Grace brought her hand up to her mouth, her eyes filled with shock and sadness. She removed her hand and whispered, "We?"
I nodded, "Yeah, me and my unit. We had gone in on the mission and we were successful pretty immediately. But when we went in to the warehouse the target had been hiding in, we found some things we weren't expecting, including a whole room of women and girls in the most deplorable conditions you could imagine." I was silent for another minute, picturing opening that door, the smell hitting us immediately as we all recoiled and then shined our flashlights in–eyes wide and scared staring back at us. They hadn't given them access to toilets or water. They were being held like cattle, worse than cattle. When I pictured hell, I pictured that room.
"They were being trafficked. Girls as young as six were in that room, fated to become some sick fuck's sexual plaything."
Her eyes were huge in her face, tears welling over now as she stared at me silently.
"One of the girls, Ara, had seen a chance for escape when they threw some dinner in for them. The guards caught her and they raped her–raped her in any and every way they could. They hurt and degraded her unmercifully." My voice faded at the end as I swallowed down the lump that always formed when I thought of Ara. "They all took turns with her and then they beat her so severely that she was barely conscious. Of course, we didn't get this information until later, when our translator talked to some of the other women being held."
Tears were coursing down Grace's cheeks, and she grabbed my hand and held it to her heart as I continued to talk.
"After we killed them and found Ara, we carried her outside and we cleaned her wounds as best as we could with what we had. But the internal damage was too much… she needed a hospital and we had no way to get her to one. We gave her morphine and we stayed with her through the night, taking turns holding her hand and telling her stories–any story we could think of. As the sun started to rise, it was my turn to hold her hand and I told her about you, how I thought of you every morning when the sun came up in the sky. And I swear, she smiled at me, Grace. She looked right in my eyes, and she smiled. And then she was gone."
Grace choked out a small sob. "Oh, God," she breathed out.
I closed my eyes for a minute, recalling that morning, my heart breaking as I looked into Ara's eyes, the girl I didn't even know, as she slipped from this world.
"How do you handle that memory, Carson? How do you get over that?" Grace finally asked on another small sob.
I thought about that. I thought about how you ship off to fight for your country, and no one ever tells you that the things you see might seep into your very soul and irrevocably change who you are. They never tell you that a million miles from one moment, it will all suddenly come back to you - where you were, what you felt, what you saw, that one frame–on repeat, over and over and over.
"I'll never get it out of my head. I'll never get over it. And I'm okay with that. She lived it. The very least I can do is remember."
She studied me for a moment, and then she smiled a sad smile at me, something deep and intense flashing in her eyes as she took my face in her hands and brought her lips to mine softly. We sat together for a minute, as she kissed my cheeks and my forehead, my nose, and my lips again, very softly. Then she picked my hands up in hers and examined the scars on my palms, putting her lips to those and closing her eyes tightly.
I watched her, my heart beating triple time in my chest as her emotion swept over me, filling me, humbling me, and giving me peace.
When she leaned back she asked, "What happened to the other girls?"
I sighed. "They were all from small, poor villages in the surrounding areas. The townspeople helped locate their families and get them back where they belonged. They had mostly been told that there was a housekeeping job or something like that in another village. That's the usual M.O. when it comes to trafficking. In some cases, families even sell their daughters into what they believe will be a better situation than they can provide."
Grace nodded, biting her lip. "And Ara's family?" she asked quietly.
"We had to leave before Ara's family was located, but the townspeople thought they knew where they were and promised to bring her body to them."
Grace put her head on my chest and her arms around my waist and squeezed me gently. God, it felt good to talk about this with her and let her comfort seep into my heart. The guys and I had talked about it afterwards, but it wasn't the same. It wasn't the same as being wrapped in Grace's arms as she took part of my pain and made it her own. I didn't want her to hurt, but to share my scars with another human was a relief that I hadn't even known I needed until I got it.
We were quiet for a few minutes, just holding each other. Finally, I said quietly, "Grace, there's more, and this part concerns you."
She brought her head up and frowned. "Okay," she said.
I paused. "Listen, when I tell you what I'm about to tell you, I understand if you need to take some time to think about it. I pray to God that you don't get back in Dylan's SUV and drive back to Vegas, but if you want to do that, I'll understand."
"Carson, you're scaring me," she whispered.
I took a deep breath. "The initial plan was to kill the target and get in and out of there, but because of the unexpected situation we found, we were later making our way to our rendezvous point. It gave men who worked for the high value target time to ambush us. You already knew I was injured, but not the circumstances. Leland was injured in that same ambush."
She nodded, her eyes big pools of worry. I grabbed her hand and squeezed it.
"Anyway, after that, we were shipped back while we healed. Leland got discharged and I was given a choice to stay or go. When Leland offered me a job, I decided to go."
"Yes, you told me all this."
"I know. But I didn't tell you what my real job is."