Chapter 4 #3
As he rushed Lexie down another narrow alley, a door suddenly opened, and Midas came to an abrupt stop. He felt Lexie run into his back, but held his ground as he stared at the dark-skinned woman who’d opened the door.
He and the woman locked gazes for what seemed like an eternity before Lexie peeked out from behind him and said, “Astur?”
“Lexie?” the woman asked.
Before Midas could stop her, Lexie had rushed around him and was hugging the woman. “Oh my gosh! It’s so good to see you!”
The woman’s gaze flicked back to Midas’s and then down the alley, when they heard more men yelling.
Without a word, Astur grabbed Lexie’s arm and pulled her toward the door she’d come out of.
Midas wasn’t about to let the women out of his sight, and he followed close behind.
He didn’t mind going inside, it would hide them from the growing mob in the streets—including the armed men he was more and more certain were hunting for Lexie—but he had no idea if they were jumping out of the pan and into the fire.
The door shut behind them, and Midas realized they were in the back room of some sort of store.
“Trouble you in,” Astur said to Lexie.
She scrunched her nose and nodded.
“Hide. Here,” Astur said.
“We don’t want to get you in trouble,” Lexie said immediately. “If we can cut through your store and out the front, we’ll be fine.”
“No fine,” Astur said with a shake of her head. “More men. Look for Americans. Heard them.”
“Shit,” Lexie swore. She looked up at Midas. “What are we going to do? Maybe you should just go. They’re looking for me, not you. You can get back to your team and…” Her voice trailed off.
It didn’t matter what she was going to say. He wasn’t leaving her. No way in hell. “I’m not leaving,” he said sternly.
“Hide here,” Astur repeated. “I work at store. No one think you here.”
Midas studied her. He had no idea who this woman was. But he didn’t see any malice in her eyes. If anything, he saw concern. Not for him, but for Lexie. That didn’t surprise him.
She moved, pushing Lexie to the side and crouching down by the door they’d just entered.
She tugged at the boards near their feet until a small space was revealed.
It was some sort of storage space, most likely, and Midas could see a few stray cans and some flat cardboard boxes at the bottom, lying in the dirt.
“You hide here,” Astur said, standing and pointing into the hole.
Lexie looked up at him again, and Midas hated the uncertainty on her face. He wasn’t so sure about this either. He didn’t know this Astur woman; for all he knew, she was working with the men looking for them and the second they were in the hole, she’d go outside and lead the group straight to them.
More yelling sounded outside the shop in the alleyway, and Lexie’s eyes got wide. “I don’t think we’ll both fit in there,” she whispered.
“We’ll fit,” Midas said, making a decision. It would be tight, that was for sure. He wasn’t exactly small, and as the tallest man on the team, this was the least ideal situation for him to be in. But if it meant keeping Lexie safe, he’d do whatever it took.
He stepped down into the hole, which was only about three feet deep. He sat on his ass in the dirt and moved his rifle around to his right side. He scooted over as far as he could to the right and gestured for Lexie to join him.
She looked even more skeptical, now that he was inside the hole.
“It looks like a coffin,” she told him with a frown on her face.
“Lexie, there’s no time,” Midas warned her as the voices outside grew closer.
“Shit,” she muttered. Then she turned toward the woman who’d led them into the store and gave her another hug. “Thank you, Astur.”
“You help Astur and children. We help you,” she said as she returned Lexie’s hug. Then she gently pushed Lexie away and gestured to the hole impatiently.
Taking a deep breath, Lexie gingerly stepped into the hole and lay down against Midas.
She wiggled a bit, trying to get comfortable, and before she’d even stopped moving, Astur had replaced the boards, making dust fall on top of them.
A light in the back room shone through the cracks in the floor, giving them just enough dim illumination to see each other.
She hadn’t dropped the last board over their hiding place a second too soon, as the door to the alley flew open with a crash.
Midas tensed and curled his finger around the trigger of his rifle. This was it. Astur could easily give them up right here and now, and if the men had weapons of their own—and if they were smart—they’d shoot first and ask questions later.
But no shots were fired. What sounded like several men stomped into the back room of the store and began speaking in Somali.
Midas had no idea what was being said, but Astur didn’t seem afraid to speak her mind.
Their voices raised and, at one point, Astur stomped her foot.
At least, he thought it was her. In outrage?
In anger? In frustration? Midas didn’t know, but he was as tense as he’d ever been.
He could feel every breath Lexie took, as she was literally plastered against him.
Her head was resting on his shoulder, one arm tucked against her side, and thus his side, with the other flung across his lower belly. He could feel her gripping the edge of his tactical vest and their legs were tangled together.
It could’ve been five minutes or fifteen, but after a very tense wait, with more foot stomping and more yelling, the men finally left the small room, heading back into the alley from where they’d come.
Silence greeted their departure, and even Astur left the back room, presumably heading to the front of the store.
“Holy shit,” Lexie whispered.
“Shhhh,” Midas warned in a barely there tone.
He felt her nod against him and, one by one, her muscles began to relax.
Then they lay there in that cramped hole under the floor for what seemed like hours.
The heat rose, and Midas’s legs started to cramp.
Still, neither he nor Lexie moved. He’d been trained to stay in one position for hours, but Lexie hadn’t.
And she still wasn’t one hundred percent after her ordeal.
Midas had been impressed with her before, but with each minute that ticked by, his admiration rose.
The back door had opened twice more, and each time, Astur went head-to-head with whoever had entered, until they eventually left. Midas was aware that they were one cough, one sneeze away from discovery, and he prayed the dirt falling through the cracks didn’t set either one of them off.
Before long, the shouts and yelling from the alley stopped and silence filled their hiding spot and the back room of the store. When Midas was fairly confident it would be safe to speak in hushed tones, he whispered, “You okay?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Peachy. This must be how sardines feel in a can.”
He felt more than heard Lexie’s snort of laughter against his shoulder. Then she said, “How can I be laughing? There’s nothing remotely humorous about this situation.”
“Embrace the suck,” Midas said.
“Pardon?”
“Embrace the suck,” he repeated. “It’s something we said back in SEAL training. It means the situation is bad, but deal with it. Accept the shitty but unavoidable situation, in order to move on.”
“I’m not sure that’s very inspirational,” Lexie said. “What else you got?”
“The only easy day was yesterday?” he joked.
Surprisingly, Midas was enjoying this. Probably because Lexie wasn’t freaking out or hysterical. This was the kind of conversation he’d have with one of his teammates in a similar situation.
“Yeah, no. Because yesterday wasn’t easy,” Lexie said in unequivocal terms. “Try again.”
Midas chuckled softly. “How about…you’re amazing. And there’s no one I’d rather be in this situation with than you.”
“Right,” she said with a small shake of her head. “And I’ve got an ocean-view house in Kansas to sell you.”
“Seriously, you think I’d want Mustang in here with me like this?”
It was Lexie’s turn to laugh softly now. “Um…that might be a little uncomfortable. I mean, it can’t be fun to have me in here with you. We don’t exactly fit.”
“I’d say we fit perfectly,” Midas said before thinking twice about his words.
“I guess it’s a good thing I was able to shower. You wouldn’t be as happy with me practically lying on you like this if I still smelled like I did. Three months is a long time to go without soap.”
Midas did something then that he’d been wanting to do since he saw her lying on that examination table. He turned his head and buried his nose in her hair. It didn’t exactly smell like sunshine and roses, but the strands were soft against his face.
“Are you smelling me?” she asked in confusion.
“Just breathing,” he retorted. “And your hair is in the way.”
“You’re weird,” she told him.
Midas smiled. He was. But at the moment, he didn’t care. His fingers relaxed from their grip on the rifle for the first time and he reached up and ran a hand over her hair, smoothing it away from her face.
This wasn’t the time or place to think about how much he liked the feel of Lexie in his arms. He felt relatively safe at the moment, but he wasn’t about to creep out of their hiding spot until nightfall, hopefully after whoever was searching for them gave up, so they had quite a few hours to go.
His conversation with Slate came back to him, about how there were no coincidences.
Midas had resigned himself to the fact that he didn’t have time to get to know Lexie before they went their separate ways.
Well, the universe had basically just laughed in his face as if to say, “You want time? I’ll give you time. ”
And he wanted to know everything about her.
“Tell me about Astur,” he said, asking the first thing that came to mind. “How’d you know you could trust her?”