Last Man Standing

by Cindy Gerard

  “He’s a strong man,” he said, offering her a kind smile. “A fine physical specimen. That is all in his favor. In a few days, he’ll be much improved. Give him a month and he’ll be back to normal.”

  Looking at him now, his face gaunt, his skin pale and pasty where it wasn’t covered with bruises or wounds, she couldn’t imagine that happening.

  “You will see.” The doctor started gathering up his medical kit. “Even tomorrow, he will show more signs of life. I suspect the sedation will be necessary to keep him down, to give those ribs a chance to heal.”

  She panicked when he headed for the door. “You’re leaving?”

  “I must,” he said with an apologetic smile.

  “But you’ll be back to check on him?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I cannot. I have done what I can for him. Time will do the rest. And I have many patients much more in need of my attention. He will be fine,” he assured her again, then went over his instructions on the administration of the fluids, the antibiotics, and sedation.

  “Thank you so much.” She handed him several bills. “This seems inadequate, given all you’ve risked.”

  He counted the money. “You are very generous. This will go directly to the clinic. Many people will benefit, so the risk was well worth it.”

  Suah rose and opened the door, then, leading with the rifle, checked to make certain there was no one in the hallway who wasn’t supposed to be there.

  “We have not seen much of you at the mission, Suah.” Dr. Sankoh paused by the door.

  “I’ve been busy,” Suah said evasively.

  “You are missed.” He laid a hand on the boy’s bony shoulder. “Please do not be such a stranger.”

  Suah gave him a noncommittal nod. “I am in your debt.”

  “If you feel so, then come back to the mission. We miss your smiling face.” The doctor chuckled when Suah schooled his face into a mask totally void of emotion that Stephanie was beginning to realize was typical Suah fashion.

  Just once, she would like to see him smile. Would like to see him react to kindness, to show some sign that there was still a little boy inside that too-thin body. A boy with hopes and dreams and plans for a future.

  But Suah seemed to already know what the country that had abandoned so many children knew. That every day of his life would be a fight for survival, and no matter how badly he might want to believe in people like the kind Dr. Sankoh, he could only depend on himself.

  It hurt her heart to know that his pretense of detachment came from so many hard lessons. She felt helpless because there was nothing she could do to help him, either. If she managed to pull this off, she and Joe would be gone soon. Suah would still be here, still be an orphan, still be on his own. It would still be—always be—him against the world.

  When Suah left the room with the doctor she turned back to Joe, someone she could help, and looked him over with a critical eye. He appeared to be resting comfortably. She chose to believe that the doctor could be right: that he’d soon be back to normal.

  For the first time in ages, she drew a breath that didn’t choke her with tension.

  They’d actually done it. They’d gotten Joe out of that evil situation. None of Suah’s boys had gotten hurt, thankfully, and no one, not even the guards, had died in the escape.

  Joe was free. He would heal. They’d find a way out of Sierra Leone, and then . . . then what?

  She knelt beside the mattress, pulled the bucket of rainwater Suah had collected earlier closer, and reached inside for the cloth Dr. Sankoh had used to clean Joe’s wounds.

  What happened next for her and Joe? The answer was simple: nothing.

  No matter what his motives were—whether he really didn’t love her, or whether it was some misdirected attempt to protect her—the bottom line was that he had left her. He’d been determined to write her out of his life, confirming a truth she’d been denying for a very long time. With Joe, there would always be something bigger than the two of them. He would always be committed to his job and his team and his code of honor that told him it wasn’t fair to subject her to the risks. He’d always be haunted by ghosts from his past and not want to subject her to the fallout. And now he’d have new nightmares from his horrifying imprisonment to muddy the waters even more.

  She stared at his bruised and battered face, sadness tightening her chest. Despite all that she knew about what couldn’t be, all that she knew about his inability to stop playing protector long enough to engage in an equal partnership, she still loved him. Still loved a man who didn’t have the ability to trust that what they could have together would outdistance any obstacles that got in their way.

  Yeah, she thought with a newfound resolve to deal with a future without him. She still loved him. But when they got out of this place, she was going to let him go.

  “Your loss, Joe Green,” she whispered into the quiet room.

  Hers, too.

  With tender care and as dispassionately as possible, she started bathing him. He still reeked of the jail. She knew how much he would hate that and wasn’t going to make him suffer it a moment longer.

  As she gently administered to his body, she tried to look but not see or remember what it felt like to lie beneath him. Tried to touch but not feel. Tried to pretend that the tears suddenly trailing down her face were all about the cruel damage inflicted on this strong, resilient body. Tried, even, to convince herself that some of her tears were for Suah, who had never been allowed to be a child. That they were tears of relief, even, that the worst was over. That they had nothing to do with the fact that she had finally accepted the truth.

  She would never touch this man again as a lover. Never give and take pleasure from this body ever again. Never look in his eyes and know this was the man she hoped to spend the rest of her life with.

  She wiped her eyes with the backs of her wrists, and rinsed out the cloth. Then she finished the job she’d started.

  8

  “Do I have to tell you again what will happen to you and to your family if the American is not found immediately?” Pain clutched at his chest as he leaned over Saidu Bangura’s desk. You should be afraid, he thought darkly, gratified that the fat police lieutenant was nearly cowering.

  “Are you . . . well?” Bangura asked cautiously. “You do not look well.”

  “I’m fucking fine,” he ground out as what felt like a searing hot iron spread flames through his chest.

  Sweat poured off his face as he reached blindly into his breast pocket. His hand was shaking with rage and weakness as he withdrew a prescription bottle, then fumbled to uncap it. He shook two nitro tablets into his palm and quickly tucked them under his tongue.

  The relief was almost immediate. The pain lessened and the nausea subsided as the drug dilated his blood vessels and eased the pressure.

  Fucking angina. Fucking inept bastard, whose bumbling loss of the American could cost him everything.

  “Perhaps you should sit down,” Bangura prodded as he planted his palms on the desk and rode out the tail end of the attack.

  “And perhaps you can explain to me why a lone American who’d been starved and beaten for a month managed to escape your transport vehicle.”

  “The men responsible for letting him escape have been punished.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “I do not know yet what happened. I know only that he had assistance from outside.”

  “Assistance?” Not from Green’s employer or his teammates. He’d made sure that the Black Ops, Inc. team was otherwise occupied deep in the Amazon, chasing their own tails on the trail of a bogus intel report of an al-Qaeda splinter group setting up a base of operations. Once his eyes on the ground had informed him that there was an American in Freetown snooping around, then positively identified him as a former member of a U.S. special operations group that had made trouble for him at the onset of his operation here, he’d made certain the rest of the team had been kept very busy.
Before that, he’d arranged to have them tagged to go to Colombia to deal with a bona fide U.S. security threat. When Green was arrested last month they’d been conveniently unavailable in Bogotá, where there was no chance of the news reaching them. The BOIs—Black’s Obnoxious Idiots—were out of the picture. Green wasn’t getting any help from them.

  That was the degree of power he wielded. The power he had earned. He had the ear of the secretary of defense. The confidence of the joint chiefs. And had been noticed by the president.

  None of it was by accident.

  Every step of the way, he’d meticulously plotted and skillfully placed all of his chess pieces in play. It was all about finesse and intellect, about winning and reaping the rewards.

  Most of all, it was about power. He’d been taught that from a very early age, and what he hadn’t learned fast enough had been beaten into him. Defeat had never been an option. Not in little league baseball. Not in a school spelling bee. Not on the gridiron.

  Weakness led to defeat. And he’d never been allowed to be weak. The angina was an unforgivable weakness, but it would not win. And he would not lose.

  After several long years, he was one step away from checkmate. Only one man stood in his way: Joe Green.

  In retrospect, he should have shut him up right away. Letting him live this long had been one of his few mistakes. But he’d wanted information before he had Green eliminated. A stay in Bangura’s jail had seemed the perfect way to weaken his will and loosen his tongue. A transfer to Pademba Road prison, a final interrogation to determine what, if anything, Green knew about his Sierra Leone operation, and he’d quickly become a casualty of a prison system known for its high mortality rate among inmates.

  “I assure you, we will find him.” Bangura attempted to reassert himself in the silence he had taken as a threat, with good reason. “My entire force is searching as we speak. I have divided the city into grids and—”

  “I don’t give a fuck how you do it.” Now that the attack had passed and he was capable of self-control, he reverted to the chillingly calm tone that he had always found a more effective terror tactic than shouting. “And I don’t want your assurances. I want results.”

  Sweat beaded on the fat man’s brow.

  Message received: Bangura understood that his family wasn’t safe until this was resolved.

  “Hourly reports,” he said over his shoulder as he walked out of the lieutenant’s office.

  Inside the building had been stifling. Outside, the sun was unbearable. He hated this fucking barbarian country. Despised the fact that he was even here. But here he would stay until Bangura delivered.

  The crooked cop was a joke at his job, but he loved his fat, busty wife and their three heathen children. He’d made it a point to know everything about Bangura. Knew specifically that the man’s interrogation tactics would be brutal. Bangura wouldn’t hesitate to lop off a digit or even a limb to obtain the information he wanted. That unapologetic brutality was one of the reasons he’d recruited the former RUF officer in the first place.

  If Green had help, Bangura would find those responsible. And then he would dispense with them all.

  Joe woke up in the dark. In a bed, or maybe a pallet on a floor. Not mired in filth. The air didn’t smell foul. No moans of misery and pain formed perpetual white noise in the background.

  He had no clue where he was, only that he was not in prison. What he did know, with absolute certainty, was that he was not alone.

  He lay still to determine if the other person in the room represented a threat or a promise. But his head felt so damn fuzzy. His thoughts were like sludge, sluggish and vague and disjointed. Only his body sent crystal-clear messages. If he so much as drew a deep breath, the pain was vicious and crippling.

  The sweet oblivion of unconsciousness was a powerful lure, so he drifted again, floating in and out of sleep.

  And then he caught a scent.

  Warm. Fragrant. Clean.

  Familiar.

  Stephanie.

  Another trick of his mind? Hadn’t he made certain he’d sent her away?

  A soft hand lay gently on his brow.

  “Joe.”

  His heart kicked like recoil from a rifle shot. Disbelief came in a distant second to hope as he lifted a hand, curled his fingers around a slender wrist, and hung tight.

  “Jesus,” he whispered, part prayer, all sheer, selfish relief that rolled over the regret.

  “It’s okay,” she murmured and with the gentlest of touches, settled his wildly beating heart. “You’re safe now. All you need to do is rest.”

  It had been so long since he had rested. So long since he’d felt safe. She was offering both. And Jesus God, he wanted both. He’d never felt this weak. Physically. Mentally. It shamed him.

  “It’s okay,” she murmured again, and with exquisite gentleness pried his fingers away from her wrist. “Just rest.”

  The hell with it. He didn’t want to fight it.

  So he believed.

  You’re safe now.

  And he obeyed.

  Just rest.

  And he let the tension slide out of his body on a slow, shallow breath.

  This time when the darkness took him under, he welcomed it with open arms.

  “I was starting to think you were never going to come around.”

  Stephanie. Beside him. Sleep-soft and fragrant. She shared his bed on the floor. The only bed, he suspected.

  Jesus. Joe still had trouble believing it, and coming to terms with what had happened.

  He’d been awake for several minutes, silent. Assessing. Trying to clear the cobwebs and get a bead on the time of day. Based on the angle of the sunlight slanting in through an open window, he finally decided that it was late morning.

  He was naked beneath a thin sheet and wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He was clean. About that, he felt damn good, until he thought about Stephanie having to clean him up. He should remember something like that, but he was drawing a total blank.

  The only thing he was certain of was where they were. Nowhere on earth smelled like this place: the faint but ever-present stench of rotting garbage, smoke from hundreds of charcoal grills, the salty scent of the sea, the bitter scent of cassava and rice. Add that to the intense heat and there was no mistaking that they were still in Freetown.

  He had a million questions, but they could wait. He wanted to savor this moment a little while longer. Savor his freedom and the nearness of the soft, pliant woman nestled up against him.

  Real. Not a dream.

  And not right.

  A staggering wave of panic shattered his temporary feeling of contentment. She was not safe here.

  “I thought I sent you away.” His throat felt raw and dry.

  She pushed up on an elbow. “You tried to.” Her smile was full of concern, speculation, and discomfort. Yet it was so heart-wrenchingly beautiful, it humbled him.

  She had every reason to hate him, yet she was here. He couldn’t even begin to assemble the questions on that front.

  “Last thing I remember . . . I was chained in a truck. And then I wasn’t. You did that? You got me out of there?”

  “We got you out.”

  “We?”

  She sat up stiffly, folded her legs beneath her hips, and stretched her arms above her head. Sunlight from the east-facing window cascaded over the dark, tangled hair that fell over her shoulders and trailed down her back. A line creased her cheek where she’d been lying on her arm. A softness in her eyes revealed a heaviness in her heart that made his chest ache.

  “Why don’t we see how you’re doing first, then we’ll play twenty questions.” She checked a tube that he only then realized was attached to an IV port in his arm.

  “Fluid and antibiotics,” she explained when he looked from the tube to her face.

  Antibiotics were as hard to come by in Freetown as running water. He didn’t want to think about how she had gotten them.

  Someone had patched him
up. A bandage covered the cut on his forehead, he realized after feeling it gingerly with his fingertips.

  He lifted his head, felt the room spin, and let it fall back down. He was as weak as a damn baby. All he could do was lie there as she rose to her feet, stretched out more morning kinks, and walked across the small room on bare feet.

  “How long have I been out?”

  She returned with a bottle of water, knelt beside him again, and supported his head so he could drink. Compared to the brine at the Freetown jail, it tasted like ambrosia. He latched on to her wrist and guzzled, not caring that it ran out of the corners of his mouth and down his neck, or that the plastic rim bit into his cut lip.

  “Easy, Joe. Your system can’t handle that much water that fast. You’re going to make yourself sick.”

  He reluctantly let her go, let his head fall back, and closed his eyes.

  “How long have I been out?” he asked again as he willed down his stomach’s attempt to reject the water.

  “Almost forty-eight hours.”

  Christ. He’d lost two days. “How the hell did that happen?”

  “Dehydration, malnutrition, your injuries—pick one.”

  “I shouldn’t have been out of it for two days.”

  “The doctor said you needed the rest.”

  His eyes snapped open. “You’ve been sedating me?”

  She looked surprised at the anger in his tone. “Per the doctor’s orders, yes.”

  “Is it in this?” He glanced suspiciously at the IV port. He’d rip the sucker out of his arm if he was getting a steady drip of it.

  “No. I dose you every six hours.”

  “No more,” he said flatly.

  “But if it will help you heal—”

  “No more sedation,” he restated in a hard tone, and immediately regretted the bruised look he’d put in her eyes. “It’s okay; you did what you thought was best. But I can’t be sedated, Stephanie.” Not and get back on his game.