discomfort, from gunshot wounds to broken bones, and still fight to live another day, moment, or even second. That was the point of the whole exercise, and one day Kris would thank her.
Better this way than the way she was forged into a killer. Nearly any torture was preferable to that.
Jaden had learned throughout the years that if she loved people, they tended to die, and this young woman was not going to be the latest ghost in line of many that kept her from sleeping at night. Especially not after she watched the girl grow up into a woman before her very eyes.
The next morning, Jaden and Kris stretched their achy muscles to begin the descent back to flat earth before it was time to jog back to the waiting Jeep. She was primed and ready for anything. Kris was still a bit puckish in attitude. Jaden tried to normally be sensitive and empathetic to what the girl had gone through, but she had to make her understand the world wasn’t a pretty place. There were worse things than could be imagined, even those beyond what Kris had seen, and plenty of people who didn’t have any scruples about who they killed. Or how.
“I’m sorry for being a brat, Jaden.” It was the first words to come from Kris’s mouth the entire morning.
“It’s okay, Kris. You have the luxury of being a brat because I give it to you. When I was in your shoes, I didn’t have that option. I had to take whatever was given to me. I fought for every scrap I ate. I fought for small things that you would take for granted. Hell, at that point all I wanted was the right to wear clothes or own a pair of shoes without fighting for them first. For that reason, I would never begrudge you the right to complain.
“Do you know that every night after I finally earned sleep that I wished for only that right? To be able to say no. No, I don’t want to muck animal stalls at dawn so that I can eat a single egg for breakfast? That I could say no to someone who wanted to use me as a tiny punching bag?”
“No, I didn’t, Jaden.” The expression Kris made scrunched her lips sideways then back again. “But then again you’ve never told me the whole story, even after all these years.”
“There is a reason for that. Even now when I wake up I feel thanks just for the fact that I can sleep where I am comfortable.”
“But you sleep on the floor!”
“Yes, I do. But now it’s because I choose to. As long as I am in this business, I will continue to do so. I can’t afford to become weak in any way.”
“But why would that make you weak?”
“Weakness is nothing more than being complacent. Or becoming too comfortable with the status quo. Don’t forget that.”
“Will you tell me now?” Kris stopped, as if she was afraid to ask for more. But the silence only lasted a moment before the girl forced the courage to query again. “What happened to you, I mean?”
“Yes.” But Jaden didn’t know where to start or even where to end the story of what happened to her that fateful day so long ago, even when it felt like yesterday. Her throat closed up, and she knew that it was going to take a bit longer to relax enough to even speak about it.
They were silent for a long time, and Kris seemed to understand her need to take her time. They were halfway back to the airport when she began talking again.
“It started twenty years ago…”
* * * *
July 1992
Her last memory was of her father was at her birthday party just the month before. Dad had just given her a new bike and a Michael Jackson CD. She had a picture of him laughing when she couldn’t blow out the trick candles.
Just a few days later, he was sent away, yet again for some secret government operation.
Serena’s dad was in the military and spoke several languages, including a few Chinese dialects. The only information he would tell her or her mom was that he was given orders to translate for a series of meetings between delegates from a few different countries and he would be gone