Chapter 2
Olivia
The little boy’s fever finally breaks just after sunset.
I feel it in the cooling of his skin beneath my hand, in the way his breathing eases, in the tiny sound his mother makes before she covers her mouth and starts crying anyway. She’s already lost her daughter and husband.
I sit back on my heels, exhaustion settling deep into my bones.
“He’s stable for now,” I tell her softly. “Keep giving him sips of water. Small ones. If the bleeding starts again, come get me immediately. Try and get some sleep.”
The woman nods over and over, clutching my hands in hers like I’ve done something miraculous.
I haven’t.
I’ve done what I can with too little medicine, too few bandages, not enough sleep, and the kind of fear that lives in your bloodstream after long enough.
Around us, the old schoolyard has become a patchwork of suffering.
Blankets spread over dirt.
Children with smoke-damaged lungs.
A girl no older than eight with burns down one arm.
A teenager with shrapnel still buried in his thigh because I don’t have the anesthesia to do more than numb the edges and pray.
This place wasn’t meant to survive a war.
None of us were.
But the children didn’t ask for any of this.
That’s the part I can’t walk away from.
Not when they still look at me like I might be able to fix things.
Not when their mothers press babies into my arms and whisper please like the word itself might keep death outside the walls.
Not when leaving feels too much like abandoning them.
“Doctor.”
I turn at the sound of Hannah’s voice.
She’s standing in the doorway, pale and tense, her red hair tucked beneath a scarf. Dr. Stephen Cole is behind her, scrubbing a hand over his face like he hasn’t slept in days. To be fair, none of us have.
“What is it?” I ask.
Stephen glances toward the road. “There are new patrols.”
My stomach knots.
The local priest, Father Nabil, steps in behind them. “Two men came asking questions this afternoon. They wanted to know if Americans were here.”
Hannah folds her arms. “We need to go. Tonight.”
I look from one face to the next.
There it is again.
That conversation.
The one we’ve been having in circles for three days.
“There are thirty-two children here,” I say. “Some can’t even stand.”
“And if they find you,” Hannah snaps, “you won’t save any of them.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?” Her voice breaks. “Because you keep acting like dying here would somehow help.”
I rise slowly, wiping my hands on my already filthy pants. “I’m not trying to die here.”
Stephen gives me a tired look. “Then stop making decisions like you’re invincible.”
I almost laugh at that.
Invincible.
I haven’t felt invincible in a long time.
I feel cracked open. Worn thin. Held together by adrenaline and stubbornness and the faces of children who deserve more than this ruined place has to offer.
“They can’t travel,” I say. “Not yet.”
Father Nabil’s eyes are sad. “The soldiers will not care.”
I know that too.
I know it in the deepest part of me.
The regime doesn’t care that Noor still cries for her mother every night.
It doesn’t care that little Sami clutches a toy car with three missing wheels while I clean blood from his side.
It doesn’t care that the twins sleep curled together because their entire family is gone.
I know exactly what they are.
I know what they’ve been doing to foreigners.
I know what happens when governments need a spectacle.
That doesn’t change the truth standing in front of me.
If I leave, some of these kids will die.
Maybe not all.
Maybe not even most.
But some.
And I will know it.
I scrub both hands over my face. “Give me twelve more hours.”
Hannah stares at me like I’ve lost my mind.
Stephen mutters a curse.
Father Nabil says nothing at all, which somehow feels worse.
Before any of them can answer, one of the boys from the village comes flying into the room, breathless and wild-eyed.
“Cars,” he gasps in Farsi. “Black cars. East road.”
My head jerks up.
Hannah goes still.
Stephen whispers, “No.”
Outside, the camp changes in an instant.
Noise spikes. Mothers grab children. One of the volunteers shouts. A metal pan crashes to the ground. Fear moves faster than fire, and it catches just as easily.
I’m already running before I realize I am.
Out into the yard.
Toward the road.
Dust rises in the fading light, and there they are—two dark vehicles cutting through the village like a promise of death. Armed men in black step out before the engines have even stopped.
My pulse slams hard against my ribs.
No more maybe.
No more later.
They found us.
“Inside!” I shout. “Take the children inside now!”
People start moving.
Not fast enough.
Never fast enough.
One of the gunmen raises his weapon and fires into the air.
Screams rip through the yard.
I grab the nearest child—a little girl with a bandaged foot—and shove her toward Hannah. “Go!”
Stephen is hauling boxes across the doorway, trying to create some pathetic illusion of a barricade. Father Nabil is shouting for the older boys to help the mothers.
And me?
I’m frozen for half a heartbeat, staring at the men advancing through the dust and thinking with terrifying clarity:
This is it.
This is how it ends.
Then a shot cracks from somewhere above the road.
Not from the soldiers—something else.
One of the men jerks sideways and hits the dirt.
Another shot.
A second man goes down before he can even turn.
Everything explodes after that.
Gunfire from the ridge.
Fast. Controlled. Precise.
The kind of shooting that belongs to men who know exactly where every bullet is going before they pull the trigger.
The soldiers scatter, shouting.
More shots tear through the chaos.
The women scream and drop to the ground over the children.
I stand there like an idiot, clutching a medical bag to my chest while death rains down from two directions.
Then a voice cuts through the noise behind me.
Low. Hard. Furious.
“Doctor, are you trying to get yourself killed?”
I spin around.
And for one disorienting second, everything else disappears.
He’s tall. Broad-shouldered. Dressed in black tactical gear dusted from the road. Rifle in hand. Face streaked with dirt. Eyes the color of a storm and locked on me like I’m the problem he intends to solve whether I like it or not.
There are three more men behind him, moving with lethal efficiency as they cover the perimeter.
Americans.
Not aid workers.
Not soldiers from here.
Something else entirely.
I stare at him. “Who are you?”
His jaw tightens like he doesn’t have time for this.
“Your ride out.”
“I’m not leaving.”
He blinks. Once
Like maybe he expected gratitude.
Then his expression turns cold enough to freeze the whole damn country.
“Yeah,” he says. “We’re going to have a problem.”