Chapter 44 #2
Noah shifted, trying to raise himself upright, heart jackhammering in his chest, preparing himself for yet another confrontation.
A shape emerged from around the corner. Two figures, smeared in blood and soot, stumbled out of the shadows.
Alex.
He was dragging someone—no—carrying her. Her arm was slung over his shoulder, her leg trailing, blood dark against her pale skin.
Ginger cried out, pulling away from Fahad with an unstoppable strength. “Alex!”
The pain in Noah’s ribs, the throbbing in his jaw, the sting in his throat all seemed to fade away as one clear thought surged through Noah’s mind.
He’s here. He’s alive.
Alex
“We’re almost there,” Alex managed to Ruby, his words short and choppy as the people on the street in front of the orphanage came into view. He’d been running, half-carrying Ruby for what seemed like ages, with her directing him on where to go. “Hang on.”
His dragging feet almost stumbled to a stop at the sight.
He’d hoped Uncle Jack might be there—Ruby seemed to think the chance might exist.
But what he saw instead chilled him through.
Mama. Papa.
They were here?
How? When? How had they got here?
His heart squeezed so tightly in his chest that an ache pulsed out from it, spreading to his ribs, and he gasped for breath.
Worse still, his father was bleeding and appeared to have been beaten. Men with rifles stood only a few feet from him.
God, no! His academic, language-loving father.
What is he doing here? Playing soldier?
Ruby’s shaking had become violent by now—either due to shock or pain, maybe both. Mama was already running toward them, though. Mama, her beautiful red tresses gleaming in the moonlight as she tore toward him without a thought for anything else.
Alex tried to ignore the arrow to his heart at the sight of her. I love her so much. He wanted to choke on a sob like a young boy, throw his arms around his mother, allow himself to be held by her.
He wanted every inch of the comfort he knew he’d find in her embrace.
But Ruby was desperately injured, and he couldn’t think of himself right now.
As Mama drew even closer, he set Ruby down, crouching beside her.
“Don’t worry,” he said, grasping her hand.
Her skin was slick and sticky with blood, despite his best efforts.
He’d only stopped to tie a tourniquet and bandage the wound to staunch the blood flow, but Ruby needed much, much more than he could help with.
Ivy would have known what to do.
The thought left him almost as quickly as it had come. He couldn’t think about Ivy right now. And his mother would be more helpful than anyone right now.
“Mama!” he shouted, his voice feeling hoarse. “Help me!”
She practically threw herself toward him, catching him by the shoulders. “Are you hurt?” she asked, hands to his face, searching his eyes.
“No, no—it’s not me. It’s her. Her name is Ruby … help her.”
“Alex, get away from her,” a clear, strong voice called out.
Alex looked up to see Uncle Jack coming closer. “She’s a liar and a manipulator. Works for Prescott Federline.”
Alex stood slowly, his gaze shifting from Ruby’s writhing, ailing figure to Uncle Jack. I no longer know what to believe.
“Actually, she doesn’t,” another male voice announced, stepping from the shadows.
Theo?
Harsh electric lights flooded the street, coming from the roof of the orphanage.
Alex dropped back, covering his eyes, barely able to see.
The light illuminated almost as much as it cast shadow, long and heavy onto the dusty street. Several British policemen came out from inside the orphanage, following a well-dressed man in a linen suit that seemed incongruous to the dirt and blood and grime caking Alex’s skin.
Alex’s heartbeat slowed, and for several moments time seemed to stand still, the silence perfect. Consuming. Blocking out everything.
His mother’s lips moved, her head bent over Ruby, already assessing, trying to heal.
His father, half-kneeling in front of an Arab man, had his hands lifted in surrender, but his eyes were locked on Alex. Behind him, Papa’s friend, Fahad, had a steady hand on Papa’s shoulder.
Uncle Alastair—Uncle Alastair—stood in the background, holding on to the arm of a dark-haired, thin nun.
Uncle Jack, half-turned, stared at Theo, opened his mouth suddenly. “Kit, no! Al-Rashid isn’t worth it!”
Another woman Alex didn’t recognize stepped from the shadows, gun raised.
Her long blond braid gleamed in the electric light, her face cold and ruthless.
The bullet ripped through the air with a singular, sickening crack, then the man standing in front of Papa fell, a cloud of blood spraying in the air.
The courtyard exploded.
A few men shouted something in Arabic—outrage and fury in their voices that sliced through the night.
Then the gunfire started, deafening, echoing off stone walls, cracking through the dark like lightning in a canyon.
Alex didn’t move.
He should’ve dropped. He should’ve ducked or run or done literally anything else—but he didn’t. He stood frozen on the street, numbly watching the scene unfold, Ruby’s blood sticking warm and wet to his sleeve.
Everything was happening too fast.
A muzzle flashed near a wall by the orphanage, and a woman screamed. Mama?
Uncle Jack had bolted back into the chaos and gripped someone tightly in his arms, while Uncle Alastair shielded the other woman with his body, hiding behind a nearby motorcar.
And Mama, of all people, dragged Ruby off the road, away from the gunfire, half-carrying, half-hauling, leaving a smear of blood across the packed dirt, all while screaming, “Alex! Alex! Run, Alex! Get down!”
His feet felt as though they’d grown roots.
His heart stuttered—then seemed to stop entirely as one of the men holding a rifle pivoted, swinging toward him. The barrel caught the moonlight, pointed straight at his chest.
Oh God.
“Alex!” Mama screamed.
But before the shot fired, something else happened. A blur of motion. A rush of shadow cut across the chaos. Moving fast. Moving with purpose. His father?
Alex barely recognized him at first. Not like this.
There was no hesitation. No flare of fear in his eyes. Just a pistol raised and ready—God, when had he drawn it? The last Alex had seen, he’d been disarmed and kneeling. Bleeding.
One clean shot flashed and cracked through the doubt. The rifle clattered to the ground as the man aiming at Alex dropped like a sack.
Alex stood motionless, ears ringing.
The man’s body sprawled in front of him, blood seeping into the dirt in a dark-crimson puddle. The stench of powder choked the air. His father—his father—had shot a man at close range and didn’t so much as blink.
His father stepped forward, calm, controlled, his stance rigid and grounded. One hand still on the pistol, the other lowering just slightly—not in hesitation but readiness.
He positioned himself between Alex and the next threat, shoulders squared like a wall.
“Get down,” his father said, his voice low and cold. Completely unrecognizable. “Now.”
Alex dropped.
Gravel bit into his palms, breath sawing through his chest. He blinked fast, trying to focus, trying to see anything but the twisted, ruined dead man just a few feet away. Hard shadows fell across his father’s face, his eyes lethal and deadly.
This wasn’t the man Alex had grown up with.
Not the one who took them to church on Sunday or made notes on their essays. The one who’d taught him to tie his shoes and had marveled for days over a broken piece of pottery he’d dug up in a field near home.
That man didn’t exist right now.
This was someone else.
“Papa?” The word left his mouth before he even realized he’d spoken.
His father didn’t turn. His stance didn’t falter. “Stay down, son.”
Alex could only stare at him. At the back of that broad frame. The calm in his grip. The way the moonlight touched his shoulders as if he’d been carved from it. He saved me.
All the doubts Alex had carried—about who his father really was, whether the past had been a lie, whether he’d ever known the man who raised him—collapsed under the weight of that one moment.
That one bullet.
He was safe.
Even here, in the bloodied streets of Jerusalem, far from Penmore—he was home.