Chapter 2 #2
What? A black cloud plumed from the front of the train.
Tommy had started to cry.
“Hey, buddy.” Selah smoothed his hair back from his sweaty forehead. “Want to hear about the baby elephant I saved in Nigeria?”
His eyes opened. “A real elephant?”
“Yep. She’d gotten caught in a trap—a wire wrapped around her foot. Her mama was going crazy, trumpeting and stomping around.”
The truck bounced over another rut. Tommy pressed closer.
“What happened?” David said.
“Well, we had a veterinarian with us. And he had this special medicine to help the mama elephant calm down. But we still had to be really brave to go near her, even after she got sleepy.”
James took a sharp turn onto a narrow dirt road. Tree branches scraped the sides of the truck.
“The baby—we named her Grace—she was scared, just like her mama. But sometimes when we’re hurting, we have to trust people who want to help us, right?” She adjusted the cold pack on Tommy’s wrist. “So I sang to her while the vet worked on her foot.”
“You sang to an elephant?” Tommy’s voice held a hint of a smile.
“Yep. ‘Baby Mine’ from Dumbo. And you know what? She stayed so still, just looking at me with those big brown eyes. When we got the wire off, she jumped right up and ran to her mama.”
“Did they stay together?” Tommy asked.
“Last I heard, they were still living in the sanctuary, happy and safe.”
They passed a few farms, then more and more houses. A couple churches. Then the truck turned and she spotted a sign.
Cashmere Urgent Care.
A small white brick building, no bigger than a house. Oh, this didn’t bode well for Grant, but who knew—
James pulled them up to the curb, got out, and ran around to the back. Blood had dripped into his collared shirt, his sweater ripped, his face bloodied…
Reminded her too much of a guy she’d left behind. Same hero type, same dedication.
He pulled Grant right off the truck bed and over his shoulder in a fireman hold and ran him to the clinic.
She could imagine the scene he made inside, but by the time she got there, Grant was back in the service area.
Tommy and David sank down into the chairs, and she gathered Amy to herself as Sarah ran to the back.
Please, God, save Grant.
She led Amy to the chairs, and her hand went again to her head, cool against the heat.
Amy turned in her arms, put her hand down on her shoulder, and cried.
Yeah, well, me too.
She didn’t know how long they sat there until James appeared from the back. He’d taken off his sweater and opened his shirt, and someone had put a butterfly bandage over his head wound.
“And?”
“He’s alive.”
Amy tore away from Selah and ran past James to the back.
“So maybe someone can get this metal out of my gut?”
Selah glanced at David. He was rising, a nurse coming out for him. He turned to Selah. “Thanks.”
“Come mow my lawn sometime—we’ll call it even.” She winked.
James crouched in front of her. “We should get some ice on that.”
“On what?”
He indicated her head.
Selah drew her hand away, and from his expression, oh my, apparently it wasn’t just a little bump.
“Yeah, you’re going to have a doozy of a bruise there. Your new line should be ‘You should see the other guy.’” He smiled.
She smiled back. Laughed. Oh, it felt good. To be not protected but relied on.
Not just a survivor, but a hero. A champion.
James grabbed a cold pack from the nurse, who’d clearly heard him, and cracked it. “Hold this here.”
She pressed it to her head, wincing.
“Do you need to call anyone?”
She pulled out her shattered phone.
James took it, turned it over in his hands. “Yeah, okay. We can fix this.” He caught her gaze, held it. “Trust me.”
And maybe she blamed it on the crazy day, but yes, she did trust him.
* * *
The drone of the jet engines wrapped around North, his forehead pressed against the cold window of the 737.
Below, darkness stretched endlessly, broken only by occasional clusters of lights from the few towns that dotted the Montana landscape.
The first-class cabin smelled of stale coffee and the chicken dinner he’d ignored a couple hours ago, served somewhere over North Dakota.
His phone lay dark in his lap. No signal. No word about Selah.
The thought of her alone, hurt, maybe dying while he sat trapped in this metal tube at thirty-five thousand feet—
He shifted in the cramped seat, his legs too long even for first class. Six-plus hours since Chloe’s call about the train crash, and he was still hours away.
A flight attendant ghosted past, checking seat belts in the dim cabin. Most passengers slept, their reading lights dark dots in the ceiling.
North couldn’t sleep. Shouldn’t sleep. But the hum of the engines, the darkness pressing against the window, pulled at him, dragging him into slumber. Dragging him back. Back to another night, another rescue…
The Nigerian air pressed hot and thick against his skin as he crouched in the darkness. Sweat trickled down his back under his tactical vest, and his night-vision goggles caught every movement in the terrorist camp.
His buddy Jake crouched beside him, Ham’s voice in their earpieces as they waited for the order to execute. But North’s attention fixed on the massive tamarind tree where the three female hostages huddled.
Where she huddled.
Even with her head covered by a hijab, he knew her. Selah. He’d watched her deliver food to the wounded guards from their convoy, seen the way she’d leaned toward the injured man earlier, probably whispering words of comfort. Always taking care of others, even now.
The team had shown up two days ago, watched the encampment, the thugs inside who spent time harassing a young guard, smoking and drinking.
“There are two separate camps. One for the soldiers, the other for the captives. Our ladies are kept under the tree. The others are about twenty feet away, out in the open.”
The others—his buddy Fraser, a former Delta operator named Colt Kingston, who seemed to be constantly trying to antagonize the guards, an interpreter from the refugee camp, and Dr. Hanson, the focus of the envoy’s tour-gone-south.
For two days, North had made camp on his belly in the dust while insects climbed over him, as the heat baked dirt into his pores, as he sweated under his ghillie suit.
Now, finally, Ham, the team leader, was ready for them to make their move.
“I need you and North on the extraction of Selah and the other women.” Ham’s voice crackled in his ear, talking to his teammate Ranger. “While Skeet and Jake cause trouble in the big camp, you grab the ladies and meet us at point Charlie.”
Ranger affirmed with a noise into his comms.
“Affirm.” The word burned in North’s throat. He’d been standing by for two days, knowing she was here, waiting for this moment. Trying to figure out why he’d let her go over six months ago. Of course, back then, he hadn’t known where he’d fit into her plans.
So off to Africa she’d gone.
And here he was, months later, following because she was in over her head.
In the darkness, crawling up to the camp, Ranger said quietly, “You got me, North?”
“Yep.” He’d already spotted Ranger moving in the grasses. The odor of burning rubber and creosote soured the air. Move fast, Range.
“Ready,” Ranger finally said.
And Ham’s voice burst into North’s ear. “Execute, execute, execute.”
Ranger took off, and North tracked him, his eye on the guards.
He watched as a guard went down silently, Jake’s knife finding its mark. The second guard turned, but North pulled off his shot.
Neutralized.
Ranger had reached the tamarind tree.
Shots cracked through the night. The camp erupted in chaos as the team engaged the terrorists on the far side.
North imagined Ranger showing his patch, identifying himself, imagined Selah’s beautiful blue eyes widening—
Run, sweetheart.
As if hearing his thoughts, the group emerged from under the massive tamarind tree, fleeing across the grass to a mostly forested area populated with jackalberry trees.
He watched their six as they ran in their cumbersome abayas. One of the women went down—Ranger didn’t see her.
“North, get to their position.” Ham, in his ear.
Roger that.
Ranger and the ladies reached an enormous kuka tree, and North was up, running hard for their hiding spot.
“We have a problem,” Ranger said into the comms. “One of ours is missing.”
North paused, crouched, and searched the darkness. There—
Four soldiers started in her direction.
He sighted one, and the man went down. The others shrank into the elephant grass.
North got up and kept running.
“I see her!” Jake’s voice, and Ranger ducked among the acacia bushes, following his direction.
North kept running, burst into the opening behind the tree.
Out in the grasses, the soldiers had found the woman—please, let it not be—
“North?”
Selah’s voice stopped him from running out after Ranger. He spotted her in the dim light of the moon, and—
Her eyes found his in the darkness. The fear melted into recognition, relief, and something that stole his breath. Something that had haunted him for months afterward.
If he hadn’t been there…
Frankly, the sense of it still haunted him.
“North.” She said his name, barely a whisper.
Then she flung herself at him, arms around his neck, sobbing.
Ranger returned, empty-handed. “We gotta go.”
He couldn’t agree more. North grabbed Selah’s hand.
But Ranger was waging some kind of war with the other aid worker about going back for the lost girl. Meanwhile, Ham’s voice clogged North’s ear as he communicated with the others.
“We have to go, Range,” North said.
Ranger turned to him. “Thirty minutes. If we’re not at the checkpoint, leave. I’ll find you.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Me either.” Then he said something quippy about carrying the woman.
Whatever.
“Don’t be late.” North turned to Selah. “Move, move!” He pressed Selah ahead of him, one hand on her back as they ran for the cover of the trees. Her bare feet stumbled on the rough ground and he caught her, steadied her.