Baby Blessed

by Debbie Macomber

  Jordan looked at Lesley and blinked, wondering if what she’d implied was true. Did he still love Molly? He’d never blamed her for what happened to Jeffrey, but she’d blamed herself, despite everything he said and did.

  But did he love Molly? Jordan asked himself a second time. He didn’t know. So much of what he felt toward her was tangled up in his feelings for his son. He’d loved Jeffrey more than he’d believed it was possible for a man to love his child. He’d grieved, in his own way, until he’d nearly killed himself, working all hours of the day and night.

  If Jordan had learned anything from his limited experience as a father, it was that he refused to be vulnerable to this kind of pain again. This was Lesley’s great appeal. She didn’t want children, either. They were perfect for each other.

  “I don’t mean to pressure you with these uncomfortable questions,” Lesley told him in a soft voice.

  “You’re not,” Jordan said. The loss of his son wasn’t a subject he’d ever feel comfortable sharing. But if he was going to join his life with Lesley’s, they needed to talk about Jeffrey.

  The waiter brought their salads, and Lesley, who sensed his mood, left Jordan alone with his thoughts.

  At some point this evening he’d have to tell Lesley he was going to Africa to bring Molly back.

  Why couldn’t Molly have gone to some tropical island and set up a medical clinic? Oh no, she had to throw herself into one of the world’s most troubled spots.

  Ian hadn’t fooled him, either. Molly’s father was worried sick about her, and Jordan had fallen right into the old man’s hands, coming to see him when he did. Talk about bad timing.

  “Molly’s in the East African Republic,” Jordan told Lesley without warning.

  “Africa,” Lesley repeated in an astonished gasp. “What on earth is she doing there?”

  “She volunteered with some missionary group.”

  “Doesn’t she realize how dangerous it is?” Lesley set her fork aside and reached for her wineglass. Jordan wished now that he’d taken more care in breaking the news to her.

  “I’m going after her.” He didn’t mention that Ian was pulling every string he had to get Jordan a visa. He was going to the East African Republic, even if he had to be smuggled into the country.

  “You.” Lesley’s eyes went wide, and when she set the glass down, wine sloshed over the edge. “Jordan, that’s ridiculous! Why should you be the one? If she’s in any danger, then the State Department should be notified. Or…or her father should do it.”

  “Ian’s aged considerably in the past three years and his health is too fragile for such a strenuous journey. Someone’s got to do something, and soon, before Molly manages to get herself killed.”

  “But surely there’s someone else who could go.”

  “No one Molly would listen to.”

  “But…what about your work?” He’d rarely seen Lesley so flustered.

  “Paul Phelps will take over for me. I shouldn’t be gone long—a week at the most.”

  “What about all the travel documents? No one travels in and out of the East African Republic these days…do they? I mean, from what the media are saying, the country’s about to explode.”

  “Ian’s making the arrangements for me. He’d wanted to go himself, against his doctor’s advice, but I couldn’t let him. Listen, this isn’t anything I want to do. Trust me, if I was going to take a week away from the job, the East African Republic would be the last place I’d choose to visit.”

  “I understand, Jordan,” she said, her hand resting on his. “This is something you have to do.”

  Jordan nodded, relieved. He hadn’t been able to put his feelings into words, but Lesley had said it for him. It was something he needed to do. This one last thing before he said goodbye to Molly and their marriage. He considered going after Molly a moral obligation. To her and to Ian. To the man who’d given him advice and financial backing when he’d started his business. To the man whose daughter he’d loved.

  “When do you leave?” Lesley asked, and Jordan noticed that her voice was shaking, although she’d attempted to disguise it. Jordan was grateful that she didn’t try to talk him out of it, didn’t try to convince him not to put himself in danger for a woman he intended to divorce.

  “The first part of the week.”

  “So soon?”

  “The sooner the better, don’t you think?”

  Lesley nodded, and lowered her eyes. “Just promise me one thing.”

  “Of course.”

  “Please be careful. Because I love you, Jordan.”

  * * *

  Molly woke to gunfire echoing in the distance. She sat up in bed, but it took her a moment to orient herself. Tossing aside the thin blanket, she climbed out of bed and quickly dressed. The rat-a-tat sounds seemed closer now and propelled her into action.

  Dawn had just come over the hills and Molly could see people running in several different directions. Pandemonium reigned.

  “What’s happening?” Molly demanded, catching an orderly by the shoulders.

  He stared at her. “The rebels are coming! You must go…now,” he said urgently. “Do not wait.”

  “Dr. Morton?” Molly pleaded. “Have you seen Dr. Morton?”

  He shook his head wildly, then broke away, running toward the row of parked vehicles.

  “Richard,” Molly shouted. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, leave without her friend. His sleeping quarters were on the other side of the compound, but crossing the open area was nearly impossible. Sounds came at her from every direction. People were shouting in more languages than she could understand. The pervasive sense of fear nearly immobilized her.

  “Molly, Molly.” She whirled around to see Richard Morton frantically searching the crowd for her.

  “Here!” she shouted, waving her hand.

  She had to fight her way to his side. Briefly, they clung to each other.

  “We have to leave right away. Mwanda has a truck waiting.”

  Molly nodded, her hand gripping Richard’s. They’d been fools not to heed headquarters’ warnings. A coup had seemed like a distant threat that wouldn’t affect her, but she was wrong.

  “What about the sick?” Molly pleaded. Richard was on one side of her and the six-foot Mwanda on the other.

  “We will care for them,” Mwanda promised in halting English. “But first you go.”

  Richard and Molly were thrown in the truck bed, and covered with a tarp. They huddled in the corners, waiting for Mwanda to drive them somewhere else. Somewhere safe.

  As the truck fired to life, Molly peered out and saw a tall, thin boy vaulting toward the truck, speaking furiously in his native tongue. Over the past couple of years, Molly had picked up some vocabulary, although she wasn’t as fluent as she would have liked. The cold hand of fear settled over her as she translated the frantic words.

  Dr. Morton was also peering out from under the canvas tarp, and her gaze met his. She could tell that he understood the message, too.

  They couldn’t leave now. It was too late. The countryside was swarming with rebel troops, bent on vengeance. Many innocents had already been murdered.

  Richard and Molly were trapped inside the compound.

  Mwanda turned off the engine and climbed out of the truck. His eyes were empty as he helped them climb down from the back.

  “What do we do now?” Molly asked.

  Richard shrugged. “Wait.”

  Wait for what? Molly wanted to ask. For death, and pray that it would be merciful? She doubted there was any real chance of rescue now. If they were captured, her fate—as a woman—didn’t bear thinking of.

  Surprisingly she wasn’t afraid. The fear left her as quickly as it had come, replaced with a sense of calm. If the rebels broke through the compound, they weren’t going to find her cowering in some corner. They’d find her doing what she did each and every day, helping her patients.

  “I believe I’ll do my rounds,” Richard announced, his voice quaverin
g slightly.

  “I’ll come with you,” Molly said.

  He seemed pleased and offered her a shaky smile.

  Mwanda shook his head and, with a resigned shrug of his shoulders, moved away. “I will go back to the kitchen,” he said with a wide smile. Molly thought she’d never seen him smile more brightly. Or bravely.

  Clinging to routine was of primary importance to them, to their psychological survival. The thread of normalcy was fragile and threatened to break at any moment, but it was all they had to hold on to.

  Gunfire continued to sound in the distance, creeping closer, bit by bit. Radio communication with Makua City had been severed, so they had no way of knowing what was happening in the capital. Had the entire country been taken over?

  It was not knowing that was the worst. A number of patients left, preferring to take their chances on reaching their families. Richard tended to those who were too sick to walk away from the compound. Some of the fleeing patients had tried to convince Molly and Richard to leave with them, but they refused. This was where they belonged. This was where they’d stay. Molly was shocked to realize that only a handful of people remained in the compound. No one could guess how long they’d be safe behind its protective walls.

  Minutes—or maybe hours later—Molly heard the unmistakable sound of a helicopter. It circled the compound, but she couldn’t read any markings on it, so she wasn’t sure if it was friend or foe.

  The chopper hovered, then slowly descended. The noise was deafening, and the wind strong enough to stir up a layer of dust that cut visibility to practically zero.

  From the snatches of color she did manage to glimpse, she saw soldiers leap from the helicopter, dressed in full battle gear.

  Molly stayed in the pediatric ward, empty now. The door burst open and she faced a soldier with a machine gun. The man stopped when he saw her, then shouted something over his shoulder. Molly straightened. She waited, not knowing for what.

  A few seconds later another man burst into the room. Bracing herself against the rails of a crib, she met the angry eyes and realized they were hazel. And shockingly familiar.

  “Jordan?” she whispered, looking up into her husband’s face. “What are you doing here?”

  Two

  “We’re getting out of here,” Jordan said. His heart rate felt as though it was in excess of ninety miles an hour. From the aerial view he’d gotten from the helicopter, the rebels seemed to be less than three miles outside the medical compound and were quickly gaining territory. They’d likely move in on them at any minute.

  “What about Richard?” Molly cried. “I can’t leave without him.”

  “Who?” Jordan gripped her by the upper arm and half lifted, half dragged her toward the door. His friend Zane, a mercenary now, and the men Zane had hired, surrounded the helicopter, their machine guns poised.

  “Dr. Morton!” Molly shouted to be heard above the roar of the whirling blades of the helicopter. “I can’t leave without Richard.”

  “We don’t have time,” Jordan argued.

  With surprising strength, Molly tore herself away, her eyes bright as she glared at him. “I refuse to go without him.”

  “This isn’t the time to be worrying about your boyfriend,” Jordan snapped, furious that she’d be worried about another man when he was risking his neck to save hers.

  “I’ll get him,” Molly said, surging past. Before Jordan could stop her she was gone. The helicopter blades stirred up a thick fog of dust and smoke, and an ominous crackling noise could be heard in the distance. Bedlam surrounded them. More than once Jordan had asked himself what craziness had possessed his wife to put herself in this situation. Molly wasn’t the only one—he was stuck in the East African Republic, too, and wishing he was just about anyplace else.

  Jordan’s area of expertise lay in constructing high-rise apartments and office buildings. Guerrilla warfare was definitely out of his league and the very reason he’d contacted Zane Halquist.

  “Molly!” he shouted urgently. “There isn’t time.”

  Either she didn’t hear him, or she chose to ignore his frantic call. It occurred to him that he should leave without her. He would have if he’d known he could live with himself afterward. Jordan had never thought of himself as a coward, but he sure felt like one now.

  An explosion rang in his ears, the blast strong enough to knock him off-balance and jar his senses. He staggered a few steps before he caught himself.

  Zane shouted something at him, but with his ears ringing, Jordan didn’t have a prayer of understanding him. He shook his head to indicate as much, but by that time it wasn’t necessary. The man he’d trusted, the man he’d given ten thousand American dollars, raced toward the waiting copter with two or three of the other soldiers.

  Jordan’s heart slammed against his chest when he realized what was happening. They were leaving him, Molly and a handful of mercenaries behind.

  Jordan hadn’t finished cursing when he saw Molly with an elderly man on the far side of the compound. She held her hand to her face to protect her eyes from the swirling dust. She stood frozen with shock as she watched the helicopter rise and speed away.

  The man who’d found Molly in the nursery grabbed Jordan by the elbow, jerking him out of his momentary paralysis. “Take the woman and hide,” he said roughly.

  Jordan’s instinct was to stay and fight. He wasn’t the type to sit on the sidelines and do nothing. “I’ll help,” Jordan insisted.

  “Hide the woman first.”

  Jordan nodded and ran as if a machine gun were firing at his heels. He raced toward Molly, and she dashed toward him. He caught her just as she stumbled and fell into his arms.

  They clung together. Jordan wove his fingers into her hair, pressing her against him. His heart pounded with fear and adrenaline.

  Jordan had never been angrier with anyone in his life, and at the same moment he was so grateful she was alive he felt like breaking into tears. It’d been more than three years since he’d last held her and yet she fit perfectly in his embrace.

  “Where can I hide you?”

  She looked up at him blankly. “I … I don’t know. The supply hut, but wouldn’t that be the first place anyone would look?”

  Jordan agreed. “There isn’t a cellar or something?”

  “No.”

  “Then don’t worry about it. If the rebels make it into the compound, they’ll check every outbuilding. I’ll take you and Dr. Morton to the supply hut.”

  “What about you?” She clutched his arm with a strength he found astonishing.

  “I’ll be back later.”

  Her hands framed his face, and she blinked through her tears. “Be careful. Please, be careful.”

  He nodded. He had no intention of sacrificing his life. Hand in hand they ran for the supply hut. Jordan glanced around for Dr. Morton and saw that the men had taken Molly’s friend and were hiding him themselves.

  The supply hut was locked, but luckily Molly had the key. Jordan surveyed the grounds, wondering exactly how much protection this ramshackle building would offer her. If the rebels broke into the compound, he needed to be in a position to protect her.

  Gunfire rang in the distance, like the soundtrack of a war movie. Only it was real…

  “Keep your head down,” Jordan said, closing the door behind her. “I’ll be back for you as soon as I can.” He noticed how pale and frightened she was. He probably didn’t look much better himself. His last thought as he left her was that anyone going after Molly would need to kill him first.

  * * *

  Terror gripped Molly at every burst of machine-gun fire. She was huddled in the corner, hunched down, her back against the wall, knees tucked under her chin. She covered her ears and gnawed on her lower lip until she tasted blood. The room was pitch-dark with only a thin ribbon of light that crept in from beneath the door.

  Footsteps pounded past, and she stopped breathing for fear the rebels had broken into the compound. The worst part of
this ordeal was being alone. She wouldn’t be nearly as frightened if Dr. Morton was with her. Or Jordan.

  Nothing could have shocked her more than her husband bursting into the nursery, armed with a rifle and dressed as if he were part of Special Forces. He’d briefly served in the military, but that had been years earlier, when he was right out of college.

  What had possessed Jordan to risk his life to save her? It might seem ungrateful, but she’d rather he’d stayed in Chicago. He was furious with her, that much she’d read in his eyes, although his anger wasn’t anything new. In the end, before she’d moved out, their marriage had deteriorated to the point that they were barely speaking. It hadn’t always been like that. Only after Jeffrey had died… She pushed thoughts of their son from her mind. Early in their marriage they’d been so deeply in love that Molly would never have believed anything could come between them.

  Death had.

  The grim reaper’s scythe had struck, and his blade had separated them in the most painful of ways, by claiming their six-month-old child.

  Molly had no idea how much time had passed before the door opened. Panic gripped her as she squinted into the light, but she relaxed when she saw that it was Jordan.

  “What’s happening?” she pleaded, eager for news.

  “Don’t know.” He abruptly pulled the door shut. The room went dark once more and he lit a match that softly illuminated the small space. He leaned his rifle against the wall and sank down onto the dirt floor next to her. His breathing was heavy. His chest heaved as he exhaled. “Knowing Zane, he’ll do everything he can to come back for us, but there are no guarantees.”

  “Who’s Zane?”

  “An old friend,” he said. “You don’t know him. We met in the army years ago.”

  He blew out the match, and the room was pitch-black again. He leaned against her, and some of the terror and loneliness abated at his closeness. “What about the rebels?” She needed to know if there was any chance of getting out alive. Death didn’t concern her, but how she died did.