Although they were difficult, I was happy he did them. They made him a stronger man, a better man, and he served our country. Gates was a hero, even if he didn’t feel like one or think he was one. To me, he was a real hero.
“You know, I started dating Tony because of you,” I blurted out.
He glanced at me, a small smirk on his face. “How’s that work?”
“You didn’t answer my letters,” I said. “I guess I was hurt. Tony was the first guy to be really nice to me.”
“So he was a rebound?”
“I guess so, at first.”
“I knew you were sitting at home, thinking about what it felt like to be with a real man that night.”
“I wasn’t just sitting around.”
“You’re right. I’m sure you were in the shower, and in your bed, and on your couch as well.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“I’m not. We both know it’s the truth. You get dripping wet every time you think about me, and you couldn’t help yourself.”
He was more right than he probably knew, but I wasn’t going to tell him the truth.
“Don’t make me regret telling you things,” I said, looking away.
He laughed and continued driving, tearing the road to pieces.
I didn’t know what was going to happen, but it didn’t matter. Gates may have been a cocky asshole, but he was my hero. He was my protector.
I felt safe in that car with him, even if I was in the most dangerous situation of my life.
Chapter 18
Gates
We drove for hours down Indiana. Cornfield after cornfield interspersed with soy fields flashed by. I saw more fucking cows than I ever wanted to see in my whole damn life.
Up north, Indiana used to have a bunch of marshes, probably leftover from whatever big ass glacier created the great lakes. Down south, though, was more like the plains. Everything was flat, so fucking flat. I missed the hills and forests of New York, but it didn’t matter.
We were on a mission, and sightseeing wasn’t a part of that mission.
I last spoke with General Maron two years ago, just before I deployed for Syria. We hadn’t left things on a good note, and I had no clue how he was going to receive us. Truth was, he might laugh in my fucking face and tell me to go sit on a ten-foot pole, and I might even deserve that.
But I had to try. If there was one person in my life that could help us, it was Maron. He had serious connections, political and otherwise. He was the kind of person that you could count on to solve a complex problem like this.
I was a hammer. I could break shit, and break it very well. But Maron was subtler than that. Maybe I’d be that way too one day if I ever decided to embrace post-war zone military life like Maron wanted me to, but I liked being a hammer. I was good at being a hammer.
I didn’t know anything else.
I couldn’t just turn off the parts of me that needed action and craved excitement. I was a killer, trained in combat. I couldn’t just come back to civilian life and sit behind a desk like Maron did. He understood how to play the game, how to amass power without using hammers like me all the time.
Maron had subtlety. I needed to learn that skill, and learn it fast. Otherwise, I might be failing Piper. I knew what I was. I was a bad man, a dangerous man. I had skills that set me apart from most of the people living in normal society.
I was going to have to use all of those skills and then some if I wanted to make sure that we got out of this alive.
The base was situated in a small town at the very southern edge of the state. It was in the middle of nowhere, basically, and that was on purpose. The commanders didn’t want their trainees sneaking off base to go drinking or some shit like that, and so they made sure that the only thing worth doing in a fifty-mile radius was strictly controlled by the military.
Which meant there was just one motel near the base. It was about five miles away, a little Motel 6 chain place that was a total fucking dump, but it was better than nothing. We parked in the lot and I was already experiencing some intense memories as we stepped out of the truck.
I did a lot of my early training at this base. I was an idiot back then. I knew absolutely fucking nothing, and through the military’s training I became something. They broke me back then and remade me into the man I had become, and I was thankful for it.
But fuck, those were some good times, too. I remembered some of my squad mates, Jimmy and Leon and Bridges, all good guys. We used to go buy cheap moonshine from a nearby farmer and drink that garbage out in his fields until we were practically blind-drink. Then we’d stumble back to base, sneak back over the fence, and puke our fucking guts out the next morning during physical training.