SAN YSIDRO
MONDAY, 11:20 A.M.
GRACE FOLLOWED FAROE THROUGH the wind and stinging grit until she stood just behind him on the beach. Distant thunder blended with the relentless pounding of storm surf. Salt spray and a foretaste of rain stole light from the air, turning morning to evening. There was no horizon, simply the wild blending of sky, sea, and storm.
“Am I part of the hive?” she asked above the wind.
Without turning away from the sea, Faroe held his hand out. “I’m thinking about Lane.”
She laced her fingers through Faroe’s hand.
“I’m thinking about the time I didn’t have with him,” Faroe said, gripping her hand. “The first time he walked, the first word he said. I’m wondering if he was like the toddler I saw in Peru, who pointed at the surf and said ‘laughing water’ and then he laughed with it. Joy. Innocence. Openness. The things Lane had to lose to survive.”
Grace didn’t say anything. She simply held Faroe’s hand.
“Then I think about all the other times I wasn’t there,” Faroe said. “The first time Lane got bloody protecting someone smaller. The first time he sucked it up and didn’t cry because crying didn’t get the job done. The first time his voice broke. The first time he looked at a girl and felt like his skin was too small.”
Grace told herself the cool moisture on her face was salt spray.
“Now Lane is as old as a lot of the soldiers in too many of the regular and irregular armies around the world,” Faroe said. “More innocent maybe-until forty-eight hours ago.”
She lifted his hand and put her cheek against it.
“I’m used to violence, to death,” Faroe said. “Not indifferent to it. Just not surprised. I can accept that I won’t see the next sunset, but not Lane. Not Lane. And there’s damn little I can do to prevent it. So damn little. So I have to trust in greed and violence, because they’re reliable weapons and innocence isn’t.” Faroe’s fingers tightened, then slid away from her grip. “So be it.”
“Can you forgive me?” Grace asked, feeling cold, watching the coming storm with eyes that didn’t see.
Faroe skimmed the back of his fingers over her cheeks, her tears, her wind-tangled hair.
“The ‘honors’ were about even on both sides,” he said. “So yes, I forgive you for knowing I wasn’t what you needed all those years ago. Have you forgiven me?”
“Yes,” she said.
For an instant his fingers clenched. “Now all I have to do is forgive myself.”
She made a sound that could have been laughter, but wasn’t. “Same here.”
His hand slid out of her hair and to his belt, where the satellite phone was holstered. He started to punch in a number, then stopped.
“Go talk to Steele, amada. I’ll only be a few minutes.”
“Does this have to do with Lane?”
“Yes.”
Grace didn’t leave.
Faroe didn’t ask again.