Heart of a Hero (18 page)

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 dawn 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.

06:27 Alpha. Shilongwe River.
Monday, September 22

B
lack 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 soldiers 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.

He sat Sarah down on a slab of rock near the brown waters of the Shilongwe and squinted toward the sky. The chopper would come in from the north, from Cameroon. There was a wide sandbank about twenty yards into the shallows. It would land there. If his guys made it into Congo airspace undetected, they should be here in about forty-five minutes.

That was already cutting it too close.

He turned his attention back to Sarah. She was watching him intently. Tears, dirt and blood streaked her cheeks, and her eyes were huge with fear.
Of him.
She didn’t trust him. Who in hell could blame her? What horror had those big brown eyes seen?

Hunter felt an odd little spasm in his chest. He recognized it for what it was: anger. Protective anger. Anger at the people who’d done this to her. Because this woman was
not
equipped to handle the situation. She did not deserve this. How she’d managed to get this far was beyond him.

Then he saw what she was nervously fingering at the hollow of her throat—a small crucifix on a delicate gold chain. His jaw
tightened and he stared at her fingers. In this merciless jungle, where you had to take life in order to live, where dark spirits and primal forces ruled, she was seeking the comfort and protection of her civilized God.