“Get better so we can go on our date,” she whispered for his ears alone.
She pressed her lips to his cheek, his cool skin sending a shiver through her. And not the good kind.
He had to pull through this. She was falling in love with him, and now she had to leave him.
A phone buzzed. She glanced at the man she thought might be Grant, who dug in his pocket and frowned at the screen.
“Looks like our transport is early, and ready to turn it around.” He glanced at her. “You good to go?”
“Yeah.” She nodded and glanced back at Felix.
Jackie would have to trust Kyle that Felix was coming home, and she’d get another go at this thing they’d jumped into.
She said her goodbyes to Isaac and Adam, then slid out past them with the rest of Grant’s team.
“Grant, right?” She glanced at the sandy haired man next to her.
“No, I’m Riley. Grant’s back there making sure our gear is ready to load.” He thumbed over his shoulder and winked. “Unlike Grant, I have a sense of humor.”
“I’m not going to remember your name.” Jackie groaned.
“We all answer to, Hey, you.”
“Oh thank goodness.” She followed a pair of the men in green down the stairs. What with the hospital packed, the elevators were only for people who needed it. Her legs worked just fine, so the stairs it was. “What is it you guys do?”
“We do the same thing as Alpha Team, but our client base is more corporate in nature.”
“I don’t think I understand...”
“Well, there are a lot of companies whose CEOs have to travel all over the world for business. Your dad for example. Their work takes them into places where they might be at risk, so the company can keep us on retainer. If something happens, we bring their person—or persons—home. We could have easily been the ones sent to retrieve you, but we were on a job already.”
“I see.”
She wove her way through the press of people in the main lobby, following the easy to spot Americans out through the front doors and into the blistering heat. The sun zapped what little strength she had and by the time she made it to the van she was ready to drop.
“In you go.” Riley helped her into the cool interior. A familiar face sat at the wheel, his wide grin infectious.
“Malick!” Jackie stared at the man who’d brought them medical supplies along with the food. Kyle had said he was here, but the fact hadn’t sunk in until she saw him. “What are you doing here?”
“Hello Ms. Davis. It is good to see you in better circumstances.”
“I’m so happy to see you.” Jackie grinned, grateful for this one bit of brightness. “How are you doing? Your English—it’s so good.”
“Thank you. Everyone in? Here we go.” Malick eased the van away from the curb. “My English is what got me this job.”
“What job?” It was so rare that Jackie got to meet people she’d helped, this was an unusual treat.
“I am an administrator in the trade offices.”
“That’s awesome.” She’d been eighteen, self righteous and stupid when she’d come face to face with the brutal reality of what life could be like here.
“Yes. Your father was doing his tour of the mines with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Your father looks at the minister and says—this is the kind of man you need running your office. Someone who speaks the language of the people you want to work with, and they hired me on the spot.”
“What?” Jackie gaped at Malick. Her dad had said that?
“Yes. Yes. Sometimes I miss the quiet life, but this? This is better for my family.”
Malick switched between Arabic and English, telling her stories of his wife and their children, their happy life. If she weren’t emotionally drained, she’d have cried to hear how Malick’s life had turned around. She had nothing to do with it. The only thing she’d done was open a door. It was Malick who’d worked hard to create a future for himself. By the time they reached the airport her side ached from laughing at the antics of his children, the quick wit of his wife and all the happy stories he had to tell.
They paused for the briefest of security checks before driving out onto the tarmac and the familiar Davis jet.
A refrigeration truck was busy being loaded by a few people while forklifts did the heavy jobs. The Lepta Team unloaded and quickly pitched in to speed up the unloading.
Jackie managed to get out of the van, but that was about as far as her reserves could get her.
Malick turned the van off and came around to stand next to her.
“Ms. Davis, would you mind if I said something?” Malick glanced at her.
“Not at all.” She’d spent the last hour listening to him.
“I came to know you, and then your father, through your family’s generosity to me. Over the years, I think I’ve gotten to know your father very well. When I left the mine, we only had our oldest daughter, but she made me think about you and Mr. Davis.”
“Oh?” She swallowed down her nerves, or tried to.
“You are a bright, burning star. You inspire people. You make change happen. But when you’ve done what needs doing, someone else has to carry the torch so we remember what the stars look like when they aren’t there to guide us. I wish I could show you the small ways your father improves the lives of those who work for him. He’s not you, but I can see where you get that spark from. I wish, as a father, you would give Mr. Davis a second chance.”
“It’s hard. I think about what I’ve seen him do, the things he won’t do, and it makes me angry.” She squinted at the plane. Yet here as an example of what Dad could do when he wanted to. It was no doubt a calculated move on his part, but it was the kind of thing that made a difference.
“It’s no secret you think your father should do more.” Malick leaned up against the van and turned to face her. “What I think you forget, if you don’t mind me saying, is that...our way of life here is simple. It doesn’t take much to make a difference, and Mr. Davis, he has to make that difference a thousand times over. I remember a meeting where a British businessman questioned why your father pays his miners more than the current going rate for physical labor. Your father said that he could get more work out of a happy man than a sad one. That the loyalty of his workforce was the difference. Jackie, I’ve known what it’s like to be a slave, and I know what it is to be a free man. Your father is a fair man. Maybe not a kind one, but he’s fair.”
Jackie could disagree with Malick’s estimation of her father, but not by much. When Dad said he would do something, he did it. His decisions might be based on calculated profit, but he’d never once been cutthroat or cruel—except at home. She didn’t need him to be perfect, but she wasn’t sure she was ready for a closer relationship with him either.
“Jackie.” One of the guys in green—Grant or Riley—waved at her from the top of the stairs.
“I guess that’s me.” She pushed off the van. “Thank you, Malick.”
He gave her a gentle hug and then she set her sights on the plane. She knew going to her mother was the right thing to do. Then why did the more distance between her and Felix coil the anxiety tighter around her stomach?
21.
Thursday. Al-Saddaaqah Hospital, Nouakchott, Mauritania.
Felix was never going to drink again.
This had to be the worst hangover in his life. His alarm had to have been going off for hours to have his head pounding this hard.
He pried an eye open to gauge how far the alarm as from him—and stared at the beeping, blipping machines of a hospital room.
What the...?
He opened his other eye. The lights were dim, but he could make out the dark lumps of people sitting in chairs and another hospital bed so close eh could almost flick Shane’s nose.
Jackie.
The name sliced through the fog, bringing with it a week’s worth of memories slamming into his already taxed mind. He sat up, peering at the shape
s, searching out a smaller one. She might hate him from here until forever, but her safety still mattered to him.
He tried to say her name, but his mouth was so dry he grunted sounds rather than words.
The closest lump in a chair sucked in a breath and sat up.
“Felix?” Kyle muttered.
“Water,” Felix croaked out.
Two of the lumps moved at once. Kyle went one way and the biggest lump went the other. Someone clanged against something, a third voice grunted in pain, and the lights flickered on.
Felix winced and covered his eyes with his hands.
“Here.” Kyle offered Felix a cup of water with a straw.
Beggars couldn’t be picky.
Felix sucked down the water and took in the rest of the room. He felt like shit, and parts of him ached he hadn’t ever been aware of. Shane was laid up in the other hospital bed, looking like hell, but more aware than Felix. Isaac slouched down in the wheelchair, and Adam hovered in the doorway.
“Where’s Jackie?” Felix pushed the now empty cup and Kyle’s hands out of his personal space.
“She’s home,” Kyle said.
“She is?” Felix blinked around the room. Last thing he remembered was her covered in blood.
“You’ve been out for about a day and a half. Scared us pretty bad.” Kyle braced his hands on the bar alongside the bed and stared down at him.
“How bad was she hurt?” Felix couldn’t shake the sense that there was something the guys weren’t telling him.
“The bullet went through you and grazed her side. She was rushed to the hospital when she got to Seattle because they were worried about the possibility for internal bleeding, but she was just dehydrated and exhausted. She’s with her mother now.”
“Her mom?”
“Mom’s still hanging on, so mission accomplished across the board.”
“What’d I miss?” Felix eased back onto the mattress, his strength nearly gone.
“We stormed the palace, rescued your sorry asses, had a bit of a shootout with Zeina and her mercenaries, but we always get our people out. Zeina and Samba are in Duke’s custody for now, though I bet there’s some fighting over jurisdiction. As far as the PPM, they’re gone, too.”
“How?” Felix rubbed his hand across his face.
“Seems people didn’t appreciate their first, truly elected leader being removed from office by more of the same people they voted out.”
“Got it.” Felix swallowed. “And Jackie?”
“She’s home.” Kyle frowned.
“No, I mean—I don’t know.”
They hadn’t parted under the best of circumstances. She’d still been upset at him and with the way things had gone, he just wanted to know she was okay.
“Adam, see if you can’t snag that doc? I’d like to get something nailed down for transport home.” Kyle scrubbed a hand across his face.
“Your dad okay?” Felix asked.
“Yup,” Kyle said far too fast.
Felix stared up at the ceiling, his mind foggy and his grasp on the events leading up to putting his ass in this bed more than a little fuzzy. He was a little disappointed that Jackie wasn’t there even though he knew her place was in Seattle with her mom.
“When are we going home?” His voice was raspy and unfamiliar, but at least he was alive.
“As soon as Dr. L clears us,” Kyle replied.
“My clothes around here somewhere?” Felix peered into dark corners.
“You mean that shit Dr. L cut off you? Yeah. It’s in a biohazard bag over there so we don’t get contaminated.”
“Fuck you.” Felix flipped Kyle off and the others chuckled.
First, they’d get home, then he’d go find Jackie. He had to make sure she got her mother’s necklace before the funeral. After that, she could choose to never see him again and part of him would understand.
Friday. University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle, WA.
Jackie’s phone chimed. She shifted and turned off the reminder. Yesterday she’d learned her lesson about sitting for too long without moving. Getting up to pee had nearly made her pass out. After weeks of death-defying captivity, running for her life, and escaping a civil war, her body was done with it all.
“Are you still wearing the same clothes from yesterday?” Jeff paused in the doorway, a cup of coffee in hand.
“Guilty.” She curled her leg under her and adjusted the pillow at her lower back.
“Have you even been home?” Jeff perched on the other chair, the one that didn’t make out into an uncomfortable bed, and peered at her even closer.
“Nope.” A friend had brought her a change of clothes and her old phone so she could at least try to signal the rest of her world she wasn’t dead yet.
“She’s already gone, you know?” Jeff stared at the lifeless body of their mother. The ventilator was doing all the work at this point, keeping the shell alive. “She wouldn’t know it if you weren’t here.”
“But I would.” Jackie swallowed down the lump in her throat. She pressed her fingers to her collar bone where the necklace should have been.
“Did they get everything lined up?” Jeff sipped his coffee.
“Yeah. So...this is it.”
“Did they clear you? You okay?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s all superficial stuff mixed with heat exhaustion, dehydration, and not eating a lot for two weeks. The nurses come by and harass me every so often.”
“Dad wanted to know why you weren’t answering your phone.”
“Did you tell him I was in a war zone up until...God, what is today?” And how long since she’d seen or heard from Felix?
“You’ve got your phone, so you’re purposefully ignoring him.”
“And? What’s new about that?”
“Jackie, in a bit, they’re going to pull the plug on our mom. I know you and Dad are too alike and that means you butt heads all the time—”
“I am not like him.”
“Jack.” Jeff stared at her, his stare flat.
“All Dad cares about is money and profit and the company. We don’t matter. We never have. That’s how this happened in the first place.” She gestured at their vegetable of a mother. If Dad had never slept with someone else, if he’d been faithful, Mom wouldn’t have been on the road to begin with.
“I guess... I guess I remember things differently.” Jeff’s gaze slid to the floor. “You were—what? Five or six?”
“Right before my sixth birthday, yeah.”
“Mom and Dad were different before you. Mom was different. It doesn’t excuse Dad from everything he did. Things changed.” He sipped his coffee and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Look, all I’m saying is, Mom and Dad—they aren’t perfect. Dad has been worried about you in his own way.”
Jackie found that hard to believe. Then again, she hadn’t expected to see the company jet loaded down with medical supplies.
“The flowers are nice,” Jeff said.
“Yeah. The big arrangement is from the rehab place she liked. A few of the others are some friends. They’re holding the rest at the nurse’s station for now.” She suspected the lilies were from Dad, but deep down she didn’t want to know. “Hey, have you heard from the company you hired to bring me home?”
“Uh, no.” Jeff frowned.
Jackie bit her lip.
She hadn’t spoken about Felix or her fears because giving voice to those meant opening the door to bad things. There was every possibility he’d died the minute she left, and she just couldn’t handle that much loss right now. She could feel herself fracturing, bits of her soul breaking off and drifting away every moment she watched her mother struggle for a breath, fighting for every moment.
This wasn’t the life she wanted her mom to live.
The time stretched on. She and Jeff spoke in short spurts about Mom, their memories and happier times. Through it all, she sensed a readiness, as though Mom were standing there, patiently waiting for them to reach
the moment of acceptance. Despite her faults and addictions, she’d loved them. It was something Jackie had never doubted.
When the staff came, when it was time, Jeff spoke with them, shouldering the weight Jackie couldn’t. She curled up in her chair and reached through the bars, holding tight to her mother’s cold hand.
Felix’s skin had felt similarly cold, something she was trying—and failing—to forget. He had to be alive. The world couldn’t lose two lights at once.
“Jackie?” Jeff perched on the arm rest of the chair and placed a hand on her back. “It’s time. Are you ready?”
“No, but we don’t get that choice, do we?” She glanced up at her brother and blinked through the tears.
This was why Felix and the others hadn’t wanted to tell her. Because when the reality sank in that this was over, that her mom was leaving her, she couldn’t carry on. She’d begun to realize that when Felix was practically telling her how to get in the car at the refugee camp, but it hadn’t fully sank in until now.
The nurse moved to the other side of the bed, where the machinery whirled and beeped, doing its job. The doctor stood at the foot of the bed, a benevolent grim reaper in white.
Jackie closed her eyes and listened to the machines switch off, plunging them into near silence. She opened her eyes and squeezed Mom’s hand, Jeff’s hands around theirs, and watched for a breath. A stirring. Something.
“She’s gone,” Jeff whispered.
“Already?” Her voice broke, making the one word unintelligible.
“It was time.” The nurse stared across at them, her face creased in empathy.
Jackie turned her face and leaned against her brother. She clung tight to her mother’s hand, because she wasn’t ready. She’d thought she was, but she wasn’t. Mom wouldn’t be there to tell her she as proud of Jackie or to follow her dreams. There would be no more Christmas Chinese takeout dinners or random calls at all hours of the day and night.
Dangerous in Transit Page 27
