Heart of a Hero (29 page)

“What gave you the courage to finally leave him?”

She liked the way he said that. It implied he believed she’d found some inner strength. But she hadn’t. “Josh left
me,
Hunter. He walked out the door the night I confronted him about his latest affair. He wasn’t even bothering to be discreet about it anymore.”

“His affair with the model?”

Sarah angrily sniffed back her emotion. “Yes. And you know how I found out about it? My friends didn’t tell me. They were embarrassed for me. They didn’t want to hurt me. But nothing could have hurt or humiliated me more than standing in that checkout line at the grocery store and seeing my husband’s face staring at me from the magazine racks—my husband with his arms around another woman, a very pregnant woman.”

Bitter tears blurred her vision. Sarah scrunched the chocolate wrapper into a tight little ball in the palm of her hand. “I actually put my sunglasses on before I got to the register. What
a fool. I mean, who was I kidding?” She gave a light, nervous laugh. “I bought the magazine and went straight to the store bathroom. I locked myself in and read about my husband and his lover and the babies they were having. I sat there until the store manager banged on the door. I…I went straight home, waited for Josh. I sat in a chair, watching the front door, numb, just waiting. He came in after 2:00 a.m., and when I confronted him, he looked at me as if I was a pathetic stray animal. And—and he told me I was an idiot for not having seen that our marriage was over long ago.” She stared at the balled chocolate wrapper in her hand. “My husband just turned and walked out that door, and I never saw him again. He sent his lawyer instead. I…I was such a fool, Hunter.”

He grabbed her jaw, jerked her face to his. “Don’t you
ever
say that.” The ferocity in his voice startled her.

“It’s
not
your fault, Sarah.”

She wanted to thank him for saying that. She wanted to lean into him, to fold herself into his arms, to feel the radiating warmth of his solid chest, but she held back.

“That man is a sick bastard who took advantage of your most generous quality, Sarah. People like him prey on people like you.” A raw anger glittered in Hunter’s eyes. “Any man, Sarah,
any
man who walks out on a woman like you knows zip about life.”

That did it. She couldn’t hold it in anymore. Tears erupted and spilled in a curtain down her face. He gathered her to his chest and held her firmly against him and she sobbed, until his bandage was wet with her tears.

“Let it out,” he said softly, stroking her hair. “Let it go, Sarah. Let it
all
go.”

She felt herself begin to relax. But just as she did, every muscle in his body stiffened.

She shot her eyes up to his.

They’d gone ice-cold, dangerous. His face had completely changed. He’d become the fearsome man she’d first seen back at the Shilongwe.

Her heart began to pound. “What is it?”

He lifted a finger to his lips. “Put your shoes on,” he whispered. “We’ve got company coming.”

“What?”

He shifted his eyes to the trees at their right. “From over there. Listen, the cuckoo.”

She heard it,
tok tok-boo, tok-tok-boo, tok tok-boo, tok-tok-boo,
the same sound that had followed them all the way from the Eikona River. Someone was coming. Someone had crossed the river into the Blacklands. Fear rose in her throat.

“I thought you said we’d be safe here,” she whispered.

He pushed his AK-47 into her hands. “Take this.”

Shock flared in her chest. “Why? Where…where are you going?”

“Just take it. I’ll surprise them from the back,” he whispered. “Make as if you’re going to fetch the clothes. Get away from the trees here, out into the open. Keep the AK slung over your shoulder, ready at your side. If you see anyone, use it.”

Her body went icy. “I…I can’t. I’ve never used a rifle.”

“Here’s the trigger. All you have to do is aim and pull it. And Sarah…” he paused, looked deep into her eyes “…shoot to kill.”

“I…I
can’t.”

“If you don’t, they’ll kill you first.” He touched her face, then vanished like a ghost into the forest behind her.

Her mouth went dry. Her heart jackhammered against her ribs. And she heard it again.

Tok tok-boo, tok-tok-boo
…

13:39 Alpha. Blacklands.
Tuesday, September 23

S
weat dampened Sarah’s torso as she edged away from the protective cover of the jungle and out into the clearing, toward their clothes drying over a bush. The heat of the sun was violent on her head; her palms were moist.

She kept her back to the clothes and faced the wall of green foliage, squinting against the white-hot glare, searching for a sign of movement, anything that might show her where the men were.

A twig exploded with a crack. She gasped, jerked around to the source of the sound, waited. Nothing moved. Blood thudded in her ears. She tightened her grip on the gun, curling her finger around the trigger. She tried to swallow. She stared at the shades of green in the forest fringe, trying to separate one dark shape
from another. Another crack and a rustle sounded, to her right this time. She spun to face it. Oh God, how many were there? She was surrounded. She was a sitting duck in the clearing. Where was Hunter?

She heard another sound to her left. She swallowed her scream and spun around just as a massive soldier materialized at the edge of the trees.

Her heart stopped.

How long had he been standing there? How long had he been watching her from mere yards away? Her breath congealed in her throat. She couldn’t move. Time warped in the heat, and sound slowed to the consistency of glue. Mesmerized, Sarah stared at the man’s face.

His skin was glistening ebony, his cheekbones impossibly high. He wore a maroon beret cocked at an angle over his shining brow. But it was his eyes that held her. The whites of the soldier’s eyes were almost yellow against his dark skin. And they were looking straight at her.

He moved slightly, and she noticed his sleeves were rolled up high against gleaming black biceps. He wore a red armband. His hands were massive. They held a rifle, just like the one in her own hands, and it was aimed right at her. Sarah stared at the muzzle of his gun. Why couldn’t she make herself move? Why was everything happening so slowly? Why hadn’t he killed her?

He took a step toward her. Sound coalesced into a dull, ringing buzz in her ears, and her vision narrowed to a tunnel of blurred color until all she could see was the end of the rifle aimed at her. Where was Hunter?

“Shoot to kill, Sarah…or they will kill you first.”
But she couldn’t make herself move.

Then a noise, a strange sound, like one animal attacking
another, caused the man to jerk his head and his gun to his left. He raised his rifle, aimed at the source of the sound.

The sudden movement snapped Sarah back to life. Hunter! Oh God, the man was going to shoot Hunter! Sarah didn’t think. She pointed the assault rifle out from waist level, closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger.

It all happened at once, in strangely slow time. Her gun exploded, kicking back into her stomach. She hadn’t anticipated the thrust. She stumbled backward, tripped and flailed wildly. As she fell, she could see the soldier spin to face her. Sitting on her butt in the grass, she raised the gun again, squinted, aimed at his chest, fired. She heard a simultaneous crack as he shot at her. She heard, felt, a hot blur against her ear as the bullet whizzed past her head and shattered the bark of a tree behind her.

For a second everything stood dead still. She could feel the burning heat of the sun on her face, could smell the grass, like warm hay from the stables she’d worked at the summer she was fifteen. She could smell the acrid residue from the gun in her lap, feel the heat from the barrel against her skin. She could feel sharp bits of scrub cutting into her bare legs. Tiny insects darted in a soft cloud about her face, and grasshoppers clicked. Her heart banged against her eardrums.

Slowly, she pushed herself to a kneeling position so she could see over the grass.

The man’s yellow eyes were wide. They looked right at her. He was holding his stomach, just below the diaphragm, and he was sinking slowly to his knees as blood oozed thick and shiny through his fingers.

Sarah couldn’t breathe. Had she killed the man? She couldn’t make herself look away from his eyes. They pleaded with her as he fought for life. Then he slumped forward into
the long grass with a soft thud. She wobbled onto her feet, gun hanging in her hand. All she could see was the rounded hillock of his back, covered in drab olive camouflage, sticking up out of the long grass.

Her stomach heaved. Dizziness spiraled. She felt a heavy touch on her shoulder, and screamed. A flock of birds scattered, squawking, from trees across the clearing.

“Sarah, Sarah, it’s okay, it’s me.”

She spun around, looked up into his eyes. Cold, hard eyes. His hunting knife was in his hand, blood on the blade.

“Looks like there were only two. I took care of the other one.”

She began to shake.

“It’s okay, hey, you’re going to be okay.” He touched her hair. “You did good.”

She jerked out from under his touch, threw the gun to the ground, faced him squarely. “I thought you said they wouldn’t follow us here! You said we’d be safe! You said—”

He tried to take her into his arms.

She backed away, shaking her head.

“Sarah, we
will
be safe. There were at least six men on the river that night, six men following us to the Eikona. It looks like these were the only two who dared to cross the river into the Blacklands. These were the only two who had the courage to defy the superstition. They’re not locals. They’re probably from the south. We should be okay from here.”

“I don’t believe you! I don’t believe anything you say! What if they send more from the south?”

“We’ll be gone by then.”

“You’re…you’re lying!” She spun around, began to stumble through the grass to the man she’d shot. Hunter grabbed her arm, held her back. She fought against his hold. “He’s injured. I shot him…I—I need to help him….”

“Leave him, Sarah.”

“I can’t…. I hurt him!”

“Sarah, he was going to shoot me.
You saved me.”

“Let me go!”

“Sarah,” Hunter growled. “He was going to shoot me and then kill you.”

“He wasn’t!” Tears flooded her eyes. “He
didn’t
shoot me. He had the chance, but he
didn’t.”
Hysteria began to cloud her brain, spin her logic dizzyingly out of control.

“Sarah, if he didn’t kill you right away, he was going to do it later. Believe me. And it would’ve been far worse than anything you might imagine. If they wanted you alive, it was for a reason—information. They would have made you give it to them, Sarah. Then you would have died. Painfully. Brutally.”

She yanked free of his grip, shoved at his chest with both hands, pushing him away from her. She glared at him. He was a complete stranger to her. What on earth had made her think she had a connection to this man?

He tried to touch her again.

“Don’t! Don’t touch me. Ever!” She whirled around and waded through the sharp blades of waist-high grass toward the fallen soldier. She crouched down next to his limp form, felt his neck for a pulse. There was none. His skin was still warm.

Remorse choked her. She jerked up to her feet. She had to get away. From Hunter. From this place. She had to get away from what she’d just done, from herself…hide from the fact that she, Sarah Burdett, had just killed a man. She’d looked right into his eyes and shot him dead.

She stumbled toward the cover of the thick jungle.

Hunter let her go. She wouldn’t get far without him. She’d come to her senses soon. But right now she needed time. Space. This was a woman born to heal. The need to nurture and sustain
life ran through the very fiber of her being. And she’d been forced to kill a man.

His heart ached for her. He knew…he knew firsthand how much it cut a healer’s soul to take a life. How he’d felt the first time.

He watched her move through the golden grass in her white camisole and cotton skirt, the sun on her hair burning like auburn fire. And for an odd moment she looked like one of those bright shampoo commercials where the world smells like apples and strawberries and lemons.

He chewed on his cheek as he watched her near the trees. Hell, not even time was going to help this woman forget this. Nothing would. He knew how hard these things were to bury. And he also knew that she would forever associate him with this horror in her mind. If she was having trouble ridding herself of the specter of her ex-husband, there was no hope of redemption for Hunter. Not now.

His heart felt heavy as he crouched down next to the man she’d shot and rolled him over onto his back. Hunter checked the man’s pulse, then searched his pockets for some kind of ID. He’d found nothing on the guy he’d killed in the forest, but Hunter knew already that both men belonged to the People’s Militia. The red armbands and maroon berets told him that. It was the same red armband they’d glimpsed in the digitally enhanced footage sent to warn President Elliot. It was the armband, along with the equatorial vegetation, that had clued them in to the general location of the pathogen. Sarah’s Mayday had pinpointed it.

Hunter took the soldier’s handgun and his knife. He found cigarettes in his breast pocket. American cigarettes. He flipped the pack over, read the surgeon general’s warning. They’d been packaged for sale to a U.S. market, not an African one. Nothing new about that. Stuff was smuggled into the Congo for bribes
on a daily basis. Hunter went through the other pockets, found nothing but a book of matches from a bar in Brazzaville. If that’s where this man came from, it would explain his disregard for the Blacklands curse. Not that it had done him much good.

Hunter patted the pockets on the guy’s thigh, felt something, took out a corticosteroid nasal spray, for allergies. He turned the cylindrical container over in his palm, read the logo on the label. It was manufactured by BioMed Pharmaceutical. He read the prescription stuck across the cap of the spray. The man’s name was Manou Ndinga and his nasal steroid had been prescribed by a Dr. Andries Du Toit.