by Pamela Clare
“Cairo.” Kristi had always wanted to visit Egypt. “That’s exciting.”
Inside the terminal, Malik printed their boarding passes, and they went to stand in line at the ticket counter to check their bags.
“I can’t believe I’m going home.”
They reached the counter, and Malik showed the woman their tickets and passports. The woman thanked him. Then she lifted her gaze, looked at Kristi and Malik—and her eyes went wide. She tried to cover up her reaction with an uncertain smile, but Malik had seen it, too.
He leaned over the counter, looked down at something, then took Kristi by the arm. “Grab your bags. We’re leaving.”
“What?” Pulse pounding, Kristi grabbed her luggage and hurried after Malik, aware now that people were staring at her.
“She’s got photos of the two of us. I bet everyone in the airport does. The bastards are here, and they’re looking for us. Hurry.” Malik opened the door. “Keep walking. Don’t ask questions.”
They left the terminal and crossed the street, where Malik flagged down a taxi. They climbed inside, and Malik asked the man to drive them to the Abuja Market, the dark monolith of Aso Rock visible on their right. While Kristi did her best not to let people see her face, Malik got back on his phone again. The taxi moved erratically through the traffic, dodging motorcycles, okadas, trucks, and tuk-tuks. When they arrived at the market, Malik hailed another cab and had the driver take them downtown.
“You can let us off here,” Malik told the driver. “My cousin’s business is just over there.”
Malik paid, and Kristi found herself standing on the street with her bags and no idea what was happening. He pointed. “Over there.”
Kristi looked and saw Praise the Lord Car Rental. “We’re renting a car?”
“We need to disappear.” He set off.
Kristi hurried just to keep up with his long strides. “But the roads aren’t safe either. There are bandit gangs, terrorists, militant groups…”
He slowed his pace, letting her catch up. “Nothing is safe, Kristi. Public transportation isn’t safe, and it’s unreliable at best. We have to go with what gives us the best chance of evasion and escape. That’s how we survive.”
Dread settled in the pit of her stomach. “I thought it was over.”
He stopped once more, took her face between his palms, his brown eyes looking deep into hers. “I know, angel, and I’m sorry. You’ve been incredibly strong through all of this. I need you to be strong just a while longer. Can you trust me?”
“Of course.” There was no one on earth she trusted more than Malik, especially in these circumstances. “I’m … I’m just not used to this.”
“I know.”
While Kristi waited out of sight on the side of the building, Malik went inside. Careful to keep her face averted from the busy road, she drew deep breaths, fighting to quell a rising sense of panic.
Don’t lose it.
She couldn’t lose it. She couldn’t make Malik’s job harder than it already was. The man had quit his job and broken the law to save her life. The least she could do was keep it together.
Cars drove by, hip hop and gospel music blaring from their speakers. A young man in jeans and a black T-shirt passed, earbuds in his ears, phone in hand. A Muslim woman in a white hijab walked by, three small children hurrying after her. It was an ordinary urban scene, something a person might see in any big city on earth. New York. London. Amsterdam. And yet Kristi couldn’t shake her fear.
It’s post-traumatic stress.
That’s what she would have told a patient who’d gone through what she’d endured. And yet, her diagnosis as an RN didn’t bring her any relief or comfort.
A black Toyota Rav4 with tinted windows drove around the corner and stopped right in front of her.
Kristi’s pulse spiked, and she took a step backward, some thought about running half-formed in her mind.
The driver’s side door opened.
Malik.
He climbed out, grabbed her bags. “Let’s go.”
She hurried around to the passenger side, hopped into the seat, and buckled up, relieved to be off the street. “Where are we going? Do you know?”
Malik turned onto the main road. “It’s roughly a twelve-hour drive from Abuja to any of the borders or to the coast.”
That was true. The capital city had been built in the center of the country to give people from all regions equal access.
“Cameroon to the east is a mess right now—war, terrorism, refugees. The population in Nigeria gets denser toward the south, and the coast and Gulf are plagued by pirates. Heading north leads us into Niger and the Sahara Desert—a bad plan unless you’re a camel. That leaves Benin. There’s an international airport in Parakou. That’s a thirteen-hour drive west.”
Thirteen hours.
To Kristi, that seemed like an eternity.
Malik turned onto the street, hoping he’d bought them some time. They had a long drive ahead of them, and so many things could go wrong along the way. All these Sky King assholes had to do was connect Kristi to this rental vehicle, which surely had anti-theft technology and was traceable. “Are you ready for a road trip?”
“I guess so. Do you know how to get to Parakou?”
“Yes.” He knew Kristi was afraid, and he couldn’t blame her. He reached over, took her hand, tried to reassure her. “We’re loading up on supplies first—water, food, gas cans, and sunglasses for you if you don’t have them.”
“Good idea.”
“If there’s anything you need, you should make a list.”
She answered without hesitation. “Chocolate. Lots of chocolate. A woman can only take so much bullshit before she needs chocolate.”
She was so serious about it that Malik was tempted to laugh, but his survival instincts, honed through a decade of warfare and experience with two older sisters, warned him against that. “Chocolate. Got it. Anything else?”
“Hand sanitizer. Wipes. Soap. Do you have a first aid kit?”
“Yeah. It’s in my bag.” He drove them to Best Choice Supermarket, parked, and retrieved one of David’s SIG P320s from his duffel in the backseat. He’d kept both pistols, along with the M4 carbine. “You stay in the car with the windows up and the doors locked.”
But she’d seen the pistol. “I thought the guns belonged to David.”
“They did. He donated this and the carbine to our cause, along with some spare ammo. He just doesn’t know that yet.”
Kristi gaped at him. “You stole them?”
“Stole is a strong word.” He tucked the SIG in the rear waistband of his jeans, covered it with his T-shirt. “I borrowed them. There’s a difference.”
“How did you plan to get them onto the plane?”
“Airport security here is notoriously lax.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad you have them. I just don’t want David coming after us, too, or you getting arrested.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll square things with David when you’re safe.”
He climbed out, locked the vehicle behind him, and walked into the store. He worked his way down a mental shopping list that included everything Kristi had mentioned, as well as a pair of sunglasses for her, two cases of bottled water, and two five-gallon plastic gas cans that he would fill on their first refueling stop.
The cashier didn’t bat her eye at the two dozen chocolate bars.
Malik bagged their supplies and paid with the Cobra card once again. He gave the cashier a nod, and left without speaking, rolling the cart out to the vehicle. He loaded everything up, returned the cart, then climbed into the driver’s seat and handed Kristi her chocolate. “Is that enough?”
She glanced inside, a look of relief coming over her face. “Oh, thank God! Snickers! Twix! Baby Ruth! Dairy Milk bars!”
Malik got them back on the road, working hard to keep the smile off his face as she ripped into a Snickers bar. “How long has it been since you’ve had chocolate
?”
“Almost nine months.” She moaned, a sound of pure female pleasure that hit him square in the groin. “Mmm.”
It’s the chocolate, dude.
His brain knew this. His dick didn’t.
He ignored his dick and switched on the vehicle’s navigation system, choosing English for the language and tapping in their destination. He excluded toll roads and asked it to reroute around heavy or stalled traffic. He hoped that would steer them clear of any surprise roadblocks.
He glanced over, saw that Kristi had devoured that Snickers and was now licking her fingers.
A memory of her going down on him in the greenhouse at Amundsen-Scott flashed into his mind, making his jeans uncomfortably tight. The woman knew how to use her tongue. That was for damned sure.
Eyes on the road, bro.
He turned on the sound system and synced it with his phone, while she tore into another Snickers. “Are you going to eat the whole bag?”
He’d never understood the mystical connection between women and chocolate.
She glared at him, chocolate on her lower lip, her mouth full. “Are you judging?”
“Hell, no. After what you’ve been through, eat all the chocolate you want.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
He was glad she was recovering her smart mouth. That was one of the things about her he’d enjoyed the most. “Is hip-hop okay?”
She nodded, licking the chocolate off her lip.
Fuck.
With Drake dropping beats, Malik headed west, making his way toward the A124, his cock half hard. He needed to get his mind off sex and stay sharp. He couldn’t afford to be distracted with fraternity mafia assholes hunting for them.
You wanted to get to know her better. Now is your chance.
There were a lot of miles between here and Parakou.
“I want to hear what you’ve been doing these past nine months. How was life here before this shit happened?”
Her chocolate craving temporarily satisfied, Kristi did her best to recap nine months of nursing without boring Malik to tears. Giving vaccines. Prenatal screenings. Setting and splinting broken bones. Assisting with emergency surgeries. STI screenings. Treating infections. Handing out mosquito nets. Catching babies.
“We had a laboring mom who tried to reach our mobile medical unit, but she started to deliver on a rutted dirt road that passed through the village. I grabbed some gloves and a towel and ran out there. She squatted down and pushed out the first baby, a little boy, and then I realized there was another.”
“Wow. Twins?”
“I only had one towel, so I took off my lab jacket, caught the second baby, and wrapped him in that. By then, some men had come with a litter. They carried her and the babies, still attached to their umbilical cords, the rest of the way to the unit.”
She couldn’t help but smile at the memory. “It’s funny, but I had to come all the way to Nigeria to do the kind of nursing I love.”
“What do you mean?”
“At home, nursing is as much about hospital policy, insurance companies, and lawyers as it is patient care. This patient needs that test, but insurance won’t cover it. That homeless woman has nowhere to go, but the hospital orders you to discharge her anyway. I’d be in the middle of setting up an IV on someone in serious pain, and the finance people would walk in and ask for money.”
“Shit. Yeah, we’ve got problems.”
“The bureaucracy wears nurses down. You can’t necessarily give your patients the attention and care they deserve. But here, there’s none of that. There are limited resources, and so many people live far from adequate healthcare. Few of the hospitals here are up to what I consider modern standards of care. But every day was about using my skills and the available resources to save lives and stop suffering. I made a difference every day. That’s what I wanted to do when I became a nurse.”
“That’s amazing. I mean it, Kristi. Your parents must be so proud. They’re doctors, right?”
She was impressed that he’d remembered. “My father is a neurologist, and my mother is a pediatrician. When I showed an interest in medicine, they expected me to become a physician. But I’d spent enough time in hospitals as their daughter to see that nurses, not doctors, do most of the patient care.”
“And that’s what you wanted to do.”
“Yes.” She remembered her parents’ dismay when she’d applied to the nursing program instead of pre-med. “I think they were disappointed at first. They tried to talk me into med school, but when I gave them my reasons, they came around.”
“You’re a damned good nurse. I’ve seen you in action, remember?”
“When Thor was shot.” She remembered. “Working here in Nigeria is the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. I loved every moment of it, even on the hard days. I’m going to miss it so much.”
They’d reached the outskirts of Abuja now, the city falling behind them, the setting sun low on the horizon ahead.
“Did you lose people?”
“Yes, sometimes. But it was hard in other ways, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“I treated girls who’d been freed or escaped from Boko Haram. That was tough. To hear their stories… It broke my heart.” It was some of the worst violence Kristi had ever seen on a human body. “One had been raped pregnant at age fifteen. She managed to escape and gave birth to a boy. Both had contracted AIDS from her attacker. When we found her, it was too late to save her baby, but we got her on good medications. Even after all of that, she was resilient enough to take in two little boys orphaned by Boko Haram. She’s just a kid herself, but the three of them are a family now.”
“Geezus.” Malik took her hand. “You don’t know how much I wish we could take those Boko Haram fuckers out for good.”
“When I was abducted, I thought at first that they were to blame. I thought about that girl, about all of those girls and how brave they were. I couldn’t help but think about what had happened to them and wonder if that’s what was going to happen to me, too.”
“Not as long as I’m alive.” Malik looked over at her, sunglasses hiding his eyes, his grip on her hand tightening. “I know what they’re capable of doing. That’s why I couldn’t wait. That’s why I had to come, even if I came alone.”
She raised his hand to her lips, kissed it. “I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”
Lips that had kissed her senseless curved in a soft smile. “You already have.”
How could a man who’d spent his adult life at war be so sweet?
“Did I bore you to death with all the medical stuff?”
“No, you didn’t bore me. I asked, remember?” He changed lanes, merged onto a highway, the traffic light. “I’ll let you in on a secret. When you and I said goodbye at Amundsen-Scott, I wished that I’d taken the time to get to know you better.”
“I felt the same way.”
“Now we’ve got another chance.”
12
Malik pulled over at the first filling station they saw, uncertain how many miles lay between them and the next one. “I think this place has restrooms. Take advantage of it while you can. There aren’t many public restrooms here, and the ones that exist are pretty disgusting.”
“I’ve lived here for the past nine months, remember? Do you have any Nigerian money? They might charge.”
He reached into his wallet, drew out a ten. “That ought to be enough. I think I’ve got a baseball cap to help you hide your hair, too.”
He grabbed it out of his duffel, handed it to her. “Try not to let anyone see your face, and pretend you don’t know me if we run into each other inside.”
She tied up her hair, hid it under the cap. “Got it.”
SIG tucked in the waistband of his jeans, he watched as she made her way indoors. Then he topped off the fuel tank and filled both gas cans. He wanted some insurance that they wouldn’t run out of fuel if they were forced to leave the highway and take backroads. Wh
en he was done refueling, he went inside to pay, entering the building just as Kristi was walking out.
She didn’t so much as look at him.
He paid for the gas and the restroom, took a leak, and then walked back out to the vehicle. While Kristi sat inside with the windows up rubbing her hands furiously with hand sanitizer, he went to work, searching for the anti-theft GPS tracker. It would be small, not much bigger than a deck of cards. Based on experience, he checked beneath the engine and found it attached by magnets to one of the struts.
He ripped it off, tossed it into a trash bin, and got back into the driver’s seat.
“What was that?”
“It was a GPS tracker—an anti-theft device. I wanted to get rid of it so they can’t track us if they connect us to this vehicle.”
“Shit. Do you think they know where we are?”
“No.” He didn’t want her to worry unnecessarily. “If they did, their trail ends here, near the intersection of two highways, one heading north and the other heading south to Lagos. Once they realize we didn’t catch a plane, I’m sure they’ll think we’re on our way to Lagos.”
They set off again, merging back onto the A124.
“What do your parents think of you flying off to Nigeria by yourself to risk your life rescuing some woman they haven’t met?”
That was a question he hadn’t expected.
“My parents don’t know about my missions. They don’t ask, and I don’t tell. Operational security. I couldn’t share information when I was with the Rangers, and I don’t share it now.”
“Don’t they worry?”
“I’m sure they do, but they’ve learned to live with it. They didn’t want me to enlist. They wanted me to go to law school.”
“Law school?”
“My mom is a district court judge. My old man teaches law at Emory University. My older sisters both studied law, but only one practices. The other runs a restaurant in Marietta, outside Atlanta, with her husband, Dustin.”
“God, that sounds like my family, only lawyers instead of doctors. They’re proud of you, though, right? I mean… how could they not be?”
