Soldier Stepbrother (2 page)

Sadness welled in her, but pride kept her from begging him to get out of his agreement to another four years in the Army. As much as she wanted and loved Cade, she couldn’t spend the rest of her life wondering if he would come back from the next mission, and it was obvious she had never been more important to him than the Army.

Without another word, she turned away from her stepbrother, now her former lover, and walked out of his room. She didn’t even glance at her dad or stepmom as she left their home. She was too numb and heartbroken to deal with their relief once they learned the taboo relationship was over.

In the back of her mind was the offer from the nonprofit where her friend worked. They desperately needed nurses in their program. She had initially rejected the idea because it meant leaving Cade. Now, she embraced the idea of providing aid to those who were suffering. Maybe it would even ease some of her own pain to help heal others.

Eighteen months later

Bangui, Central African Republic

It was still dangerous to venture out on the streets of Bangui despite the peacekeepers’ presence, especially in the evening. That didn’t stop Anya and the other two aid workers from their organization when the young boy came for help. He was bleeding copiously from a gash on his face that he allowed Anya to tend to while telling them about his mother’s suffering in halting French interspersed with Sango.

She had been in the country for seven months, but still knew only a smattering of Sango. Thanks to nightly sessions with Rosetta Stone, at least her French was conversant-level now, so she was able to follow most of the boy’s plea for help.

His mother was in childbirth and had been struggling for two days. He had finally defied her edict not to venture onto the streets to find help at the aid station. Along the way, he had run into a group of Anti-Balaka. They had tried to detain him and ascertain whether he was Muslim or Christian. The boy had escaped, but not without the machete cut down his face.

When he was stitched up, he insisted they go to his mother right then. Anya ignored the protests of the other aid workers, knowing the mother was probably the only person left in the young boy’s life, and she couldn’t leave the woman and her baby to die in childbirth if they could be saved.

Tom and Etienne had shared her conviction, so the three of them headed out on foot. Vehicles might actually attract more attention as they ventured into a part of the city still strongly under the control of Anti-Balaka forces despite public claims by the peacekeepers to the contrary.

She was almost surprised to find their progress unimpeded. Perhaps the white uniforms they wore, all bearing the medical logo of their organization, bought them safe passage. The scrubs had gotten her out of trouble a few times before—as had the silver cross she wore prominently around her neck on the advice of Etienne, who had been in the country since almost the start of the fighting between Séléka and Anti-Balaka.

The boy led them to a modest house at the end of a street. Several of the surrounding homes had toppled over or bore signs of the heavy fighting that had taken place before French and Rwandan peacekeepers intervened, later followed by the current U.N. peacekeeping force.

She should be inured to such sights by now, since the country was nowhere close to recovering from the devastating civil war instigated by outside influences and fueled by religious differences. It still shook her to imagine the terrible life this child must endure, and she had to fight back a wave of pity for the baby soon to enter the world in such circumstances—if she could do anything to prevent its and its mother’s deaths.

The physician in their group had left Bangui weeks ago, declaring his presence no longer necessary despite the continuing glaring need for aid. Her organization had offered her a transfer, but she had chosen to stay, as had a small contingency of workers and volunteers.

The door creaked when the boy opened it, allowing them to slip inside first. As she passed him, the fear in his eyes transmitted to her, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and causing her to freeze. “Something isn’t right,” she whispered to Tom and Etienne.

Before either man could respond, a blinding spotlight stole their vision. She blinked, barely able to make out a gathering of forms at the periphery of the light. “Please let us pass. We’re here to help this boy’s mother.”

The spotlight dimmed and angled to the left, but it was still too bright, making it difficult to discern the features of the person who stepped into the circle of illumination. Anya’s eyes watered as she blinked fiercely to adjust, finally able to discern the tall, thin person was in fact a woman. She frowned, because this woman wasn’t pregnant.

The woman spoke sharply to the boy in Sango, and he darted forward through the light and past the perimeter to disappear into the shadows on the other side of the house. Her voice was cold and clipped when she spoke to them in French. “You are the doctor?”

She hesitated, licking her lips.

“Yes or no?” The woman angled a worn-looking rifle at them, focusing on Etienne. “You are doctor man?”

He shook his head slowly. “I specialize in procuring supplies, madam.”

Her gun angled to Tom next. “You a doctor man?”

Tom shook his head. “I’m a public health specialist, but not a medical doctor.”

Anya tried not to tremble when the barrel of the rifle faced her. It looked huge from her perspective, and she knew intimately what a bullet could do to a body after her months with the humanitarian organization, first in Darfur, and now C.A.R. When the other woman asked if she was a doctor, she put up her hands slowly. “We don’t have a physician any longer, but I’m a nurse.”

The woman said something that sounded ugly and angry. Perhaps a curse. The gun didn’t waver in its aim. “Come with me,
nurse
.” She spat the title as though it were distasteful to her.

She hurried to comply, darting a glance over her shoulder in time to see several young men converging on her colleagues. “Please don’t harm them.”

“We will see, nurse.” The woman gave her a grin that held no mirth while stretching her dark skin over her skeletal face.

“How long has the mother been in labor?”

The woman laughed. “There is no mother in labor, foolish nurse.” She shoved Anya into a room illuminated with a similar spotlight system, though the angle was pointed away from the figure on the bed. “There is our leader. You will save him, or…” With a large smile, the woman removed a wickedly sharp machete from her belt and mimicked drawing it across her own throat.

“What’s wrong with him?” She asked the question with trepidation, knowing if it was anything like cancer or something chronic and serious, she and her friends were already dead.

“He was shot by Séléka dogs.” She clutched her gris-gris and murmured a prayer that seemed to call for the eradication of all Muslims from the country, along with painful burning deaths for the peacekeepers.

Yeah, that wasn’t at all daunting. Anya gulped to clear the lump in her throat and approached the man lying on the bed. As she neared, the woman angled the light so she could see better, revealing the still form of a thin African man with a grayish tinge to his skin. Her hand trembled when she reached for his wrist to check his pulse, convinced she would discover him already dead.

Relief swamped her when she found a thready pulse. Medical training took over, and she began assessing her patient, knowing she wasn’t just saving this man’s life. Her life and the lives of her fellow aid workers depended on her performing emergency surgery under these conditions to dig out a bullet or two from a violent criminal.

No pressure.

“You’re out of your mind if you think I’m sitting on the sidelines, Colonel Miwanga.” Cade ran a frustrated hand through his overly long hair, having reached the end of his patience. Hell, he’d reached the end of that about ten minutes after learning Anya had been kidnapped by Anti-Balaka forces.

He still remembered sitting in the mess tent, eating the thing that passed for food that day, as the only television on the makeshift base had shared the world news. He’d barely looked up at the mention of the Central African Republic, having grown accustomed to reports of violence there. It was only when the anchor mentioned the organization for which Anya worked that he’d set down his fork.

Two minutes later, his life had altered drastically when he’d heard her name, along with two others, who had disappeared in what peacekeepers were sure was a kidnap by Anti-Balaka. Somehow, the cogs of the Army had turned more quickly than usual, and he’d gotten leave and been on a plane for Bangui by that evening.

Since then, he’d spent a tireless, but fruitless, two weeks accompanying the unit of peacekeepers assigned to find his stepsister. The group holding her kept changing locations, but they had narrowed it down. Two days ago, Etienne Francois had staggered onto a main road, apparently freed by a bargain Anya had made with the Anti-Balaka force, though he had no details of that.

The next day, Tom Andrews had been found ten miles to the south, clearly dumped en route to their next base. His massive head bleed had left him in a coma, thus preventing debriefing.

When he had seen those around him starting to give up on Anya, Cade had pushed and prodded. He had demanded they keep searching, and when that had failed, he’d stolen a Land Cruiser and gone on recon himself. Now that he’d found where they were hiding Anya—though he hadn’t seen her personally, a large contingency of Anti-Balaka militia members gathered in one spot offered their best lead—there was no way he wasn’t going in with the liberation force.

“You are a gigantic pain in my ass, Jackson,” said Miwanga, but with more tiredness than heat. “Very well. Get yourself killed. It matters not to me. You are not my man, and the Army can clearly do without you, since you are still here.”

He nodded tightly, not divulging to the overworked colonel that his orders allowing him to be away from active duty had expired seven days ago. It was only a matter of time before the Army came looking for him, but he was going to make sure Anya was safe first.

***

A few minutes before midnight, Anya looked up from changing the dressing on Jacque Taramentu’s nicely healing gunshot wounds. A quiet thudding sound had caught her attention, and she tilted her head to identify it. Seconds later, the louder
whomp
of automatic weapons discharging covered whatever the first sound had been.

Almost used to the sounds of gunfire now, she bent back to her task. The leader of the Anti-Balaka group was improving daily, but there was still a low risk of infection. If he died, she died. It was only his patronage that had kept her alive.

For whatever reason, the older man had decided she was an angel sent by God to save him. She was more sacred to the superstitious man than his beloved amulet. His favor had offered her a great deal of protection and the power to negotiate the release of her coworkers.

It had also earned her an enemy in Esther Taramentu, the leader’s young wife and orchestrator of her kidnapping. She was jealous of Anya and seemed convinced the older man would set her aside to claim the nurse as his new wife.

Anya didn’t think Jacque harbored any sexual feelings for her, but she was still nervous about Esther’s supposition and what actions the woman might take against her. It had led her to remaining by the leader’s side whenever possible, which had only worsened the other woman’s jealousy. She was without a solution that ended in her continued survival, so she was enduring each day in a hellish limbo of uncertainty.

The gunfire grew closer, which captured her attention, as did the door slamming against the wall when Esther and a small contingent of young soldiers entered the room before barring the door. She shouted to them in Sango, and they formed a half-circle around the entrance as she strode forward.

Standing over her injured husband, she began to shout at him while gesticulating wildly in Anya’s direction. Though she couldn’t follow the rapid exchange, it seemed obvious the woman wanted to shoot her regardless of Jacques’ insistence that she be protected.

Anya tried not to scream when the gun in Esther’s hand swung her way. Instead, she met the cold black eyes of the fearsome harpy and prepared for death. Cade’s face floated through her mind, and she had to fight back tears that wanted to spill. If only things had been different. If she hadn’t been so insistent on him leaving the Army…if he hadn’t promised to and then broken his word…

Not quite brave enough to meet her fate with her eyes open, she squeezed them shut. A second later, the roar of a gun discharging in close proximity left her ears ringing, but there was no pain. Cautiously, she opened one eye, shocked to see Esther slumping to the floor in front of her, a gaping bullet wound in her forehead. Her sightless eyes stared at Jacques in an accusing fashion, though the dead woman was beyond reproaching anyone.

“You are my angel.” He spoke calmly as he lifted his handgun to point in the direction of the door, now under the onslaught of someone trying to break through from the other side. “You do not kill God’s messenger.”

“Um, right.” Feeling dazed, Anya slowly sank to the floor, hand clutching the silver cross. It wasn’t a faith thing, but more of a pragmatic habit she had picked up the past two weeks. It was to her benefit to have her “host” believe she was devoutly religious.

Suddenly, the door gave way, bouncing into the wall with a bang of metal against metal as the piecemeal corrugated wall, welded together from scrap, buckled under the force of the door hitting it.

Troops thundered into the room, and the boy soldiers lifted their guns. Many were technically children, but she had seem them commit all manners of atrocities the past two weeks and was under no illusion they wouldn’t shoot her rescuers.

Not that she believed they were here to specifically free her, a lone aid worker. Still, whoever was breaking into the hobbled-together house was surely after Jacques and would free her.

Unless it was Séléka, and then she was probably just as screwed as she had been in the custody of the Anti-Balaka. Maybe even more screwed, since she was an unmarried American woman behaving contrary to their fundamental beliefs.

Suddenly nervous, she waited for the smoke to clear enough to identify her rescuers. A surge of relief left her lightheaded when she recognized the peacekeepers’ uniforms. Convinced the experience had left her disoriented, she thought it must be a hallucination when a familiar face appeared before her.

Hesitantly, she lifted her hand to touch his cheek, rough with stubble. “Cade?” Even as she whispered his name, she let herself surrender to the wave of unconsciousness sweeping over her. It was all simply too much to process.