Chapters (78)
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Fifty-Four
- Fifty-Five
- Fifty-Six
- Fifty-Seven
- Fifty-Eight
- Fifty-Nine
- Sixty
- Sixty-One
- Sixty-Two
- Sixty-Three
- Sixty-Four
- Sixty-Five
- Sixty-Six
- Sixty-Seven
- Sixty-Eight
- Acknowledgments
- Discover More
- About the Author
- Also by Owen Laukkanen
Jess told Burke how she’d cried, lain in her bunk and tried not to look at Afia’s stack of Archie comics, tried not to think too hard about going out beyond the wire herself, going AWOL, back into the village and beyond to try to find Afia and bring her back, whatever was left of her.
She’d been pretty close to doing it too, and then Afia had turned up again, tortured and brutalized, struggling to walk the last hundred yards to the wire.
She told Burke about the shot, and how Afia had died, and how her men had dragged her back to the wire and left Afia dead on the road, her blood in the dust. She told Burke how she hadn’t cried after that, not once.
“It fucked me up,” she said. “After that, I couldn’t have cared less why we were put in that valley. My purpose was one thing: kill Haji. And that’s what I fucking did, Burke.”
He didn’t say anything. He was still holding her hand.
“I finished my tour and I came home to Deception, and I realized pretty quick that I had no reason to be there. My marriage was going to shit, there weren’t any jobs, and I wasn’t done killing insurgents yet, not by a mile.”
“So you went back.”
“I reenlisted. I pushed hard to get back to the valley. I got lucky; they needed more women for the engagement teams, and I had experience. I had a rapport with the women in the villages.”
She snorted.
“I didn’t give a shit about engagement, not at that point. I said the right things to my COs, and I acted the part, but all I really cared about was getting those bastards back for what they did to Afia.”
“And did you?”
“Not enough of them. And then Ty went and got himself killed, and they sent me back home, and somewhere along the way some doctor had a look at me and pronounced me fucked in the head. They gave me some meds and hooked me up with Lucy, and it was right about that time that Kirby and his homeboys started sniffing around after their lost package. And that about gets us to the part where you showed up.”
Burke hesitated. “Do the meds help at all?”
“The meds make me even number than I am without. I don’t like being numb, Burke. I stopped taking them.”
“All right,” he said.
She let out a long breath of air. “Honestly, I’ve spent a long time wondering why I didn’t have the good sense to die over there with Afia. Everything that came after has been absolute shit.”
He started to talk. She squeezed his hand to shut him up.