by Teresa Hill
"I know." She shrugged. "I don't get out much anymore. I'm a hermit. I've forgotten how to behave in public. I'm actually thinking of making a cave out of my box springs and mattress. A cave sounds like just the thing. What do you think?"
"I think your father might worry even more, but if it makes you feel better..."
She smiled, feeling hopeful and something close to happy. "Okay, the truth is, I really don't go out much. I don't... like it. It's hard to make myself leave the house. There aren't many places where I feel safe, even in my father's house."
"Aww, honey—"
"I'm just trying to say I don't know many people here, and there aren't a lot of people I want to talk to. But I want to talk to you. And we don't have to talk about Buhkai. Not if you don't want to. Can I just... be here for a while? Please? Maybe be your friend?"
She knew that was way too much, way too pathetic, even for her.
"Did you think I'd kick you out?" he asked.
"I wasn't sure. You looked like you wanted to the first time I showed up."
"I was surprised. It doesn't happen often. Professional hazard. I need to be ready for anything."
So, she'd seriously rattled him? "I have to confess, I like knowing that I can surprise you."
He laughed so hard at that he turned much more appealing immediately. And the man was more than appealing enough already.
"So," he said, "what do you want to do?"
"I don't care. What were you doing before my father and I barged in?"
"It's nice outside. The kids were out there playing when your father showed up. We could sit in the backyard and watch them. I'd rather they have an adult there when they're outside, even if the back yard is fenced and there's a latch and an alarm on the gate."
"Okay," she said, wanting to see him with the kids.
If he was protective of them and genuinely liked being around them, she'd find him even more appealing.
Chapter 8
Will didn't sit long. The kids came and dragged him over to play with them in the fort-themed treehouse.
The little ones wanted him to lift them up and put them in the treehouse, and then bring them back down, often with the kids giggling and holding out their arms and pretending to fly. He pushed kids on the swing that hung down from the treehouse, and put them on the top of the slide. He was surrounded by joy and giggling, kids running in circles around the tree, hiding, a bit of tripping and falling, a few tears.
It did Amanda good to see and hear such happiness. It took her out of her own world for a while.
And it was no hardship to watch Will play with the kids.
He lifted kid after kid easily, and physical strength was something she truly appreciated these days. He was patient, and soothed the children when they needed it. She wondered if he'd been the same way with her: strong and patient and reassuring.
She wished so much that she could remember him. All she had was a hint of familiarity and memories that seemed to lurk just under the surface, so close, and yet she couldn't get to them.
She found herself tying kids' shoelaces, listening to little girls complain about boys not waiting for their turn to get on the slide or to fly with Will. She brushed off some skinned knees, kissed a few boo-boos and smoothed down some hair that was flying every which way.
It was good to be back with little kids. They were so funny, so sweet, always surprising you and making you laugh. They must feel safe here, to be so carefree, and she was grateful.
Eventually, one of the moms called the kids in to dinner. They grumbled but filed slowly inside. Will, looking so strong, so capable, so very appealing, walked over to the bench where Amanda sat.
"Do you have to go inside?" she asked.
"No."
"Sit with me," she said, motioning to the space beside her.
The bench wasn't a tight fit, but it didn't provide any space between them, either. His shoulder pressed against hers at first, until he slowly stretched his arm out on the bench behind her.
She fought the urge to snuggle up to his side, trying to be content just being this close to him, enjoying the reassuring heat of his body, the way he smelled so good.
"It's nice to see these kids so happy," she said. "They think you're a big toy for them to play with. They were all over you."
"They're good kids stuck in a lousy situation. They need to know there are men who won't hurt them."
"Yes, they do."
So did Amanda, for that matter. Oh, she knew intellectually, but seeing it, feeling it, being close to a man and being unafraid, that was different.
Was that why she found Will so appealing? Because she trusted him? Because of that elusive sense of knowing he'd saved her? Or was it something else?
"Do you miss teaching?" he asked. "Being around kids?"
"Teaching? Not exactly."
That made her think of being in a classroom. Just the thought felt awful. She shivered, lost for a moment.
"Hey? You okay?" Will's arm settled on her shoulders, giving her a little squeeze.
"Yes." She tried to come back to the present, the backyard, the shelter, Will. "I thought about teaching, and that was okay. But then I thought about being in a classroom, and that... I don't want to be inside a classroom. The whole idea... no."
She shivered again.
"Sorry." Will came closer, his body angled toward hers, one hand gently cupping her shoulder. "Stupid question."
"No, it wasn't. I really do miss my kids. I try not to watch the news. Emma said it's unnecessarily alarmist and repetitive, and it would likely only scare me. But I do wonder about what's going on in Buhkai. Mostly if my kids are safe. If their families, and the other teachers and their families are safe. What's going on over there? Do you know?"
"It's not as bad as it was when we pulled you and the other Americans out, not as stable as it was most of the time you were there. It's still hard to say whether the current government will be able to hold the country together."
"I should ask my father. I'm sure he's been in touch with his friends there. Now that I think about it, I'm surprised I haven't heard from anyone there." She shook her head. "He's probably screening calls and messages for me."
She waited, and it was like she could hear Will thinking, wanting to say something.
"Don't worry. I'll be nice. I do know how lucky I am to have him," she said.
"Good."
"I don't understand you. You save my life, and he acts like you're someone he needs to shield me from, but you want to protect him."
"Amanda, I'm never going to think badly of a man for trying to take care of his daughter."
"But I don't need protecting from you."
"Your father obviously thinks you do."
"I know. You do, too, in a way. It scares me, Will. I swear, I didn't come here to try to pry information out of you. I just... wanted to be here. It feels good to be here, and nothing else feels like that to me right now."
"I'm glad. I want you to feel good."
"But I think about how hard my father's working to keep me away from you, and you being so reluctant to talk to me, and it scares me. It makes me think there's something really bad that I don't remember."
He took his time, thought it through. "Amanda, I don't know about anything that happened to you over there that's worse than what you already know. I mean, I would think the scariest things would be gunmen showing up in your school, and holding you hostage, and the..."
"Rape. You can say it. I don't fall apart at the word."
"I would think those were the scariest things." He shook his head. "I mean, I know there were other times when you were scared. You saw some dead bodies. You probably saw people killed in front of you—"
"The teachers I knew?"
"I don't think so. I mean, it's possible, but I meant some of the gunmen. We were out of there fast, but it's one of the things I worried about telling you."
"Oh. I hadn't thought of that."
He sighed. "You
want to hear that part?"
"Yes, I do."
* * *
Buhkai, Africa
January 16th
The situation had deteriorated while Will had been inside. He was antsy to go back in and get Amanda and the other hostages out.
As he was briefing the Buhkai troops he was taking inside with him, the situation exploded. Suddenly, he heard gunshots, people screaming, glass shattering. The mob outside the school lost its patience and stormed the school.
Shit.
Will shouted for his Bukhai troops to follow him, and they raced inside.
It helped that he knew exactly where the gunmen and the hostages had been, while the crowd had to search as it surged forward. As he reached the spot in the hallway outside the library, he saw gunmen panicking, arguing about what to do. One just ran. Some started shooting people charging through the courtyard. Two grabbed hostages and dragged them along as shields.
The kids started screaming. Will turned and saw that they were still clinging to Amanda. She wouldn't let go of them, either.
He dealt with the two gunmen trying to use the hostages as shields, using his K-bar knife, because this close he didn't want to risk a shot hitting anyone else. It was quick. They simply dropped to the floor.
Not seeing any other immediate threats, he headed for Amanda and the kids.
It was a battle to separate them. There was too much noise for anyone to hear the reassurances he tried to give. So he pried scared kids away from her and distributed them to the nearest Buhkai troops. He picked Amanda up and put her over his shoulder in a fireman's hold. He could move faster that way and still have one hand free for his weapon.
She fought like a wild thing, kicking him and clawing at him with her fingernails. He couldn't blame her. She'd just watched him kill two men. They had been holding her hostage, but she had no idea who Will was. He suspected he looked pretty scary at the moment. And he'd separated her from the kids.
She struggled against him every step of the way. He worried someone in the mob of people moving in would think he was one of the militants and shoot him or both of them in the chaos. So he clamped down ruthlessly on her legs, hurting her, he knew, and surely scaring her even more. But he didn't want to get shot, and if he did, who would get her out of the country?
Will headed for the back of the library, sticking to the wall as best he could for the protection it offered. The first time he glanced back, the three soldiers with the kids were following him, and the other teachers were following them.
As they got to the courtyard doors, someone or something hit him, and he and Amanda crashed into a wall.
Son of a bitch, that hurt.
And he was afraid she'd taken the worst of it.
He started moving again, heading out as the crowd surged in.
It seemed to take forever, but finally he and Amanda were outside.
She was sobbing and still fighting him, but they'd made it. They were out of the school.
* * *
Baxter, Ohio
Will didn't tell her he was the one who killed two men in front of her. He glossed over that part and just said the two were killed, and he worried that she'd seen it happen.
Was that wrong?
Maybe.
Probably.
Part of the reason he didn't tell her was the way some people looked at a man when they knew he'd killed someone.
Some of them wanted to hear every gory detail, to dig around inside his head and try to understand how it made him feel, as if anyone had that right. It was a part of his job, and he did it. He felt no remorse for killing men who'd shot up a school full of innocent children, killed teachers and raped one of them. Those men deserved to die.
But it scared some people, just that Will was capable of doing it. And knowing he was capable of it was different than actually seeing him do it.
Bottom line, he didn't want her to be scared of him now.
She had been, at times, in Buhkai. Not necessarily because she'd seen him kill those two men. Because she'd been traumatized and raped in a foreign country exploding into war. He'd tried his best to convince her he was one of the good guys, but that had been hard to do under the circumstances.
Would any woman truly trust any man again, after what she'd been through? What she was still going through?
"That's the part that you think might have really scared me? Seeing two of the gunmen killed? I don't remember that."
"Good."
"Or trying to get out of the school. You were afraid to tell me that part?"
He shrugged. "A mob of people was charging in. It was loud, a lot going on. And you had no idea who I was. You fought like crazy, understandably. I'm sure I scared you."
She stared at him. Was it his imagination or did she lean into his side? He fought against pulling her closer, just to reassure her, to make her feel safe. Even more than he wanted her closer, he wanted to be the man who could make her feel safe.
Shit, he was in trouble.
"I can't imagine ever feeling scared of you," she said.
"Well, you were. More than once. There was just no time to stop and explain, to give you time to process what was going on. We had to keep moving."
"I understand that, Will."
"You didn't then."
"Well, I hope you're not thinking about apologizing for that. Job No. 1 was getting me out of there alive, which you did."
"It was. I still hate the idea of scaring you."
And disappointing her, which he had. He'd infuriated and hurt her, even though he was only doing his best to achieve that first objective of his: getting her out of the country safely.
"Hey," she said softly. "You can't think I'm going to complain about anything you did to get me out of there, can you?"
"No, I don't. I just... I could see how scared you were."
He saw a lot of scared people, and he'd learned to block it out and do what needed to be done. He didn't usually see those people back in the real world, and if he did, it was a moment or two, done, over.
He didn't obsess about them, didn't find himself wanting so much to see them afterward, to know they were okay. He didn't chastise himself for scaring them in the process of rescuing them.
"Will, you have nothing to feel guilty about."
"Aww, honey. I do. I mean, it was a judgment call. A couple of them, and I made them. You never know if you made the right one. You tell yourself, in the end, if you accomplished what you set out to do, you made the right call. I misjudged the crowd outside that day. I didn't realize how volatile the situation was, that things were going to explode in a second."
"You were inside, trying to figure out how to get us out."
"I was. And it was hard to crawl out of that school and leave you." Suddenly, he realized what he'd said. "Leave all of you," he added. "Maybe I stayed too long, didn't have the kind of eyes I should have had on the situation outside."
"Wait, where was everyone else? The guys on your team? Weren't they outside watching the crowd?"
"No. The Buhkai troops were outside. The ones I'd been training." He wasn't going to lie to her, but if he told her the whole truth—that there was no team of U.S. soldiers on the ground with her until the helicopter came, that it was just him and her—she'd want to thank him again and feel indebted to him. He didn't want that from her. Finally, he just said, "I was the only U.S. military guy at the school."
"What do you mean, the only one?"
"I was the only one."
"But... I thought there was a team. You guys work in teams."
"Normally, we do. And if I'd waited awhile, I probably would have had a team. But I was already there, and I promised your father I'd do anything I could to get you out. The longer they had you, the more likely it was that they'd hurt you, maybe kill you. And then, waiting wasn't an option. When the crowd rushed in, we went in, too. The Buhkai soldiers backed me up."
He might have some regrets about how he'd done things, but he'd never r
egret going in there after her.
But now, she was looking at him the way people did sometimes. That larger-than-life, hero crap that made him so uncomfortable. He was just a man, one with an amazing job he loved, the best job in the world.
If he really was a hero, he'd have somehow kept her from ever being attacked, ever being held hostage in that school, scared she was going to die or that the kids were. He'd have kept everyone alive that day. He and the guys in the teams would be so good, so fast and so tough that none of them ever died on a mission. But he and the others like him didn't have that kind of power. People did get scared. Bad things did happen, and some people died.
He had to settle for what he could do, what he had done.
"I had no idea you were the only one at the school," she said. "You took a huge risk."
"Honey, once I heard about what you did—getting all those kids from your classroom out alive, unhurt—there was no way I was leaving you there. That was an incredibly brave thing you did."
"Like you, going in alone after me. And don't give me that, 'Hey, it's just my job' thing."
"It is my job," he insisted.
"Well, it takes an amazing man to do it. Don't even try to argue. I know it's true, and I think..."
She went silent for a minute, and it seemed like he'd lost her. "Amanda?"
"I think I remember you telling me who you were. Was there some kind of arched doorway? And it's really noisy? You look... Fierce. Scary, with long hair, a beard, dirt smeared on your face. You look so big and dangerous and intimidating-looking. And you're telling me something about how you're just a man? Did that happen?"
"Yeah, it did."
"Tell me. Tell me that part."
* * *
Buhkai, Africa,
January 16th
They made it to the street, both of them in one piece, and Will was thrilled until he looked back and... The soldiers he'd given the kids to weren't behind him. He couldn't see the other hostages, either.
Fuck.
It was chaos behind them, with a mob of people, angry, shouting, shoving, fighting their way inside. Could he hope to get in there and find a handful of kids and adults?
It looked impossible.
Especially while he was carrying a terrified woman over his shoulder. He couldn't leave her alone to go back inside. She was still fighting him, too scared to listen to anything he said or trust him.
