Chapter 29

Outside Zaatari, at the start of a long road that connected the refugee camp with the desert, Justice found another truck. It probably belonged to the Koreans. They had a tae kwon do academy set up a short distance from here.

So many people had been drawn here to help. Like Sandesh. She hoped he could still help these people. She’d do whatever she could to make this right.

Removing her niqab, she used it to cover the butt of her gun. She was about to smash the window when Sandesh cleared his throat. She glanced back. He mimed trying the door. She did. It opened.

Huh. Trusting sort, those Koreans.

Sandesh had a big, not-my-first-rodeo grin on his face. Cocky. She dropped inside the vehicle and began to hot-wire it.

She sensed more than saw Sandesh reach inside, flick down the visor. A jingle, and keys dropped onto her hip, tumbled to the floor. She picked them up and refused to look in his direction. She could hear him smiling.

She put the keys in the ignition. She fully expected the car not to start. It started.

Really? They deserved to have their vehicle stolen. Sandesh tossed the large, black bag with whatever weapons he’d brought into the back seat, then started toward the passenger side.

No way. She couldn’t shoot if she was driving.

She waved him back to the driver’s side. Without objection, he reversed course. She climbed into the passenger seat, and he slid inside and began to drive toward Syria.

* * *

The truck’s headlights cut through the night like cones of yellow glass. The road was deserted. Not much call for traffic into Syria from Jordan these days, especially this late.

Except for the wind whining through the old weather strip, it was as quiet as a tomb in the car. Justice didn’t need a whole lot of empathy to feel the fury that rocketed off Sandesh. Even in the dim light, she could see his hands clutch the steering wheel. Yeah, the road was bumpy, but not that bumpy.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what he was thinking. He kept randomly hitting the steering wheel.

Anger at her seemed like it might be a good bonding experience between Tony and Sandesh. Note to self: Make sure that conversation never happens.

He probably expected an explanation. And the thing was, she really wanted to explain things. Unusual for her in many ways. First: She was brought up in a secret society of vigilantes. Not an open group. Second: She didn’t do relationships.

She bit the inside of her cheek. Something had to be said to fill the silence. Well, if he was anything like Tony, she knew how to get him to talk. “Stop pouting.”

He waited a beat or two. “Pouting? No, Justice. You don’t get to put this on me. I want an explanation. What are you doing here? Who were those men? Why were they after you?”

“I can’t answer those questions.”

Sandesh swung the car to the side of the road. She slid along the seat. Her wound shot off hot protestations. He threw the car into park. Plumes of gray dust mushroomed over light streaks from the headlights.

He turned in his seat. His blue eyes stabbed her with ice and steel and accusation.

“Actually, you have no choice. Says the only guy who can get you out of this desert alive. I need to know what I’m up against.”

Whoa. He was playing a dangerous game of chicken. If they were going to implement their plan, they needed to keep moving. She shifted, rolled her shoulders. The vast cold of the desert night quickly seeped into the truck. Sandesh kept staring. He really wasn’t going to budge. She shivered. “Drive. I’ll tell you what I can.”

He turned in his seat, shifted into drive, and kicked up sand as he accelerated onto the road. Justice listened to the wheels eating up ground.

“Let’s hear it, Justice.”

Oh hell. “I do what Salma does. Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

Her chest ached like someone had taken a scalpel and cut strips called loyalty from her heart. “Well, she goes after the girls who are being lured or sold or tricked into sex slavery. I go after the men who are doing the luring, tricking, and selling.”

In this instance, anyway. The League was just as likely to go after men who stoned women, burned them with acid, beat them, gang-raped them. Wherever society let bad things happen to women, the League was there. No need to tell him that.

He breathed out a sound that was part curse. “She saves girls. You aren’t saving these men.”

“No. I’m saving many girls and women by killing the men.”

He tapped the steering wheel. She wasn’t sure if she saw disgust or curiosity on his face or maybe something more complicated.

“Your mother obviously knows. Is this what she does? Is this why she covers her face?”

“No. She was a teenager, a preteen really, burned by acid. That man picked the wrong girl to attack.”

“I read she was adopted by two wealthy women. Brought to America. It would seem the happy end to a sad beginning, but she wasn’t satisfied. Was she?”

So not going to answer that. Subject change. “The men who chased us work for a sex-slaver called Walid. Earlier tonight, or I guess that was yesterday now, I killed his brother. Wish I’d gotten them both. The way they run their business. Stupid. It really is get the head of the snake and the rest collapses. I would’ve gotten away clean but for the girl.”

The sound of the tires spinning against the road filled the cab as they lapsed into silence.

“I wondered why your mother would fund my charity.”

Dude was like a dog with a bone. No matter how she tried to steer things away from Momma, he went back there.

“A start-up with no reputation. Obviously, that’s exactly what she needed. Give them money, use them, control them. And I played right into it. Idiot.”

Now she knew he was disgusted. With himself. She hated that she’d used him. She didn’t want him to be this angry. To feel suckered.

She glanced at the side-view mirror, at the darkness behind them. “Remember what I told you on the plane about Hope?”

A long pause. “Yeah.”

“The man I killed tonight. He killed Hope.”

Silence. She could practically hear him realize what happened tonight was very personal. A lifetime of plotting, planning, and pain. “You’re seeking revenge.”

“No. I’m seeking redemption.” She wanted to call it justice but wouldn’t. “So if you think about it, our goals aren’t really that dissimilar. You kind of want redemption for a military life.”

Sandesh scratched roughly at the back of his head, clearly annoyed. “Redemption? No. Redemption indicates I thought what I did in the military was wrong. I didn’t. I don’t. And I don’t expect you to understand right now. You’re in the thick of it. But the kind of anger you have, the kind of anger I had, it doesn’t just go away when you take off the uniform or put down the gun.”

Justice leaned back and tilted her head toward him. She was so tired. “What do you mean? You’ve never struck me as too angry.”

“Trust me, if we had met a few years ago, it would’ve been one hell of an explosion. Because when I first left Special Forces, I had an excess of anger.”

He did? She knew the feeling. “I know that excess. I use it.”

“Sure. I get that too. As a Ranger, I had a place to direct it, a need to direct it, stoke it, but when I got out…it became wild. Everyday normal encounters would escalate. I’d find a way to fight my way through. Even if it was some dude trying to bring twenty items through the ten-items-or-less aisle.”

Justice thought about her day-to-day. How she yelled at people, her sisters, Momma, Leland. She fought a lot too. “Sometimes you have to fight.”

“Sure. And I know there’s a place where you can’t give an inch to the enemy. I’ve stood on that line. I’ve defended that ground, refused that inch, with every ounce of strength and courage and determination I possess. But once I no longer had to do that, I ended up trying to fight my way out of anger.”

“Can you fight your way out of anger? Is there an end?”

He looked over at her, must’ve read the sincerity in her face, because he shook his head. “No. I got out of it the opposite way.”

She waited for him to expand.

“A few months after leaving the service, my friend, the guy who’d eventually help me start the IPT, Victor Fuentes, asked me to go down to Louisiana and help in his childhood neighborhood. They’d been hit by a hurricane.

“From the moment I had boots on the ground, I felt useful. It was kind of amazing, seeing so many people with no idea what to do. But we were soldiers, we knew how to organize, keep calm, work in tough situations. I helped for weeks. Never once did I feel rage.

“That’s when I realized that part of me, the boy who’d tried to save the life of a dying bird, who thought that being a hero didn’t mean crossing lines, needed…” He paused for a moment. He released a breath and maybe some anger. “Does it make sense to you if I said he needed air?”

Oh. Man. Yeah. It made perfect sense. Her childhood self, the one that had stood by helplessly, needed air too. “Yeah. It makes sense. But that’s exactly what my anger needed, what Hope was denied: air. It was choking me.”

“And that’s your choice. I’m not judging. But I’m done with that chapter. I’m done walking through each day with my hands balled in fists. I’m done questioning when the violence I did helped, when it hurt, when it made a difference, when it fucked things up, fucked me up, saved people, or let people down. I’m done with that.” He paused. “Or I thought I was.”

He didn’t say it accusingly, didn’t even glance her way, but Justice felt remorse like a hot brand against her chest.

She wanted to tell him that she’d do everything to make it right and get him back to where he should be. But she thought the promise would sound hollow. And that wasn’t how it felt to her. “I’m so sorry, Sandesh.”

He looked over at her. Something in him seemed to soften. “Do you feel better now? Less angry?”

If he had said it with an ounce of sarcasm, she wouldn’t have answered, but he hadn’t. He was sincerely interested. Which made her think about the question.

A cold chill worked its way up her back. “No.” She placed her head against the window. “But I’ve never been this tired before.”

Her body gave out in a rush. She was so damn tired, but she heard Sandesh whisper as sleep overcame her, “It’s the adrenaline backfire. Murder does that.”