The Guardian. Cindi Myers
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one of the butterscotch candies, then he did the same and returned the roll to his pocket.
“I’m addicted,” he said. “I quit smoking last year and took up the candy as a substitute.”
“Good for you for quitting,” she said. “I knew a lot of soldiers who smoked, but I never took it up.”
“Smart woman.” He settled back in the driver’s seat, gaze fixed on the curving ribbon of blacktop that skirted the park’s main attraction—the deep, narrow Black Canyon.
Abby tried to relax, too, but curiosity needled her, overcoming her natural shyness. “How do you possibly remember me after all this time?” she blurted. “It’s been years, and you must have only seen me for a few hours, at most.” Had he been an orderly in the field hospital, a medic or a pilot, or simply a grunt tasked with transporting the wounded?
“I was a PJ. We saw hundreds of casualties during my tour—but you were the only woman. And you were my first save. It made an impression.”
PJs—pararescuers—were bona fide superheroes. Members of the US Air Force’s rescue squadron swooped into the thick of danger in Pave Hawk helicopters, often under heavy enemy fire, to snatch wounded soldiers from almost certain death. They performed critical lifesaving procedures in the air, long before their patients reached the doctors at field hospitals. Abby remembered none of this, but she’d seen a special on TV and watched with sick fascination, trying to imagine what it was like when she was the patient, being patched together by young men she’d likely never see again.
“I...I don’t know what to say.” She plucked at the seat belt harness, feeling trapped as much by her own emotions as by the confining cloth strap. “Thank you doesn’t seem like enough.”
“I was glad you made it. We lost too many soldiers over there, but losing a woman would have been worse. I know it shouldn’t be that way, but it was—I won’t lie.”
She nodded. Though women weren’t authorized for combat roles back then, the army needed female soldiers to interrogate native women and to fill a variety of noncombat roles, from resupply to repairing equipment that constantly broke down. Women soldiers stood guard and went on patrol, and sometimes got caught up in battles, in a war with no clearly defined front line, where every peasant could be friend or foe. But for all the roles they filled, women made up only about 10 percent of the ground forces in Afghanistan. As a female soldier, Abby hadn’t wanted to stand out from her fellow grunts, but she couldn’t help it.
“I still can’t believe you remembered my name,” she said.
He winced. “I made it a point to remember it. Later, I tried to look you up—just to see how you were doing. I’m not a stalker or anything. I just wanted to know.”
“But you didn’t find me?”
“I found out you’d gotten transferred stateside, but that was about it.” He adjusted his grip on the steering wheel of the FJ Cruiser he drove. A second Cruiser followed a few car lengths behind, with Graham and Carmen; for all Abby knew half a dozen other vehicles full of more law-enforcement agents came after that. “But now I know. You look good. I’m glad.”
She resisted the urge to touch the scar. “Thanks for not qualifying the compliment.”
He frowned. “I don’t get it.”
“Thanks for not saying, ‘You look good, considering what you’ve been through.’”
“People really tell you that?”
“Sometimes. I also get ‘That scar is hardly noticeable,’ which I know is a lie, since if it was so unnoticeable, why are they bothering to point it out?” Had she really just said that? To this guy she didn’t even know? She didn’t talk about this stuff with anybody. Not even the therapist the Army had sent her to. Waste of money, that.
“So you’re studying botany?” Maybe sensing her uneasiness, he smoothly changed the subject.
“Environmental science. And to answer your next question, which I know from experience is, ‘What do you do with a master’s degree in environmental science?’ I’ll probably end up teaching ungrateful undergrads somewhere. But all that is just to support the research I want to do into developing medicines from plants.”
“You mean, like herbal remedies and stuff?”
“I mean, like cancer drugs and medicine to cure Parkinson’s or diabetes. Plants are a tremendous resource we’ve scarcely begun to explore.”
“So there are plants in this park that can cure diseases?” He motioned to the scrubby landscape around them.
“This might look like desert to you, but there are hundreds of plants within the park and surrounding public lands. It’s the perfect place for my research.”
“A big change from the war,” he said.
“Everything is a big change from the war,” she said. “Didn’t you feel it, after you came home? That sense of not knowing what to do next? Of being a little out of place? Or was that just me?”
“It wasn’t just you,” he said. “Every day over there you had a mission—a purpose. Life over here isn’t like that.” He stared at the road ahead for a long moment, then added, “I thought about going back to school after I got out, but sitting in a classroom all day—that wasn’t for me.”
She shifted toward him, feeling more comfortable scrutinizing him for a change. He was good-looking—no doubt about that—with dark eyes and olive skin and a hawk nose and square chin. His broad shoulders filled out his short-sleeved tan shirt nicely, and slim-fit khakis showed off muscular thighs. “How did you end up working for border patrol?”
“They were at a job fair for veterans and it looked like interesting work. It was a lot of independent work, outdoors. I liked that.”
She nodded. She understood that desire to be outdoors and alone, away from other people. After the noise, chaos and crowds of the war, the wilderness felt healing.
“It’s great that you found work that’s important,” he said. “I mean, what you’re doing could make a big difference in peoples’ lives someday.”
“Someday, maybe. But yeah, I do feel as though it’s important work. Don’t you think what you’re doing is important?”
“Sometimes I do. Sometimes I’m not so sure.” He checked his mirrors and crunched down on the candy. “You said this guy you found is Mexican?” he asked.
Back to the reason she was here. Guess they couldn’t avoid that subject forever. “Well, Latino. He had dark hair and brown skin—like you.”
“My mom is from Mexico. My dad’s from Denver.”
“Do you speak Spanish?”
“I do. Comes in handy on the job sometimes.”
“Do you run into a lot of people from Mexico in the park?” she asked, thinking of Mariposa and Angelique.
“Some.” He slowed as they reached the end of the paved road and bumped onto a rougher gravel surface. “How much farther from here?” he asked.
She checked her GPS. “About nine miles.”
“You weren’t kidding—remote.”
“The best specimens are usually where they haven’t been disturbed by people or grazing animals.”
“Right. You haven’t seen anything else suspicious while you were out and about this week, have you?”
She stiffened, again thinking of the Mexican woman and child. “What do you mean, suspicious?”
“A bunch of marijuana plants, for instance? Or a portable meth lab?”
“No. Should I have seen those things?”
“Probably not,