Page 90 of One Last Promise

“I was an interrogator.”

“Seriously? I mean—don’t get me wrong. I know you’re smart and tough, but?—”

“I scored high on my ASFAB and in the intelligence tests. And I had a gift for languages. I wasn’t involved with anything sketchy like you see in the movies. I vetted female interpreters and sometimes questioned Afghani women who came in with information, and rarely—very rarely—I went to get information with some of my team, connecting with Afghani women who worked as informants.”

“That soundsplentysketchy. Wow. Do you speak Afghani?”

“You mean Dari? Yes.”

He wore what looked like admiration in his eyes.

“What—you thought I just waited tables?” She smiled.

“Clearly, I’m an idiot. You are . . . surprising, Tillie.”

“Don’t beat yourself up too much. I worked hard to slough off my past, become the Tillie who served you late night chicken.” She shrugged. “I liked that Tillie.”

“I like that Tillie too,” he said quietly.

“I’ll bet you’re thinking, How did she go from top security clearance to on the run in Alaska with kidnapping charges?”

He held up his hands. “No judgment here. We all have stories, but . . . yes.”

“The short of it is that I came home after my first deployment and found that Pearl had run away again. Rigger had moved to Florida, and she’d followed him. I found her living with him. He’d started his MMA career, and she was still using. I asked for a transfer to the base in Tampa and got it, and took her away from Miami and put her in treatment. We were good for a year, and then I got deployed onto a ship for my last year. When I came home, she’d moved back to Miami. He’d married while she was away, and she got jealous. I don’t know. . . .” She sighed. “She just couldn’t see herself as deserving better, I think. Anyway, shewas pregnant, and I left active duty and went into the reserves. She was so desperate to be near Rigger that she ran away to Miami and refused to return, so I requested a transfer. They have a reserve base there. And Rigger . . . I don’t know. I was hoping that after the baby came, she’d see what a jerk he was. Unfortunately, for a while, he wasn’t. Maybe he felt guilty, but after the baby came, he started coming around. I’m not sure why—although, seeing how old his kids are now, my guess is that his wife was pregnant with twins then. So yes, a total jerk. But we didn’t know that, and then he asked me if I wanted to earn serious cash.”

She had folded up the takeout bag. Put it in the back. Now she sighed. “I’d gotten in over my head trying to take care of Hazel and Pearl and so I agreed. And I thought I could learn a few things. I did one event and was done.”

“You lost?”

“No, I won, but I . . . I didn’t like it. I wasn’t filled with rage. I was filled with terror. My only goal was to stay alive.”

“Yeah. I’ve seen those bouts. There are some terrifying people in there.”

“Yeah, like Rigger. He was the light heavyweight champion at the time. Billed me as his protégé, so I had to perform. I saw the future, and I tapped out.”

“But you still trained with him.”

“He was furious with me. That’s when I started really seeing the danger. He was getting rough with Pearl, and Hazel too.”

Overhead, a passenger jet took off, rumbling the van.

“I agreed to train for the Iron Maiden to sort of cool him off. But I liked it. It was more than just strength. There was strategy and timing and . . .”

“And you were good at it.”

“I needed to be. We needed the money.”

“Was Pearl using again?”

“No. But Pearl just couldn’t say no to him. SoI decided that we needed to get out of Miami, but I needed cash. I started putting away my win money.”

“And then?”

She frowned.

“You said you could destroy him. How?”

Oh, that. She looked away at the headlights from cars slicing through the night.

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