Rick dragged a hand down over his face, sighing heavily. "If you want to know, you should know," he said simply, a classic example of his casual one-to-one logic. "But if you've heard to much, just tell me, and I'll shut right up," Rick promised, a little wary, a little doubting of how much exactly she wanted to hear.
He took a deep breath of his own, sitting up a little straighter with the effort. "Alright. I'll just. Start at the beginning." Another deep breath, a small nod, and Rick began. "Uh, like I said, my name's Rick Patton. I was in your fiance's platoon over there. We were over there for two years, I'm sure you know, so, I guess after two years only seeing the same people, after a while you get pretty close. Your fiance, Derek, good man. He was a real good man."
Realizing he was still off track, Rick closed his mouth, quiet for a moment and started over. His eyes were focused closely on the lines on the palms of his hands, completely unable to look up at Violet at all. "What happened was," Rick tried again, voice hushed, "Was we were out doing a regular patrol. Real simple, you know? Whole platoon was in the caravan, and me and Derek drew unlucky and we got put in the first car. I'm not gonna lie, that's a bad place to be, but we hadn't had any problems before. So me, Derek, and three others are in the first car, driving around our sector securing the border. And this kid Jimmy's sitting in the front seat and he's telling some stupid joke or something, all of a sudden, there's an explosion about ten, fifteen feet in front of the vehicle. Windshield breaks, gunfire starts happening, it's chaos. Some Iraqi insurgents heard us coming or something. So whole caravan gets out and starts following training, ducks behind the vehicle and starts returning fire. Derek -- your fiance -- he was standing right next to me, aiming over the corner to fire, all of a sudden, there's more of 'em coming from behind too. No idea how they got there, but they did. Both him and me and that kid Jimmy, we all turn around, but he's already fired."
Rick stopped there, glancing up at Violet, unsure of whether he should continue or not.