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“They will find us here,” a younger woman said. “We must go deeper into the hills.”
“We can’t,” Rashida said. She tipped her head toward three older women sitting on the ground, their backs hunched, their eyes closed. “The old ones will not make it. It was all they could do to come this far.”
Alex’s heart went out to the old and young who couldn’t move as fast or endure another climb up steep hills.
“None of us will last long without food and water,” the other woman argued.
“We can’t go back down to the village.” An old woman called Mirembe glanced up from her position seated on the ground. “We would all be tortured or killed.”
Alex didn’t want to argue with the women when the reverend and his wife were down there with no one to help or hide them. With the children safe in the cave, Alex couldn’t stop thinking about the elderly missionaries. She drew in a deep breath and made up her mind. “I need you women to care for these children.”
Again, the women gathered around her.
“Where are you going?” Rashida asked.
“Don’t leave us,” another woman pleaded.
“If you go back, you’ll be killed,” Mirembe predicted.
“I have to go back. Reverend Townsend and his wife stayed behind.”
Mirembe shook her head. “They are dead by now. They must be.”
A sharp pain pierced Alex’s heart. “I choose to think they are still alive. And I’m going down to see if there is anything I can do to help.” She glanced around at the women. “Will you care for these children?” she repeated with more force.
Rashida nodded. “We will look after them until your return.”
A tiny hand tugged at her pant leg. “Miss Alex, please don’t go.”
Alex glanced down at Kamaria, the little girl she’d carried up the hill. She had tears in her big brown eyes as she stared up at Alex.
Her chest tight, Alex dropped to one knee and hugged Kamaria. “I’ll be back,” she promised. “Until I return, I need you to help take care of your brothers and sisters.” She brushed a tear from the child’s cheek. “Can you do that for me?”
Kamaria nodded, another tear slipping down her cheek.
Alex straightened. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Fariji followed her to the cave entrance. “It is not safe for you to return to the village. I will go with you.”
“No.” Alex touched his arm. “Stay here and protect the women and children. They have no one else.”
The gentle young man nodded, his brow dipping low. “I will do what I can to help.”
And he always did. Fariji was one of the most loving, selfless men in the village.
Alex hugged him, and then she left the cave and slid down the gravelly slope to the base of the bluff. She figured returning to the village would be dangerous, but she couldn’t abandon the missionaries. If she could help, she would, even if it meant risking her own safety.
Chapter Two (#uf80de86b-b6e9-5d24-8278-a71cd4081eae)
Going down from the hills alone went a lot faster than climbing, carrying a child on her back and herding half a dozen more. Within minutes, Alex reached the edge of the village.
She hid behind the first wall she came to, pushed the scarf she wore down around her neck and listened, her heart beating so loudly against her eardrums, she could barely hear anything.
The gunfire had ceased, but men shouted. A woman screamed and vehicle engines rumbled.
The reverend’s wife had been in the home of a woman who’d given birth to a baby boy. The baby had been breech, complicating the birth. Both had survived, but were weak and unable to travel.
Mrs. Townsend had been caring for the two since the baby’s birth.
Alex dared to peek around the side of the hut. The narrow street between the dirt-brown mud-and-stick buildings appeared empty. She sucked in a deep breath and ran to the next structure.
A man shouted nearby. Footsteps pounded in the dirt, along with the rattle of metal against metal or plastic, like the rattle of a strap on a rifle.
Alex held her breath and waited.
Shouts grew closer. The sound of something smashing made Alex jump and nearly cry out.
She clapped a hand over her mouth and slipped farther back into the shadows.
Another man yelled, the noise coming from inside the building behind which Alex huddled.
Voices argued back and forth, and then...bang!
Knowing it was too late to change her mind about coming back to the village, Alex shrank into a dark corner and prayed the men in the hut didn’t come out and discover her there.
The home the reverend’s wife had been in was a couple huts over from where Alex hid. If she could get there without being seen, perhaps she could convince the missionaries to leave before the men found them.
Voices sounded again as the men exited the building and moved to the next.
Alex waited, fully expecting them to come around the corner and start shooting.
She froze and made herself as small as she could in the meager shadow.
A loud bang erupted nearby, as if someone had slammed a door.
The men in the street said something, and then more footsteps pounded against the dirt street, moving away from Alex’s hiding place.
She let go of the breath she’d been holding. After another moment or two, she rose and eased to the corner. The street was clear.
Someone shouted from a couple houses over.
If she was going to move, she had to do it before the men returned.
Alex ran across the street, skirted another hut and checked around the next corner.
It, too, was clear.
She started across the street, heard a cry and nearly froze. Realizing she couldn’t make it around the next home in time, she dived through a door and squatted inside, trying to control her breathing in order to hear the enemy’s approach.
Footsteps clattered along the path outside the hut. Then they stopped.
For a long moment, Alex heard nothing. She waited a little longer and then eased toward the door.
Before she reached it, an arm wrapped around her middle and a hand clamped over her mouth, stifling a scream rising up her throat.
She struggled to free herself, but the arm holding her tightened, trapping her arms against her side and her back against a hard wall of a chest. “Shh,” he whispered against her ear, his breath heated and minty. Not what Alex would have expected from an enemy rebel.
“Check in that building,” someone said in French outside.
Alex froze. Though she was unsure of her captor, the men outside had been shooting. She’d make her escape from the man holding her after the other men passed in the street. Until then, she held still against the warm, hard surface of a hulking, big man with arms like steel vises. As she waited, she listened for the sound of movement outside the building.
Someone called out next to the door, “I have this one, you check the next.”
The door jiggled.
The hand over her mouth dropped to her arm and she was shoved backward, behind the man.
If she wanted, she could escape him. But to what?
She couldn’t go back out into the street and risk being captured by the rebels storming the village. She’d be better off taking her chances with her unknown captor in the dark interior of the hut.
The door swung inward.
Alex was shoved behind the opening door as a beam of sunlight slashed across the floor.
A man in black clothing stepped into the building, pushing the door wider with the rifle he held in his hands.
As the light beam fanned out, it chased away the darkness of the rest of the room. In the gray light out of the sunshine’s wedge, Alex studied her captor.
He wore a desert-camouflage military uniform and a helmet, and carried a wicked-looking rifle of the type the Special Forces units carried. She searched for some indication of whose team he played for. Was he American, French or—God forbid—one of the paid mercenaries so often found in conflicts where they didn’t belong? He wasn’t from Niger. The skin she could see was too light. Granted, it appeared tanned, but not the rich darkness of the native Niger people.
The man who’d pushed open the door stepped inside the room, his weapon raised. Then he fired several bullets.
Alex flinched and shrank back into the corner. If the shooter turned any farther in their direction, he’d hit her captor.
The rebel turned slowly.
Alex’s captor leaped forward, slamming the butt of his weapon into the side of the shooter’s head. The weapon dropped from his hands and fell to the floor. Before the man could react, the military guy pulled a knife and slit the shooter’s throat. Her captor bent to retrieve the other man’s weapon. With equally efficient movements, he removed the bolt, slid it into his pocket and laid the remainder of the rifle on the ground next to the dead man.
Then her captor turned to her and held out his hand. “We have to move.”
She remained frozen in her position crouched on the floor of the hut, her heart beating so fast she could barely breathe to keep up with her need for oxygen.
His hand shot out, palm up. “Now!”
Alex stared at the big, calloused hand that had just dispatched a rebel fighter with such ease and efficiency of movement. Would he do the same to her?
Shouts outside the open door of the hut shook Alex out of her stunned silence.
Her captor dropped his arm, eased up to the door and glanced out. Without turning, he spoke softly, “If you want to live, come with me now.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Introductions later. Run now!” He hooked her arm, jerked her up off the floor and rushed her to the doorway.
After a quick pause, he dragged her out into the street and back toward the hills.
They’d gone past several huts when Alex remembered why she’d returned to the village in the first place. She dug her heels into the dirt and ripped her arm out of his grasp.
He wheeled around, his gaze shooting in all directions. “Why are you stopping?”
“I came to help Reverend Townsend and his wife,” she said.
His lips pressed into a thin line. “You can’t help anyone if you’re dead. We have to get out of the village, before they find that man’s body.”
“I didn’t kill him,” she pointed out. “You did.”
“It was him or us.” The man grabbed her arm and pulled her off the street and into the shadow of one of the huts. “Now isn’t the time to argue. The terrorists outnumber us twenty to one. And they won’t hesitate to shoot first. If they take prisoners, they won’t be kind to them.”
“Exactly my point. The reverend and his wife stayed behind with a new mother and her baby. I can’t leave them to the terrorists.”
“You will do them no good if these ISIS bad guys capture you, as well. The best we can do is get out of here, notify someone with more firepower than we have and let them launch a rescue mission.”
“Why should I go with you? I don’t even know if you’re one of the good guys.”
“If I was one of the bad guys, I would have left you behind for ISIS to find instead of wasting my time arguing with you.” He peeked around the corner of the building. “Now, if you’re done flapping your jaw, we need to move.”
He had an American accent, and, despite his gruff demeanor, he had saved her from being filled with bullets. Or had he saved himself? Either way, she was still alive and he was the reason.
This time he didn’t grab her and drag her; he glanced back and raised his eyebrows. “Ready?”
She nodded.
He held out his hand.
Alex laid hers in his. A jolt of awareness raced up her arm into her chest. His fingers curled around hers, strong, sure and rough. A fleeting thought ran through her mind. What would it feel like to have those hands run freely over her naked body?
Shocked at her thoughts, Alex shook herself and fell in step with the man who had her life in his hands. Once he got them out of the current situation, he could do anything he wanted with her.
A trickle of fear and something else slipped down her spine. Alex refused to think past getting out of the village to somewhere safe where they could hide. For all she knew, she was trading one bad set of cards for another.
* * *
JAKE HADN’T EXPECTED to find an American woman in the village. When she’d run into the hut where he’d been hiding, he knew he couldn’t leave without taking her with him. The ISIS terrorists would either kill her, or rape and torture her until she wished she were dead. Leaving her behind wasn’t an option. But taking her with him made them both more vulnerable. She slowed him down, and two people made a bigger target than just one person attempting to escape and evade capture.
With the sun starting its descent toward the horizon, their best bet would be to either make a dash for cover in the hills, or hunker down in one of the huts and wait until dark to make their move.
The crack of gunfire filled the air with the answer to Jake’s question. They had to get out now rather than later. When the terrorists found the dead man, they’d be out for blood. He felt bad about leaving behind the reverend, his wife and the new mother, but he couldn’t take on the entire ISIS force that had stormed the village. They were far outnumbered, and his ammo wouldn’t last long enough to take out all of them.
