Mission

by Amy Andrews

  Because it was ugly.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  RICHARD slept. Two days of hard marching and only brief episodes of dozing the night before was a potent sleeping pill. The stress levels that had soared through his system, working on the dehydrated infant and their abduction and the subsequent worry about Holly’s safety had left his tough-guy reserves seriously depleted.

  He also knew that tomorrow was going to be his biggest challenge. Tomorrow he had to treat the rebel leader and earn their freedom. A million scenarios had circled through his head as he had reclined on the dirt floor of their prison and he had pushed them all aside to allow sleep to claim him instead. He was going to have to be alert. Their lives would depend on it.

  Perversely, Holly couldn’t sleep. She lay awake watching the steady rise and fall of Richard’s chest as the firelight cast fingers of orange light across his body. She still quaked a little when she thought about her angry words with John but the result had been worth it. They had helped another person on their travels.

  She shivered when she thought about how ill the little girl was. The fear she had see in Mundi’s eyes and the desperation in her voice would stay with her for ever. So would the callousness of John. Had she been wrong about the rebels? No, when it mattered, John had done the decent thing. The honourable thing.

  Richard mumbled in his sleep and her gaze rested on him again. Her eyes caressed his features. His strong jawline was heavy with dark stubble, his short black hair peppered with grey and his lips slackened by slumber. In fact, the whole harshness of his face had disappeared, the severity of his features relaxed now.

  It was great to be able to stare at him for a change. Two days of him following her had made her very conscious of her appearance despite their dire situation. When she had bought the cargos just prior to her departure from Australia she hadn’t thought she’d be trekking through a jungle with an ex-lover behind her. If she had, she might have been more critical of how her butt looked in them.

  Mind you, it probably didn’t matter at this point. Every part of her must have looked like something the cat had dragged in. With no mirror to confirm her worst suspicions, she just had to guess. After two days without soap or toothpaste, she was more au naturel than she had ever wanted to be.

  Still, she thought as sleep started to muddle her brain, at least she was clean—intermittent dousing with torrential rain saw to that. And didn’t they say rainwater was good for your skin? Whatever. She’d kill for some soap and the opportunity to get naked and wash herself all over. Some shampoo and even a little moisturiser wouldn’t go astray either.

  And she only had four sticks of gum left in her pocket, which she had been sharing with Richard. Even if it didn’t do much for oral hygiene, at least her mouth felt refreshed and her breath didn’t smell like birdcage effluent. But, oh, if she ever got out of this alive, she was going to sit in a spa bath all day and pamper herself.

  A couple of hours later she was dreaming about precisely that when a sudden shout woke her. She sat bolt upright, her muscles protesting the quick movement, disorientated at first. The fire had burned low, just a few coals glowing in the stone ring, and she heard the unmistakable sound of thunder and rain beating down outside.

  Her heart rate settled as she realised the noise had come from outside and she glanced over at Richard to tell him it was just thunder. But he was asleep. Strange, very strange. Surely tough-guy, action-figure Richard would be instantly alert at a noise that had managed to drag her awake?

  Nothing woke her. She was a shift worker. Her family called her log. As in sleeping-like-a. But Richard? Weren’t professional soldiers supposed to sleep with one eye open or something? Weren’t they supposed to be instantly alert if so much as a leaf crunched?

  Then she noticed the sweat beading his brow and then he muttered in his sleep again and shook his head from side to side.

  ‘No,’ he shouted, and Holly nearly jumped out of her skin. That had been the noise that had woken her. It hadn’t been thunder. It had been Richard. She watched as he muttered again and she saw the rapid movements of his eyes beneath his closed lids and guessed he was dreaming. Bad dreaming.

  ‘No,’ he shouted again, and she watched as his fingers curled into fists.

  OK. What was she supposed to do now? The rain continued to thunder down outside so she doubted anyone in the camp had heard him. Did she just leave him and hope that he would wake of his own accord, or was she supposed to rouse him? The look on his face, twisted in agony, was too awful to bear. What was he dreaming about?

  Her urge was to go to him and hold him. Whatever he was dreaming about, it was bad. He looked in so much pain, so alone. Maybe even if only his subconscious knew she was beside him, it might help him feel less alone.

  She shuffled over and sat nearer. She reached for a log and threw it on the fire, poking at the coals with a stick to stir them up. She watched him a bit longer as he muttered to himself, still undecided.

  And then he started to whimper. He sounded like a wounded animal. It was such an anguished sound her heart squeezed painfully in her chest. She couldn’t stand to listen to it any more. She lay on her side next to him, propped up on one elbow.

  ‘Richard,’ she whispered, and placed her hand on his firmly muscled chest. ‘Richard.’

  He either didn’t hear her or couldn’t wake from the bounds of his dream. She tried again, shaking him a little more firmly this time. Still nothing. And still a gut-wrenching whimpering that clawed at her soul.

  Holly got down closer to his ear and whispered again. His head shook from side to side and she gently kissed the side of his face, close to his ear. ‘Richard, it’s OK. Wake up,’ she said, and kissed him lightly again in the same spot.

  She couldn’t explain why she’d decided to kiss him. In fact, it hadn’t even been a conscious decision. It had just happened on the spur of the moment. It hadn’t even been sexual. Just one person trying to comfort another, a bit like a mother trying to soothe a frightened child. Because that’s exactly what Richard looked like—a scared little boy.

  ‘Richard,’ she said again, kissing his sweaty brow. ‘Richard.’ This time she kissed a closed eyelid. ‘Wake up, you’re dreaming. It’s OK, it’s Holly. Wake up.’

  She continued to whisper words of comfort and solace to him as she dropped gentle kisses all over his face. His fretting eased and she stroked her fingers through his hair and across his forehead. His face, contorted with a mix of emotions, relaxed and Holly snuggled her head against his chest and listened to the reassuring thud of his heart beating.

  A few minutes later the head-shaking and muttering started again and Holly was quick to repeat her earlier ministrations.

  ‘It’s OK Richard. I’m with you. Holly’s here. It’s OK.’

  Richard’s eyes snapped open and the orange glow cast around the small area made them look even blacker. He looked at her, confusion evident in their dark depths. He didn’t look fully awake to her so she kept whispering, telling him he was OK and that she was there for him. And it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to keep kissing him, dropping light kisses all over his face.

  More importantly, he didn’t even try to stop her. She stopped when he seemed more awake, his black eyes boring into hers, and laid her head back down on his chest for a while. His arm came up around her shoulders, scooping her closer, and she sighed and relaxed against him.

  ‘You had a bad dream,’ she said quietly. His heartbeat had steadied and the sound and feel of it beneath her ear seemed as natural as the rain beating down around them.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.’

  Holly raised herself on her elbow. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Richard. We can’t control our subconscious.’

  ‘I can,’ he said, removing his arm from around her and putting it by his side between them.

  Holly sighed. Now he was going to be a he-man about this? He seriously needed to open up a bit more. ‘Tell
me about it,’ she said, lying back down on her side beside him, an arm propped beneath her head as a pillow, her body not quite touching his.

  ‘It’s not important,’ he said.

  ‘It is to me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I want to be able to understand you. And because…you woke me.’ She smiled. And it wouldn’t be fair to do that and not explain.’

  He gave her a half-smile back. ‘Life, my dear Pollyanna, isn’t fair.’ And he promptly turned his back on her.

  ‘Was it a premonition? Was it about us being killed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Being rescued?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Your childhood?’

  ‘Holly. Go to sleep.’

  ‘Nope,’ she mimicked.

  Silence.

  ‘Mosquitoes?’

  Silence.

  ‘Giant mosquitoes?’

  More silence. She cast around for something else. She was getting kind of desperate now. ‘Monsters?’

  Richard flinched and squeezed his eyes shut. Now she was getting closer. He still felt the tempo of his heartbeat pounding through every cell in his body and the familiar nausea that the dream always caused rolled through his gut. He started counting to himself. Anything to divert his thoughts.

  Twelve, thirteen, fourteen—

  ‘Some other evil force that big tough guys are scared of?’

  Why didn’t she just shut the hell up? Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen—

  ‘Please, Richard,’ she said, unable to keep the pleading tone from her voice, ‘talk to me.’

  ‘Go to sleep, Holly,’ he said gruffly.

  ‘No. I’m going to guess all night. You may as well just tell me.’

  Richard sighed. Unfortunately he believed her.

  ‘Holly, enough,’ he said, turning over to his other side so he was facing her.

  ‘Please, Richard,’ she whispered.

  He shut his eyes. What the hell? If it meant that much to her and she’d actually be quiet, it’d have to be worth it.

  ‘It was about the thing that I told you about today.’

  ‘What? The Africa thing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Holly held her breath. She felt like one false move, one wrong word would send him scuttling in retreat. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I killed someone.’

  His bluntness pulled her up. His shuttered face was illuminated by the firelight and she could see the anguish etched there.

  Think, dammit, think. ‘You were a soldier in a war zone,’ she said quietly, quelling the urge to stroke his face. ‘I guess sometimes that happens? Right?’

  ‘Wrong. I was part of a United Nations mission. Your weapon is to be used only if there is an immediate threat to your life.’

  ‘And there wasn’t?’

  ‘Not to mine, no.’ He grimaced as he remembered that day. ‘I mean, how crazy is that? They can shoot someone, an innocent civilian, right in front of your eyes and you can’t do a damn thing about it.’

  ‘Is that what happened?’ she asked softly. There was silence for a while and she watched as his eyes returned from a faraway place and came back to focus on her.

  He nodded. ‘I came across this rebel soldier on the outskirts of the camp who had rounded up a woman with two children. One was a baby and the other was probably no more than two. He was trying to prise the toddler away from her leg and she was screaming and crying and begging him to leave them alone.’

  ‘Oh, Richard, how awful.’

  ‘It became apparent he was making her decide. Forcing her to choose which child lived and which child died. He was so cocky. So…damn sure of himself. He knew I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.’

  ‘But you did.’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t just going to stand by and let him do that. So I intervened. I took out my rifle, pointed it at his head and…he laughed at me. He was only about nineteen or twenty but he was cold. Worse than cold. There was this maniacal, zealous glint in his eyes. He was so indoctrinated he couldn’t see that an innocent woman and her children had no part in his stupid war. And he was getting such a sadistic kick out of terrorising her…’ Richard shuddered as the chill that had swept through his bones that day revisited him.

  Holly stayed silent. She could feel the tears welling in her eyes and goose-bumps prickle her skin at the eeriness of his tone. He had left her. She could tell he was back reliving that day.

  ‘And then he grabbed the baby out of her arms and the mother was sobbing and wailing and begging him. She threw herself at his feet and clutched at his clothes and the toddler was screaming and he just laughed. This horrible, cold laugh. And even though I couldn’t tell what she was saying, I could see she was offering herself instead. She kept pointing to her chest and trying to take the baby off him.’

  Holly felt a tear leave her eyes and track its way down her cheek. ‘So you shot him?’

  Richard looked at her, her voice bringing him back to the present. He looked at her silently for a few seconds. ‘No. Not then. I pressed the weapon to his head and demanded he give the baby back. And then…’

  She watched the play of emotions on his face and gave him some breathing space. ‘Then?’

  ‘He sneered at me, took a step back, threw the baby in the air and while we all looked up he started to pepper the air with automatic gunfire…and I shot him. One bullet, straight through the heart. He dropped instantly.’

  Holly bit back a sob as Richard’s face blurred before her. She couldn’t even begin to imagine the horror of what he’d just described. ‘The baby?’

  ‘The baby landed on the ground before any of us had a chance to catch it. He had taken a hit to his leg. I scooped him out of the dirt, picked the mother and the other child up and ran with them back to the casualty station. He was evacuated immediately. He survived.’

  She saw the lines of strain around his mouth and eyes that retelling the story had caused. She touched his face with tentative fingers, stroking the deep furrows on his forehead. ‘I’m so sorry, Richard,’ she whispered. ‘What an awful, awful thing to have been through.’ She stroked his temples. ‘What a terrible nightmare.’

  Richard closed his eyes as her touch caressed his face. It was nice and he felt the tangible sense of dread recede. ‘That’s not the worst part of the dream,’ he said, opening his eyes. What the hell? She may as well know it all.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It starts off with me witnessing an argument between my parents when I was a kid, about ten. My father starts to beat my mother and I’m crying and yelling for him to stop, and then suddenly the scene morphs into the baby incident, but I’m still ten and the soldier is ignoring me and I’m still helpless to stop it. Just as helpless as I always was at home.’

  Holly heard the anguish in his voice. ‘Hush,’ she whispered, placing her fingers on his lips. ‘You were a child, Richard. What could you do?’

  ‘Something. Anything. I shouldn’t have just let him beat her.’

  His lips moved against her fingers and her heart filled with compassion. She tried to picture Richard as a frightened ten-year-old and failed. He seemed so capable. So sure of himself. But she could see the child in his eyes and she wanted to lend him some comfort.

  Holly leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss against his passive lips. She pulled back slightly and saw the wariness creep into his black eyes. ‘It’s OK, Richard,’ she said quietly, because he looked like he was going to bolt at any second. ‘Just relax, it’s OK.’ She kissed the corner of his mouth this time. ‘Tell me more about it. Were you scared…that day with the soldier?’

  ‘Terrified,’ he admitted, accepting another light kiss on his lips, feeling parts of his body stir to life. ‘But I think I was angry…more than anything. Everywhere we looked there were such dreadful human rights violations and we were unable to do anything. There was this overwhelming feeling of impotence denting our morale. And when I saw him tormenting that mother…I think I just snapped. They r
eminded me so much of me. Alone and defenceless with no one to stick up for them. I was scared, yes, but primarily I was just pissed off.’

  No wonder he was so screwed up, she thought as she listened to his story. She kissed him again on the lips and this time he kissed her back, their lips holding for a brief moment.

  He felt her lips at his temple and then his ear. It was getting harder to remember that acute sense of impotence now. Holly’s kisses were making him feel anything but.

  ‘What I don’t understand is why it destroyed your chance of promotion. The way I look at it, you were a hero that day.’ And she kissed him full on the mouth to try and convey her belief. The world needed men like Richard. Noble men, ready to defend the weak and the downtrodden. She broke away, slightly out of breath to finish what she wanted to say before she forgot how to speak. ‘They should have given you a medal for bravery.’

  Her lips were moist from their kissing and mere millimetres from his. It was such a Pollyanna thing to say he kissed her again. It must be nice to live in her world, he thought as she moaned against his mouth, where everything was so simple, so clear-cut. Unfortunately UN conventions weren’t so black and white. But to have someone so totally in his corner was a turn-on nonetheless.

  ‘The justification doesn’t matter. My life wasn’t at risk,’ his voice was husky against her mouth, ‘I was reported and disciplined.’

  ‘Do you regret it?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he said, and gave her a brief hard kiss. ‘I don’t. If I had my time over again I’d probably do the same thing. You see, it was instinctive, pulling the trigger, there was nothing conscious about it. I had to stop him shooting at the baby. But killing another human being, no matter what the provocation, diminishes you, and realistically I didn’t have to shoot to kill.’

  She looked at the self-doubt in his eyes and for the second time in her life she fell in love with him. His heroic actions hadn’t brought him any triumph. He’d saved a life but taken another in its place, and it had obviously taken a piece out of him.