what I was doing. Without the Accord incident, it was a different story. It wasn’t reality. But it would become history. With that omission, I edited the truth into something like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, and I never forgave myself for it. When Hollywood came calling five months later, I declined to option my book. That was my self-inflicted punishment, meager as it may seem now. I neither wanted nor deserved that money. That said, I did not turn down the Pulitzer Prize I won for the same book, which covered all my time in Afghanistan as well as Iraq. And I have reaped untold benefits from that Pulitzer. Every time I’m introduced on television, they mention it. In every bio in every pamphlet handed out before I give a speech for $20,000 or $30,000, that Pulitzer leads my list of accomplishments. For years I’ve prayed to win another, to wipe the shadow of false pretense from my life. But while I’ve made the list of finalists twice more, I’ve never again won the award.
Paul’s outcome was very different. He wasn’t tried or officially punished for any action he took on the day he and his men shot their way out of the Jamhori Quarter. But he was ordered by Joint Task Force command to leave Iraq, and ShieldCorp had all its government contracts canceled. Worse, Paul was personally barred by both the State Department and the Pentagon from returning to either Afghanistan or Iraq. My book made him a hero to a lot of people, but less than a year after he saved my life, Paul watched his business condemned to oblivion. He returned to Bienville, Mississippi, to work for his father, and within three months, he relapsed into heavy drinking.
Thirteen years later, I would return to Bienville and start sleeping with his wife. It sounds low, I know—perhaps unforgivable to some. But here’s the thing: I loved Jet first. She loved me first. More to the point, I’m not sure Paul ever loved her. He wanted her, sure, but that’s a different thing. I wouldn’t be alive today if Paul had not gone back into that house to save me. And I would probably be dead if he hadn’t shot those people in the Honda Accord. But there’s also this: if I had written the truth about the people in that Accord in my book—while the Pentagon was making up its mind about ShieldCorp’s bloody escape from Jamhori—then Paul might have gone to federal prison for the second incident, and the fame that my book brought him as a fearless warrior would have been forever tainted.
The way I figured it, we were even.
Chapter 17
When I first moved back to Bienville from Washington, I rented an apartment downtown, just a short walk from the Watchman building. I knew I couldn’t live in my parents’ house, and there was nothing to rent in their neighborhood. They’re still in the tract house Adam and I grew up in, a 1950s ranch-style with pleasing touches of midcentury modern, set in a wooded subdivision that was filled with kids when I was growing up but is now inhabited by old people, many widows living alone.
The downtown apartment worked well until Jet and I started sleeping together. After that, it was too risky. I needed a secluded refuge that could give us real privacy while we worked out what the future was going to look like for us. To that end, I bought an old farmhouse on six isolated acres east of town. The place had sat on the market for two years. Only fifteen minutes from downtown, it’s bounded by woods on all sides, and there’s only one entrance by road.
It was 2:50 when I reached home after my raid on Buck’s rental house. Jet had set our rendezvous at three, but because she must evade not only her husband but also anyone else she might run into before meeting me, it’s not uncommon for her to be an hour late. As soon as I walked in, I called Nadine Sullivan and told her I would love to attend the party on the roof of the Aurora, if she would still have me. Nadine replied that she was glad to have the company and was looking forward to it. Then I opened a Heineken and walked out to my back patio, which looks onto four acres of woods.
Lying back on a teak steamer chaise, I checked my email on my iPhone. I felt