David's jaw clenched and a vein in his temple throbbed. "Not everything we do is about killing, Noelle. We keep this country safe. We protect people."
"But you do kill." It wasn't really a question.
"When it's necessary."
"And who gets to decide when it's necessary?"
He scrubbed a wide hand over his head and pulled in a deep breath as if to calm himself. "There are a lot of bad people out there. It's not exactly something we broadcast on the nightly news if we can help it. We like for people to be able to sleep at night, not worry about whether or not they're going to wind up dead in ways they can't even imagine."
"You keep saying 'we,' Are you one of the people who get to choose between life and death for another human?"
David exploded into angry motion, flinging the chair away. "Yeah, I'm one of those people. I've held men in my rifle sights and decided whether or not to pull the trigger. I've set explosives on a building knowing that as soon as I pushed the button everyone inside was going to be blown to hell. I've even killed with my bare hands, breaking men's necks or choking the life right out of their bodies."
He leaned forward, his hands flat on the table, his eyes frigid blue with anger. "And I'm not sorry because I know what those men did. I know what they would have been capable of doing had they lived."
Noelle leaned back in her chair, needing to put some distance between her and his anger. But even in the face of such rage, she still thrust her chin up, refusing to back down on what was important. "You can't know what is in a person's heart. And if you can't know that, you can't judge them. It's wrong."
His nostrils flared as he studied her face. She wanted to get up and move across the room, but she held her ground under his scrutiny.
Slowly, he leaned down and picked up the briefcase he'd brought with him. His voice was no longer loud, but it was just as cold. "No, Noelle, you're the one who's wrong. I do know what was in their hearts." And with that, he pulled a stack of glossy eight-by-ten photos from a folder and flung them out over the table.
It was a collage from a nightmare in shades of blood and dead flesh. There were severed limbs, fingers, ears, tongues. Half of a penis. The faces of the victims were so badly beaten and mutilated they were nearly unrecognizable as human. There were men, women and even a couple of children that couldn't have even lived into their teens. Two dead babies.
Noelle fought the urge to vomit. She'd seen her share of horror films, but nothing could have prepared her for the real thing. Even with the added detachment of photos, she could almost smell the stench of blood and fear emanating from the pictures.
Her body started to shake and sweat as her mind struggled to assimilate what he'd shown her. This wasn't real. It couldn't be. No one was that horrible.
"This," he said in a quiet, aching voice, pointing at the photos. "This is what was in their hearts."
Noelle didn't want to look, but she couldn't stop herself. Her stomach clenched painfully, but she forced herself to face the images of death and violence and evil with as much courage as she could. These were real photos. Real people. Real children.
Noelle's eyes filled with tears, but she blinked them away, looking up at David. Anguish burned in his blue eyes, which were also wet with unshed tears. His jaw was clenched and his lips were pulled into a snarl of self-loathing.
"And this one." His voice was nearly a whisper now, quiet with the tightness of grief. With a shaking hand, he pulled out a set of photos showing what had once been a beautiful young blonde woman. She was bound to a metal chair by thick leather cuffs around both wrists and ankles. She was naked and bruised over much of her tanned skin.
There was a pool of blood under her chair that looked too large to have ever fit inside her slim body. Her thighs were stained with more blood and every one of her fingers had been severed and were lying neatly in rows on a table at her side. "This woman was my wife. My Mary." He swallowed audibly before he could continue. "The Swarm did this to her. They raped her and tortured her and beat her for the crime of being married to me. Nothing more. She was supposed to be safe at home while I was out on a training op. I wouldn't have even known she'd been taken if I hadn't received her wedding ring—still attached to her severed finger—in the mail."
It was the quiet grief in his voice that made Noelle look up. He'd loved Mary. She could see it plainly, shining in his eyes, along with anguish, regret and self-hatred. He'd loved this woman and they had mutilated her.
Suddenly, all the people in the photos became real, not just images on paper. They had parents and siblings and friends who loved them. They'd laughed and cried and loved in return. They were people. Alive.
Turned into photos too grotesque to imagine.
David looked up from the photos and stared right into her eyes. There was so much pain there inside him that she couldn't look away. She felt that if she averted her gaze, even for a second, David would crumple under the weight of his guilt. She could tell that he felt like he should have saved his wife from this gruesome fate. Noelle was sure that he'd done everything he could to save the woman he loved, and it still hadn't been enough.
"This is what we're fighting, Noelle. This is why we need your help. Without you, the Swarm will find those weapons and they won't hesitate to use them. People will die, and only you can stop that from happening." His voice fell to a mere whispering thread of sound. "Please, don't let that happen. Don't let someone else's wife be tortured and killed like my Mary."
Noelle's body shook in rebellion against David's plea. How could he ask this of her? How could he ask her to throw away all her morals and do what she'd sworn she'd never do? What if her work was used to kill?
A tiny, new voice inside her answered, What if it wasn't used to kill those monsters?
Noelle forced herself to look at the photos again. David was right. Whoever had done this deserved to die. They needed to die before they could kill again. No matter how ugly or horrible the task was, someone needed to do it. The Swarm wasn't a group of people. It was a group of demons. Pure evil.
Someone had to stop them, but Noelle wasn't sure if she was strong enough to be that person.
The glossy eyes of the dead stared at her, pleading with her to help. Mary's lifeless, brown eyes begged Noelle to save her husband from his own prison of grief and self-loathing.
Noelle bolted from the table and bent over the small metal trash can, vomiting. She tried to breathe, tried to push away the images floating in her head, the ones that lay on the surface of the table only five feet away.
It didn't help. She couldn't stop her stomach from heaving.
And then David was there. He put a hand on her head and wrapped his arm around her stomach to help keep her muscles from cramping. He said nothing, but just the touch of another human, alive and warm, was enough to allow Noelle to regain control.
Slowly, she was able to breathe again and she leaned back against his chest, panting.
He stroked the cold, sweat-damp hair back from her forehead, just waiting for her to calm down.
Noelle didn't dare turn around and risk seeing those pictures again. She didn't think her sanity would hold out if she did. "I didn't know," she said.
She felt David nod behind her. He was close, holding her tight, comforting her. "I know. I'm sorry you had to see what makes good men kill."
"Did you, uh, kill the men who did... that to your wife?"
He went stiff, every muscle in his chest going taut, but didn't pull away. "I thought so, but I was wrong. There was at least one left. Maybe more."
"They rebuilt the Swarm," she guessed.
"Yeah," he said, his voice tight with hatred.
Noelle had no idea how difficult it must have been for David to lose his wife to such horrifying violence. There was nothing natural about his loss. He could find no comfort in the fact that it had been her time to go, as had been the case for Noelle's grandmother. His wife's life had been cut out from under her, spilled onto a cold cement floor. Stolen.
Noelle wondered what sort of strength it had to take for David to go on after something like that.
"I thought I'd made it impossible for them ever to do anything hke that to a woman again. I thought I'd avenged her death and protected countless others from the same fate. I was wrong," he said. "The Swarm is still out there and able to strike again. I can't let that happen. I need your help."
Noelle understood what he meant, but it was a painful understanding. Men like David did horrible things so that normal people didn't even need to know about the kind of evil they fought. It was an honorable, messy, thankless job.
One she could help make easier. One he couldn't do without her help.
Noelle wasn't convinced that violence would prevent violence, but maybe knowledge could. Knowledge only she could provide.
Noelle steeled herself for what she was about to do, unwilling to turn away from David's plea for help. His wife's plea. She didn't want to deal with the guilt of causing the death of another, no matter how distanced she was from the act. But now she knew that something had to be done to stop the Swarm. Maybe David was right. Maybe the only way to stop them was to kill them.
As much as she despised the idea of providing the military with knowledge that could be used offensively, she had to be strong like David and do something she hated because it was necessary. Noelle only prayed that what she was about to do wouldn't murder her own soul.
She pulled away from him and leaned her back against the wall for support. She needed to look into his face and make sure that he was telling her the truth. "If I help, can you give me your word that you'll do everything in your power to see my work destroyed before it can be used against anyone but the Swarm?"
David nodded. "I'll do anything to find the rest of the men who killed my wife. That includes destroying government property."
"And can you promise they will let me go if I give them what they want?"
"No, but I can promise to keep tabs on you, and if they don't let you go, I'll break you out of wherever they're holding you." He gave her a feral smile. "Even if it kills me."
Noelle pinned him with a fierce stare. "I won't let you die for me, David. I'm not worth the price of another human life."
He shrugged as if his life was worth no more than the casual gesture. "You're a lot more valuable than you think."
"So are you," she told him.
Something in his expression shifted, softened. "Does that mean you want to help me?"
Helping David recover from the loss of his wife was one of the things she wished most to accomplish, even more than cracking that intriguing code. Noelie didn't know Mary, but helping David seemed like a fitting tribute to the woman who had loved him. She wasn't sure how she would do it, but she was going to do everything in her power to prove to David that Mary's death wasn't his fault. "Yeah. It does."
CHAPTER EIGHT
David desperately needed some caffeine, but his hands were shaking so badly that he didn't trust himself not to spill the scalding hot coffee onto his lap. He stared at the steaming mug on the table, willing himself to relax.
Monroe placed a fatherly hand on David's shoulder. "You did the right thing by showing her those photos, son."
