CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“I hurt people,” Billboard spewed, almost before they’d had a chance to settle.

O’Shea’s first impulse was to refute his words, but she bit her tongue, knowing Billboard had to let things out in his own way, in his own time.

She already knew that his secondary duty in the service—after flying helicopters—had been questioning insurgents. She just didn’t know the extent of it.

“And I did it on purpose,” he clipped, then scoffed. “Officially they called it ‘interogation’, but it doesn’t matter what authoritarian name you give it, the stuff I carried out was torture.”

O’Shea wiggled in Billboard’s arms, getting as close to his body as possible. She still didn’t want to interrupt, but she could show solidarity with her physical presence.

His arm tightened around her, and they stayed that way for what seemed like a long time, with Billboard not giving her any more to go on.

Well, maybe he needed a small nudge. “Can you tell more than that, Billboard?” she urged him gently.

He groaned. “Yeah. I can. You see, what nobody knew, or at least what most people weren’t aware of, was that I hated that job. It was given to me because I had a history of being able to intimidate people with only a look. When my commanding officer got wind of that, he recruited me for his own purposes, then…upped the ante.”

O’Shea had to speak out again. “That’s not on you, Billboard. He was your superior. You were doing what you were ordered to do.”

“But I never told him no during the times he asserted there was no viable alternative for extracting information.”

His chest heaved under her cheek. “Maybe if I had denied him more often, my punishment, if I’d refused, wouldn’t have been so bad. He needed me, after all, for my piloting skills, so I might have gotten away with a write-up for insubordination.”

“But you don’t believe that.” O’Shea was certain that Billboard would have been able to read the situation, and done everything he could not to be railroaded into something that went so blatantly against his morals.

He huffed. “Maybe. Maybe not. My CO was a blood-thirsty prick, and he probably would have made an example of me if I’d declined to do as ordered.” Billboard took a deep, shuddery breath, and began to explain.

“At first it was all about intimidation, and that I understood,” he managed. “My presence alone, looking big and mean, was often enough to get the information we needed from a detainee about their planned terror attacks. But as time went on, word must have gotten around that I wasn’t anything but talk, because our prisoners began refusing to spill their plans.”

O’Shea could feel Billboard’s entire body stiffen.

“Me and the guys on my team discussed how to up the ante, and almost as a joke, we started putting together what we called a ‘torture kit’. It had everything in it from tin-snips to blow torches, and we designed it to fit in a pack that would open up flat and have everything on display. We all figured that since my ugly mug had stopped being scary, our little array would do the trick. And it did, for a while.” He hesitated, then spit out, “Little did I know that our hastily assembled paraphernalia would soon become the tools of my trade for the next several months.”

There were so many things O’Shea wanted to say.

She wanted to rail at his superior for putting him in such an untenable situation. She wanted to soothe Billboard, telling him it wasn’t an evil within him that had caused this, but an evil outside himself that he couldn’t control.

He had, however, begun talking again.

“I did things with those implements, O’Shea… Things that no human being should have to be witness to, let alone perform. In one particular instance, I—”

O’Shea couldn’t help herself.

This time she cut him off.

“Billboard, you don’t have to go into detail,” she assured him. “Which doesn’t mean you have to be quiet about it. I’m not squeamish, so I’ll listen if you want to tell me the things you were forced to do. That’s if you think they’re necessary for your healing. But if saying that shit out loud is going to make you relive moments you’d rather not, then don’t go there, because I can read between the lines.”

With that off her chest, O’Shea settled down again. She’d wait to hear what else Billboard needed to spew, and only open her mouth if she had something pertinent to say that would point out the misconceptions regarding his supposed guilt.

“I…I’d rather not go into detail. Thanks.” He ran his free hand through his hair. “I’ve been over and over the minutia with Doc Ed, and it’s helped. She’s helped take my self-reproach down several notches. But every time we go there, into the actual nitty-gritty of what I did, I still…” He groaned through clenched lips. “Let me back up.”

He took a minute to regroup, and O’Shea was patient, stroking his chest comfortingly.

“After each interogation, after I extracted the information our CO deemed necessary, I’d rush off to the latrine and puke my guts out. I wish I could say it purged me of my shame, but it didn’t. Nightmares always followed. And just to show you how much a part of me the whole thing still is, even though the night-terrors have abated, when I reveal new things to Doctor Ed, I end up vomiting every time, as if I were back in that shithole of a base, still committing atrocities.”

He turned his head away, as if ashamed, bending his arm and crooking an elbow over his eyes as if he could hide.

O’Shea bristled. She’d heard enough.

“Billboard,” she implored. “Look at me.”

He didn’t move. “Why? So you can tell me to my face what a monster I am?”

“No,” she answered as patiently as she was able with the acid eating at her gut over how the Marines had failed her man. “So I can ask you a few things.”

He complied slowly, despite his fears, turning tear-filled, troubled orbs to hers.

“Okay. I’ll try to give you answers to the best of my ability,” he replied stoically.

O’Shea pulled her thoughts together and began.

“I’m sure your therapist has already put forth a few of these things, but maybe coming from me, someone who…cares deeply for you, it might make a bigger impact.”

O’Shea had almost said “love”, but now was not the time to muddy the waters. It was time to clear away the murk that clouded Billboard’s relentless stream of self-condemnation.

“First,” she questioned, “did you derive any pleasure whatsoever while doing what you did?”

He flinched and regarded her with disbelief in his set jaw. “No. Of course not. No decent human being could.”

O’Shea was not intimidated.

“Exactly. Because you are a decent human being.” She wiped away a tear that had somehow escaped the corner of his eye, and asked another question.

“If you could have said no to the role you were given; if you knew you wouldn’t suffer any consequences from your CO by refusing, would you have continued, or would you have taken the out and walked away?”

Billboard snorted uncomfortably. “I would have…”

He suddenly looked so conflicted that O’Shea felt bad for asking such a probing question, but with difficulty, she gave him time to phrase his answer.

“I…actually don’t know. I was the senior member of our team, and if I hadn’t done it… Dammit, O’Shea. One of my team would have had to take it on, and then they’d be stuck with the demons that haunt me. I’d never wish that on any of them.”

There was his kind soul again, if only he could see it.

“Okay,” O’Shea agreed. “But let’s say none of your buddies would have had to take up the gauntlet.”

“Then I would have told our commander where to stuff it,” Billboard replied swiftly and gruffly.

O’Shea nodded against him. But now…

“This last question is the hardest,” O’Shea warned, but she went ahead with it before she could overthink on pushing him. “Did you gain valuable information using the…methods you employed? Did your actions save lives, Billboard?”

His whole body tensed. “I’ve thought about this, endlessly, and revisited it with Doctor Ed, but regardless of the answer I’m about to give you, it hasn’t eased my remorse.”

“I understand that,” O’Shea answered firmly. “But I still want to hear whether or not your actions made a difference.”

Billboard sighed. “Yes. In every instance where I complied with orders, it either saved a village from being captured, or kept civilians—women and children—from being slaughtered. Sometimes the intel warned of rogue factions who were planning to launch surprise attacks on our base, which we were able to combat once we found out.” His face held pain. “But knowing that doesn’t help, because my brain keeps asking, does the end justify the means?”

That query, O’Shea could tell, came from deep within Billboard’s heart, and she wanted to back off, but she couldn’t soften yet.

“I’ll piggy-back on that, then,” O’Shea stated, needing desperately to make her case. “If you hadn’t extracted word of those plots from the terrorists, and someone on your team had been killed because you lacked that intelligence…” She let that hang and posed a second scenario. “Or let’s say you’d become friendly with some of the kids in a village that was in the terrorists’ path for destruction, how would you have felt if any of them had been slaughtered?”

“I… I did know some villagers,” Billboard answered gruffly. “And it would have destroyed me if they, or any of my buddies had been hurt or killed.”

It was exactly the answer she’d expected.

“So, it seems to me that the positive outcomes did make the extraction of information vital,” O’Shea reprised, “even if it went against all your principles.”

Billboard turned and stared at her with creases in his forehead and also bracketing out from around his pinched mouth.

“That’s what eats at me,” Billboard admitted with a shudder. “I didn’t want to do the things I did, but I know I’d do them again given the same circumstances.”

“As would any reasonable human being,” O’Shea assured him, stroking comfortingly at the lines on his face. “You’re a good man, Billboard. A good man who was put in an untenable position. Now we’ll leave all that behind and focus on the here and now. Okay?”

He nodded.

“I’m not going anywhere, Billboard. You’re stuck with me. The only thing that would make me run away from you, was if you didn’t have some kind of remorse. You feel, deeply, and that’s one of the things I adore about you.”

“Adore, huh?” Billboard asked, his face smoothing out.

“Yup. And that being said, I’d love to go back and kick your commanding officer’s ass for saddling you with all this self-doubt,” she added with a growl. “He sounds like a major prick.”

Billboard managed a strained chuckle. “You’ve got that right. The man wasn’t what you’d call, reasonable. There were a few times I sensed we had the wrong person in custody, and I’d outright refuse escalating to physical coercion once I’d made that determination. Even though he knew I was right, for my insubordination in those rare instances, I was thrown in the temporary brig. I know it was a warning of things to come if I continued trying to thwart his orders, so I never pushed him further than those limits.”

O’Shea’s ire rose.

“Yup. I want to find the prick and pound his evil soul into the ground.”

Now, Billboard chuckled. “Okay, Rambo, but just to let you know, he, uh, got his, eventually. I hope that makes my bloodthirsty lady happy.”

“Do tell,” O’Shea cuddled up again, liking that Billboard was looking less stressed; almost amused even, as he recalled his CO’s demise.

“He got too arrogant, too cock-sure of his autonomy, and was caught demanding bribes from the local villages; sometimes money if it was available, but often food for his table, or chickens whose eggs only he was allowed to eat. One of the men he brought in for ‘interrogation’ was actually an elder who’d refused to pay-up. What the man told me during a simple questioning session, floored me.”

“Did you confront the asshole in charge?” O’Shea ground out.

“Nope. I ended up contacting a friend I knew instead who served on an oversight committee. I documented the graft and reported each instance. It didn’t take long before the commander’s ass got hauled off.”

“Good. Now I don’t have to hunt him down.”

Billboard actually chuckled. “No. You don’t. We actually got an awesome replacement; a woman captain who was a lot less bloodthirsty, and really knew her stuff. Everything at camp got better from there.”

“I’m glad that nasty piece of shit got his,” O’Shea stated, and meant it. Some people just weren’t meant for positions of authority.

“Now,” she changed the subject, gave Billboard a sly glance before going up on her knees, sensually sliding a bare leg over his torso to straddle him, “how do I convince you that nothing you’ve said has scared me off?”

He arched up underneath her, his cock growing hard as he rubbed it across her dampening and sensitive crotch.

“Hmm. I’m not sure,” he responded playfully, most of the shadows gone from his eyes, at least for the time being. “Maybe if you put that superior, meddling brain to work, you can think of something.” His voice was gruff.

“Meddling, huh?” she repeated, rocking against his hardness. “I should deny you any rewards for that one, but…”

O’Shea cupped her breasts and leaned forward.

“I might just have to tamper with things a little more, because… I think I have just what you need, right here.”