The road stretches on. How can anyplace be so damn flat?

“Or a Russian girl, about ten years old, who was sold to…perform. You meet her in a sweet cottage with toys, dolls, and games, and while you try to find out which particular oligarch from Moscow had a hand in her sale, said oligarch also being involved in smuggling weapons-grade uranium to North Korea, she keeps on asking why she hurts so much down there.”

There’s an intersection. I slow down and take a left.

BEACHSIDE TWO MILES, says the sign.

“That’s the people you talk to,” she goes on. “And then there’s the films, the videos. You sometimes see them on the cable channels, heavily edited. But because your job is intelligence, no matter how terrifying, how horrible, how bloody, you need to watch it. Again and again. Looking for clues.”

My chest is tightening. I’m saying words my husband, Tom, has never heard.

“I saw a video of a captured fighter pilot, stuck in a cage, set ablaze in an Iraqi desert. He burned and burned…and I saw his jaw fall to the ground when the muscles and tendons melted. I saw a video of a Filipino family—mom, dad, five children—lined up in a jungle on an isolated island, beheaded one at a time. And I had to watch that video dozens of times, freeze-framing, trying to see if I could ID the man holding the sword. Dozens of times I saw that family die, saw the mother try to hide her baby under her blouse, saw them both killed…Funny, but every time I replayed the video, part of me was hoping, this time, this time, maybe they live.”

I try to clear my throat. “Then they never do. And after watching that beheading video a couple of dozen times, then I leave the base and in twenty minutes, I’m home. I hug Denise and kiss Tom, and look over Denise’s homework and cook dinner for the three of us…and an hour after seeing the blood spurt, seeing the father sob—they save him for last—I’m eating mac and cheese in our dining room, trying to keep a happy face on for my girl and my man.”

Up ahead I make out the thin line of the Gulf of Mexico and the low buildings of Beachside. My chest is really tight.

“Then there are the times when you do more than just watch,” I say. “You have a hand in it, by pure accident and happenstance.” I find it’s getting harder to talk, even though I’m not getting any answers back from my passenger.

“You’re put in a situation, sitting in a comfortable chair, a computer control in your right hand, and because you’re at the ultimate pinnacle of human development and technology, you can flip a switch, take a sip of iced tea, and on the other side of the world, a family is incinerated. Just like that.”

Buildings start to appear. Cute one- and two-story structures, made of some sort of cement or rock or adobe, the colors pink, blue, and yellow. Tall palm trees sway in the Gulf breeze. I feel like we’ve driven onto a movie set for some South Pacific paradise. People are strolling on the sidewalks, most wearing bathing suits, and there are cute little shops selling T-shirts, swimwear, towels, inflatable beach toys.