Darrell came to stand behind me. His hands settled on my arms, but my body was tense and unyielding under his touch.
“Tell me it’s something else,” I said.
He stayed silent, and I swallowed.
“It’s only for defense. Right? One of those missiles that shoots down other missiles.” My voice was thin and strained, almost lost in the huge room.
He didn’t speak, didn’t even shake his head. He just rested his brow against the back of my head. I wanted to understand. I wanted to find a way for it to be okay.
“What does it do?” I swallowed. “What does it...destroy?”
He took a deep breath and then let it out. When he spoke, it sounded like each word cut him like a knife. “The nose cone is designed to hold a 300 kiloton warhead.”
I’d heard that word kiloton on old war documentaries. I knew what it meant, but I had to be sure. “What will that do?”
He swallowed. “Destroy a city. This is one of six—we call them MIRVs—that sit inside a....” He broke off and sighed. I knew, somehow, that he’d closed his eyes behind me, unable to look anymore. “Six of these will eventually sit inside the main missile. Six cities.”
I was shaking. I didn’t know when I’d started, but I couldn’t stop. “Tell me...tell me there’s none of me in there.” I tried to swallow. “Tell me you’re working on something else as well. Tell me—” I could feel myself starting to cry, and broke off.
He walked around me and stood next to it, the scientist next to his monster. In his eyes, I could see how much pain this was causing him, but I could see he was desperate to give me the truth, too. He pointed to the guts of it, the black cylinders on their piano wires. “I made it able to shift its weight. It can twist by pulling all the weight suddenly to one side, or change course by pulling all the weight forward or back.”
“Just like me,” I said tightly.
He nodded.
I could feel tears rolling down my cheeks and balled my hands into fists, because I didn’t want him to see me cry. I wanted to be strong, dammit. I wanted him to know how angry I was.
“I don’t...” I shook my head. “I don’t want to be part of...this.”
He put his hands up in defense. “I didn’t mean to hurt you—”
“You lied to me. You got me in here to dance and the whole time you were building this.” I shook my head. “What did you think my reaction was going to be?” I was rewinding in my head through everything that had happened. “This is where all the money comes from? This is what Carol and you fought over?” Suddenly the peacenik comment made sense. “She thought I knew, didn’t she? She thought I was dragging you away from it.”
“We fought because I was having doubts. Ever since you came along.” His voice was tight now, growing angry. He’d stepped between me and the missile, as if to protect it.
“Well, they didn’t stop you, did they?” I could hear the bitterness in my voice and hated it, but at that moment, I hated him for lying to me even more.
“It’s not that simple.”
I thought I’d misheard. “Yes it is, Darrell! God...yes it is! Building this stuff, thinking up ways to destroy cities—yes, that’s wrong! Why is that even a question for you?”
“It isn’t. That. Simple.” He grated the words out. I could see that vicious anger that I’d glimpsed when he’d had his nightmare clawing its way to the surface, but I was past caring.
“Then tell me!” I was still crying, but the tears were silent and cold now, frozen by the fear that I was about to lose him forever. Because after this, I didn’t see how we could possibly go on. “Tell me! Tell me your good reason for doing this!”
And so, head down and his black hair flopping over his eyes, he told me. He told me about the day he’d watched his parents die. He told me about coming back to the US and embarking on his path of revenge, building something to strike back at the people who’d ripped his mom and dad from him. He told me about Carol, about how she’d told him he was doing the right thing and encouraged him to continue after that first time. She’d even helped him choose the mansion and arranged the contractors to build his workshop.
I stood there listening in growing horror. There were very few people I actually hated, but this woman who’d used and corrupted him, forced his growth in a direction that suited her...I hated her more than anyone I’d ever known.
When I’d demanded an explanation, I hadn’t thought there was anything he could say that would justify what he’d done. I just wanted to hear his side of it—I figured I owed him that. But as he told me, I did understand. I could see exactly why he’d done it. I just had no idea if I could save him.
When he’d finished, we both stood there in silence for a moment. I knew I had to choose my words carefully, even as I reeled in shock. “Darrell...I’m sorry.”
He nodded. I could see he was trying not to cry. I’d just forced him to relive it all.
“But....” I stepped in close and put my hands on his chest. “Darrell, you have to see, she’s using you. She should never have let you get into this.”
“It was my choice. I went to her with my first design.” A defensive note in his voice.
“You were nineteen! And in the middle of grieving! She should have made you get help—counseling, something.”
He shook his head. “She said that wouldn’t help.”
Hate for this woman was bubbling up inside me like boiling tar. She’d taken this perfect, loving man and made him live in misery and barely repressed rage for four years, just so she could get rich. “She’s using you,” I said again. “Darrell, you have to see that. Maybe the first time—I don’t know—maybe that was okay, maybe you needed to take revenge. But this”—I indicated the missile—“this has nothing to do with your parents. It has nothing to do with the Middle East and terrorists. This is for wiping out another country!”
He just stared at me, and for once, those beautiful eyes weren’t clear and honest. They were clouded by something. By her. “I can’t,” he told me. “I can’t just walk away. I thought maybe I could, but I can’t.”
I was going out of my mind. I could see how tightly she’d ensnared him, and I didn’t know how to cut him free. “Why?”
His eyes were brimming with tears. “I can’t forget about them.”
I threw my arms around him. “You wouldn’t be forgetting about them! Darrell, you wouldn’t be—there are other ways, there are better ways of remembering them!”
He wasn’t hugging me back. “You don’t understand. If I don’t do this—if I don’t work every hour I can—it’s like I don’t....” He sighed. “You wouldn’t understand.”
And then I knew. The realization was like being on the downward plunge of a rollercoaster, my stomach dropping a million feet as I saw how I could save him. There was only one way to connect with him, one way to let him know he wasn’t alone in his pain.
God, not that. Please not that.
But I could see him turning inward, closing down. I only had this one chance to make him see.
“I do understand,” I said very quietly. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
Chapter Thirty Five
Natasha
Six years earlier
Mom gets me to recite her cell number for like the eightieth time and Dad makes me promise to get to bed by ten because it’s a school night tomorrow. I wait until I hear their car leave the drive, then give it another five minutes—just to be sure. Mom said they’d be back by midnight. It’s eight-thirty—I have half an hour before he gets here.
I get out of the jeans and t-shirt I was wearing and into the dress I bought secretly and snuck home from the mall. Black, with a scoop neck and a short skirt. If Mom saw it she’d say it was a little too daring for fifteen and Dad would never let me leave the house. Not that I have any intention of leaving the house tonight.
Craig’s coming over.
I have to go to the bathroom to do my make-up. I don’t have a mirror in my room, because I’m camped out in the den downstairs while Dad lays a new floor in my real bedroom—a job he started a week ago and still hasn’t quite figured out how to finish. I love him, but sometimes I just wish he’d admit his shortcomings and hire a handyman.
I’m quick, because I’ve been planning exactly what I’m going to do for days. Heck, I’ve been planning the whole night for days. I carefully paint dark lips and artfully smudged grey eye shadow. I wish my hair was black but apart from that, I figure I carry the goth look off pretty well. Craig’s going to love it.
I run through to the lounge to start getting stuff ready. I’ve bought some long lengths of black silk from a fabric shop. Well, I’d wanted silk, but silk was seriously expensive. This stuff looks cheap and ragged-edged, but I’m hoping it’ll look better when I turn the lights out. I use tape to fix it to the walls, because thumbtacks would mark the wallpaper. Soon it hangs in long, graceful curves overhead, making the place look like some sort of Bedouin tent.
I get out the candles and just go mental with them, putting them all around the edges of the room, on the table, on the windowsills.... By the time I get them all lit it’s just after nine, but the room looks amazing. Everything’s in flickering, romantic half-shadow, and when I check myself in the mirror it totally hides the couple of pimples I was worried about. Craig’s not going to be able to resist me. I think tonight might be the night we finally do it. I’m so excited I actually have to resist clapping my hands together. I’m ready! Then one of the candles goes out and the little coil of smoke sets the smoke alarm off, so I have to climb up on a chair and yank the battery. OK...now I’m ready.
It’s been slow and gentle so far with him. We’ve been dating for three weeks, but it’s sooo hard to get time alone together, with both sets of parents watching us like hawks. Thank God for Dad’s company party tonight. I swear, it’s the only night they actually go out each year.
I hear his knock at the door just as I remember the finishing touch—the bottle of vodka some guy at work gave Dad. I am grounded like forever if he finds out, but that bottle’s been sitting there half-empty for over a year. I figure that if we only have a little bit and top it up with water, he’ll never know.
I answer the door and Craig’s standing there grinning, tight black t-shirt over his whipcord body. The guy barely eats—part of the whole goth thing, I guess—but he’s cute as hell and smart and funny. I can feel my heart racing, every moment of my life up to now fading away into insignificance. Tonight is the night!
I throw some cushions down on the floor and we lie there in the candlelight, laughing and talking and occasionally kissing. I try some vodka and Jeez it burns. How do people drink this stuff? But I feel all warm and mellow inside, so I drink a little more. The talking dies away and there’s more kissing and more vodka and I’m seriously thinking that tonight it’s going to happen when I hear the sound I really don’t want to hear: car tires on gravel.