“They put me in a big hole in the ground out in the sun, sand everywhere, and when the sun got to the top of the sky, my back would blister in the heat. After a few days of just leaving me there, they’d come up and ask if I wanted water. Then they’d pour salt water all over me and leave. Usually the next day, they’d haul me out and give me something to drink. Then I was back in the hole. I think they were trying to just…I don’t know…drive me crazy? It probably worked.”
My organs felt like they were trying to climb out of my skin, and I realized I was gnawing on the edge of my thumb with the hand that didn’t contain the nearly burnt-down cigarette. I stopped chewing on myself and tossed the butt into the cup of water.
Lia sat quietly, barely moving. She was holding back tears, but I wasn’t looking for her sympathy. I only wanted to get through this shit so she would understand and hopefully decide my reasons for all the shit I had done were valid enough.
“So, that’s where I stayed for months,” I finally said. “Every once in a while they’d give me water and maybe some rice, but that was it. I’d completely lost track of how long it had been, but one day when they brought me out, that same guy—the leader of that group, or one of them, at least—came back. He started telling me a bunch of shit that was all classified information that he definitely shouldn’t have known. I figured out then that the private I’d seen when they filmed us must have cracked. He certainly would have had knowledge of the intel this guy was telling me.”
I leaned over and put my elbows on my knees. Closing my eyes for a moment, I tried not to let the anger from that time get to me.
“Then he tells me when and where they picked the dude up.” My hands clenched into fists. “Turns out they had him long before they got me. At some point, I realized he was the one who gave away our position, though it wasn’t confirmed until after I came home.”
“The private betrayed me,” Lia whispered.
“What?”
“You’ve said it in your sleep,” she replied, “a couple of times.”
More talking in my fucking sleep. Ultimately, that was what cost Bridgett her life—she learned too much from me while I was napping.
“What else have I said?” I swallowed past the tightness in my throat and awaited her answer.
“Nothing that made any sense,” she said. “Like what you said about the private betraying you—I never would have known what that meant until you told me. You’ve said the word ‘sand’ several times and something about being hit, and lots of letters and numbers that didn’t make sense. I never understood anything else you said.”
I wondered what the letters and numbers might have meant. They could have been military abbreviations, weapon types, codes—there were too many possible answers without having her write them down or something. If she did that, then I would have to explain it to her, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to set myself up like that.
Maybe I could record myself sleeping.
“I’m sorry,” Lia said. “I sidetracked you.”
“It’s all right. I could use a break.”
We ate a little of the leftover pizza, and I took a minute to shave. It was good to have the scruff off; I hated it when my face was stubbly and scratchy. I wished I had my trimmers with me so I could give myself a haircut as well, but I was going to have to live with just the shave.
I made a valiant attempt to distract Lia into fucking again, but she wasn’t having any of it. She quickly and definitively steered me back to my life’s story. I sighed as I gave up and then sat with my back against the headboard.
“So I figured out the private was how they found us,” I went on, “and the insurgent leader continued to try to get more out of me.”
Flashes in my head started feeling like a hammer against my temples.
“You like to tell me your numbers? I’ll give you numbers! How about you count this? Maybe we just keep going until we hit your number, huh?”
My gut tightened up, and my body went stiff. For a moment, Lia and the motel room were gone, and there was nothing but sand and sweat and pain.
“Evan? Evan, baby—it’s okay. I’m right here.”
I felt hands on my face and realized my wrists weren’t bound. I reached out and grabbed the arms that tried to encircle me, and then I heard her voice.
“It’s okay, Evan, it’s me. It’s Lia.”
It was the cracking in her voice that brought me out of it. My eyes found her, and I saw the streaks of tears running down her cheeks. Releasing her forearms, I reached out and brushed one of the tears away.
“Sorry.”
“What were you remembering?” she asked.
I closed my eyes and swallowed. I felt her fingers against my jaw and turned slightly to press my face to her palm.
“Just…everything he did. Trying to get information…trying to break me.”
I opened my eyes to find her staring into my face. My chest rose and fell as I tried to take in enough air. I could see it—I could see it in her face. She knew there was more, and she was going to ask for the details. My hands clenched, and I started to hyperventilate.
“Evan.” Lia’s voice was stern, the tone causing me to instinctively look to her eyes. “You’re all right. You are with me, and I’m not going to ask you anything else about that, okay? He hurt you—I understand that—and that’s enough detail.”
I nodded once, then again. My body was shaking uncontrollably, and I couldn’t even figure out how I’d let it get this far. I could feel sand in my throat and up my nose, heat from the desert sun on my skin, and there were hands on my back and arms—pushing me down and holding me to the ground.
Then they were gone, and it was just me and Lia in a motel room bed. Her arms were around my head, and I rested my cheek on her stomach.
*****
“You don’t have to tell me any more.”
As much as I knew she was trying to make it easier, Lia giving me an out was actually making it more difficult.
“There’s a shit ton I haven’t told you,” I reminded her. “You need to know about some of it because of what’s happening now.”
Lia sighed and nodded.
“I really had lost all track of time after I had been there a few months,” I said. “I was always tied up, so I couldn’t even make scratches on a wall or anything, and I was in that…that fucking hole most of the time anyway. I spent most of the time trying not to think, but there wasn’t anything else to do. I counted up all my sins and asked God to forgive them. I swore if He’d just let me die, I’d do the penance or whatever I needed to do—anything to stop the fucking pain.”
I paused and raised an eyebrow at her.
“So, no,” I said with a sardonic grin, “I’m not Catholic anymore. God can kiss my ass for letting me rot there for a year and a half.”
Lia’s teeth grabbed her lower lip, and her eyes tensed. She nodded slightly, and I went on with my story.
“When their base was raided, and I was rescued, I’d pretty much given up any hope. I didn’t even believe there was anyone there, you know? I thought my mind had totally cracked and I was hallucinating. I don’t think I started believing it was all over until I was at the hospital in Germany, and that was because they finally gave me something strong enough to make the pain stop.”
I took a deep breath.
“Malnutrition, dehydration, muscle atrophy—which took a decent amount of physical therapy before I could walk properly—a dislocated shoulder, four fractured ribs. That’s what they said I had and kept telling me how lucky I was that I was otherwise unharmed.”
I laughed humorlessly.
“That’s a good one, huh? Otherwise unharmed.”
“I can’t say that I find it very funny, no,” Lia remarked.
I pulled my legs up and rested my arms over my knees as I smoked. I held the butt end of the cigarette between my thumb and first two fingers and angled the lit end toward the palm of my hand, shielding the glow from view. It took a few minut
es for me to get myself out of my own head and back to the rest of my little tale, but Lia was patient. I finished the smoke and kept talking.
“My first episode was maybe a month or so after I came back to the States,” I recalled. “I remember the first time because it scared the shit out of me. I was at the gym doing leg presses or something like that, and all of a sudden, they were there—all around me. They were yelling, and I could hear the gunfire and see the smoke. The whole floor had become sand, and when I stood up, I fell face-first into it.”
I grabbed another cigarette and lit it.
“I spent a lot of time in the psych ward at the military hospital in Hampton, Virginia. The doctors there treated me for a couple of months. PTSD, the psych said. He wanted to write a fucking book about what I went through, but I wouldn’t authorize it. They talked about giving me a desk job, and I pretty much told them to shove it. I was a sniper, for fuck’s sake. What was I going to do behind a desk?”
I took a few puffs off the smoke to calm myself again and wondered why I thought it sucked when I just felt numb. I’d give most anything to feel numb about all of it right now.
“I was honorably discharged and moved back to Ohio, thinking I at least knew the area, even if I didn’t really want anything to do with the people I knew there. I spent every dime I had to buy my Barrett rifle. Whatever money I made doing odd jobs, I spent on ammo and time at the shooting range.”
“You bought the rifle?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
I looked over to her quizzically, thinking the answer was obvious, but then I couldn’t find the words to express why I needed it.
“It was…comforting,” I finally said. “It’s almost like…I don’t know…an extension of myself. I needed it.”
I could tell she didn’t get it, but I didn’t know what else to say to make myself clear.
“That’s where I met Jonathan.”
“Who’s Jonathan?”
“He was just another guy at the range,” I said. “He was always complimenting me on my accuracy and wanted to try out my Barrett. He ended up inviting me out to his place where he had his own shooting range set up on private property. He wasn’t in town a lot, but he said I could come out anytime I wanted to shoot. Saved me a lot of money, and he never pressed me for information about what had happened to me. He eventually figured out I’d been a POW and whatever, but he never pushed, you know?”
Lia looked down at her hands.
“Am I pushing too much?” she asked.
“It’s a bit late to be asking,” I said with a quiet chuckle. “No, it’s okay. I want you to know. Well, no, I don’t, but I think you should anyway.”
Lia nodded.
“At some point, we ended up talking about…well, about other shit. Career shit. I didn’t have one, and even though the military would have paid for college at that point, I had no desire to be a fucking engineer or whatever any more. He offered me an alternative.”
I stopped. This was it—the rest would be what might drive her away forever. I’d let her go, too. I wouldn’t like it, but I’d do it.
“Jonathan asked me to come to Chicago with him to meet the guy he worked for. I did, and his boss offered me a job doing what I do best.”
“What do you do best, Evan?” Lia asked when I paused too long.
I closed my eyes, breathed deeply, and then looked straight at her.
“I’m a hit man, Lia. I work for the largest crime family in the city, and I kill people for money.”
Nothing could take back my words now.
Chapter 11—Unexpected Reaction
Lia sat on the bed and just stared at me for way too long.
I wasn’t sure if she had even heard me at first, but I realized pretty quickly that she had. I couldn’t read her though. There weren’t any obvious signs of what was going through her head. She actually seemed a little stupefied.
“Lia?”
“That’s a joke, right?”
“Why would I joke about that?” I asked.
“Because you can’t possibly be serious,” she answered.
“You wanted to know how that guy outside knew who I was,” I reminded her. “There’s your answer. Gangs don’t fuck with us—they know they’d get wiped out in a weekend. The last time I was in this neighborhood, I took out seven of them in about three minutes when they were hanging out at a park not far from here.”
Lia’s eyes widened, and her tongue darted out over her lips. I figured I’d probably given her enough details at that point. She looked over to the dresser where my Beretta sat on top of my shirt.
“With that gun?” she asked quietly.
“Sometimes,” I said. “Usually with my Barrett—the sniper rifle.”
Lia sat back and pulled her knees to her chest, and she wrapped her arms around them. Her throat bobbed once, and then she looked up to me.
“Are you going to kill me? Is that why you brought me here?”
“Fuck, no!” I stood up from the windowsill and yelled loud enough that she jumped. “I’m sorry! Shit!…But, no, Lia—no! I’d never hurt you; I swear.”
Even as the words flowed from my mouth, I wondered if they were true. How could I guarantee that to her, considering what I’d done in the past? I wasn’t even sure if I could manage to keep her safe through what was to come. Even if she decided to get as far away from me as possible, she was likely already in danger.
“But you…you shoot people? That’s your job?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I mean, I have to pick the right spot, the right timing and all that, but in the end, I’m not paid for the recon, I’m paid for the hit.”
“You do this for the mafia? That’s the mob, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, “and yeah, it is.”
“The Chicago mafia?”
I nodded again.
“That’s real?”
A laugh escaped through my nose.
“Yeah, it’s real. It’s not quite the way it ends up portrayed in the movies but real enough.”
“Who do you…um…” Lia paused a moment, and I saw her throat bob again. “Who do you kill?”
“Anyone my boss tells me to,” I said. “Mostly, anyway. Sometimes there are others.”
“Others?”
“Yeah, like when I need someone else out of the way to get to my target—sometimes I’ll kill them, too.”
“Do you get paid for those as well?”
“No, they aren’t on my roll.”
“Roll?”
“Kill roll,” I told her. “My list of people who I’m supposed to kill.”
“Your…your to-do list?”
“Something like that,” I laughed. I had never thought of it like that, but it was as accurate as any other analogy.
She looked away from me, her eyes focused on absolutely nothing interesting across the room, obviously not finding anything humorous in the conversation. She swallowed and closed her eyes for a moment.
“How many?” she whispered.
“How many are on the list now?”
She shook her head and took in a long breath.
“How many people have you…have you killed?” Her eyes moved back to mine as she waited for the answer.
It was my turn to look away. I licked my lips and tried to find words that would make anything any better, but I was way past lying now. It wouldn’t make sense; she already knew everything.
“I have no idea,” I admitted.
“A lot, though, right?”
“A lot,” I agreed. I’d never bothered to keep track though I probably could have come up with a relatively precise number if I thought about it long enough. I didn’t really care to do that and figured even estimating what had to be approaching a hundred people over the last three years of working for Moretti wasn’t going to help my position with Lia now.
“Holy shit.” Her voice was low as she clasped her hands together.
I took a couple steps toward the bed, a
nd Lia jumped up and moved to press her back to the wall. Her eyes were wide and distrustful, and the palms of her hands pressed against the drywall. With my chest tightening around my heart and lungs, I stopped moving.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I reminded her.
“How do I know that?”
I closed my eyes for a moment and was reminded of our night at the cabin when it was clear she was thinking similar thoughts only without any knowledge to back them up.
“If I was going to kill you, you’d be dead,” I reminded her.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t.”
I watched her carefully—the subtle way she kept looking toward the door, the way she was balancing up on the balls of her feet, the positioning of her hips. Her fear had sent her into complete flight mode. If I hadn’t been standing between her and the door, she would have bolted.
Inside of myself, I didn’t think it would have felt any different than if someone had reached inside my chest with one of those hand-held mixers running on high power. Everything inside me was churning painfully, and my muscles were so tight, I could barely breathe. Someone with logic on their side would have recognized it as the same emotion as Lia’s but with the opposite response; all I could feel was anger.
“Why would I tell you all this shit just to kill you off? You think I fucking liked talking about this, huh? You think I wanted to? I’ve never talked to anyone about any of that shit unless I was under direct fucking orders. Never.”
I was nearly panting, and there was pressure behind my eyes I was finding difficult to hold back. I wasn’t even sure what was happening in my head; it all just felt bad.
She’s going to leave.
Lia’s arms were wrapped around her stomach, and she was pushing herself against the wall now—anything to get farther away from me. Everything inside of me wanted to grab my Beretta and start shooting the shit out of something—anything. There was some kind of geyser just under my skin, trying to find the weakest point to break through in a gush of steam and boiling rage.
I managed to take in an audible breath, and I tried to let it out slowly. Lia tensed even more, and I wanted to turn the damn gun on myself for scaring her so much. It wasn’t what I wanted. I would have been the first to admit that I didn’t really know exactly what I wanted, but this definitely wasn’t it.