“What are they supposed to be doin’?”

“ ‘Maintaining security.’ Which means all kinds of things. Protecting American diplomats, training troops, guarding prisoners.” He pauses, his voice growing softer. “Questioning insurgents. That’s what I was there to do.”

Ned sits up for a moment, stretches his arms, twists his neck as if he has a kink, and then hunkers down over Royce’s arm once again. “Sounds rough.”

Royce takes a deep breath. “They were some of the longest, worst days of my life.”

Silence hangs through the shop as Ned works to the subdued tune of Willie Nelson and Royce stares up at the ceiling, facing down his demons, I’m sure. I’ve been in his place.

“You heard of Adeeb Al-Naseer?” Royce suddenly asks.

“Probably. Can’t keep those foreign names straight, though.”

“He was the leader of the terrorist cell that bombed that office building in Seattle seven years back.”

“Oh, yeah . . . I sure remember that one.”

“I helped catch him, you know.” Royce’s eyes flicker to Ned’s furrowed brow. “A battalion brought in a guy with cryptic messages written out on paper and taped to his body. They couldn’t get him to talk, so they told us to have a go at him. See what he’d tell us.” He hesitates. “So we did. And he talked, all right. By the time we were done with him, he told us everything we needed to know.”

Ned pauses to peer up at his customer for a brief moment, before ducking back down. “What does that mean? What’d you do to him?”

“You name it. Slapped him around, electric shock, hung him from his wrists, grabbed his balls and gave them a good twist,” the hand on Royce’s free arm clenches. “Broke his leg, his arms . . .” He goes on, listing techniques that have been used more times than anyone cares to admit.

Some that I’ve used to get people to talk.

I’ve never enjoyed a second of it, never reveled in scaring another human being, of causing pain. But I’ve done all I had to in order to get the answers, and justice, that I needed. And I’ve felt the weight of it on my shoulders afterward.

I have no doubts that what Royce is admitting to doing right now is the cold, harsh truth.

And, by the disgusted look on his face, he didn’t enjoy a second of it either.

“Jesus,” Ned mutters. “What finally broke him?”

Royce hesitates, swallows. “The two guys I was working with went out and found the man’s fourteen-year-old daughter and took turns raping her in front of him. That’s what broke him,” he says quietly.

Ned is silent.

“These two other former Marines that I was stationed there with, they were something else. I don’t know where Alliance found them, but they should never have been hired. One of them, this guy Mario, he was seriously fucked in the head. He’d always be the first one in line to interrogate, to start smacking someone around. He loved to take on guard duties and go into the city. I think it was just so he could hold his gun to people’s heads and make them piss their pants.”

“Sounds like a real asshole,” Ned murmurs.

“He’s sadistic.”

“Sounds like it.” I can hear a distinct shift in Ned’s voice, from indifference to at least mild concern.

Royce’s jaw clenches. “That girl they raped? She wasn’t the only one. One night I caught him and Ricky in an interrogation room with a fifteen-year-old girl who’d been brought in on suspicion of aiding in a terrorist plot. She died the next day. Found out later that she was completely innocent.”

I hit Pause on the VCR as my stomach sinks. Bentley said that everything Royce was claiming was pure lies. But I’ve met Mario, and my ten-second gut read is that he’s a nutcase, and someone I don’t trust. He went against Bentley’s orders just by approaching me, and he seems hell-bent on not being tied to any crime, either overseas or here. Plus, he basically admitted to what’s on the tape as being true. And if that’s the case . . .

Bentley didn’t create Alliance to rape innocent young women. That isn’t for the greater good.

Taking a deep breath, I let the tape keep playing.

“He get into trouble?” Ned asks.

Royce smiles, and it’s not at all pleasant. “Who’s gonna give him trouble?”

“You said this was a private company, right? Ain’t the owner worried about employees doin’ that kind of stuff?” Ned has obviously been listening—and understanding—far more than he’s let on.

“John Bentley doesn’t give a fuck what happens over there as long as the contracts keep coming in. That’s why I got paid off and told to keep quiet.”

My stomach clenches. That’s got to be the bullshit Bentley was talking about. I know Bentley well enough to know that he would care about rape.

“Don’t nobody say nothin’?”

“This is war. It’s so easy to cover that kind of shit up, and all the other shit. And people there are scared. Say the wrong thing and you may find yourself with a bullet in your head. Enemy fire, of course.”

“But you’re back home now.”

Royce pauses. “Nobody in America wants to hear about how a Medal of Honor recipient stood by and watched women get raped.”

Ivy’s uncle works away and listens, dropping a question here and there, as Royce spells out countless other horrific things he saw while working for Alliance, all the times that basic human rights were clearly violated by Mario and Ricky and other employees—not to protect American lives or interests, but for pure, sadistic enjoyment.

But what about Royce? Did he partake? Is he saying he was always just an innocent bystander?

Their conversation eventually shifts to menial things, and then nothing at all, and after four hours in the chair, Royce is passing over a wad of cash. “I’ll wanna come in next week to finish this piece up here,” he says, tapping the top of his shoulder. “Same time, same day?”

“Sounds good.”

Ivy’s uncle sits at his desk and stares at the door for a while, long after the guy has left. Processing everything Royce just admitted to, I’m sure. Clicking a key on the keyboard, he waits for his computer monitor to light up. Then he types something into Google. I can’t see what it is, but when a website comes up that I know like the back of my hand—with a black background and a picture of founder and CEO John Bentley on the left-hand side—I know that the wheels have begun to churn in Ned’s head.

He gets up to pull the metal screen across the entryway, locks the front door, and disappears down the hall, to the back where there is no surveillance.

And then the tape cuts out.

And I’m left staring at my reflection in the monitor.

Royce may have deserved to be punished for his part in all this, but he didn’t deserve a bullet to his head to shut him up.

And Ned . . . well, he was a fucking fool to get involved, but he definitely didn’t deserve to be killed over this either.

But Bentley was telling the truth about one thing: If this confession—from a Medal of Honor recipient, no less—gets into the hands of the American public, Alliance is finished.

The bigger question is: Do Bentley and Alliance deserve that end? Is this just a case of a contractor or two going rogue? How often is shit like this happening over there? How many of these guys, with God complexes, are doing inexcusable things to innocent human beings?