by Susan Stoker
He stepped down into the hole, which was only about three feet deep. He sat on his ass in the dirt and moved his rifle around to his right side. He scooted over as far as he could to the right and gestured for Lexie to join him.
She looked even more skeptical, now that he was inside the hole.
“It looks like a coffin,” she told him with a frown on her face.
“Lexie, there’s no time,” Midas warned her as the voices outside grew closer.
“Shit,” she muttered. Then she turned toward the woman who’d led them into the store and gave her another hug. “Thank you, Astur.”
“You help Astur and children. We help you,” she said as she returned Lexie’s hug. Then she gently pushed Lexie away and gestured to the hole impatiently.
Taking a deep breath, Lexie gingerly stepped into the hole and lay down against Midas. She wiggled a bit, trying to get comfortable, and before she’d even stopped moving, Astur had replaced the boards, making dust fall on top of them. A light in the back room shone through the cracks in the floor, giving them just enough dim illumination to see each other.
She hadn’t dropped the last board over their hiding place a second too soon, as the door to the alley flew open with a crash.
Midas tensed and curled his finger around the trigger of his rifle. This was it. Astur could easily give them up right here and now, and if the men had weapons of their own—and if they were smart—they’d shoot first and ask questions later.
But no shots were fired. What sounded like several men stomped into the back room of the store and began speaking in Somali. Midas had no idea what was being said, but Astur didn’t seem afraid to speak her mind. Their voices raised and, at one point, Astur stomped her foot. At least, he thought it was her. In outrage? In anger? In frustration? Midas didn’t know, but he was as tense as he’d ever been. He could feel every breath Lexie took, as she was literally plastered against him.
Her head was resting on his shoulder, one arm tucked against her side, and thus his side, with the other flung across his lower belly. He could feel her gripping the edge of his tactical vest and their legs were tangled together.
It could’ve been five minutes or fifteen, but after a very tense wait, with more foot stomping and more yelling, the men finally left the small room, heading back into the alley from where they’d come.
Silence greeted their departure, and even Astur left the back room, presumably heading to the front of the store.
“Holy shit,” Lexie whispered.
“Shhhh,” Midas warned in a barely there tone.
He felt her nod against him and, one by one, her muscles began to relax.
Then they lay there in that cramped hole under the floor for what seemed like hours.
The heat rose, and Midas’s legs started to cramp. Still, neither he nor Lexie moved. He’d been trained to stay in one position for hours, but Lexie hadn’t. And she still wasn’t one hundred percent after her ordeal. Midas had been impressed with her before, but with each minute that ticked by, his admiration rose.
The back door had opened twice more, and each time, Astur went head-to-head with whoever had entered, until they eventually left. Midas was aware that they were one cough, one sneeze away from discovery, and he prayed the dirt falling through the cracks didn’t set either one of them off.
Before long, the shouts and yelling from the alley stopped and silence filled their hiding spot and the back room of the store. When Midas was fairly confident it would be safe to speak in hushed tones, he whispered, “You okay?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Peachy. This must be how sardines feel in a can.”
He felt more than heard Lexie’s snort of laughter against his shoulder. Then she said, “How can I be laughing? There’s nothing remotely humorous about this situation.”
“Embrace the suck,” Midas said.
“Pardon?”
“Embrace the suck,” he repeated. “It’s something we said back in SEAL training. It means the situation is bad, but deal with it. Accept the shitty but unavoidable situation, in order to move on.”
“I’m not sure that’s very inspirational,” Lexie said. “What else you got?”
“The only easy day was yesterday?” he joked.
Surprisingly, Midas was enjoying this. Probably because Lexie wasn’t freaking out or hysterical. This was the kind of conversation he’d have with one of his teammates in a similar situation.
“Yeah, no. Because yesterday wasn’t easy,” Lexie said in unequivocal terms. “Try again.”
Midas chuckled softly. “How about…you’re amazing. And there’s no one I’d rather be in this situation with than you.”
“Right,” she said with a small shake of her head. “And I’ve got an ocean-view house in Kansas to sell you.”
“Seriously, you think I’d want Mustang in here with me like this?”
It was Lexie’s turn to laugh softly now. “Um…that might be a little uncomfortable. I mean, it can’t be fun to have me in here with you. We don’t exactly fit.”
“I’d say we fit perfectly,” Midas said before thinking twice about his words.
“I guess it’s a good thing I was able to shower. You wouldn’t be as happy with me practically lying on you like this if I still smelled like I did. Three months is a long time to go without soap.”
Midas did something then that he’d been wanting to do since he saw her lying on that examination table. He turned his head and buried his nose in her hair. It didn’t exactly smell like sunshine and roses, but the strands were soft against his face.
“Are you smelling me?” she asked in confusion.
“Just breathing,” he retorted. “And your hair is in the way.”
“You’re weird,” she told him.
Midas smiled. He was. But at the moment, he didn’t care. His fingers relaxed from their grip on the rifle for the first time and he reached up and ran a hand over her hair, smoothing it away from her face.
This wasn’t the time or place to think about how much he liked the feel of Lexie in his arms. He felt relatively safe at the moment, but he wasn’t about to creep out of their hiding spot until nightfall, hopefully after whoever was searching for them gave up, so they had quite a few hours to go.
His conversation with Slate came back to him, about how there were no coincidences. Midas had resigned himself to the fact that he didn’t have time to get to know Lexie before they went their separate ways. Well, the universe had basically just laughed in his face as if to say, “You want time? I’ll give you time.”
And he wanted to know everything about her.
“Tell me about Astur,” he said, asking the first thing that came to mind. “How’d you know you could trust her?”
Chapter Five
Lexie felt like a terrible human being. Here she was, hiding for her life, and she was enjoying being plastered up against Midas. If someone had told her high school self that she’d one day be in the position she was in right now, she would’ve laughed in their face.
But she couldn’t deny that she wasn’t hating the feel of his hard body under hers. Was amused that he’d smelled her hair. And loved the tender feel of his hand running over her head, smoothing her crazy curls away from her face. It helped that their hiding space wasn’t pitch dark. Astur had left the light on in the small back room of the shop, and the rays of light peeking through the cracks in the floor was just enough so Lexie didn’t feel as if she was buried alive.
She was still scared out of her mind and didn’t feel all that great. She was hungry and thirsty, but she didn’t want to risk moving from their hiding spot. The men weren’t trying to find her to give her a goodbye party. They sounded pissed that she’d escaped.
Kicking herself for not asking Midas or any of this teammates how many people they’d killed at the desert camp, she realized now that there had to be at least one person who’d escaped. Who’d seen what happened and had spread the word.
She, more than m
ost people, knew what the ransom money meant for the kidnappers. She didn’t agree with the way they were trying to get money to survive, but on one level, she understood it. Desperate people would do desperate things, especially if they had a family.
And she’d met some very desperate people in her years working for Food For All. Particularly here in Somalia. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs was a real thing. Most people didn’t think much about their basic needs, because they were easily met. But Lexie had known more than her share of people over the years who weren’t getting those basic needs met. Food, water, shelter, sleep, clothing. Beyond those, everything else was secondary.
“Lex?” Midas prompted.
She realized with a start that he’d asked her a question. “Sorry. I met Astur when I first got here about six months ago. Food For All provides its workers with housing, but all the rooms in their main building were taken, so I was given a small house about two blocks away. I was kind of glad. I like living among the locals. Anyway, about a week after I’d arrived, I’d just left the food pantry when Astur walked up with her three kids. Hodan, her daughter, is around five; Cumar, her middle son, is nine; and Shermake, her oldest son, is sixteen. They were in pretty bad shape. They were dirty, their clothes were torn, and Hodan was the only one who had shoes on. Astur didn’t speak much English, but I understood that she was looking for food for her kids.”
Lexie hated remembering this, but she knew Astur and her family were among many who were hungry and homeless in the world. “I turned back around to go get them some food, but my supervisor at the time was closing up the building and told me no, that we were closed and it was against regulations to give away any food or clothing after hours. That pissed me off. I mean, Food For All’s entire mission is to provide food for freaking all. I had heard bad things about the supervisor before I’d arrived in the country, but dismissed the talk as gossip.
“Anyway, Astur was upset, but she took Hodan and Cumar by the hands and walked away. And while I wasn’t happy, I didn’t want to piss off my boss in my first week, so I didn’t say anything. I walked home and when I got to my street, I saw Astur and her kids again. They had settled under an awning of a business across from my small house. So… I invited them in.”
“Jesus, Lex,” Midas said with a shake of his head.
“I know, I know…but you should’ve seen them, Midas. They needed someone to give a shit about them. And at that moment, I was the only one around. So I convinced them to come inside, and I made a simple and quick meal for everyone. When I started rearranging the furniture, pushing it back so I could make a pallet on the floor, Astur began crying. It took everything I had to convince her to stay, and they spent the night in my living room. In the morning, they had a small breakfast, then they left. But that night, I saw them on the street again, and invited them in a second time.
“This happened every day for about a month. Shermake, the oldest boy, was the most proficient in English, and we practiced every night. They were all very quiet and respectful, and every morning they’d head off to wherever they went to spend the day. I started to enjoy the company, so I was happy when they were waiting near my place when I got home from work.”
“You were giving them free food and a place to stay, why wouldn’t they keep coming back?” Midas said dryly.
“But they were giving me just as much,” Lexie insisted. “I was in a new country, trying to figure out all the customs and stuff, and Shermake was a great help. Astur took me to a farmers market one weekend, and it was fascinating to see the interaction between her and the vendors. She was as fierce a negotiator as I’ve ever seen. And yes, I was paying for the food, but if she was truly just mooching off me, she wouldn’t have cared about getting the best deal.”
“It looks like she got herself figured out, since she’s working here in this store,” Midas noted.
“Shermake told me that their father had gone to Ethiopia to earn money for the family. He’d been gone longer than they’d planned, and Astur ran out of money. She lost their small hut and had no choice but to live on the streets with her kids. Yuusuf eventually came back and had been very lucky. He’d earned enough money to rent them another place, and Astur decided she wanted to help earn money for their family so they never had to be homeless again.”
Midas didn’t say anything, and Lexie tilted her head back, trying to see his expression. She didn’t have enough room to maneuver any farther, but she could see the outline of his face. His jaw was tight, and she thought she even saw a muscle ticking there.
“What?” she whispered.
He dipped his chin and turned his head a bit, and their gazes met. “You’ve always been concerned about others,” he said.
Lexie shrugged. She used to feel embarrassed about wanting to take care of other people, but after making it her career, she’d ceased to care what others thought. “So many others have it worse than I ever did. It feels good to help.”
There was a moment of silence before Midas asked, “You had it bad?”
Lexie didn’t respond, not sure what to say. She didn’t want this man to pity her. She was fine. She’d survived and was satisfied with where she was in her life.
“When I joined the Navy, I was so naïve,” Midas said. “I grew up with loving parents and two great siblings. Karen was a pain in my ass, but I would’ve killed anyone who tried to hurt her. I guess that’s what older brothers do for their little sisters. Max was always trying to be like me. He even joined the swim team, and the little shit broke one of my records.”
Lexie smiled. She didn’t know a lot about Midas, they weren’t really friends in high school, so she drank in each and every bit of information she discovered about him.
“My parents were happy, treated us kids like we were the most important things in their lives, and we always had awesome Christmases with a ton of presents. When I asked for all the trendy clothes, they usually bought them for me. I had lots of friends and didn’t really have to work all that hard in school for good grades. I was spoiled, I can admit that now, though my folks did a good job of trying to make sure we appreciated what we had. But when I joined the Navy…all of a sudden, I was nothing. Just another grunt who’d been a big fish in a small pond in his hometown, and then I was this tiny little minnow in a huge ocean. It was definitely a shock.”
“I’m sure you didn’t stay a small fish for long,” Lexie commented.
He chuckled softly, and she felt the rumble in his chest against her own since they were pressed together. If she’d been in this hole in the floor with anyone else, Lexie would’ve been extremely uncomfortable. But something about Midas made her relax.
“I learned really fast that it didn’t matter where we all came from. If we were going to make it through boot camp, and then SEAL training, we all had to work together.”
“Embrace the suck,” Lexie said with a smile.
“Exactly. Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of shit. People acting like assholes toward each other. Disrespecting their children, their wives, their neighbors. Fighting over something they probably didn’t even understand. Have you seen the movie World War Z?”
Lexie blinked at the change in topic.
“I have a point,” Midas said.
“That’s the movie with Brad Pitt and the zombies, right?” she asked.
Midas nodded. “Yeah. Anyway, there’s a part when they’re running from the zombies in Jerusalem, and Pitt’s character looks back and sees a boy in the mayhem, crouched down in the middle of the street with his hands over his head. All the zombies go around him without even looking twice at the boy, even though they’re biting everyone else. You’re kind of like that kid.”
Lexie scrunched her nose and frowned. “In what way?”
“Everyone else around you is fighting and clawing for something. Food. Power. Money. And then there’s you. A calm light in the darkness. Giving out smiles and food. Making friends in the most hostile territory. It’s like the dark can’t touch you.”
“Um, I think you’re forgetting that I was kidnapped and taken hostage,” Lexie said dryly.
“No, I’m not. You were kidnapped, and that sucked. But they didn’t touch you. And trust me, that is a fucking miracle as far as I’m concerned. Most hostages aren’t so lucky. They kept you reasonably healthy and alive.”
“They wanted money,” Lexie felt obligated to mention. “If they killed me, that would’ve cut their ransom in half.”
She felt him shrug.
“All I’m saying is that I’m realizing you’ve always been that way. You went out of your way to befriend the socially awkward kids at school. You gave up your own lunch money to buy someone else a sandwich. You volunteered to be in a group with the kids no one else wanted to work with. You’re a good person, Lexie. And while it completely freaks me out that you’ve probably been inviting complete strangers into your home and feeding them for years, it’s obvious you love what you’re doing.”
After a long moment of silence, Lexie blurted, “I joined Food For All to get away from my father.”
She felt every muscle under her go taut.
“Explain,” Midas bit out.
“He didn’t hit me, but he wasn’t very nice,” Lexie admitted for the first time ever. She’d never talked about her dad to anyone. Partly because she hadn’t been very close to any of her coworkers. She wasn’t around any of them long enough. Between her switching locations frequently, and them doing the same, it was a part of life to meet someone one day and have them be gone the next. But something about lying in the dark with Midas, and the fact that he knew her from so long ago, made opening up not as difficult as she might’ve expected.
“He was never sure what to do with a daughter. He was also an alcoholic, always being fired from jobs for showing up drunk. We didn’t have big fancy Christmases. I think the last time we had a tree was when I was in elementary school. When he got drunk, the last thing he thought about was making dinner for me.”
“Where was your mom?” Midas asked.