Page 94 of Omega

We weren’t out of the woods yet.

17

“I LOVE YOU,” FINALLY

After Brazil, Florida seemed relatively temperate. As soon as we landed—once again on a too-short landing strip in the middle of nowhere, Harris effortlessly bringing the big aircraft down with a single gentle bump and bark of the tires—Thresh, now clothed in a tight T-shirt and canvas boat shoes, jumped onto a waiting Harley and roared off without even waving at me.

There was a Hummer waiting for us, but it wasn’t the civilian version, the watered down derivative. No, this was the military Hummer, huge, wide, tan, with a sloping rear roof and a brutally spartan interior.

Harris turned the engine over, and it made a rattling bass diesel growl. I buckled myself in and laughed as a thought occurred to me.

“What?” Harris asked.

“Just, you. I wish I knew how you do it.”

“Do what?”

“Magically procure guns and airplanes and military Hummers—”

“It’s not a fuckingHummer,” he snapped, “it’s a Humvee. A Hummer is one of two things: a piece of shit civilian vehicle that shares literally no DNA with what I’m driving right now, or it’s a blowjob.Thisis a Humvee. It should never, ever, be called a Hummer.”

I widened my eyes. “Yessir,” I said, with a mock salute.

He had the good sense to laugh at himself. “Sorry. I’m a soldier, and we tend to get picky about that kind of thing. A chopper is a motorcycle, not a helicopter. Pistols have clips, assault rifles have magazines. And AK-47s, M-16s, those kinds of things…those are assault rifles, not machine guns. What Thresh had on the cargo plane,thatwas a machine gun.”

“Noted.”

“Now.” He glanced at me. “What was it you were laughing about, now that we’ve got basic terminology out of the way?”

“It’s just…none of what’s happened to me has been like I thought it would be. In the movies, shooting guns is easy. You shoot someone, and it’s no big deal. You shoot a car in the engine and it explodes. Running for your life is exciting. But none of that, except for you, is true. You’re just like a movie character. Like, you show up with a bag full of machine guns—sorry,assault rifles. You go on not one, not two, butthreereal-life car chases with people shooting at us and everything. And weget away. And then you’ve got a real life Terminator who shoots big ass machine guns like it’s a goddamned toy. And there’s an actual plane just…waiting for us. And when we land…there’s a military-grade Humvee waiting for us. Like, who can do that? Seriously. Who do you call that can just get a fucking airplane? Where do you get assault rifles? This shit doesn’t just…appear in real life. But for you, somehow, it does. It’s like magic.”

By now we were on a two-lane highway that led through absolutely nowhere, the horizon flat as a ruler in every direction.

Harris just shrugged. “It’s not magic, it’s connections. I know a lot of people. A lot…of unsavory people. Just so you’re totally aware, having a bag full of assault rifles is, obviously, highly illegal, regardless of what country you’re in. But that’s why it’s called the ‘black market’, right?”

I snorted. “I really do know better, I swear, but…I’ve always pictured the black market as being, like, a secret warehouse somewhere, like an actual secret marketplace. Like you have a secret knock and shit, and there are tables full of guns and there’s someone that runs a business called Goons ’R’ Us. I mean, I do get that it’s all online and whatever, but that’s the mental image I have.”

Harris laughed out loud. “Goons ’R’ Us. God, Layla, you’re fucking hysterical. I’ll have to tell Thresh about that. We can make it a side business. Maybe we can invent our own gun and call it the ‘thugbuster’.”

“‘You’re mocking me, aren’t you?’” I asked.

“No, I’m not, I swear. It’s just funny.” I didn’t really expect him to catch theToy Storyquote, but hey, I had to try. The situation just called for it. He shot me a glance. “And babe, life isn’t like the movies. I spent a small fortune just on the guns. Being a badass is expensive as hell, which is something no one ever tells you. In reality, shooting a gun and hitting what you’re aiming at is hard, and killing a man is harder. Car chases are fucking terrifying, and having people trying to kill you is worse. Cars rarely explode. Getting shot fucking hurts; I donotrecommend it. Any of it.”

“I wish I’d known all thatbeforeI got kidnapped.”

“You’re handling this better than you have any right to, by the way,” he said, reaching over and taking my hand. “I think anyone else would have gone crazy by now.”

“Here’s the thing, though. You don’t really go crazy, do you? I mean, unless you legit have a psychotic break or a nervous breakdown, you don’t really go crazy. You just deal with it. It sucks, and you hate it, and you wish you weren’t going through it, but you deal, and all you can really do is keep going. And I suppose, as crazy as all this has been, it’s not reallythatcrazy, not if I consider everything else I’ve been through. But killing Cut?Thatwas different. Really fucking different. I can’t forget it. I’m trying. I’m trying so hard…but I just keep—I just keep seeing it.Feelingit. I can deal with shooting the guy during the car chase. That one I can justify as being like in the movies. I can pretend it didn’t happen. I can forget it. But stabbing Cut in the eye with a pen? I can’t forget that.”

And just like that, I was fighting hyperventilation. Zero to sixty in nothing flat. Suddenly I was sobbing—just immediate, bam, Layla goes full on baby.

Harris pulled over on the side of the road, exited the Humvee, jerked open my door, and hauled me out. He held me against his chest. Let me cry. Didn’t say a word for a long time. Just held me.

When it seemed like my hissy fit had subsided, he tilted my head back. “It’ll fade. I can’t say it’ll ever go away. I’m not gonna bullshit you or blow smoke up your ass. You’re a tough as nails chick, so I’m not gonna treat you like you’re fragile. You kill someone with your hands like that? It sticks with you. You feel it. You have this…I don’t know…haptic memory of it. It doesn’t ever go away. You just learn to live with it. You justify it as self-defense, something you had to do, it was you or him. You’re talking about it, which is a big step. Some guys, after their first kill, they won’t talk about it. They clam up, suppress it. And that’s no good. You’ve got to let it out, talk about it. Or it’ll fester. And when emotional trauma turns gangrenous…that shit gets ugly.”

“I didn’t want to kill him. But when I did? Nick, it feltgood.That’s the part that makes me sick. I don’t regret it. Not one fucking bit. I don’t feel guilty. He was an evil fuck and he deserved to die the ugly death I gave him. I feel bad that I don’t feel bad. And I hate the…what was that term you just used? Haptic memory? That’s it exactly. I can feel right now exactly how it felt. And that’s a memory I’ll never, ever be able to forget. I’ll have it till the day I die.”

“Which will be a very long time from now, okay?” His palm was warm, rough, and flat against my cheek.