Page 49 of Freedom Fighters
“It wasn’t a precocious brat who stole her uncle’s yacht and came back to Vistaria.”
“I didn’t know what else to do!” Carmen cried. She sat up. “There was nothing for me to do in Acapulco. It wasn’t home. No one could find me somethingto do to help. Minnie was going off on her grand adventure to find her beloved Duardo, so I tagged along. I was ballast.” She wiped her eyes again.
Garrett sat up, too. “You haven’t been ballast since you walked into my camp. You haven’t once asked yourself what the point of this is.”
Carmen hesitated, thinking back over the last two months. He was right.
“Tell me what you think about whenwe’re on missions,” he pressed.
She looked down at the sheet gathered around her knees, thinking. “I don’t think,” she confessed. “If anything, I get angry, when I see how desperate everyone’s lives are. No food except what they can gather and grow for themselves, barely any medicine, schools shut down on Insurrecto orders and the sad, sad faces everywhere…I get pissed. Really pissed. My fathernever let anyone bottom out like that.”
“Exactly,” Garrett said. “You’re working to change that. There’s no doubt in your mind.”
“I’m not doinganything,” Carmen said. “I’m following your orders and most of the time what we do seems useless.”
“It all helps,” Garrett told her. “A raid here and there distracts them and pulls resources away from where they want them. Besides,youhave made thebiggest difference, in the last two weeks.”
She looked at him questioningly.
“The radio,” he said. “We wouldn’t be hooked into the Loyalist network if you hadn’t nagged me into buying Hernandez’s computer. Now, with their direction, we have a chance of doing something that could make a real difference.”
Carmen plucked at the sheet. “I suppose…”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Garrett toldher. “Wars mess up people’s lives. You’re doing far more than anyone has a right to expect of you, given the circumstances you’ve found yourself in. You’re good at it, too.”
“I think that has more to do with the training than anything else,” she muttered.
Garrett rolled his eyes. He dipped his head and kissed her. It was a gentle touch of his lips. “Just wait,” he told her. “Wait and trust thatthings will work out.”
“That’s not what you do,” she accused him.
“I do, now,” he assured her.
He lay down again and pulled her back into his arms, insisting she get some sleep. Carmen let him insist. She didn’t think she could sleep, though. She was too wide awake now and too wired. Her brain was working overtime.
Garrett had hope now. That was what his last comment meant. No one could waitand trust that things will work out without hope.
Yet, when she had first met him, she would have said Garrett was filled with ice cold anger and not much else.
Why had he gained hope? The radio? Communicating with Acapulco meant that whatever they did now would directly influence the Loyalist’s war efforts, yet that seemed too flimsy a thing to spawn hope. They still didn’t know what the Loyalistswere planning. They were cogs in a much larger machine.
What had given Garrett hope?
* * * * *
It was the middle of the afternoon and the old house was still and almost silent. It was a hot day, when the air was thick and oppressive and there wasn’t even a whiff of a breeze. Everyone who didn’t have critical responsibilities was sleeping…or trying to.
Minnie didn’t want to sleep, though. Duardohad appeared unexpectedly two hours ago and looked at his watch. “I have twelve hours leave,mi amor,” he told her and kissed her, right in front of Rubén and Téra. Minnie had closed her computer, taken his hand and led him to their cramped bedroom. Twelve hours was more spare time than Duardo had been granted in a month or more. She didn’t demand details, because Duardo couldn’t give them. Duardowas assisting General Flores these days, taking more of his responsibilities into his own hands.
She let out her breath, feeling a bone-deep contentment. They were both naked and pleasantly sweaty. Her heart was slowing. Duardo had his hand on her belly, which protruded, even when she was lying on her back as she was now.
“That’s two sighs in five minutes,” he said. “What is on your mind?”
“It’s…um, nothing.”
He smiled, his teeth flashing white in the dim room. They had the drapes drawn against the harsh afternoon sun and the bamboo fan circled lazily overhead, moving the air to cool their moist skin. “Are you deliberately lying badly?”
She shook her head and sat up. She curled her feet underneath her. “Sort of. I’m not sure how to handle this.”
