His body started to shake.
Did you think this would be easy?
“Someone had to do something.”
She laced her fingers through his—an anchor. “Naturally, that was you.”
Connor’s heart began to hammer. “I volunteered to make my way around to the other side to take out the hostiles with a grenade or two. The Unit guys kept up a steady fire on the house while I worked my way toward the place. I took cover behind a rock wall, a pile of rubble, really, then tossed a grenade.”
Frag out!
Connor saw the boy clear as day in his mind as he stepped out, looked around.
“I’m here, Connor. You can tell me.”
Connor let out a breath. “In the next moment, a little boy stepped out of the house. He couldn’t have been more than four or five years old, just a little guy. He looked around at the world we adults had broken with big brown eyes and then—”
Shanti waited. “And then?”
Connor’s throat went tight. “I couldn’t call the grenade back. I couldn’t do anything but watch him die. I’ve killed children, Shanti. I’ve killed children, too.”
It took all his courage to meet her gaze.
There were tears in her eyes. “Oh, Connor. It was an accident. You didn’t target that boy. You didn’t walk into that house, point a gun at his head, and pull the trigger. I have no doubt that if you could have saved him, you would have.”
Connor shook off the absolution that she offered him, self-loathing seething inside him. “He died because I—”
“He died because terrorists who wanted to kill you and your fellow soldiers hid in his house and used him and his family as human shields. That’s a violation of Protocol One of the Geneva Convention.”
Her words brought him up short. “Is that … is that true?”
She smiled, tears on her cheeks. “I’m a human-rights attorney. I specialize in war crimes and crimes against humanity. I do know something about it.”
Shanti’s heartbroke for Connor. It hurt to see him in so much pain, rage and despair on his face, his body tense and trembling. Now Shanti understood what Elizabeth had meant. Connor’s military service had left him wounded on the inside, where no one could see it, where the world could conveniently ignore it, even as it asked him to risk his life again and again.
Fighting back her tears, she raised his hand to her lips, kissed it. “You are not a monster, Connor. I’m so sorry that happened. I can’t imagine how awful that must have been. But it’s not your fault.”
His jaw was tight, his lips a grim line, and she could feel the war he waged inside himself. “If I had waited just a moment, if I hadn’t been so quick with the grenade…”
She leaned in, cupped his jaw. “Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t beat yourself up. You don’t deserve it. You threw the grenade, yes, but the ISIS fighters put that boy in danger.”
Then it came to her.
“Why did you tell me this now?”
“It felt wrong to kiss you, to have sex with you, when you probably wouldn’t want me to touch you if you knew.”
The ache in her heart grew stronger. “You told me so that I would know I was sleeping with the enemy. Is that it? You wanted to give me a chance to tell you to go to hell.”
He nodded, his jaw still tight. “I know the ICC ran background checks on all of us before they hired Cobra. I know they researched our military records. The army absolved me, so there’s nothing about it in my file. There was no way for you to know.”
She wanted to tell him that he was almost certainly suffering from post-traumatic stress, that his grief over the boy only proved how big his heart was, that she loved him.
What?!?
Oh, God! She loved him!
She was in love with Connor.