Heart of a Hero

by Sara Craven

  Her eyes pooled with moisture but her jaw remained tight. “Yes,” she said softly through clenched teeth. “Yes, I understand.”

  “Good.” He prised the container from her fingers as he spoke. “Now here’s the deal. I have night vision gear, you don’t. I can see, you can’t. I need you to hook your hand into my belt webbing here….” He grabbed her hand, guided it to his back, tucked her fingers into his belt. “I’ll lead. I’ll be your eyes. You just hang on and try to keep up. We move till daybreak, then we take cover and wait for the helevac.”

  He began to edge forward, but she resisted immediately. “Where are we going?”

  He drew a breath in slowly, straining for patience. “The Shilongwe River, where we can get the chopper in.”

  “I…I was going to the Oyambo River,” she protested. “I was going to—to the village there, to get help.”

  “So was your tail,” he snapped. “You ready now?”

  She made a faint little sound he took as an affirmative. “Stay directly behind me. Don’t want to connect you with a back-swing if I need to use the machete to clear a path, understand?”

  He took her silence as acquiescence, and he started to move. She stumbled instantly, dragging down hard on his belt, but righted herself just as quickly. Hunter moved slowly at first, picking the easiest route across small gullies, around ferns and raised roots on the forest floor. Sarah managed to find an awkward if staggering gait behind him, and he took it as a sign to increase the pace. They moved like that for the better part of half an hour before the earth turned boggy and began to suck and drag at their feet.

  He felt Sarah begin to falter again, and then she stumbled, her hand slipping free of his belt. Hunter reached behind him, snatched her wrist and caught her. He tucked her hand back into his belt—and this time registered how slender and soft her fingers were, how fine-boned her wrist. It felt…like Kathleen’s hand.

  The thought exploded like shrapnel through Hunter, so sharp he stumbled.

  He stopped, caught his breath, and killed the memory instantly. But the fact it had even entered his head rocked him to the core.

  He blew out a long, slow breath as he tried to focus. He thought he’d totally terminated the memories. The past. The blackness. Himself. But now…now the murdered memories were sifting up like haunting mists from a decaying swamp, the dread rising inside him, making him feel things again. What in hell was wrong with him?

  Hunter gritted his teeth. There was no freaking way he was going to start seeing ghosts in this forest. Not after so many years. Not after coming this far. This hadn’t happened to him on any other mission. So why this one?

  Deliver the package and move on. Another job. Another day.

  He picked up the pace, knowing he was going too fast for her, yet unable to slow himself down.

  Sarah could barely keep her balance as her rescuer suddenly upped the pace, and she was so out of breath she could hardly speak, let alone find some kind of logical order to the fragmented images and questions slamming through her brain. But she had to ask. “Why…are they after my container?”

  “Later. Save your breath.” His words were clipped.

  “Who…will send a helicopter?”

  “Friends. Keep moving.”

  His dismissive tone frustrated her. And she couldn’t keep up at this pace. But she was terrified of protesting, of letting go, of irritating him to a point that he’d take her container and just leave her in the jungle to die. She had no idea who he was or who he worked for, and she didn’t trust him any more than those murderous soldiers back at the compound. But right now he was her only salvation, her lifeline through the dark. She had to hang on.

  The forest undergrowth grew thicker. Sarah could literally sense the tangle of vegetation knitting itself around her, creeping ominously closer. She stumbled again and again. Thorns and twigs and leaves tore at her clothes, scraped her skin. Tears of sheer exhaustion began to stream down her face. “Could…could you slow…down a little? I—”

  “Keep moving!”

  Her toe hooked under a knot of vines, and this time she wasn’t able to brace herself. Her hand wrenched free from his belt and she went down hard and fast. Her chest slammed into the ground and air crunched from her lungs in a violent whoosh. Sparks of pain radiated through her torso, and for a terrifying instant, she couldn’t breathe, or even move.

  She felt him drop instantly to her side, felt his hands on her, easing her up into a sitting position. She gasped wildly for breath, but her lungs wouldn’t open up.

  “Easy, easy, Sarah. You’re winded. Don’t panic, just relax.” His voice was calm, strong, quiet. He gathered her to his chest and gently rubbed her back as she struggled to breathe, until her lungs could take in air again, until the acute panic began to ebb and she realized she was going to be okay.

  She expected him to release her then, but he didn’t. He fell silent and continued to hold her against his body, a brooding, encompassing presence in the dark. She could feel the rough hair on his forearms and the hair at the base of his neck where his shirt was open. She could smell his masculine scent amid the rich layers of jungle smells. And she could sense him studying her. It made her feel naked, yet in a strange way, she felt a sense of refuge in his arms, a basic human comfort.

  He placed a callused palm against her cheek, a confident, tangible strength transferring through his touch, as if the man was magically infusing her with the calm to do what she needed to do. “Are you okay?”

  There was something about his voice, something in his touch that made her want to believe she was. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I—I think I’m okay.”

  But the tears trailing furiously down her face must have betrayed her. He brushed them away with his thumb. The gesture made her heart twist and her tears flowed all the harder. Absurdly, she just wanted to stay in his arms. She wanted to bury her face against his chest, drink in his masculine scent, fold herself into his embrace.

  “You’ve made it farther than most people could, Sarah,” he whispered against her cheek. “You’re strong, and you’re going to be just fine as long as you hang in here with me for another twenty minutes or so. It’ll be light by then. We should be in the clearing, alongside the Shilongwe. And once we’re there, we can get you cleaned and patched up. Here…”

  She felt something being pushed up against her lips—the mouth of a canteen. He cupped his hand around the back of her head and tilted the canteen toward her. Water trickled over her lips and down her chin and neck. Sarah gulped at it, but he pulled it away before she’d had enough. She groped in the dark for more.

  “Not so fast,” he said softly. “Need to save some for later. Ready now?”

  She wiped her wrist over her mouth and nodded, feeling strangely refueled by his touch, by the fact that he actually seemed to care. As much as he terrified her, Sarah needed this man on a very basic human level.

  He helped her to her feet. “The going will get a bit rougher from here, but not for long. Stay right behind me, clear of the machete.” He took her hand and once again guided it around his back, hooked it carefully into his belt.

  She heard the sickening sound of a blade being unsheathed, then the first two rapacious strokes as metal met vegetation. He began to move forward again, pulling her along, more slowly now. She edged after him, feet tentatively testing ground before transferring weight.

  Gradually, gray shapes and shadows began to emerge from the cloak of pure blackness as dawn broke somewhere beyond the forest canopy. Fresh energy surged through Sarah. She’d made it through the night! She was going to live to see another day.

  But almost instantly her flare of excitement was quashed as the indistinct shadows morphed into monstrous, prehistoric-looking trunks, knotted vines curling up them, nests of vegetation growing in the forks of their branches. Tangled lianas looped down from the canopy, some of them as thick as her wrist, some with inch-long thorns. Stems and leaves and vines all mixed so chaotically in the eerie d
awn light that she couldn’t tell where one plant ended and another began, what was growing up or what was growing down. There was absolutely no sense of order. And all around her, heat and sound began to swell. Birds, monkeys, other unidentifiable creatures, all rising to a riotous, raucous cacophony that tore at her ragged nerves. Sarah’s heart began to pound even harder.

  Being blind to what was around her had been better than actually seeing it all. Seeing made her predicament too stark, too real. This wasn’t some horrendous dream from which she could waken. She was stepping out of the blackness into a living nightmare.

  And as more light began to filter down through the canopy, the man in front of her took an even more formidable form than she’d imagined in the dark. He was well over six feet tall, with an unruly mess of pitch-black hair. He was wearing a combat vest, camouflage gear and black army boots. He had a military pack on his back and an assault rifle slung across his shoulders. It was the same kind of gun she’d seen both soldiers and rebels carrying since she’d arrived in the Congo. Yet despite his military gear, she could see no official markings on his clothing. Whoever he was, she’d bet her life he did not belong to any conventional army. And judging by the hypnotic swipe of his machete, the way he never lost the rhythm or power of his stroke, she’d also bet that he’d done this kind of thing many, many times before.

  It made her hunger for a look at the face that went with the body, with the voice, with the powerful tenderness in his touch—the contradiction that was this man.

  Then, so suddenly it shocked her, they broke out of the forest into a clearing. Sarah jerked to a stop, instantly blinded by light. She scrunched her eyes tight against the white pain, feeling as disoriented as a mole that had just been spat out of moist, black ground.

  “Your eyes got accustomed to the dark,” he said. “Give them time to adjust.”

  She stilled.

  This time there was no harsh whisper or growl from his lips. The man had the languid and mellifluous bass tones of a late-night Irish DJ. Sarah became even more desperate to see him. She lifted both hands to shield her brow and angled her head, squinted one eye open. Then the other.

  Her heart stumbled. She blinked once, twice.

  And could only stare.

  Chapter 3

  06:27 Alpha. Shilongwe River.

  Monday, September 22

  Black camouflage paint covered his face, making the whites of his eyes leap out in contrast. He was studying her with those eyes in a relaxed, almost lazy fashion. His mouth, sensually sculpted, was absolutely devoid of expression as he appraised her.

  A predator, that’s what he was, acutely aware of everything going on around him. She didn’t doubt for an instant that he could strike to kill in the blink of an eye.

  Sarah swallowed the odd mix of awe, fear and admiration rising in her throat. She felt suddenly more powerless in front of this elemental male than she had in the deep jungle night.

  He raised his machete and sheathed it slowly behind his back, his eyes never breaking contact with hers. She had a sense she was being weighed, judged.

  He reached for the canteen hanging at his hip, twisted off the cap, held the water bottle out to her, and smiled. The sudden whiteness of his teeth against the camouflage paint was predacious.

  Sarah cringed instinctively toward the protection of the jungle foliage. A flock of birds scattered from the reeds along the river and fluttered squawking into the sky, exposing the red underside of their fanned tails. The surreal flurry of color in her peripheral vision, the sudden brightness of daylight after twelve hours of blackness, was overwhelming her senses. She stared at the water bottle in his huge, tanned hand, aware of her thirst, yet unable to move.

  “You okay?”

  Her eyes lifted slowly, met his. “Who are you?”

  He smiled again, more gently this time, and the sunlight caught his eyes. A distant part of her brain noted the color of them, an unusual blue, so dark it was almost indigo.

  “Here…” He pushed the canteen toward her. “Have some water. You look like you need it.”

  She moved to take the canteen from his hands, but as she did, she caught sight of the huge hunting knife tucked into a leather casing strapped around his massive thigh. There was dried blood on the hilt, and on his pants. Lots. She froze, thinking of the three men who’d been following her…. Her eyes shot back up to his.

  “They would have killed you, Sarah,” he said softly. “If I hadn’t taken their lives, they would have taken yours.”

  She shook her head, not wanting to think about what this man had done with that knife. For her. She didn’t want to be responsible for death…for anyone’s death. She believed in life, in protecting it at all cost. That’s what had driven her to be a nurse, a caregiver. Hugging herself, she backed toward the wall of vegetation they’d just come through, as if it might offer refuge from stark reality. But Sarah knew it held only darkness and danger. There was no going back. She had no choice. She had to go forward. With him.

  He took a step toward her, placed his hand against her neck. Sarah caught her breath. She could feel a latent power almost vibrating through him.

  He curled his fingers around the back of her neck, placed his thumb under her jawbone, and tilted her face, forcing her to look back up into his eyes. She had no doubt he could snap her neck in an instant, yet his touch had a solid warmth that seemed to flow right into her, that somehow went beyond protective into the realm of darkly seductive. A shiver rippled through her body at the conflicting sensations generated by the contact.

  “Sarah,” he murmured. “I’m on your side. I’m going to get you home.”

  Home?

  A hiccup jerked painfully in her chest as she tried to choke down a sob. Wasn’t that why she’d come running to Africa? Because her idea of home had been utterly demolished by Josh, the cold, powerful man she’d once thought she’d loved with all her heart? Her ex-husband had crushed her world. He’d taken everything from her.

  She had no home.

  “Trust me, Sarah.” Hunter gazed into her eyes. “If anyone can get you out of here, I will. I promise you that.”

  She wanted to tell him it was not possible. No one could get her home. Not in a way that mattered.

  He pushed the canteen into her hands. “Now here, drink.” He wrapped her fingers around the bottle. “You need to stay hydrated. Take what you need—we’ll be out of here soon. In the meantime, I’m going to head out into that clearing over there—” he pointed to a patch of grass that grew luminescent green and tall in the sunlight “—where I can get a decent satellite signal. I’m going to call for our helevac and then we can get you cleaned up while we wait for the chopper, okay?”

  She nodded numbly.

  He turned and made his way into the clearing—with her biohazard container. The long grass parted around his sleek, powerful form, his hair glinting blue-black in the sun.

  “Trust me, Sarah.”

  Could she? She sank onto the trunk of a massive fallen tree and drank deeply from the water bottle as she studied him in the distance. He crouched down among the tall grass and took what looked like a stubby phone out of his combat vest, pulling a thick antenna out the top.

  “Trust no one. This is the Congo. Everyone has a price.” What was this man’s price? What on earth had she gotten mixed up in? Her brain didn’t want to think. Couldn’t. She was too tired to even formulate the questions.

  She set the canteen down on the log beside her and clasped her hand tightly around the small gold crucifix that nestled at the hollow of her throat, seeking comfort in the familiar shape. Her grandmother had given her the small cross for her fourteenth birthday, her first birthday after her mother died, and Sarah had worn it ever since. It grounded her, reminded her of the good things she’d had in life. Sarah clutched the keepsake, closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun.

  Then she heard Hunter’s voice in the clearing. He was speaking in fluent French. Her eyes flared open. The sol
diers who had attacked the compound had been yelling in French.

  She listened more closely. The inflection and resonant intonation of his words were no different from the haunting sound of the locals. Her chest tightened. Was he allied to the soldiers who’d attacked the compound? She hadn’t been able to see anything of them other than their black hazmat suits. Had he come after her because he’d known she had the pathogen? Was this all just a ploy to get her container? But then why hadn’t he killed her back in jungle?

  “Trust no one.”

  He signed off, pocketed his phone, looked sharply up in her direction. Something had changed in him. She could see it in his posture. Her mouth went dry.

  He stood in a fluid movement, a gleaming panther rising out of the grass. And in that same liquid motion, he adjusted the sling of his assault rifle, swinging the weapon from his back to hang ready at his side. He picked up her biohazard container and stalked through the long grass toward her, until the shadow of his huge frame blotted out the sun that had warmed her face.

  “Chopper will be here within the hour.” His voice was gruff and there was a new razor-sharp glare in his eyes. He seemed somehow less human, and the change frightened her.

  She shrank back. “Will you please tell me who you are, who you were talking to out there?”

  He didn’t answer. He grasped her arm, lifted her brusquely to her feet and moved her closer to the jungle fringe, his eyes scanning the far edges of the clearing as he moved.

  “What is it?” she asked nervously.

  “Stay close to the forest cover. We need to move down to those flat rocks at the river’s edge, under that tree. We can clean and patch you up there while we wait for the helo.”

  Hunter escorted Sarah down to the water, every sense alert. He scanned the far bank of the wide, sluggish river for the slightest signs of movement as they went. Jacques Sauvage at the FDS base had just informed him there’d been a coup in Brazzaville early this morning. Insurgents had stormed the president’s residence before dawn. President Samwetwe was now missing, and all borders were shutting down. Sporadic fighting had already spread as far north as the Shilongwe. That meant rebels could be anywhere at this very minute. And it meant that he and Sarah were suddenly fair game from all sides of this war. They were running from not only the militia who had razed the Ishonga compound, but also from unidentified rebel cadres as well. They had to get out of the Congo, fast. The whole place was set to blow.