by Vanessa Kier
“Ah, lass.” He squeezed her fingers.
She stared down in surprise. When had he picked up her hands? What was it about him that made his touch so familiar, so comforting, that she barely even noticed it?
She cleared her throat, but left her hands in the protective cradle of his gentle grip. “After my mother’s death, my father resigned from his position as an orthopedic surgeon at the hospital. I didn’t know it at the time, but the house had been heavily mortgaged to pay for Mother’s legal defense. He left the house in the hands of the lawyers, then accepted a new job. Six weeks after my thirteenth birthday, he dragged me kicking and screaming to West Africa. He’d accepted a position heading a charity-run medical clinic in a remote section of the jungle.”
“So. You were following in your father’s footsteps by working at the clinic.”
“Not deliberately, but yes, that’s right.” She tipped her head at him. “To say that I was unhappy with our new living conditions, where we had to boil and filter our drinking water, and both electricity and running water were sporadic, would be a gross understatement. The tantrums I threw were quite loud and vitriolic. In fact, I’m surprised the villagers didn’t ask us to leave.” She smiled faintly.
“I accused my father of not loving me. I insisted that if he loved me he’d send me back to America, although he could stay in Africa for all my teenage self cared. I also raged against my mother, blaming her selfish suicide for triggering such an extreme reaction in my father.”
Lachlan squeezed her hands again.
“Unfortunately, there was no where for me to run. I didn’t speak the local language or understand the local culture. I was terrified of the jungle and sick half the time with intestinal ailments. In short, I was more physically and emotionally miserable than my thirteen-year-old self could bear.”
“And yet here you are, an adult choosing to live in such conditions.”
She gave a rueful smile. “I know. It took me a long while to adjust, but I eventually made friends with the villagers near my father’s clinic. As I witnessed the improvements in the lives of the villagers, I understood why he’d gone into medicine. I decided that I, too, wanted to help people when I grew up. I started acting as his assistant in the afternoons once school let out for the day.”
“YOU ATTENDED A local school?” Lachlan asked. “Not an American school for children of diplomats and other expats?”
“Yeah. And let me tell you, the first few months at school were miserable. Remember, I’d just escaped a world where reporters and protestors followed me, judged me, and harassed me. Suddenly I’m living in the deep jungle of Africa where a majority of the population had never met a white person before. I hated being stared at and whispered about. Hated the giggles and the little ones who’d run up to touch my skin.” Helen’s lips tightened and he wondered if she was thinking about little Sisi and the other children who’d died.
“But eventually my attempts to learn the local language and culture, plus my dedication to my studies earned me the respect of my classmates. I became friends with a few girls my age. Looking back, I can say that moving to Africa was the best thing that could have happened to me. I was a headstrong, spoiled girl, well on her way to becoming insufferably arrogant. You should have seen some of the temper tantrums I threw once we were living in Africa.”
Lachlan chuckled. “I can picture you. All elbows and knees and wild auburn hair, lashing out because you were scared. After all, your entire world had just been rearranged. Twice.” He squeezed her fingers again, only this time, he needed the comfort from their touch. “I understand better than you’d think, Helen. We moved frequently when I was a child, so I was always the new boy.” The one with the bruises that no adult wanted to acknowledge as signs of abuse. “I hated moving. Hated being forced to make new friends, not knowing how long I’d have them before we’d leave.” Only after his father’s death had Lachlan learned that they’d moved each time his father had killed a patient.
Helen gave him a smile. “That’s rough. At least we weren’t constantly moving. That would have been worse, I think. Because once my father and I were settled in Africa, we stayed in that one place.” She shifted in her seat. “Although I didn’t have my mother’s love growing up, I had a strong relationship with my father and all the material goods my heart desired. In Africa our basic needs were barely met, yet my father’s steadfast love and the generosity of the locals as they eventually accepted us and drew us into their social circle turned me into a more thoughtful, caring person.”
“You were lucky to have your father’s support.” His mother had always looked the other way when it came to his father’s beatings. Part of Lachlan’s fear after his father’s death had been that he’d be sent back to live with his mother, knowing that she hated him for taking away his father. But she’d denounced Lachlan as soon as she’d discovered what he’d done. Soon after, she’d been convicted of being an accessory to his father’s murders, so Lachlan had been spared having to live with her again.
Helen shot him a questioning glance. Sod it all, he must have let some of his thoughts show on his face. He met her eyes calmly, acting as if his insides weren’t churning with his own difficult memories. She frowned, but let it go.
“I knew when I left for college in the United States that I wanted to return and practice medicine in West Africa,” Helen continued. “A few months into my first semester, someone brought up my mother. I was stunned, having thought that chapter of my life was behind me.” She gave a bitter laugh. “If only. From that moment on, it became clear that if I was to succeed in my career, I had to behave above reproach. Because, like the girl who flung the accusations at me that first semester in hopes of winning back the boy I was dating, people would forever try to bring me down by tainting me with my mother’s crimes.” She shrugged. “I suppose if I had chosen a different field to go into, such as being a librarian or a data technician, the accusations would have held no power. But I refused to abandon my dreams of making a difference in West Africa just because my mother had been a murderer.”
“You’ve done good work,” Lachlan said. “Despite the constant opposition.”
A faint blush of embarrassment colored her cheeks and she tried pulling her hands away. But he enjoyed holding her too much to let her go. Plus, he wanted her to understand that his opinion of her truly had changed. “I admire your courage in sticking to your beliefs.”
“Even when they conflict with yours?”
“Aye, even then.” He didn’t have to agree with her in order to respect her commitment to her beliefs.
Their eyes held for a moment and something tightened in Lachlan’s chest. Then Helen glanced at the clock, breaking the odd connection.
“Oops,” she said. “We’d better get a move on. Gloria doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
Lachlan raised her hands to his lips, placing a kiss on the backs before he let her go. “Thank you for sharing your story, Helen.”
She flushed again and pushed away from the table. When she reached for the dishes, he waved her off. “Go on and get ready. I have this.”
He made quick work of washing the dishes, and forty-five minutes later found himself standing with his back against the wall as he listened through the thin door to the meeting taking place between Helen, her immediate boss Gloria, and Mrs. N’Dorah, the woman who’d founded Layla’s Foundation.
“The fundraiser would have promoted the reputation of Layla’s Foundation and brought in enough money to fund several other projects,” Gloria whinged. “You owe it to us to participate in whatever marketing events we decide on. That includes speaking to the press. You won’t, of course, be paid until losses are recouped.”
Lachlan had already developed a dislike of Gloria after overhearing the conversation up at the clinic when she’d wanted to send reporters to speak to Helen in order to drum up financial interest. Now, after ten minutes of listening to Gloria harp about how the loss of the clinic wasn’t her fault
and how Helen would need to make amends for the damage, his opinion of her had sunk even farther.
“Ms. Sanchez,” Mrs. N’Dorah snapped. “That is quite enough. Yes, you were hired because of your marketing expertise and your conscientiousness regarding staying within a budget, but your words display a lack of compassion that is contrary to what this foundation stands for.”
Lachlan smiled at the wall across from him. On the other hand, he truly liked the woman who’d started Layla’s Foundation.
“If you cannot speak civilly to Dr. Kirk, who nearly lost her life and who multiple witnesses have claimed is responsible for saving many lives, then you should excuse yourself from this meeting. Dr. Kirk remains a valued employee, complete with salary.”
“But—”
The receptionist screamed, the sound muffled by the door at the end of the hallway. But the sound of weapons fire came through just fine.
Cursing, Lachlan flung open the door to Mrs. N’Dorah’s office. He met Helen’s tense, yet resigned eyes. He gave her a wry twist of his lips and a nod to acknowledge that once again, they were under attack. “Get under the desk. Stay here until I come for you.”
Shutting the door, he raced down the corridor. The attackers kicked open the door at the end of the hall. Two men. One behind the other. Both in civilian, native clothing. Both armed with AK-47s. The man who’d kicked down the door had his weapon pointed at the ceiling. The other man held his by his side.
Not professionals, then. Good. Lachlan made certain that they both spotted him before he ducked into the library on the opposite side and down the hall from the office where the women were hiding. This way he wouldn’t risk a stray bullet going through the walls into their safe haven.
He found suitable cover under the farthest computer desk, which was set perpendicular to the right wall. Then he quickly pulled out his sat phone and sent a text to Dev with the alert for teammate under fire. Dev would notify the rest of the team. When Lachlan saw the confirmation that the text had been delivered, he tucked the phone away and waited for the attackers to find him.
The attackers might be overly aggressive and poorly trained, but they weren’t completely stupid. They fired through the door he’d closed behind him. Then the lead man shoved open the splintered remains of the door and fired his weapon in an arc in front of him. But the idiot only fired at waist level and never dropped his eyes below man height.
When Lachlan didn’t drop dead in front of him, the attacker stepped farther inside. Only now did he search the floor, but he still didn’t look far enough into the room to spot Lachlan’s hiding place.
The man in the hallway called out a question. His partner snapped out an unhappy answer as he slowly moved deeper into the library, holding up his hand to shield his eyes from the sun shining through the windows across the room.
Good. The light would compromise the man’s vision and throw Lachlan’s section of the room into shadow.
The man from the hallway strode inside. He fired two bursts from his weapon, one to either side of his partner. His partner turned to chew him out.
Lachlan rolled into firing position.
Lachlan’s first shots killed the man facing him. Before the second man could turn around, Lachlan shot him, but he didn’t aim to kill. He needed the man alive for questioning, because he had no doubt this attack was planned by Natchaba.
The man screamed, dropped his weapon, and fell to the ground, writhing and clutching his leg, which was the easiest of the three wounds for him to reach. Lachlan crawled out from his hiding place and stood up. Feeling a sting on his upper left arm, he glanced down. A ricocheting bullet had torn a shallow line across his skin. It wasn’t life-threatening or painful enough to slow him down, so he ignored it. The attacker paid no attention as Lachlan reached down and picked up his rifle. This close, Lachlan saw that the wounded man was actually a lad of no more than nineteen.
The boy was so busy howling in pain that he never saw the blow that knocked him out.
Lachlan trussed the unconscious lad with flexicuffs, then used the boy’s bandana to gag him. Stepping over the dead body of the other man, who looked to be a few years older, Lachlan moved cautiously into the hallway. A quick look through the broken door into the receptionist’s area showed the receptionist sprawled behind her desk. Bullets had perforated the front of her. Pushing aside the anger over her senseless death—she’d been a bright, cheerful woman who’d flirted playfully with him—he scanned for danger. But the front door was closed and he found no others, dead or alive, in the rooms off the hallway to his left.
Returning to the main hallway, Lachlan cleared the room across from the library, then entered the conference room. He coughed as he entered and waved smoke away. He’d been right to insist that the women hold their meeting in Gloria’s office instead of in here. Someone had shot out the window and thrown a Molotov cocktail inside. Without much to fuel it, the fire had nearly burned itself out. Lachlan stamped out the remaining flames.
Helen and the other women would be okay in their hideout for a bit more, so Lachlan returned to the library. The injured attacker was just regaining consciousness. Lachlan knelt beside him.
“Help me,” the boy wailed in English as soon as Lachlan removed his gag. “I need a doctor.”
“Why should I help you?” Lachlan demanded. “You have just killed an innocent woman and attempted to kill me. You’re a rebel sympathizer.”
The boy nodded. “But—”
“According to your leaders, I’m a foreign devil with no mercy. Tell me why I shouldn’t let you die.”
The lad stared at him. The muscles in his throat worked but no sound came out.
Lachlan sighed. He’d hoped the boy would figure it out on his own. “Perhaps if you tell me the names of those who gave you today’s orders and where to find them, I might consider letting a doctor tend you.”
“No. I can’t.” He shook his head.
Lachlan pressed the butt of his gun to the closest of the boy’s wounds. He screamed.
“Stop. Please, stop,” the lad sobbed, tears running down his face. “I don’t know anything. Robert, he was the one who talked to the man. I just followed.” The boy continued to blubber, devolving into a local dialect that Lachlan didn’t understand.
Lachlan yanked the lad’s gag into place, then walked away.
When he reached the room where the women were hiding, he gave a “Shave and a Haircut” knock on the door. Before he opened it, he called out, thickening his brogue so no one would think he was a pretender, “It’s Lachlan, Dr. Kirk. Is everyone all right?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE SILENCE THAT followed the bursts of gunfire was worse than the noise of the shooting. Helen met Mrs. N’Dorah’s eyes and tried not to let her fear for Lachlan show. She didn’t know a whole lot about guns, but over the past few days she’d learned the difference between a pistol shot and an assault rifle. None of what she’d heard had sounded like it came from Lachlan’s pistol.
She held her breath when the creak of the old wood of the floor indicated that someone was moving about in the corridor. The person opened the door of the office next to them, then moved on to the conference room.
When the knock sounded on their door, Helen barely stifled a frightened gasp.
Gloria panicked and almost broke free of the strong hold Helen and Mrs. N’Dorah had on her arms. They’d gagged Gloria with Helen’s bandana because in her initial hysteria she’d nearly screamed, which would have been a disaster for them all.
With all of Helen’s focus on restraining Gloria, it took her a moment to recognize the pattern of the knock. Then Lachlan’s familiar voice called “It’s Lachlan, Dr. Kirk. Is everyone all right?”
Joy and relief surged into her. Blinking back tears, Helen crawled out from behind the desk. “Yes,” she replied. She unlocked the door and drank in the sight of him, admitting that the thought of him being killed had scared her as much as the possibility that the attackers might fin
d her and the others.
She gasped. Blood soaked the shirt on his upper left arm. “You’ve been shot!” Her heart took a thoroughly unprofessional nosedive. But when she pulled him close and examined his arm, she gave a shaky laugh. “Oh. It’s nothing major. It’s just—”
“A flesh wound, aye.” The humor in his voice had her glancing up. “I’ve always wanted to use that line on a lass. Just my luck that instead of becoming the object of female adoration due to my stoic manliness, you’re full aware of just how insignificant a wound it really is.” He gave her a mock pout.
Thrown off balance by his ability to joke around so soon after the attack, she could only stare stupidly at him as she fought the urge to kiss him. Instead, she patted his cheek. “There, now, I won’t tell Gloria and Mrs. N’Dorah that it’s a bearable pain. You can ham it up with them if you’d like.”
He glanced behind her and frowned.
Helen turned. Mrs. N’Dorah had helped Gloria out of their hiding spot and was in the process of removing her gag. “Ah…about the gag,” Helen murmured to Lachlan. “We had to stop Gloria from screaming.”
He just nodded. “Otherwise you’re all okay?”
“Yes. What happened? Is the receptionist okay.”
“No. I’m sorry. She was killed in the initial attack. There—”
Footsteps pounded down the hallway. A man shouted frantically in the local language. Lachlan shoved Helen behind him and brought his pistol up. Before he could fire, Gloria rammed into him. “That’s my son!” she shouted as they fell into the hall.
Helen stepped into the doorway. A thin young man, perhaps fifteen or sixteen years old, with skin a few shades darker than Gloria’s light caramel color raced toward them. “Mother!”
Gloria swept him into a fierce hug.
Lachlan was on his feet, watching the reunion warily, weapon by his side.
As Gloria and her son turned to go into her office, the boy caught Helen’s eye. He stared at her with such hatred, Helen gasped and took a step back.
