Devil’s in the Details (37 page)

She moved to look back out the window, "For eight days it went on like that, endlessly. Then one day they threw me into a small room and locked me in there with a piece of bread and a cup of dirty water. I was in too much pain to even want to think about eating, so I drank the dirty water and forced myself to stand up. My back and entire body was in unbearable pain, but I couldn't show them that. I knew if I could stand up, they would keep me alive, knowing I was still holding out on them."

I didn't realize I was still holding the photograph of Victoria's back until I glanced down and the jarring image forced me to throw it back down on the desk. I closed the file to remove the images from my sight as I could feel my throat tighten and my eyes well up. All of this was beginning to overwhelm me as I pictured Victoria in a tiny room, fighting for her life, covered in blood and mud. Not knowing if she would live to see another day, another sunrise or sunset. I absently placed my hand over my heart as it began to physically hurt inside of my chest from my imagination running wild.

Victoria had her head down, "When I got to my feet, I suddenly remembered that I had packed a GPS tracker in the front inside pocket of my fatigue pants. The size of a tin of mints, the kidnappers never found it when they roughly searched me and only took my fatigue shirt. I pulled the GPS tracker apart and saw that the tracker chip was still activated and sending out a signal. All I had to do was disconnect and reconnect to send out a SOS signal. It had been at least two or three days since my team was taken, I knew someone would be looking for us."

She let out a slow breath, trying to reign in her emotions that were threatening to spill over like a broken dam, "I did the SOS ten times before I hid the chip in the bottom of my boot, tucking it under a flap of leather and the seam of the sole. I would be able to tap my boot against the wall, or a chair, as I sat. Being interrogated or waiting for the next beating."

I set the file off to the side and moved around the desk to be closer to Victoria. I was so unsure what to do as she poured out all of this information that was making me angrier. Not at her, but at the men who put her in that position and the men who did this to her. Created a woman who was afraid to be touched, loved, held and tell anyone about her past.

Victoria turned her head and saw I was moving closer, she took one step back, "It took thirteen more days after that night I put the chip in my boot, for anyone to find me." She closed her eyes as her lower lip quivered, "But I snapped the day I was rescued. That day I became a monster."

I went to reach for Victoria, shaking my head, "You're not a monster, don't say that." I took another step closer to her.

She held up her hand, "Please don't, Alex." She swallowed hard as I saw her eyes fill up with tears. Something I had never seen from the woman in my entire life with her. "Let me finish. You need to hear everything before you decide if you can stay here. Stay in this with me."

I furrowed my brow at her, confused why she dared to think I wouldn’t stay with her. I was angry at her for walking away and keeping me out, but there wasn't anything I could think of that would keep me from her. Anger would fade in time, my love for her wouldn't. "Victoria, I don't understand why you think that?"

Victoria suddenly moved around me, grabbing the file she flipped open and walked back over. Shoving the file in my face pointing at what looked to be a psych exam. "This is why." She tapped hard on the middle of the file with her index finger. I frowned, moving to hand it back when she held it firmly, "Read it." She turned away before I could see the lone tear slide down her cheek.

I sucked in a breath and began to gloss over the psychologist's report.

"
Lieutenant Bancroft is suffering from severe PTSD and trauma brought on by the endless torture. She is detached, lacks apathy and empathy in most of the tests given. She has no severe head trauma that would link to her change in behavior witnessed that day by the rescue team. Their interviews all have her tied back to what she has told me herself. That she killed her captors without a second thought or care, and did so in such a brutal and semi methodical way, that they would suffer deeply. Their deaths were neither easy nor painless. I cannot, at this time, diagnose Lieutenant Bancroft with anything that could point to what triggered the frenzy she was found in and the current comatose state she appears to be operating in. I will conduct further tests as she heals."

My head shot up from the file to look right into the slate grey eyes of Victoria who was now openly crying, tears running heavily down her face as she bit her bottom lip. "I killed them. I killed them all that day I was rescued. I broke when they came in for the third round of spikes that day. The one who spoke the best English told me that they had killed three of my men. They then showed me the shitty cellphone video of them doing it. Killing one of my men, one that had been a part of my team for the last year. A part of my unit, my family."

Victoria stopped as she swallowed down a sob. She continued a moment later, after slowly exhaling, "My captors told me it was my fault, that I had to give them what they wanted before the last two were killed and I was left to be burned alive."

Victoria closed her eyes as she began to gradually sob, "Something overcame me and the world went black. I only remember head butting him, shattering his nose before I grabbed his knife. He stumbled back, and I when I saw I had the upper hand on him, I went into a frenzy like the reports say. I killed six of my seven captors, torturers, with my bare hands. Slashing, cutting and slicing without a care. Watching them all bleed out as they crumpled to the floor, begging me to stop. When I raced to find the last one, the rescue team broke into the building we were being held in and I collapsed into the arms of one rescuer with green eyes. None of my captors had green eyes."

She sucked in a shaky breath, wiping away the tears. "I was taken outside and that's when a news reporter driving by with an Army unit saw it. Scooping up the story of a lifetime, a female officer being rescued. The CIA and NSA had the story spun into the mess you read on the internet. That's why I was given the medals on the desk. I had saved two of my men, protected precious intel, and done my job by taking out all seven very terrible humans. I did almost die from the infection from my wounds and the damage from starvation and dehydration I faced, but the news and the PR teams all spun it around. Making me a hero who kept her country's secrets intact."

Victoria lifted up her shirt with a shaky hand, just enough to reveal the very large, white puckered scar that started right above her hip and carried up to the middle of her back. It was the width of a tablet screen. I could tell that a plastic surgeon had tried, but there was so much damage done, no one would ever be able to make that part of Victoria disappear. I clenched my own tears back as she looked in my eyes and ran her hands over the scar. "How can I ever ask anyone to live with this, love this? This is who I am, Alex." She dropped the shirt back down and waved her hand over the file and medals on her desk, "That is who I am. That is what I don't want anyone to see and have never let anyone see until you, Alex."

Victoria suddenly stopped and let out a breath, covering her face with her hands as she fell to sit on the edge of the desk, "I was a hero in everyone's eyes, but I'm not. I'm an idiot who followed orders, lost three good people and dragged a handful of others through the mess that came after." She started sobbing so hard, she gasped for breaths, mumbling, "I'm not safe to love, I'm a killer."

I stared at Victoria, slowly absorbing as much as I could of the deluge of information she threw at me. The graphic details of her story matching up to the pictures I had seen, but none of that shook me to my foundation more than looking at the blonde woman sobbing uncontrollably on the edge of her couch.

Victoria never cried.

Never.

Not like this. Not like her entire world had just broken apart in the matter of the time it took her to tell me the shattered bits of pieces of a series of days ten years ago. The way she curled up into herself, her palms pressed against her face as I had seen so many times before in so many others as the doctor delivered the final news, but this was different. This was the woman I loved. Watching her like this hurt to the core.

Out of instinct of from my years of being a nurse, and the fact that this was the woman I loved with all my heart, I rushed over to Victoria, wrapped her up in my arms and held her tightly against my chest. It took a moment for her to unfold her arms, but when she did, she threw them around me. Holding me as tight as she could, making my ribs hurt from the pressure of her strong arms embracing me. Victoria's sobs grew in intensity as she buried her face into the side of my neck and cried for what, I was sure, was the first time in almost ten years.

I held on to the blonde, letting her cry as I bit back my own tears, whispering in her ear, "I will always love you, Victoria. No matter what, I love you. I always have. I'm never going to leave you." After I spoke the words, I realized that Victoria had finally let me in completely. Showing me all of her scars, making me wanted to repel the fear I would walk away like all the others. Wipe out the fear that after everything she told me, I wouldn't want her just like so many who came before me.

She embraced me harder, heaving out another sob, before we let silence fill the air. I continue to hold onto for however long I needed to. For however long it took for Victoria to feel like she could breathe without the weight of all the secrets she had carried for so long.

I held Victoria for an hour, letting her take her time and when I felt her body grow heavier in my arms, I said nothing. I only leaned back, wiped her cheeks and pushed back her hair as she kept her eyes down, focused on whatever it was in front of her. I took her by the arm and wordlessly helped her upstairs to her bed. She collapsed onto the mattress and passed out on top of the blankets. I knew Victoria was beyond emotionally drained from crying as much as she had and letting out buried secrets.

Covering her up with a blanket I found in the closet, I left her and went back downstairs to the den. Slowly starting to pick up the bits and pieces she had laid out, returning the medals to their proper places in the shadowbox. When I was done, I set the shadowbox where it always sat behind her desk, collected the file with the patches and set them in a neat pile next to the shadowbox.

As I turned to walk away, everything Victoria told me, finally struck me and I broke down and fell into the large leather desk chair. I let my own tears and sobs finally come, as they had wanted to halfway through Victoria's story. I covered my face, feeling the tears pool in my palms. The nurse facade had held strong for long enough, I couldn't keep it up anymore after everything I had seen and heard.

I felt guilty for, in some way, forcing her to revisit a time in her life that she should never have to. Forcing her to bring out the old memories of how she survived at the hands of evil and how she felt she became that same evil in order to survive. I finally understood so much about Victoria and why she was so detached. Now I was driven to prove to her that she could have all the things she wanted, or thought she couldn't have. I would be there to love her, hold her up and be the strength she needed to see that she wasn't a killer, a monster, or an idiot. She was human and deserved to be loved regardless of her past.

I sighed, wiping away the tears and stood up from the desk and walked to my bag. I grabbed a few of the articles of clothing I had brought back and changed into them. It was close to five in the morning and I was in no shape to drive home. I also wanted to be here in the morning when Victoria woke up. I wanted her to know that I was still in this with her, now more than ever.

Letting out a shaky, tired breath, I grabbed a blanket from off a chair in the den and headed back to the couch I had slept on the first night I stayed over.

I fell asleep the second my head hit the pillow.

Curled up in a ball in the middle of my bed, I stared at the thick rectangle of light that had sat on the floor in my bedroom, lighting up a perfect square of the hardwood floor. I had been staring at it for an endless amount of time since my eyes flicked open when the alarm went off.

I didn't move. I just laid in the middle of my bed, grasping to the edge of the blanket over my shoulder. I felt like I had that first day I was in the hospital after Dani found me. Numb, empty and afraid.

I couldn't remember much about last night after I lost control and ended up sobbing. I had not cried, or let out any emotion like I did last night, in years. Waking up I felt like I had been hit by a truck and my heart hurt. It hurt because of the look on Alex's face as I drowned her in facts, pictures and hard truths about my scar and that I killed seven men like it was nothing. Like they were nothing, and they were the first of many to come in my life after that day.