Lewis looked at him, his dark face nearly invisible in the darkened vehicle. “Would it mess with you?”
“Of course it would,” Peter said. “In fact, it did. You remember when my PTSD was so bad I could barely go inside without a panic attack. All those years in uniform, kicking in doors, going house to house, it fucks with you.”
“But it didn’t stop you.”
“No,” Peter said. “But this isn’t the bad old days, when you and your crew were running and gunning. You’ve got two boys now. And Dinah. What about them?”
Lewis turned forward to look through the windshield for a moment, the wipers slapping back and forth, the road dark and wet before them.
“That night in the snow,” he finally said, “Charlie and Miles learned who I really am. What I’d been back in the day, what I’m capable of now. When I woke up in the hospital, I realized I’d been working real hard to hide it from them. To protect them, I guess. But that wasn’t the right way to go. The right way is to show them how a man can be, what he can do, when he’s got good reason.”
“When he loves his family,” Peter said.
Lewis nodded. “But it’s more than family, ain’t it? It’s everybody else, too. A man’s got to stand up and be useful in this world. Use his skills. Make a damn difference.” Lewis looked at him now, eyes bright in his dark face. “You taught me that.”
“I did?”
“Yeah, you jarhead motherfucker. You did. So here I am.”
“Well,” Peter said. “I appreciate you, brother.”
Lewis nodded again. “Long as we having us a moment, I notice you pretty tightly wrapped. Ready to beat that photographer to death with his own camera.”
Peter stared out at the lights of Maple Valley. His words felt stuck in his throat, or somewhere lower.
Finally he said, “I was supposed to protect her. I was supposed to protect them both.”
“Yeah,” Lewis said kindly. “Put you right back in the sandbox, didn’t it? Losing one of your people got that white static all fired up.”
Peter sighed. He’d lost a lot of guys in Iraq and Afghanistan. Young men under his command, men whose lives were his responsibility. Men with wives and families. It never got easier. But this was different.
“KT didn’t sign up for war,” he said. “Ellie didn’t sign up for any of it. And now…”
Lewis nodded. “Her momma’s dead and her life’s turned upside down. But it coulda been worse. She could be in the hospital or in a pine box. Instead she’s with Manny and Carlotta. They good people, brother. She’ll get through it.”
Peter hoped that was true. “Except that man from KT’s house is still out there. And the voice on that tape? Whoever these assholes are, they’re planning something big.”
Lewis clapped his hand on Peter’s shoulder. “That’s exactly why we here, Jarhead. Put our skills to use. Need be, put some bad dudes in the dirt.”
“Roger that,” Peter said. “But that thing you said before? I just want to be clear. I’m your role model?”
Lewis flashed that tilted smile and whacked Peter on the chest with the back of his hand. “Sheeeit, I knew you was gonna make it weird.”
“Good talk,” Peter said. “Let’s go buy some guns.”
—
At Summit, Lewis pointed him east into the unincorporated foothills, trees looming midnight green at the roadsides. Aside from a few lonely subdivisions carved out of the woods, there was little sign of humanity. The night grew darker. The trees grew taller, closing in.
They slowed through Ravensdale, then again through Kanaskat, which was barely a wide spot in the road. The subdivisions were long behind them. Out his window, Peter could see the flat blackness of the Green River behind the trees, with flashes of white at the gravel bars. They passed logging trucks parked in dirt turnouts, their booms and trailers looking like prehistoric creatures in the wet night. As they gained elevation, the rain turned to sleet.
The Tahoe thumped across a narrow bridge, the river now on their right. Lewis looked at his phone. “Next left, coming up fast. Might be hard to see.”
Peter slowed, then slowed more. Even so, he was past the turn before he saw it, just a small gap in the trees. He braked, reversed, then cranked the wheel. Someone had used a bulldozer to cut a road into the slope of the hillside, angling upward. A long time ago, judging from the size of the trees grown up beside it. Heading up into the darkness, bouncing over the rutted gravel, he was glad the vehicle was four-wheel drive.
“Tell me who we’re buying from,” Peter said.
“Couple of small-time ex-army peckerwood brothers I knew back in the day. Worked for the company armorer, repairing weapons. Knew their stuff. Now they in business for themselves. Got a machine shop way up in the woods, stamp their own AK receivers, build new guns with replacement parts sourced from Poland and Bulgaria.”
