best to get her what she wanted. We searched not only for JGB’s primary compound, but we scheduled our mission around when we thought he would be there. It was bad luck we arrived hours before him in the darkness. If things had been slightly different she never would have known.
But that was stupid. The root problem was we lied to her. She was right that we hadn’t trusted her like a teammate. We kept things from her, both about the mission and about our own reasons for being mercenaries. Honesty was the best policy and we had totally fucked it up.
It killed me seeing Juliana in pain. She had been through a lot today. She was as badass a woman as we’d ever met, but killing someone took a toll out of even the toughest soldier. Not to mention she had finally gotten what she thought she wanted: killing Blanco himself. Getting revenge for her father’s death.
The rest of us knew it wouldn’t heal her wounds. Maybe it would give her a deeper satisfaction over time. But for now, she was in pain for a hundred different reasons.
We fucked up.
I now saw how foolish we’d been. Just because we were taking contracts and pouring the money into a charity didn’t mean every action we took along the way was moral. The ends didn’t always justify the means, and that was a terrible way to live your life. Our huge payday didn’t mean it was okay to lie to Juliana.
Hopefully she would learn to forgive us. Some food and rest would go a long way toward mending things. And then the three of us could work to make things right. Proving to Juliana that we cared about her as more than just some contractor. We wanted her on our team permanently. We were beginning to care deeply for her.
We were falling in love with her.
The hotel was crowded with afternoon check-ins when we walked through the lobby and went up to our rooms. “Our flight’s not until the morning,” Gregor said outside his door. “You guys want to meet up in an hour for food?”
“I am starving,” Michael announced.
“Yeah, we’ll do that,” I said.
Juliana and I went into our room and closed the door. I dropped our packs on the ground and wrapped her in a long hug.
“I’m sorry for everything,” I whispered into her hair. It was crusted with sweat and dirt but I didn’t care. It smelled sweeter than the most fragrant flower. It was her.
She stood frozen in my arms for a few seconds, then slowly began to relax and hug me back. It filled me with hope that we could fix things with her. Eventually everything would be okay. Time healed all wounds.
I pulled away and looked into her face. She was like a dirt-streaked angel. I never wanted to look into another woman’s face again.
“I…”
I love you.
The words were there on the tip of my lips. I wanted to say them. I wanted to be vulnerable with her, to let her know how I felt. But I was terrified she would think I was only saying it to make up for the lie. Like I was using it as a band-aid.
When I did say it, I wanted her to know it was the truth.
“I care very deeply about you,” I said instead. The words felt inadequate. “I know we messed up, but I want to make it up to you. We want to make things right, to prove you’re a member of our team. If you’ll let us try.”
A small smile broke through. “We’ll see.”
It was all I wanted. A chance. Even if it took days or even weeks I was ready for the challenge. I would win back her trust and her love.
I kissed her on the forehead and said, “You want the first shower?”
She shook her head. “You go ahead. I just want to rest my eyes for a bit.”
The water was scalding hot. That was one of the things we’d learned in all our years of mercenary work abroad: if you want hot water for a shower, spend the extra money on a nicer hotel. I took my time running the bar of soap over my skin, scraping away the grime until the water finally ran clean. I shampooed my hair, but it still felt dirty so I washed it a second time. Even after my body was clean I stood under the water, letting it clean my soul too.
Washing away the sins of the day.
“All yours,” I announced as I came out of the bathroom. Juliana wasn’t on either bed, nor in the chairs. I dressed, then knocked on the connecting door to the adjoining room. Michael answered.
“You guys seen Juliana?”
He shook his head. “She asked if I wanted something from the vending machine,” Gregor called from the closet.
“How long ago?”
“I don’t know. 10 minutes?”
I went down the hall to the room by the elevator with the ice maker and vending machines. She wasn’t there. By the time I got back to the room the growing panic in my chest told me what I would find: her suitcase was gone. So were the clothes she’d put in the dresser.
“Guys,” I called through the connecting door to our rooms. “We lost Juliana.”
“She’s probably getting a drink at the bar downstairs,” Gregor said. “Something all of us should do.”
“No,” I said, my chest tightening with pain. “We lost her. For good.”
45
Juliana
I left.
I didn’t have a plan, or even an idea of what I wanted to do. I just grabbed my bag, threw all my clothes inside, and got the hell out of that room. I couldn’t be near them. Both because I was frustrated with their lie, and because part of me wanted to forgive them.
So I ran as fast as my feet would carry me.
The taxi to the airport was slow and peaceful. There was a hole in my chest like someone had scooped part of my soul out with a melon baller. Juan Gonzalo Blanco was dead. I’d finally gotten what I wanted. I’d stared into his eyes, made him understand what he had done to me, and then I’d exterminated him.
And it wasn’t enough.
I knew now that I didn’t really need him to be dead. Well, maybe I did, but it wasn’t my primary drive. Revenge wasn’t what had fueled my motivation for these long four years. It was grief.
I missed my dad, and he wasn’t coming back.
The tears wouldn’t come no matter how hard I tried to cry in the back of the taxi. I was still numb from the events of the day. Still frayed from the adrenaline and exhaustion and horror of what had happened.
I bought a flight to Seattle, then wondered what to do with myself until the flight. I smelled awful—maybe I should have taken a shower at the hotel. Too late now. So I went to the bathroom and took a whore’s bath: using some wet paper towels to clean my arms and pits, then my neck and face. My hair was crusty with sweat and grime but there wasn’t anything I could do about that without a proper shower. I changed into fresh clothes in the stall and then put deodorant on. It would have to do.
Staring at myself in the mirror, I wondered who I was now. You are a murderer, Blanco had told me. To some degree he was right. I’d killed people today. They were drug soldiers in a corrupt cartel, but they were people nonetheless. Just cogs in the machine.
Kind of like how my dad had been.
The tears came suddenly and freely. Grief and other tangles of emotions bombarded me: the horrors of what I had done today, the long-term grief for my dead father, the debilitating realization that killing Blanco wasn’t going to bring him back. The tears streamed down my face in front of the mirror as I sobbed and wrapped my arms around myself.
A woman came into the bathroom and flinched when she saw me. I tried to wave her off but she put a comforting hand on my back and asked me something in Spanish. I smiled and nodded and waved her off some more, but then she reached into her purse and pulled out a small plastic tube wrapped in paper.
I smiled, accepted the tampon, and thanked her in rough Spanish. Satisfied with herself, she went into the stall and left me alone. The interaction may have been small and brief, but it actually put a smile on my face. Women looked out for one another, borders be damned.
More relaxed, I went through security and then to my gate. And with the sense of calm that fell over me, I came to a realization. Sure, killing Blanco wouldn’t make everything instantly better. It certainly wasn’t going to bring my dad back. But it was a necessary step in allowing me to heal. Because for the last four years, Blanco’s mere existence had been a roadblock to my recovery. Therapy had helped me push him deep down into the recesses of my brain, but he was always there. Whispering poison in my ear.
Killing him wasn’t a resolution by itself. Even though the world was a slightly better place without him, my own mental health wasn’t magically fixed. But with him gone I could finally heal. I could focus on my job, and my life.
I could move on.
As I boarded the plane and took my seat, I wondered if my three lovers would come running up the jetway. Storm onto the plane and demand I stay, begging my forgiveness. Was that what I wanted? I couldn’t be sure. I still didn’t want to think about them. Partly because I was upset with them, but partly because I wasn’t in the right state of mind to deal with that emotional baggage. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew I needed time.
The doors closed, and then the plane backed away from the gate and departed.
Two layovers and an Uber trip later, I was walking into my Seattle apartment in the middle of the night. It felt like a lifetime ago that I was locking my door and flying out to Boston for Defcon East. Since then I’d been all over the place: Virginia, then Switzerland, then South America. I left here with only three changes of clothes and came back a totally different person.
A small part of me hoped to find Donovan sitting in the chair in the corner, just like he’d done in my Boston hotel. No such luck—my apartment was empty. Cold and lonely.
I took a shower and stayed under the water until my water heater finally ran out. When I got out I had a notification on my phone. Butterflies flew in my stomach at the thought of a message from one of the guys, but it was just a notification from my banking app:
WIRE DEPOSIT: $250,000.00
My share of the job, delivered as promised. That had seemed like a life-changing amount of money when Donovan offered it to me. Now it felt inadequate. Delivered without even a word of goodbye.
I pulled up Donovan’s number and stared at the screen. The last texts we exchanged were still there. The fun, flirty sexting while I was in South America with Gregor. The photo of his boxer bulge. It felt like we were leaving things unfinished.
Before I could change my mind, I deleted the number from my contacts, then cleared my texting history. And that was that.
It felt good to wake up the next morning and drive to work. The CSCG office was as dark as the sky outside when I arrived, but I liked that just fine. I had some catching up to do. I intended to throw myself into my job with all of my energy. Now that Blanco was dead, I didn’t want to fall into a pit of zero motivation. I needed to create goals for myself, benchmarks to strive toward.
I had a bright future ahead of me.
I groaned when I sat down at my desk. 1,720 missed emails, even though I’d had my out-of-office notification up. Good thing I was here early.
I got through half of them before Mr. Pendleton came in. He yelped when he saw me, then dropped his laptop bag and strode forward, grinning like the kind old grandfather he was.
“Juliana!” he said, wrapping me in a warm hug. Instantly all the troubles from the last day melted away. “Your hair! I love the natural color!”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. I’d forgotten all about dying it blonde again.
“I trust you had a fulfilling vacation?”
“Very,” I said. “Visited Switzerland, then South America.”
“What a trip! I bet you have some incredible stories to tell. I want to hear all about them at lunch—we’re going to your favorite salad place. I insist. Oh, it’s great to have you back, Juliana.”
“It’s good to be back,” I said. “I’m ready to take on some of those new clients sitting in the case folder on the share drive. I’m anxious to dig into their security profile, see how we can make them more secure.”
He pointed a finger at me. “Actually, we have a different plan for you. There’s another security conference at the end of the week! It’s in Milwaukee. I didn’t want to push you while you were out, but now that you’re back I’ll get us booked today!”
“Oh,” I said.
“Guess how many new clients your Defcon East presentation netted us. Guess!”
“I don’t know. Five?”
“Seven. Seven new clients, Juliana! We’re going to utilize you at as many conferences as we can.” He waved himself off. “Sorry to bombard you so early. We can discuss it more at lunch. But not before you tell me about your vacation!”
When he was gone I sat back down at my desk and stared at the email list. 820 emails to go. Then another conference presentation to look forward to. Then probably another one after that.
I mustered what motivation I could and got to work.
46
Gregor
The sun was shining through my windows by the time I woke. I hadn’t set an alarm last night, nor the night before that. What was the point?
Usually I looked forward to the time between contracts. Guys like us savored downtime as a way to relax, recharge our batteries before the next mission. But every morning I got out of bed feeling like only half of myself was there. Like something was missing.
