Chapter 40

Three days later—Tuesday, December 23

"I need to talk to you," Stephanie's tone was serious.

Oh, fuck, this is it. I knew it was inevitable, but Stephanie isn't the only one around here that does denial. "Sure, Babe. About what?"

"Can we go sit down?"

At my nod she walked into the living room and sat down in the armchair. Not in her normal spot on the couch. Double fuck.

I grabbed a couple bottles of water from the refrigerator and handed her one before dropping onto the couch opposite her.

"What do you want to talk about, Babe?" Still in denial, praying it was something else, anything else.

"I really want to understand. Could you tell me about him? I need to know the whole story."

My stomach flared up, shooting pain through my chest, but I locked down and kept my face neutral. "It's classified. I can't talk about it."

"He kidnapped me… He hooked me on drugs… He whipped me, and raped me, and sold me into prostitution… He ruined my life." Every bullet point of the horrors Stephanie had experienced was another knife in my gut. "He said it was because of you, and what you did to his family. Don't you think I deserve to know the truth? To know about you?"

"The truth is, what happened to him was a long time ago. My life has changed and I've changed. I'm not the same man I was then."

"I need to know you, every part of you, even what you were back then. Not knowing is holding me back, keeping me from healing. Knowing will help me move on, put it all behind me."

I slowly shook my head. I didn't want to have to tell her. I didn't want to see the disappointment in her eyes.

Her shoulders slumped and I saw the disappointment anyway. Disappointment with me. It broke my heart.

My exhale was audible. If telling her would help her heal from the atrocities that were perpetrated upon her because of me, then I should tell her, no matter what the consequences to myself.

"Let me make a phone call," I said, getting up from the couch, "If you need to know, I'll see if I can get clearance to tell you."

I pulled out my phone and walked through the bedroom into my office.

A few minutes later I came back out carrying a single sheet of paper. "Babe, this is a secrecy agreement. It says you agree never to reveal any confidential information you learn working with RangeMan and the Defense Department. If you sign this, I can tell you about that one mission."

She skimmed it and signed.

Leaving the paper and pen lying on the coffee table between us I sat back down on the couch. I didn't want to see her reaction to my words, but I leaned forward, forearms on my knees, hands clasped between my legs, and forced myself to look her in the eye. Trying to remain expressionless I began.

"Santiago Torres was a drug lord in South America, high up in the drug distribution hierarchy. He was harming thousands of people with the drugs he moved through his territory and on to pipelines into the United States and other countries. Our mission was to capture him, extract information about those above him in the production and distribution chain, and then terminate him."

I took a sip of water before continuing. "Besides distributing drugs, he was twisted and evil. He was known as El Látigo, the Whip, because of what he liked to do." Stephanie's expressive face showed what she was feeling, and I stopped trying to hide my pain.

"He took prostitutes and kept them prisoner for months at a time, using them the way he used you, and even worse. None of them lived to tell about it." I shifted my weight, not wanting to squirm but unable to hold still.

"Through some local contacts we were able to find one of the houses where he was keeping a woman. She was…" I stopped and swallowed, thinking about how much worse it was than what he had done to Stephanie. "She was very bad, barely alive, but he had taken her to his home for a few days when nobody else was there, and she told us where it was."

I drank again, a delaying tactic, but I could only hold off so long. "We watched his house for several days. There were a couple of servants with his wife and son, but El Látigo wasn't there, so we waited. When he came home we took the house. We locked the servants and family in a secured room in the basement and went to work on El Látigo."

I couldn't keep my eyes on Stephanie's anymore, and I lowered my head, elbows on my knees, pressing the heels of my hands against my eyes.

"My team and I tortured him off and on for two days, but no matter what we did he wouldn't talk. As a last resort we brought his family in. We burned his wife with a cigarette, listening to her screaming and crying and begging him to tell us what we wanted to know. But he still didn't say a word. So we got his son. He was about a year old, and we only had to burn him once to make El Látigo spill everything."

I looked up at the revulsion on her face and knew I'd lost any chance I ever had with her. I put my head back in my hands and finished the story blindly, compulsively, wanting her to know every last detail of my atrocities.

"We left them all there locked in the basement of the mansion and set charges. We couldn't leave any witnesses, and it was designed to be an example for others who might be tempted to move in and take over the business. The house went up like an ammo dump, blowing a huge hole in the jungle. I still have no idea how El Látigo could have survived it."

It was important to me that she understood that some good had come from the appalling things I'd done. "We followed orders and did what was required to complete the mission, and the intel allowed us to shut down the drug business in almost half of South America. I can't say exactly how many lives we saved by doing that, but I'm positive there were many."

While I was confessing, I decided to make a thorough job of it. "That wasn't an isolated incident, Stephanie. For more than half of the eight years I was in Rangers and Special Ops I performed missions like that. There's nothing you can imagine more horrendous than the things I did in the name of my country."

The pain in my stomach was intense, but nowhere near the potency of the pain in my heart. I kept my face hidden in my hands and doubled over to try to ease my agony, waiting for Stephanie to get her things and leave.

She got up from the chair and walked out of the room, and I was lost. Hot tears scalded my cheeks and the acid burned and churned in my gut.

oOo

Chapter 41

I was so engulfed by my anguish that I was unaware that Stephanie had come back into the room until cool fingers curved around the back of my neck.

"Here," she said, handing me the box of tissues from the bathroom. She grabbed a couple of tissues for herself and mopped tears from her face as she sat down on the couch next to me.

"Babe." I could barely get the word out. I felt a faint welling of hope deep inside me, but I ruthlessly quashed it. She was just being kind, taking care of me in my distress the way I took care of her when she had nightmares.

"It's all right, Ranger," she said, putting her hand back on my neck and using gentle pressure to turn my head so she could see my face. "I understand now." She used the same words I remembered saying to her after her nightmare. "It's okay. I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere."

I felt like a condemned man granted a full pardon.

She used a hand on my chest to push me upright against the back of the sofa. Keeping her eyes locked with mine she climbed onto my lap, straddling me, cradling my face in the palms of her hands and using her thumbs to wipe the moisture from my cheeks.

"Practically every appointment I've had with Carole for the past three months has ended up being about you," she said. "Carole never tells me what to do, but she asks questions that make me think."

"I don't understand, Babe."

"Like about our history, before… him. I'm not sure you know how much I loved you." Her use of the past tense was a deep freeze in my chest, turning my heart cold and brittle, ready to shatter with the lightest tap. "That's the reason I was on-again off-again with Joe, couldn't commit to him. I was only with Joe because you wouldn't open up to me, wouldn't allow a relationship in your life."

I encircled her tiny waist with my hands. "I was a fool, Stephanie. Sending you back to him was the stupidest thing I've ever done. I'm so sorry you had to pay for my stupidity."

Her look was serious. "I thought I hated you for being the cause of what happened to me. I thought I never wanted to see you again. But that's what almost destroyed me."

"I still don't understand."

"It wasn't you I hated; it was myself, because I couldn't stop loving you." Hope was battering my chest like a jackhammer chipping away the ice.

She continued to hold my face in both hands, her blue gaze burning like napalm. "After what he told me about you, I felt betrayed. I thought I loved you because in my heart I knew that you were a good man. If I was wrong, if you were evil and soulless, then how could I still love you?"

The tears that had been brimming overflowed her eyes, and I pulled her tight to me, murmuring into her hair, "I didn't want you to know about my past, what I was. My life has changed and I've changed. You made me want to be a better man, Babe. Because of you I am a better man."

Her arms slid around my neck. "What I went through taught me that between you and me there's no good or evil, no judging, no worthiness or unworthiness. There's just love. It's there, no matter what happens."

Her mouth came up, her lips seeking mine, and I kissed her, tenderness mingled with relief, my heart warming like the spring sun melts away the winter ice.

"I love you, Ranger," she murmured against my lips.

I pulled back and stared into her eyes until they focused on me. "Carlos, Babe," I commanded. "It's not Ranger, not Batman, not any kind of superhero or larger-than-life image. It's just me, Carlos. I love you, Stephanie."

"I love you, Carlos."

oOo

Stephanie and I spent Christmas alone in the apartment, snuggled on the couch, watching TV, listening to music, and talking. Since it had only been a week since she moved in with me, we decided to forego the gifts for this year and just enjoy our first Christmas together. The first of many, I hoped.

She called her mother on Christmas Eve and told her that she hadn't been well enough to do any shopping, and wasn't up to the pressure of a family holiday. Her mother argued, but Stephanie held firm to both her opinion and my hand as she talked. She appeased her mother by promising to bring me to dinner in a few weeks and exchange gifts then.

My family hadn't seen me at Christmastime for years, and didn't expect to. Ella took care of sending them the usual gifts.

oOo

A week-and-a-half later—Friday, January 2

Stephanie cuddled into my side as we sat on the couch. "Carlos, I was wondering… When he took me, how did you ever find me?"

Every Tuesday and Friday after Stephanie saw Carole, she had questions for me. Over those first few weeks together we talked more than in the whole three previous years we'd known each other. She told me what she remembered about what happened to her, mercifully hazy because of all the drugs El Látigo forced into her. I made a genuine effort to open up, revealing myself to her the way her open countenance and innocent heart always revealed her innermost thoughts to me.

"Well, Babe, you know about the federal task force, right?"

"What task force?"

"Didn't Morelli tell you about it?"

"Actually… Joe never mentioned my kidnapping. We never talked about it at all."

I pulled her into my lap, turning her so that I could see her face. "Didn't you ask him about it? He spent more than a month looking for you."

"No… I… We didn't really talk much at all. He talked about his friends and family, sometimes about his work and stuff, but I guess he didn't want to upset me by reminding me of what happened. And by the time I started seeing Carole and beginning to face it, I never asked him."

"Do you want to hear the whole thing, Babe? Right from the night we found you were missing?"

"Yes, please."

I spilled my guts, told her the whole story, sharing not only the facts, but my feelings, the pain, the guilt, the regret, the determination to never give up, even after the task force was disbanded.

And I told her about El Látigo's end.

Her nightmares about him stopped for good after that.

Later I tried to explain to Stephanie why I thought my life didn't lend itself to relationships, but it sounded pretty lame, even to me. I'd been using that as an excuse for years, deluding myself that it was to protect her but in actuality protecting myself from the effort that would be required to maintain a relationship.

Stephanie's kidnapping was the catalyst that caused me to pull my head out of my ass. Stephanie forgave me, her innate goodness allowing her to do that, but I don't think I'll ever forgive myself. And I'll never forget.

TBC—Last chapter and epilogue next.