Chapter 13
“Did you come for me?” she asked, her voice a tiny silver thread in the wind.
“Yes,” I said. “I came for you.”
She leaned forward and buried her face in my shoulder. I held her with my good arm, and with my broken one, I pulled the blanket tighter around her.
I sat there in the snow, in the middle of a war zone, holding a child I had never met, while my hand vibrated against her back.
And for the first time since that day in Syria, the crying in my head stopped.
The flight back to the States was different.
The C-17 was quiet. Cross sat in the corner, staring at me with a newfound respect that bordered on awe. Hayes remained in the shadows, already planning his next move, his next “miracle.”
I sat by the cargo door, looking out at the clouds.
I reached down and unclipped the mechanical brace from my arm. It fell to the floor with a heavy metallic thud.
I looked at my hand. It was still shaking. It would probably shake for the rest of my life.
But I realized I didn’t need the brace to be a sniper. I didn’t need to be “fixed” to be whole. The tremor wasn’t my weakness; it was my scars. And scars are just proof that you survived.
When we landed at Nellis, the sun was just beginning to rise over the Nevada desert.
Hayes walked up to me on the tarmac. He held out a thin manila envelope.
“There’s a lot of people who want to talk to you, Jocelyn,” Hayes said. “The Pentagon. Research and Development. They want to know how you made that shot with a dead battery. They want to talk about ‘organic stabilization.'”
I looked at the envelope. I knew what was inside. A new contract. A new life in the shadows. A way to be “useful” again.
I looked past him, toward the horizon.
“Tell them I’m busy,” I said.
“Doing what?” Hayes asked, his brow furrowed.
I looked at my hand. It was twitching in the morning light.
“Living,” I said.
I turned and walked away from the black SUVs, the high-altitude drones, and the men who dealt in miracles. I walked toward my old, beat-up pickup truck parked at the edge of the base.
As I drove out of the gates, I rolled down the window. The warm desert air rushed in, smelling of sagebrush and freedom.
I reached out into the wind with my right hand.
It shook. It danced. It vibrated.
And I didn’t mind one bit.
Because I knew that when the world went dark, and the wind began to howl, and a life was on the line…
I was still the woman who could hit a candle at three thousand meters.
Broken hands and all.
