by Cindy Gerard
When Joe woke up again, Suah was sitting cross-legged in the corner of the room cleaning his rifle.
It was late afternoon, pushing toward dusk, if the heat on the sultry breeze drifting through the window was any indication. Joe had no way of knowing if it was the same day. He hoped he hadn’t lost another one. When you were a hunted man, nothing good came from staying in one place too long.
He had to get moving so he could get himself and Stephanie away from here. And he wasn’t going to get his strength back lying on this fucking mattress.
Besides the fact that he was now surely the top dog on Freetown’s Most Wanted list, the man who had framed him for the priest’s murder had no doubt launched a manhunt that would make the search that ferreted out Bin Laden look like a game of peek-a-boo.
Very carefully, he rolled a shoulder. It was sore but okay. Same for his neck. He painstakingly muscled his way to a sitting position, disgusted by the amount of effort it took and by the degree of pain that ripped through his ribs. Still, he felt a little stronger. His head was clearer, now that the night-night juice was out of his system. The IV antibiotics and fluids were doing their thing. And judging by the sudden growl of his stomach, his body was ready to take on a little protein.
“Where’s Stephanie?” he asked Suah, who continued to clean his gun.
“She went for food,” he said, buffing at a spot on the rifle barrel with an oiled rag.
Alarm bells went off like fireworks. “Alone?”
“Bekah is with her.”
Joe recalled the tall, lean boy, his face marked with chicken pox scars, his belly gaunt with hunger. He was one of the boy soldiers they had set free last year along with Suah; a tough, war-worn kid accustomed to making it on his own.
His gut tightened with a new urgency. “Is that wise? To send her with him?” Christ, Bekah might decide to sell her to local slave traders rather than protect her. A Western woman built like Stephanie would bring a king’s ransom in this depraved corner of the world.
Suah set the barrel aside and started cleaning the stock. “Bekah does what I say. He will keep her safe and he will bring her back. Plus, I sent Edward along to make sure.”
It had become real clear, real fast, that Suah was the leader of his motley crew. And since they survived by relying on each other, respect for authority was a necessity.
He will bring her back.
A year ago, Joe wouldn’t have trusted Suah as far as he could have tossed the transport truck taking him to Pademba Road prison. But that had all changed since he’d met up with the kid last month. Go figure, but he and Suah had inexplicably bonded—in a noncommittal and semi-hostile way. At the very least, they had an understanding. Suah pretended not to like Joe, and Joe respected the boundaries the kid set.
He understood. There was pride involved, and there was fear. Suah didn’t dare let himself care about anyone. Experience had taught the kid that everything and everyone eventually left, no one could be trusted, and nothing in life came without a price. Joe suspected that the reason Suah never went without a shirt, like his buddies, was to hide the scars on his back. The kid didn’t know that the thin white T-shirt couldn’t conceal the ridges and raised welts left by some bastard’s whip.
Yet as hard-core and hard-edged as he was, Joe also understood there was a part of Suah that wanted to open himself up to trust that Joe might be the exception to the rules he’d been taught by life and the RUF.
“You got a Plan B in case we need to haul ass out of here on short notice?” he asked.
“A better plan than you had when you let the police capture you.”
He grinned at the kid’s not-so-subtle dig, not just because Suah had a set of balls on him, but because he was right. Joe had been so focused on finally getting a solid lead that he’d walked right into a trap.
“So . . . you saved my bacon. Again. Why?” he prodded, even though he already knew the answer. It was important for Suah to clarify that it was honor and nothing more that had prompted his help.
“I repay my debts. If not for you, I would have been arrested in the cathedral. Now we are even. Again.” In Suah’s world, it was all about settling scores. Joe had just provided the opportunity for Suah to make that clear.
Joe was starting to wonder about the influence of fate. After he’d left Sierra Leone last year, he’d never expected to see Suah again. Hell, he hadn’t even known the kid’s name. So when he’d arrived in Freetown, asking questions and looking for leads to prove his theory, he’d been totally surprised, when, the night after he’d arrived, Suah had materialized out of a dark alley in Kissy.
“You’re pushing your luck, kid,” Joe said as they faced off. He fully expected the boy to challenge him in retaliation for their run-in last year over the arms deal, and he didn’t need the aggravation. “I let you go once. This time I might not be so generous. You would be smart to get out of my face.”
“You are looking for information,” the boy said, standing up to Joe’s threat. “I can help.”
It didn’t surprise Joe how fast word had gotten out on the street that there was an American asking questions. It did surprise him that this kid was offering to help.
“What’s your name?” he asked as he weighed the odds that a whole gang of these little bastards might crawl out of the decay and jump him.
“Suah Korama.”
“And why would you want to help me?”
“I do not want to help you. But I am a man of honor. I am in your debt. I must make the slate clean.”
Joe considered this unexpected turn of events. Considered the boy who had grown a couple inches but still had a lean wiry frame, a baby face, and the skills to operate an assault rifle, RPGs, frag grenades, and any other tools of war tossed his way. The kid could probably set up an X-shaped ambush like a pro and kill anything that moved through it without qualms.
“How old are you?”
He pulled his shoulders back, stood taller. “Fifteen.”
Fifteen, Joe thought reflectively now as he watched Suah work quietly on the rifle. He thought of his own childhood, of how he’d been raised with love and care on a farm in the deep south. He looked at this thin, rangy kid and wondered what his little brother, Bobby, would have looked like at fifteen. What kind of a man would he be now?
He pulled sharply away from those thoughts. No good ever came from walking that road. Or from remembering that at fifteen, he and ten-year-old Bobby had spent their summers lazing on a river bank fishing, and the only gun he’d owned was a shotgun for bird hunting, handed down from his granddad.
This kid tore down an AK-47 with the practiced precision of a pro. It was just plain wrong.
Suah had stood before him in that alley, knowing Joe could easily decide to finish the job he’d started last year—and that made him a man in Joe’s book. He’d respected the guts it had taken for Suah to approach him. And he’d understood that it was a matter of pride for the kid.
In the end, he’d agreed to let Suah help. Suah had located the priest’s parish the next day and arranged the meeting. And now they were back to square one in the debt repayment department, after Suah had helped Stephanie orchestrate Joe’s escape.
Purely a business transaction—except for one little thing. The kid had grown on him. And though Suah would never admit it, the boy wasn’t as detached as he wanted Joe to think he was.
“Must piss you off that you had to help me out again,” he said, and couldn’t help but grin when the boy snorted. “Or am I growing on you?”
“You are growing like a wart on my nose. I live only to be rid of you.”
It felt good to smile. It had been a damn long time since he’d had anything to smile about.
He was thinking about trying to get another rise out of the boy when the door opened and Stephanie walked in, her arms full of groceries.
“You look a little better,” Stephanie said after giving him a thorough once-over.
“I’m fine,” he said around the huge
lump in his throat.
He’d torn her heart to ribbons and she’d still come for him. What kind of a woman did that?
“Fine might be going a little too far,” she said. She set the groceries on the small wooden table in the corner of the room, then turned to Suah.
She nodded toward the door, an unspoken request for privacy. Carrying his gun, Suah got up and headed for the door.
“Wait.” She dug into the sacks and pulled out a few items to keep, then extended the bags to Suah. “For you and the boys.”
Suah shook his head. “We can take care of ourselves.”
She gave him a look and shoved the bags into his chest. “I owe you. Don’t deny me the chance to repay you. You, of all people, should understand.”
Joe admired her intelligence and her compassion. She knew exactly how to play Suah. She was going to feed those boys no matter what, and the look on her face said she wasn’t taking no for an answer.
His pride assuaged, Suah conceded with a nod and left the room with his arms full.
Stephanie stared at the door after it closed, then finally turned back to the table.
Her body language told him how anxious she was. Her shoulders were rigid. Her movements were jerky and precise as she filled a plate with rice and cassava and a slice of cassava bread, the two staples of the diet in Sierra Leone.
“Take it slow.” She handed the plate to him along with a bottle of water. “If it stays down, we’ll try some chicken.”
She leaned back against the wall, crossed her arms beneath her breasts, and watched him eat, her face relaying her tension.
Because he was starving, and because she was apparently still working up to telling him what was on her mind, he quietly dug in.
It didn’t take long to fill him up. His stomach had apparently shrunk to the size of a tennis ball.
And the knot in his chest had clamped into a fist. “I was a bastard earlier.”
She looked surprised. “You were upset,” she said, brushing it off.
“Doesn’t make it right. I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted.”
Her generous dismissal made him feel even more like an ass. But that was his cross to bear. Right now there were bigger fish to fry.
He handed her the half-empty plate. “We can’t stay here much longer. They’ll be canvassing door to door. Someone will have seen us. Someone will talk.”
She set the plate aside. “The boys are on lookout. Their communication network is amazingly efficient. The first sign that the search is headed this way, we move. If we’re not already gone.”
It still stuck in his craw that he had to depend on her to get his ass out of a jam. He was supposed to be the one doing the saving.
“Can you handle that?” He glanced at her waist where he knew the piece was tucked into her pants, out of sight beneath her top.
“If I have to,” she said.
That was the whole problem. She shouldn’t have to.
Focus, he admonished himself. “Am I remembering right? The BOIs are running black? They’re out of touch?”
She nodded.
“All of them?”
“Rafe and B.J. are holding down the fort, but they’re both out of commission. She’s due any day and Rafe had a bad malaria flare-up. He’s out of the hospital but Nate has him on the D.L.”
“We need to make contact with him. See what he can do about getting us some transpo out of here.” Once he got her safely back to the States, he’d come back and finish what he’d started.
“He’s working on it. I talked to him an hour ago.”
“Tell me you didn’t use a cell phone.” Cell phones were always transmitting, looking to find the closest tower, so they could be located by triangulation of the towers.
She shook her head. “I didn’t have time to procure an untraceable unit from NSA before I left.”
By “procure,” she meant “steal.” Since it was easier to shove a watermelon through a keyhole than sneak something out of the NSA offices, he was glad she hadn’t tried. She’d already risked too much.
“I’m using a calling card. Different pay phone each time.”
He clenched his jaw. “Every time you go out, you’re a target.”
“Suah knows the city. Bekah and the boys do, too. They’re not going to put me in jeopardy.”
“Jesus, Steph—you’re in jeopardy just being here!”
She was quiet for a long time. “Let’s not go there now, okay?”
She was right. It was a waste of energy. And he still had fucking little to spare.
“I bought a razor,” she said. “I was thinking you might be up for a shave.”
If she had intended to distract him, she’d aced it. “A shave would be good. A shave would be great,” he said. “The head, too.”
Unless he was deep in an op, he never went a day without shaving and always wore his hair in a military buzz or totally shaved.
She walked to a small cabinet hung on the wall, removed a bowl and a small bar of soap. “This and room temp water will have to do.”
“I’ll make it work.”
She rushed to his side when he tried to get up. “Let me help.”
Like he had a choice. It took both of them to get him on his feet and get the IV line situated so he didn’t pull it out. He held the thin sheet around his hips with one hand and slung his other arm over her shoulders. He managed two small steps when a wave of weakness slammed him.
“Give me a sec,” he said, determined to support his own weight. When he finally felt steady, he walked the two steps more to the table and sank onto the wooden chair beside it.
Sweating like he’d run five miles carrying full gear, he watched her walk to the far wall, then return with a pair of cammo cargo pants.
“Hope they fit. Suah rounded them up, along with a shirt and a pair of sandals.”
His head had finally quit spinning. It felt good to be upright. “That boy is something else.”
“He is,” she agreed, sounding distracted.
When he looked up, he understood why. She was standing directly in front of him, her gaze on his bare chest. And he realized she was uneasy being so close to him.
The room was small, 10 x 10 feet max. And now that he was upright, the dynamic had changed. So had her comfort level. It was different when he’d been lying on the floor on the pallet. When he was down, she was up and he was dependent on her.
He was still dependent, more than she’d ever know. But even in his weakened state, he understood that his sheer size was intimidating.
Christ, she was so close he could smell her—a scent uniquely hers that, even in this heat, clung to her in sensual layers of floral and musk and citrus.
“Do you need help?” she asked tentatively.
The pants. And, yeah. He needed help. He couldn’t bend over without a knife stabbing through his ribs.
Hating it, he nodded and handed them to her.
She knelt on the floor in front of him. He clutched the sheet around his hips and lifted his left foot so she could pull the pants up his leg.
And he did his damnedest not to think about the close proximity of her face to his lap.
The silence stretched and he lifted his other leg as she bent in so close, he could feel the warmth of her breath on his thigh. So close he could imagine her moving between his legs, taking him in her hands, in her mouth.
“I can take it from here,” he said abruptly when he felt himself stiffen and swell beneath the sheet.
He grabbed the pants from her so quickly that she tipped backward, reflexively clutching his calf for balance—and inadvertently grabbing a handful of sheet and ripping it off his lap.
Fuck.
There was no hiding his reaction.
“Sorry,” they both said, trampling all over each other’s apologies and fighting to ignore the very obvious elephant’s trunk in the room.
“It’s okay.” He felt like a jerk. They’d once been as intimate as a man a
nd woman could be, but in the aftermath of his “I don’t love you enough” pronouncement, his reaction was totally out of line.
“It’s okay,” she echoed, looking embarrassed.
She stood quickly and turned her back on him, more for her sake, he suspected, than for his modesty.
He pushed to his feet, pulled up the pants, and let the sheet fall to the floor. As soon as he’d tucked and zipped himself away, he sank back down on the chair, feeling ridiculous for dodging what had just happened.
“I really am sorry, Steph. I hadn’t meant for that to happen.”
“It’s okay,” she said again, a tentative smile tipping up one corner of her mouth. “Guess it’s a good sign. You’re getting your strength back, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, his own smile involuntary and tight. “I guess it’s a good sign.” And they hadn’t even started on that shave.
11
He could do this. Joe held the straight-edge razor up to his throat and glared into the small mottled and wavy mirror Stephanie held in front of him. He’d already chopped off most of the length with scissors, a task that had sapped the bulk of his strength.
So, yeah, he could do this—if his hand wasn’t shaking, and he didn’t mind nicking his carotid artery and bleeding to death in the process.
“Shit,” he muttered and tossed the razor into the water bowl. “I guess this isn’t happening today.”
He grabbed a small hand towel that looked like it had been through a thousand wash cycles. Her hand on his wrist stopped him before he could wipe the soap off his face and neck.
“I can do it for you.”
He grunted. “After the incident with the pants, you sure that’s a good idea?”
“I can do it,” she said again, more firmly this time. “Not a big deal. Let’s just get it done.”
She set the mirror on the table and fished the razor out of the bowl. Then she moved in close, touched a hand to the side of his face, and tilted his head back. “Hold still.”
The edge of the blade scraped slowly up the left side of his throat to his jawline. Water sloshed when she rinsed off the stubble, then she repeated the motion with another slow draw of the razor over another section.