Walker (In the Company of Snipers #21) - Irish Winters Page 0,108
A tiny, helpless, baby lamb,” she whined. “I killed it and I smeared its blood on my face, just so… so…”
“So you could convince Zapata you were good enough to join his gang. I get that. But the lamb ended up in a stew or something later that day, right? Its sacrifice didn’t go to waste.”
“No, but… Yes, but… he didn’t deserve to die like that,” whined out of her.
“But, to be clear, you never hurt the human baby boy in your nightmare. Right?”
She was shaking like a leaf then. “Right. He wanted me to, but I… I killed the lamb instead.”
“Instead of a baby? He wanted you to kill a baby, and you told him no?”
Persia could barely think by then. All her sins. Laid bare. Every single one. Her cowardice. Her lies. “I told him that I’d gladly kill a baby later, and I’d dance on its ruined body with him.” Like two sick miscreants, I promised I’d dance with the Devil Incarnate on an innocent child’s heart.
“Ah, sugar…” Hotrod whispered against her temple. “You’ve been running from this nightmare a long time, haven’t you?”
“Yesssss,” she admitted. Running and falling and falling apart. And running again.
“What would you do differently if you could go back into Zapata’s lair? Would you save that lamb or would you save all the little ones he had trapped there? Would you sacrifice Tomas Juarez to rescue a lamb that was destined for the table anyway?”
Hotrod made it sound easy. Save the boy? Save the lamb? “Tomas. I’d save Tomas again. Every time.”
Hotrod’s chest heaved with a great sigh. Carefully, he cupped her chin, tilting her head until she had no choice but to look into his eyes. His teary eyes.
Persia sucked in a sob. She’d made him cry. “I’m sorry,” she breathed, as she traced the wet trail of tears on his cheek, then wiped it away.
“Don’t cry for me,” he said as he kissed her fingers. “Life doesn’t give us many options sometimes. War’s never easy. Which is why the lamb in your dream morphs into a human child. Either way, you knew you’d have to hurt an innocent in order to complete your mission and end Zapata. Yet you also knew you could never hurt anyone or anything unless you absolutely had to. You should already be some little girl’s or boy’s mom. That’s who you are deep inside.”
He sounded so sure.
“You’re wrong. I’ve killed men in self-defense and they deserved to die. A lot of men, Hotrod.”
“And that’s why you’re so good at what you do. You’re capable of making snap decisions and carrying them through, even when they seem impossibly difficult.”
“I would’ve killed Zapata if Julio hadn’t.” God knew she’d wanted to end Domingo since she’d first set eyes on him.
Hotrod smothered her into his arms, his hands interlocked across her back again. “And I would’ve killed him for you if I’d been there,” he breathed. “Women’s bodies and souls were designed to bring new lives into the world. To nurture and care for babies. Men were made to protect those women, their sons and daughters. Might not be politically correct, but Mother Nature doesn’t seem to care about PC politics. At our most primitive level, the human brain’s primary mission is to ensure the survival of the species. Call it racial, prejudicial, or narrow-minded, it is what it is. Women and men will never be interchangeable. Yes, women make damned good soldiers, and yes, they have every right to be all they can be. Hell, some women I know” —he squeezed her tightly— “put a lot of guys I’ve worked with to shame. They’re braver. They work harder. They’re smarter, and I’m damned proud to work with every last one of them. But that doesn’t make them men. It just makes them stronger women. Like you.”
She had nothing to say, so Persia kept quiet, content to listen to his heartbeat and the vibration of his voice.
“You ever play with fireworks when you were a kid?”
“No,” she whispered, “but Dad does. Every Fourth of July. Mom loves our Independence Day celebrations.”
“See? That’s another one of those guy things. Boys take risks while girls usually just watch. But if you take a couple of those spinning butterfly flares, wrap them in duct tape, then light the fuse, what do you get?”
“A bomb.”
“Exactly. And do you know how many little girls end up in the emergency room every year because they held onto that Independence Day bomb a second too