Authors: Fisher Amelie

Fury (36 page)

My heart pounded. “You have to do what you have to do, Tran,” I told him, letting him know I held no ill feelings toward him for having to do his job.

He stood up and walked around his desk, sitting on the corner nearest the door. “You know there hasn’t been an official report done on what the crooked cops here are calling
the massacre
?”

“There hasn’t?”

He looked me dead in the eye. “No, Ethan, there hasn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because the traffickers know that the number of dead would not escape national media attention, possibly international. They can’t cover something like that up. Instead,” he said, pointing at the door of his office, “there are men I’m forced to call colleagues out there actively hunting side by side with men I’m forced to call
victims
by made-up crimes designed to get their opposer’s hands tied. And do you know who they’re hunting, Ethan?”

I swallowed.

“You. They’re hunting you.” He stood in front of the window facing out into the street. “As I see it, I have two choices.” His finger found the slat of his metal blinds. He pulled it down to get a better view. The metal rang out with the effort and quieted quickly. “I can either create a report of a man who walked into my office confessing to crimes no one has any interest in persecuting him for other than the criminals he inconvenienced
or
I could pretend you never came, pretend I never heard of your so-called crimes.”

My heart was in my throat then.

“Ethan,” he said, turning around and facing me. “I’m afraid I have no record of these crimes you have confessed to.”

I breathed out harshly. “You don’t?”

“No, I do not.”

“Oh my God,” I said, my body trembling with the release of my future completely altered by a single man.

“And since I have no idea what you’re talking about, I believe it’s time for you to leave. Leave my office, leave this station, leave Slánaigh, leave Vietnam. You have done what you’ve had to do by God. Let me carry the weight from here on, son.”

“I feel like I can’t let you do that, sir,” I told him.

“It is not your choice to make anymore, Ethan. I never got to give my daughter a second chance, so it is imperative that I not stand by and refuse you yours. It’s over. Now find Finley Dyer and leave.”

I stood. Stood tall, stood in disbelief, stood at the foot of my new fate.

I turned to leave but Tran stopped me by grabbing my arm. He stuck his hand out and I took it.

“Maybe one day I will see you again,” he said, “but if I do not ever have that pleasure, have a glorious life, son. Live it for my daughter, for the children you rescued, and those you could not, live it for Finley. Live it for God.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Finley

My hand found the door handle and turned when I heard the faint
crush, crush, crush
of someone running down the shell gravel that lead to Slánaigh. To this very day I will not forget the feeling I got from turning around to see whose feet were responsible for it.

My heart raced, my body rocked back landing with a thud against the front door. My chest rose and fell rapidly with breaths I didn’t know I’d ever get back.

“
Ethan
,” I breathed.

I tore down the porch, down the impossibly long winding staircase, pausing every few feet to check that he was still there, that he wasn’t a figment of my imagination. When my feet met gravel, I ran as I’d never ran. I ran for my
life
because Ethan was my life.

“Ethan?” I screamed.

He ran for me, his face devoid of expression. He was a man with a duty, a pursuit so precise he could think of nothing else. I ran against the wind, the hollowness of the air drowning out the sounds of the ocean. It had rained that morning, a sign I thought meant the earth had learned of Ethan’s handing himself over, but then it had inexplicably stopped, washing clear the dirt and grime and left behind it the delicate fragrance that was a newly laundered earth.

Each step, each intense, staggering step toward him I shed behind me every cumbersome grief that had ever plagued me.

We collided in a thundering crash, falling toward terra firma, both freed from our chains.

“Finally,” I whispered into his ear.

“Finally,” he whispered back.

EPILOGUE

Ethan

Finley and I had escaped that night from Vietnam, back to Montana. We promised both Sister Marguerite and Father Connolly that we would never stop fighting for them, that we would be their voices from afar.

Two days later, we were at my father’s door.

He’d heard us coming up the drive in a taxi at three in the morning and stood on the porch, waiting for whomever was inside.

When I emerged first, I heard my name. I ran to my dad like a small boy would but couldn’t seem to muster up any sense of shame.

“Dad,” I said, breathing him in, and clutching him to me with everything I had. He hugged me back fiercely.

“Welcome home, son.”

Finley and I explained to him everything that happened, not leaving out a single detail. Many of the things I’d described Finley had not even heard yet. And at the end, I felt ashamed and terrified she’d leave me.

And yet, instead, both she and my father embraced me.

Within six months, Finley and I had packed our bags for Nosara, Costa Rica. There, we purchased a plot of land on Playa Nosara, grew a vegetable garden, and learned to surf and paddleboard.

There, we fostered many victims sent from Slánaigh whose families could not be found and had grown older, having trouble supporting themselves. We taught them how to start a new life using real-life skills, helped them begin their forever lives. We were utterly fulfilled, Fin and I.

We couldn’t have imagined being any happier…

“Uh, Ethan?” Fin asked from her chair on our porch facing the ocean.

“Yes, babe?” I asked, handing her a piece of mango.

“My fingers are so swollen,” she said, taking it. “My wedding band is cutting off my circulation.”

“Here,” I said, taking her hand, examining the best way to take it off. “That’s so weird,” I observed.

She took a bite of the mango and her face contorted. “Ugh! That is awful! We must have gotten a bad one.”

I looked at her strangely. “What are you talking about? I just took a bite of it and it was perfect.”

“Really?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, sitting up.

Finley sighed loudly. “Oh my God, I have to pee
again
!” She stood. “What is wrong with me?” she asked, turning to walk into our beach house.

Suddenly, she stopped and faced me with shimmering eyes.

“Oh my God,” I said, standing up.