“Where is Mama?” Fatima’s black eyes looked out of hollow sockets.
“With Allah. Oh, luv.” Jessica clasped the girl’s little head against her chest and absorbed the child’s sobs.
“What will happen to me?”
Jessica redirected the child’s hand to the spoon. How furious would Kaleb be if she sneaked water and beans to the children during the day? Most Muslims did let children drink and eat, but not ISIS. “You’re with me. I’ll keep you safe.”
“What if he divorces you?” The girl nodded to the bedroom door not three paces away. The sound of feet moving and bedclothes being tidied up sounded behind the thin door.
“I—” Jessica’s heart pounded within her. She’d failed last night. Kaleb Schlensky hated her conversation, hated her cooking, and didn’t even have any interest in her pregnancy-scarred body. How many more hours until this doctor divorced her?
“If he does, then your new husband will marry me to that man who killed my mother.” Fatima’s emaciated hand trembled against the metal of the folding table.
The girl knew. Fatima knew everything those vile men had said. Pain tore through Jessica. “I won’t let that happen.” She clenched the girl’s hand. Her lungs burned as she tried to shield the girl from her own thoughts. She wrapped the child between her arms, but no embrace could block the reality.
The bedroom door creaked. Kaleb rubbed his eyes. His boots indented the faded carpet as he walked toward them.
Jessica rose to a stand and switched to English. “What do you want for breakfast, husband?” Kaleb still had fifteen minutes to consume liquid or food before the sun had fully risen.
What would become of Fatima if Kaleb didn’t divorce her? He seemed to hate children. That’s something she’d always loved about Taban, his Middle Eastern ways of welcoming children. So different than the sterile English culture where having more than two children was considered a crime against humanity.
If Kaleb detested children, would he find Fatima a husband to get her out of this house? Ice spread through Jessica’s limbs.
With a grunt, Kaleb shook his head and started texting on his mobile rather than shoving down food and water as fast as possible. He meant to fast all night as well as all day?
He stepped back into his room and closed the door.
Last night, she’d seen a grate in Kaleb’s room on the right-hand side. She ducked into the hallway that separated the bathroom from Kaleb’s room. No grates appeared in the plaster walls.
She yanked open the linen closet. Dropping to her knees, she clawed away torn towels until a grate appeared.
Bending almost double, she kinked her neck and peered through the slanted slats. Only centimeters away, Kaleb sat on the floor, knees drawn up as he texted, giving her a full-on visual of the mobile. She could almost feel his breath through the grate. She pressed her nose against the cool metal.
A woman’s name appeared on the phone’s screen. Cassandra, that was not a Middle Eastern name. He was texting a Western woman.
Hey Cass. Any progress with the police?
The woman’s name popped up again. They located your truck.
Great! Kaleb typed.
The phone beeped and the name Cassandra popped up again. It’s been gutted, no engine, no steering wheel. Some kind of chop shop took everything.
Kaleb stared at the screen.
Jessica wrinkled her brow. What did it matter about his truck since he’d not be returning to America to drive it? She sucked in one shallow breath. The metal of the grate cut into her nose.
Cassandra’s name again. Your insurance policy, which I found and read—the landlord kept your firebox—does not cover theft.
“At least I still have a birth certificate,” Kaleb muttered. He swore and then stood and headed for the door.
No! Jessica stuffed back towels at a desperate rate and shoved the linens closet door shut. She ran out of the hallway as Kaleb exited his room.
Relief slid through her lungs. She would be using that grate loads until she discovered some way to make herself appealing as a wife in the eyes of Kaleb Schlensky.
How though? She took hold of a plastic water bottle and extended it to him. Her fingers brushed his. With her other hand, she touched below his shoulder. His arm felt hard beneath the cotton shirt.
Kaleb raised one eyebrow and looked right into her face as he unscrewed the water bottle’s lid.
Her voice stuck in her throat. This man controlled her and Fatima’s lives. If he merely repeated the words “I divorce you” three times, both she and Fatima would perish at Omar’s hand. Yet, she had no idea how to make Kaleb pleased with her.
Taban had wanted a son, but Kaleb sure didn’t. She’d spent days perfecting cooking with the beans and rice supply that ISIS doled out, but judging by the faces Kaleb made, he hated her food.
Fear tingled through her palms. Slowly, she moved closer to him.
He kept looking at her as he raised the water bottle to his mouth. He smelled of hospital, the acid tang of antiseptics rising from his scrubbed hands. The stubble on his lips moved as he tilted up the water bottle. A single drop ran over his chin and dribbled down the strong lines of his neck.
Standing to tiptoes, she kissed his neck. The water droplet tasted wet against her lips.
Kaleb spun away.
Despair sagged through her.
“I’m going to the hospital.” Kaleb grabbed a tan duffel bag by the wall. She’d already searched the entire thing. It contained some medical supplies, no weapons.
“May I go with you? I know how to take blood and provide nursing care.” She held her breath. She’d taken phlebotomy in high school and wanted to become a nurse someday before she’d gotten that positive pregnancy test. Taban had promised her that she could use her nursing skills to aid orphans in Mosul. Of course, that hadn’t happened.
“No.” Kaleb scowled.
He hated her. A pit grew in Jessica’s stomach. He’d kicked her out of his room last night.
The Yazidi woman moved into the room, a baby on her hip. She met Kaleb’s gaze and made a motion as if talking on a mobile.
With a smile, Kaleb tugged his mobile out of his pocket and punched in a number. The Yazidi woman took it and walked to the other room.
Was he having sex with that woman, is that why he didn’t want her? The other wives complained incessantly about the sex slaves. She’d always pitied the sex slaves, but if she lost this marriage and Kaleb divorced her, Fatima would be subjected to as bad a fate as any sex slave.
Jessica clenched her mouth shut. As soon as Kaleb left, she was ripping his house apart to search for guns and ammos.
One street turned into another in the maze of Mosul. Kaleb turned down another blind alley. No! He kicked a broken brick. His bag slammed against his back, the medical supplies he’d kind of stolen from the hospital digging through the cloth into his skin.
Rubble and dust coated everything and the morning already heated to overbearing. The stench of death blew in the breeze. Rotting corpses popped up on the side of the road as often as discarded cigarette butts on a Denver street.
Beep. A text popped on his cell. Where are you? You were supposed to come to the hospital right after morning prayers. The name of the ISIS translator showed on his screen.
Sweat poured down Kaleb’s face and neck. He touched the water bottle he’d smuggled under his jacket.
How much did he want to bet that no one peering out from the covered windows around him would call the authorities if he broke Ramadan and sneaked a drink of water?
Ring. He picked up.
“Safe to talk?” Joe said through the line.
“Uh-huh.” Kaleb stepped over a severed limb and around a disease-bloated corpse. Dried blood stuck to the soles of his shoes.
“I need locations for airstrikes. We just lost more men to a suicide bomber.”
“I don’t even know my location.” Kaleb gestured up between tall apartment complexes, their concrete side
s the only shade from the sun’s mind-numbing heat.
“There are thousands of civilians stuck in Mosul for ISIS to use as human shields. You’ve got to find me something, Kaleb.”
If only he had GPS on this flip phone. Kaleb kicked the broken street pavement. Which one of these dreary houses was Ava inside? Did she have enough to eat and drink? He couldn’t bear to think beyond that, for she now lived with a pedophile.
Beep. Another ISIS text. Get to the hospital now.
A cross street ahead of him looked familiar. Sunlight glistened off the glass windows of Mosul’s hospital. He probably should stay in the emir’s good graces until he found his sister. Also, the translator would know where Ava was.
“I have to go to the hospital.” Kaleb clicked End Call.
Three Days Later
When these people celebrated Ramadan, they really celebrated Ramadan. Kaleb swore as he closed his hand on yet another supposedly sterile case of supplies that had insects crawling through the plastic wrapping. He’d only been able to sneak a drink once during daylight hours and he’d not tasted food since sunrise, though his stomach still ached from gulping down as much water and beans as humanly possible in the five minutes before sunrise.
With a groan, Kaleb jumped down from the hospital cot where he’d sneaked a few hours of sleep the last three nights and kicked the cot toward the other high cabinet of medical supplies. He needed a real step stool.
In the last three days of aiding civilians at this hospital, he’d seen unimaginable suffering, but had no word of Ava.
The cries of pain rose around him on the crowded hospital floor. An old man with a rotting tooth clutched his cheek where an unattended cavity had morphed into an abscess that infected his entire mouth.
A child with a broken leg moaned, the shattered bone piercing his skin. Pregnant women hemorrhaged across the hospital, died from preeclampsia, or labored for three or four days at a time. He’d saved as many as he could in the last twenty hours on his feet, but he was only one doctor.
Kaleb washed antiseptic up over his arms and pulled on one of the last pairs of sanitary rubber gloves in this place. He grabbed the only uncracked stethoscope he could find and shoved through yet another hospital room curtain.
A boy coughed and sputtered in the tiny space. Kaleb pushed the curtain shut with his elbow and held the stethoscope to the boy’s chest. His breathing sounded clear, but looked labored. He placed his hand on the child’s forehead because he hadn’t found a thermometer yet in this hellish place. The boy felt febrile and his pulse was rapid and shallow.
“We’ve had no water except what trickles through the pipes.” The father, a wrinkled man with a white beard, wrung his hands as he spoke in accented English, sparing him the need to guess at the civilian’s medical condition as he’d had to these last three days. Where was that blasted ISIS translator?
A tear ran down the father’s gnarled cheek. “I boiled it, but he keeps vomiting and soiling himself ever since he drank it.”
The boy convulsed and a stench rose from his bedding. The child could very well have some form of amoebic dysentery from bad water. Kaleb pinched the child’s skin. Poor skin turgor, sluggish capillary refill, and dry mucus membranes. The boy looked emaciated, too.
Kaleb turned to the father. “I can keep him hydrated through an IV.” If only they had TPN here to give the boy nutrition too. No nurse appeared to help. Moving outside the room, Kaleb grabbed the last clean linens and handed them to the father. He rolled an IV port toward the boy.
The scent of alcohol rose as he cleaned the boy’s skin with a wipe, then peeled open a clean needle.
He hadn’t inserted an IV himself since med school, and now he was #### doing them daily. Taking a deep breath, Kaleb yanked a rubbery blue cord tight around the boy’s arm and waited for a vein to pop.
The curtain whipped back and three ISIS soldiers plunged into the room, along with that disappearing translator. Harry Houdini couldn’t have made himself as scarce as that translator had for the last seventy-two hours.
One hand on the sharp, Kaleb grabbed the translator by the arm before he could vanish again. “I need you to translate what the woman in the next room is saying.” The middle-aged woman screamed in agony, but he hadn’t been able to do more than administer the last dose of morphine in this hospital because she couldn’t tell him her symptoms.
“Throw all the civilians out.” An ISIS soldier grabbed the father. Another soldier yanked the boy out of his bed. The child’s knees collapsed beneath him. His head bashed against the tile.
“No!” Kaleb leaped toward his patient. Falling to his knees by the child, he scooped him up beneath the shoulder blades.
“There’s a wave of wounded ISIS soldiers coming. We’re saving the medical supplies for Allah’s warriors. Throw all the civilians out,” the translator ordered.
The father cried out. The ISIS soldiers began wheeling the empty cot out of the room.
That boy would die at home! And he had no plans to patch up ISIS soldiers so they could go out and kill again.
Grabbing a pillow off the retreating cot, Kaleb tucked it under the boy’s head. He stood and grabbed the IV pole. Once these soldiers left, he’d take the boy to the cot he’d slept in last night and insert the IV. “I want to see my sister.”
“Bismillah,” the translator inclined his head, scratching his scraggly beard against the buttons of his shirt, “if Allah wills, you shall see her in good time.”
He wasn’t waiting for any god to will it. “I want to see her now!” Kaleb grabbed the man by the collar.
“Look, that is her husband now bringing in the wounded.” The translator pointed to the pedophile whom he’d spoken on the phone with almost a month ago.
Black, curly hair framed Raja Khan’s narrow cheekbones. His well-groomed beard stuck out a fist-width from his face, but no longer. His shoulders had an aristocratic tilt.
Kaleb clenched the stethoscope. He could thrust a scalpel through the man’s stomach. He could strangle him with a piece of IV tubing. He could riddle the man with steel core ammo, then place him in the MRI machine to have the metal forcibly ripped from the man’s innards.
“I want to see my sister.” Kaleb willed his voice to remain calm. He had to get Ava away from this monster.
“Of course, my brother. Come to my house tonight after the sun has set for the Ramadan feast and we will celebrate the victory Allah has given us this day.” Raja slapped his hand against Kaleb’s shoulder.
For that split second, Kaleb endorsed the ISIS practice of chopping off hands. “I want to see Ava now.” He barely kept his voice under control.
“I will text you the address after you patch up our holy warriors.” Raja smiled, his wide lips parting to reveal all of his teeth.
Another ISIS soldier pointed to the sick room with his AK-47. Kaleb’s boots stuck to the dirty tile. Sure, he’d sworn to maintain the utmost of human life, but did that really apply in this case? The pleasing fantasy of letting an ISIS soldier’s infection simmer or swapping an antibiotic for a blood thinner dallied in his thoughts.
“Okay,” Kaleb said, feet firmly planted, “but first I need to give the boy an IV.” Judging by the child’s abysmal dehydration, he wouldn’t last many hours longer without one.
“Leave the civilians. Our holy warriors need your aid.” Raja gestured to the hall, which now stood empty, all the civilians ejected to suffer without medical care.
What had these brutes done to his patient three rooms down? The woman had been laboring for three days. He’d been considering doing a C-section on her despite this hospital’s lack of transfusion blood, poor sterile quality, and minimal anesthetics. Without the possibility of transfusing, any abdominal surgery could quickly cost a patient his life.
“The child needs medical care first.” Kaleb shoved the IV stand close to the prone child and started toward the boy with the IV needle.
Raja pulled the trigger of his semi-automatic. Bullets ridd
led the child and his father. Blood spewed across the tile floor. Twitching his right eye closed, Raja scratched beneath his beard.
“You killed them.” Kaleb stared at the two lifeless bodies. The boy’s head lolled forward in death, his dehydrated limbs sticking out like spindles from his distended belly. The horror of the sight filtered into his brain as he struggled to comprehend it.
“The father let the son break the Ramadan fast. They deserved to die anyway.” The translator shrugged. “Now go treat our soldiers.”
Even if the terrorists had allowed him to, he didn’t need to bend down and feel for the child or the father’s pulse. Crimson blood pooled around their corpses, spreading out across the tile.
Though the soldiers spoke in Arabic, Kaleb could hear the suspicion in their voices as they watched his reaction to the murder. He forced himself to avert his gaze from his patient.
Just make it through a few more hours of this, then he’d go home, divorce Jessica, the woman who’d chosen to join these murderous perverts, then rescue his sister. The fatwa of the day this morning, which got group texted to every ISIS member at four #### a.m., said: “to divorce your wife, say ‘I divorce you’ three times and then expel her from your house.” He could do that.
The smell of the father and child’s blood followed Kaleb as he forced himself to take one step after the other in the direction the men with guns pointed.
CHAPTER 12
A burning sensation rose through Jessica’s throat. Her mouth cried for water. She’d searched his entire house for weapons. Kaleb Schlensky didn’t have any.
Pushing back the curtain on the front window one hair, Jessica forced herself to peek out and focus on the setting sun rather than the panic rapidly rising inside her. If only she had been able to find a gun! She could shoot straight. She’d learned that in Al-Khansaa. Even at a hundred yards, she could hit her target every time.
The sun dipped toward the horizon. About forty-five more minutes until the sun set and she could feed the children without calling down Allah’s, or more importantly, Kaleb’s wrath. A migraine thumped against her temples. She forced herself to breathe in, then out. What she’d give for a spot of tea.
Veiled by Choice (Radical Book 3) Page 9