She’d sat down a half hour ago. “I guess I wore myself out today. Can I get you some tea or coffee or some water maybe? I’m going to make some tea for myself.”
She didn’t offer him scotch.
“No thanks. I’m good.”
She walked to the kitchen, words she’d spoken last time he was here still weighing heavily on her. She had apologized, but only in a very hurried way, given that she’d been freezing outside his door.
“I’m glad you came.” She deliberately kept her distance, not wanting to cross the bridge into physical contact again until they had sorted this out. She opened her mouth to go on, but he beat her to it.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Ellie. You have every right to be angry. I wasn’t trying to keep anything from you. I didn’t want to tell you that first night, but there were other times, and plenty of them, where I could’ve said something and didn’t. I don’t understand why I didn’t bring it up. I wasn’t trying to deceive you.”
“Apology accepted.” Now it was her turn. “I am so sorry about what I said. Never in a million years would I wish that you had died instead of Dan. I never thought that. I never felt that. But I can see how it might sound like that’s what I meant.”
“I meant what I said. I would change places—”
“Please don’t say that. Dan knew what he did might get him killed, but he chose to do it anyway for the good of others. I’ve had to accept that. He’s gone. You’re here.”
The tea kettle whistled behind her.
She quickly made herself a cup of blueberry tea—something that wouldn’t keep her awake—and they moved to the living room.
“I’ve been wondering…” She hesitated, afraid this might be hard for him to understand.
“Yeah?”
“Can you tell me anything about him? You knew him in a different way. I never saw that part of him—the pilot, the soldier on deployment.”
He got a thoughtful frown on his face. “The man could fly a Black Hawk like no one else. I remember the first time my crew and I flew with him. He dropped us in the middle of nowhere, a few clicks from a village where AQ was stockpiling weapons. He gave us all a big grin and did a little flight attendant routine. ‘We’re going to be flying at ten thousand feet over some seriously fucked-up terrain tonight. If you look on the left side, you can see desert. On your right, yes, more desert.’ That kind of thing.”
Ellie found herself smiling, the person Jesse described definitely her Dan.
“He had a photo of you stuck to his dashboard, but I never got a look at it. He would point to it and call you his angel. ‘I’m on leave next month. I’m going home to see my angel.’”
Ellie’s throat went tight. “That’s what he called me at home, too. His angel.”
She listened while Jesse recounted everything he could remember about Dan—how he liked to poke fun at the other branches of the military, how he’d gotten a reputation for winning at poker, how he’d flown in under fire more than once to get Jesse and his men out.
“There was this time…” The color left Jesse’s face. His eyes lost their focus and went wide. “No.No!”
A chill shivered down Ellie’s spine. She got on her knees next to him, took his cheeks in her palms. “Jesse, talk to me.”
* * *
The IED explosionknocked him onto his ass, bits of rock, shrapnel, and sand spraying around him.
Christine!
Ears ringing, he dragged himself to his feet. “Christine!”
And then he saw her.
She lay gasping for breath about twenty feet to his left, blood pouring from a shrapnel wound in her throat, both of her legs missing below the knee.
Jesse ran for her, sand blowing in his face, AK rounds whining past his head.
He dropped to his knees beside her, ripped his medic kit from his pack. “Stay with me, Christine. Stay with me.”
“Don’t … let … me … die.”