CHAPTER 18 – Ink
“Do you want me to show you how to use the compass again?” I asked, and Slink shook his head, glancing at the compass he wore like a watch.
His father stood behind him, one hand on his shoulder and uncertainty on his weathered face. Slink’s father looked like a mountain man, born and bred. It was hard to believe he had been born in an underground prison and spent more than half his life there. His beard was thick and long, his hair an unruly mess, his skin tanned from being outdoors. David loved the wilderness and during the summer spent many nights sleeping under the stars rather than in the one-bedroom cabin he shared with his son. After spending so much time underground, void of light, David said the walls around him now made him anxious. He preferred to be outside and his son, Slink, had found the same love for the outdoors his father had.
“He knows how to find his bearings without a compass,” David confirmed proudly.
“What do you do when you reach town?”
“Keep my head down, don’t speak to anyone. Go straight to Dotty’s Diner, ask for Katy. I don’t talk to anyone but Katy. I tell her Ink sent me, and we need to use her radio for an S.O.S. I use frequency 105.2 and ask for Harrigan. I tell him what’s going on and wait for orders.”
My own pride swelled up inside as I listened to Slink recite the plan without so much as a hitch in his voice. His dark brown eyes were full of determination, his posture tall, shoulders back, his hands gripping the shoulder straps of his backpack. He might have been as slim as a flagpole, but the boy had enough resolve to share.
“You got this, Slink,” I said, giving him a nod.
“Yes, sir, I do.”
The crack of gunfire pulled our attention to the outskirts of the compound.
“Go, get him moving,” I growled to David as I turned and ran past the brick barracks, around the old communal bathrooms and into the thick trees that cushioned the buildings within the compound.
Heavy boots from my side caught my attention, and I found Fury and Ethan running alongside me, their grim features set straight ahead. The sound of children crying made my stomach churn, the panicked screams forced my heart beat double time. Skidding into a small clearing, I found a group standing around a woman who lay still on the forest floor. Pushing my way through, I felt a tortured mixture of relief and anger. Relief it wasn’t Gracie. Anger a woman in Liberty had been shot. And from the terrified looks on the faces of the children who huddled into their parent’s arms, she’d been shot in front of the kids.
“Connie,” Ethan growled in a low voice.
Glancing around, I found Gracie sitting a little way from the chaos. In her lap sat Jed, a six-year-old squirt of a boy, his legs and arms wrapped around her as he clung to her small form. I just about fell over my feet in my rush to get to her, and I crouched down to bring my eyes level with hers. There wasn’t a single tear on her soft cheeks, but her pupils were so large they swallowed most of the green, and she was so pale her freckles were almost washed away.
“Buttercup, you okay?” I asked, my hands running down her arms, my gaze checking her over for blood or injury before doing the same with Jed. My hand gently patted over her head, her soft stubble foreign under my palm.
“He shot her,” she murmured, her eyes glued to Connie.
“Who shot her, baby?” I asked, satisfied she and Jed were uninjured.
“The ghost man,” Jed’s muffled voice answered me.
Jebediah shot Connie? Connie was nobody, a teacher for fuck’s sake. She probably didn’t even own a goddamned weapon.
“Why?” I managed to force the words out as rage made my muscles lock up.
Finally, Gracie’s gaze left Connie and found my own. She looked so lost and was no doubt in shock. “She was a casualty in war. We belong to Jebediah, and he wants us to remember that.”
I was a heartbeat away from jumping to my feet and going in search of Jebediah when Gracie’s hand latched on to my forearm.
“Don’t go,” she said, her eyes filling with tears but not even one spilling. “Not yet, I think I need you right now.” Her declaration was so soft and vulnerable, there was no way I could leave her.
“Fury?”
“Yep,” he answered from just over my shoulder.
“Let’s get this area cleaned up, get the children indoors, and have Connie’s body prepared for burial. Someone needs to let Scott know. He and Connie had been spending a lot of time together lately.”
“I’ll go see Scott,” said Max, having just arrived on the scene.
It was better that Max told Scott, Fury had the social etiquette of a grizzly bear. Jed was soon pulled into his mother’s arms, and once Gracie was free of the burden, I helped her to her feet and tugged her along, heading toward her cabin. She came without fuss, her pale, dazed features set in stone.
At her cabin, I locked us both inside and gently coaxed Gracie to sit on her bed with a little pressure on her shoulders. She was clearly in shock, her breaths rapid and shallow, her hands clammy. Getting the stove heater in the corner started took only minutes before I began to pull off her boots, followed by two pairs of socks. I continued to undress her right down to her underwear, and she continued to stare in an unresponsive state that scared the shit out of me. Her grief or anger would be a welcome change to this shock she was frozen in.
Once I had her under the thick blankets, I took one of her hands and began to massage it as I spoke in a low voice. “The first time I killed a man I was nineteen. He was a lone terrorist wearing a suicide vest just outside of old New York. For a long while after I was worried something was wrong with me because I didn’t shed a tear for the loss of his life. Don’t get me wrong, I did regret it, but I did what I had to do to keep me and my team safe.”
A monster, that’s what I thought of myself. Because I hadn’t shed a tear, I figured that’s what I was, a heartless bastard who could stand before death and not be moved to tears.
“The first time I saw someone I cared about die, I had not long turned twenty. By then I was working for the rebel forces, and there was a young guy on our team, Manny, he’d not long turned eighteen. He didn’t have the training we did, but he was loyal and determined, he fought for the freedom of the innocents in the underground prison systems. Trigger, Mann, and Silo were team Delta Four, my team. We were scouting a route through New York to the Underworld prison. We weren’t supposed to engage, we were there to find the safest route to travel through the rubble and buildings. Two government soldiers doing a patrol spotted Manny.”
The helpless look on Manny’s face when he realized he was screwed would haunt me forever. If he was taken in, he would have been tortured mercilessly for information on the resistance. He chose to go out guns blazing.
“When he realized he’d been spotted, he knew he couldn’t follow us to our hiding spot, it would give us away, so he raised his gun and shot at the soldiers.”
Glancing down I noticed Gracie was no longer staring off into the shadowed depths of her cabin. Instead, she was watching me carefully, listening to my story.
“They shot back, of course, and Manny took two bullets to the chest and one to the stomach. Kill shots, the kid didn’t stand a chance. I watched him go down, his eyes searching for me, for his team, for safety. While he collapsed onto the hard asphalt, Trigger dragged me away so we could avoid being found.”
Reaching for her other hand, I began to massage it. “I didn’t want to leave him there, alone. Even though I knew he was dead, I didn’t want him to be alone, without friends.”
A single tear slipped out the corner of Gracie’s eye and fell down into her hairline.
“I threw up, I fucking raged, I was so angry. I cried for Manny that night, and that’s when I knew I was okay. I wasn’t immune to death, I could feel it’s sorrow and grief. Guilt I was familiar with, but the guilt of watching someone I cared for die…” I laid Gracie’s hand down and leaned over her, holding her gaze like she was holding mine. “Fuck, that guilt crippled me. Even though I hadn’t ordered Manny on that mission, I was the team leader, he was my responsibility out there and he’d died on my watch while I’d stood back in a dark corner and observed the whole fucking thing. I didn’t do anything, I didn’t avenge him, I didn’t try to get to him, I just crept away and left him with the enemy.”
“How did you get past that?” Gracie whispered after a long silence.
“I don’t think I ever really did,” I confessed. “I never forgot Manny. I never forgot that night, and I made a promise to myself I’d do better, I’d be better, and I’d never let another innocent man, woman or child die while on my watch.” Another failure that I struggled to accept. More innocents had died in Liberty, once again on my watch.
Gracie’s hand rose, and she traced her name down my cheekbone. “Are you okay, Ink?”
This girl! Here she was in the grips of sorrow, and she was asking if I was okay.
I smiled, unable to hold it back as I took her finger and pressed the pad of it to my lips. “Yeah, buttercup, I’m okay. We’re fighting to survive, baby.”
Using her arms, she pushed herself into a sitting position. We were so close barely a breath of air whispered between our lips. Her warmth touched my skin, her beauty touched my heart, and her spirit touched my soul.
“I love you so, fucking, much,” I whispered.
Her eyes widened. “You love me?”
Her surprise gutted me, but I had no-one to blame but myself. “I guess I should expect your surprise, after the way I’ve treated you.”
Gracie shook her head. “Let’s leave the past in its place, I’m ready to look toward the future now.” Running a hand down my cheek, a timid smile found its way to her lips. “I forgive you, you silly man.”
Words failed me. She forgave me?
“I didn’t tell you I loved you in an attempt to gain your forgiveness.”
“There is no love without forgiveness, Ink. I love you. Forgiving you was inevitable, and I trust you.”
My forehead pressed against hers as the wonder of Gracie’s faith in me stole the darkness right from my heart.
“I’ve always loved you. Even when you were a grubby twelve-year-old whining because you hated bugs, I couldn’t have adored you anymore.”
“That was different.”
I nodded and raised my hand to trace the delicate line of her cheekbone. “Yeah, it was. It was different. It was the kind of love that made me want to protect you from the world… even the bugs.”
Finally, a small smile cracked Gracie’s lips, breaking through the shock and grief. “You don’t want to protect me from bugs anymore?”
“You don’t need me to protect you from the bugs anymore. You’re a warrior.” Her smile widened. “But I still want to protect you from the world.” My hand gently moved to the gauze-covered injury on her thigh from where the bullet had grazed her. “Most of all, I want to help you forget. Will you let me do that for you?”