The Officer and the Secret by Jeanette Murray Page B

out the driver window. “Doing well,” he repeated, voice mocking.
    She could guess. Though she and her parents had stayed close to whatever village or town they’d set up camp in, other missionaries were intent on reaching the truly needy. The ones on battlefields, in the middle of genocides, dying in third-rate hospitals. The horrors they saw, she knew, stayed with them a long time. Sometimes haunted them for years. Though she didn’t go through the trauma with them, she watched as they fought their way through it, as others helped them cope.
    “If you’d rather not—”
    “I have no excuse for this. That’s the worst part. I wasn’t badly hurt. None of my men died, or were even severely injured. Bumps, one broken bone—already healed—and a concussion. Nothing major.”
    Clearly their definition of “nothing major” differed greatly. But she wouldn’t point that out.
    “I think that adds to the problem. It’s bad enough, coming back from that place and having… problems.” His lips twitched up into something resembling a mocking smile. “But knowing there’s no good reason for it makes you feel weaker still.”
    How could he think that? It broke her heart. She bit her lip to stop the burning behind her eyes and just held his hand. Though she doubted he even realized it.
    “It was such a simple thing. I stayed inside the wire ninety percent of the time. Safe, secure.” He laughed, a chilling, unamused sound. “I used to actually complain about that. That I was stuck playing desk jockey while other guys got to get out, have all the fun. Fucked up, right?”
    She said nothing. She’d never heard him curse like that before, and she doubted he’d be happy to know he slipped up later. But now, it was his story and he didn’t need to censor himself.
    “It’s not like I wanted to get into a firefight or anything. But with my job, I just wasn’t expecting such inactivity. You stay inside the wire and you start to forget that there’s so much else going on. Tunnel vision. Mentally and physically, I was on alert. But emotionally, I wasn’t ready or prepared for anything to happen. Like I blocked the possibility out. Though really, how else can you function?”
    She rubbed his arm and silently agreed, even as the thought of Dwayne having to emotionally numb himself made her want to cry. Her tears weren’t going to do anything for him.
    “The one time we had to move operations…” His breath shuddered in and out. “The one time we were going to step out of the wire, and we run over a goddamn IED. Driver tried to swerve it, but it still got us. Humvees are protected, but they’re not impenetrable. They can only take so much before they break. And the bottom on those things aren’t meant to withstand blasts like an MRAP.”
    His voice turned hollow, as if he forgot that he was even talking to someone. “We all walked away. Except for one guy, who had the broken leg. But I mean, compared to the possibility…” He trailed off, then shrugged as if it were no big deal he’d been hit with a bomb and lived to tell about it.
    Veronica listened in horror. Despite living in some of the world’s poorest countries, during some serious conflict, her parents had managed to shelter her enough to keep her from such sights firsthand. She knew they existed, but she’d never left the protection of the missionary camps or their host homes. And yet Dwayne had lived it, lived through it, survived it.
    “I went through the briefs, the required meeting with higher-ups, everything. Over there, I was fine. Pissed, upset, but functioning at the same level. Maybe higher, since I guess my subconscious went on high alert or something. But over here, where there’s no war, nothing to be on alert for, where everyone’s relaxed and it’s business as usual…”
    He looked so lost, as if he couldn’t even figure out how to end the sentence, let alone how to get through the next minute. He had survived a deployment yet was