Bulletproof

Chapter 7

You couldn't even think of a good reason, but something in your heart told you to tell her this...

"Everyone deserves a second chance at redemption. In the army, we wear our bulletproof vests, but it doesn't protect us all wounds. Some wounds are visible, others or not. The ones that you can't see take the longest to heal. My mental scars from those days still plague my life."

You admitted these things to her that you thought you would always keep buried inside your heart. You look up at her and see how attentive she has been as you were speaking.

"Any man that can admit to his fuckups is a real man in my book," she said while rubbing your shoulders in a comforting, maternal way.

"I was never going to turn you into the cops. My mom loved you too much to let you go down this path."

Jersey flashed you that sexy smile again and you felt confused.

This is Lane's daughter, you think to yourself

As beautiful as she was...as much as she...got you going...you still felt a little weird about your priorities.

You found yourself at the rear of the group. You honestly thought you were going nowhere until you arrived at a secluded side road near the forest. There, you saw two large piles of pine tree branches that were covering two obscure objects. A couple of Jersey's team members strode up to the pile and shoved the branches to the ground, revealing two black hummers.

"Hop in!" she said as she gave you a little push of encouragement to hop inside the vehicle.

You get in, no longer worrying about whether she was trustworthy or not. Anyone that wasn't Ace was trustworthy in your opinion, but also, she is Lane's daughter. You trust Lane, so naturally you should trust Jersey too, right?

You found your seat in the back of the hummer and found yourself squeezed in between two of Jersey's men. Jersey sat shotgun in the front of the vehicle. Removing the gun strapped to her shoulder, she placed in her lap as the designated driver started the car. The other respective driver in the other hummer started his car as well and slowly started to reverse out of the road and into a rarely used dirt path in the woods.

The night was inky and it was difficult to see much in the woods. The yellow headlamps of the hummers only revealed a few meters of the road before you. You felt cramped and claustrophobic in the car and were itching to get the hell out of there as fast as you could. Being in such a tiny and cramped space triggered something within you. Your vision of the night begins to bleed into one of your memories as you glanced out to the sky to look at the crescent moon.

[Flash Back]

It was hot, humid, dark and damp. The stench of sweat and fear permeated throughout the air as you sat there waiting.

You test your bonds for what feels like the hundredth time ... nope, no movement, none at all. Your last memories were of a roadside bomb going off, followed by a vicious ambush. Your M16 jammed, so you picked up a Kalashnikov from one of the fallen fighters and kept fighting.

And then, it was hand-to-hand. You strangled one of them, then they were all over you, and now you're here.

The door swings open, and two men dressed in all black, their faces obscured, step in. One of them reaches up to turn on the light above you and a dirty yellow light oozes into your plain concrete cell.

"You sleep well, Anjeun?"

"Fuck ... you," you reply.

Crack!

"That ... not the way to treat your rescuers, no." The first man says, as he backhands you across the face. A third man walks in, carrying a tripod with a video camera on it.