The Unwilling(88)

“What if I was?”

“Does she know you were involved with Sara?”

“No.”

“Could she have guessed?”

I shrugged.

“Why did you go to Sara’s condominium?”

“I wanted information on Tyra. I thought Sara could help.”

“A moment ago, you said you went because you were worried.”

“I guess it was a little bit of both.”

“So this is about Jason?”

I shrugged again. He didn’t like it.

“You said you were done trying to help your brother. This morning in your bedroom, that’s what you said.”

“I don’t remember saying that.”

“Are you done with this foolishness or not? Because you need to be. And you need to look at me, too. Look at me, and tell me that you’re done trying to play detective. I want to hear it. No more bullshit for your brother. Tell me it’s over.”

I clenched my jaw, as stubborn as I’d ever been. “I went to see him at Lanesworth.”

His eyes narrowed before he got control of his anger. “When?”

“This morning.”

“Son, that was an incredibly stupid thing to do. You don’t think Martinez can make hay with your visit? He’s already thinking, Conspiracy. We need to worry about you, your future.”

“What about Jason?” I asked.

“What about your mother?”

He raised his voice, probably from long habit. My mother was the lever that had always worked. “I’m not a kid anymore.”

“From where I sit, you are.”

“I understand that you feel that way. Let me tell you the problem from where I sit.” I stared him down, as cold as the bottom of a cave. “From the time I could speak, what I heard from you was family first. Family first, and then faith and trust and love and everything else. Those were good years and good lessons.”

I stood, and looked down, flush with all the things I wanted to say: that my father lived on the fence, and my mother on the wrong side of everything, that trust was not built into the bones of this house. There were other things to say, too, like Jason’s warning about dangerous people, and what I’d learned about his time in Vietnam, that it explained who he was, and why he was. I wanted to say, too, that Jason knew who’d killed Tyra, that he was protecting me, and that he knew more than the cops, who thought they were so smart. I should have told my father all of those things, but did not.

He should have believed in Jason.

He should have believed from the very start.

In my room, I locked the door. The place was not that big, but I paced it, thinking of Vietnam, Jason, and my father, the thoughts like a dog chasing its tail. Throwing myself on the bed, I pictured Robert’s dive from Devil’s Ledge, the cross of his body nailed to that high, pale sky. He’d been too soft for war.

Jason, though …

His first year in Vietnam had been raw combat from day one: deep-cover recon, search and destroy, cross-border infiltration. In that first year, Jason won a field promotion, two Purple Hearts, and a Silver Star. Darzell’s feelings about it had been pretty plain.

People talked about him even then …

We never heard a thing about it.

Jason must have impressed some important people, though, because when he re-upped for another tour, he was seconded to a Navy SEAL master chief and an ARVN colonel in command of three South Vietnamese rangers, the six of them tasked to run disguised gunboats into the DMZ to rescue downed aviators. In the first six months, they saved eleven Americans, including a marine lieutenant with a bullet in his lung, and two shattered legs. Under heavy fire, Jason dragged him from a crumpled jet, and carried him four miles through dense jungle, getting shot twice for the trouble. That earned him another Purple Heart and, this time, the Navy Cross. None of us knew about that, either, but Darzell had nursed the bitterness for a while.

Should have been the Medal of Honor.

Ask any marine.

No one could doubt my brother’s willingness or courage. He’d won other commendations. Darzell had other stories.

But the rest of it …

What came last …

I rose from the bed, too keyed up to have my head on a pillow. The room was still a box, but I paced it, anyway.

What else could I do?

Seriously.





31


X had Jason brought to the subbasement, and his eyes were keen as the young man entered the cell. It was the last cell in the row, and the one he used to store his completed paintings. Dozens hung at eye level; hundreds more leaned in stacks against the walls.

“Ah, Jason. Good. I want to show you something.” He took a canvas from a stack of others. It was a portrait of Jason, his eyes intent behind strands of dark hair, his face battered and bruised, but set in determined lines. “I call it The Unconquerable Soul. It’s what I see in you when we fight.”

Jason struggled with a sudden surge of unexpected emotion. The painting was … intimate.

“It’s in the eyes,” X said.

For Jason, looking into those painted eyes was like staring into something at once familiar, terrible, and strange, a part of himself he preferred to keep hidden and dark. That a man like X could capture it so perfectly …

“Put it away, please.”