felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
God, I need You to intervene in this situation... Again...
“I told you it wasn’t safe for anyone other than patients to be in here,” she said as she stood up to face the man.
The man took another step forward.
“Stop—”
“Wait. It’s okay.” He continued speaking in perfect English from the shadows, his voice barely above a whisper. “It’s Grant Reese.”
“Grant? I don’t...” She paused midsentence, as memories of a girlhood crush flickered through her mind. How was it possible he was here?
But there was no time to figure out how he’d found her halfway around the world.
A second man stepped in behind him.
“This is my friend Antonio. We need to get you out of here. Now.”
“Wait... I can’t go.” Her mind spun, still unable to determine if this was a dream, or if someone had actually come to rescue her. “Not yet.”
“Why?”
“There’s a young girl here... Ana...” Like herself, Ana wasn’t here by choice. And she wasn’t going to leave her behind. “If I leave her here...”
She tried to hold back the fear starting to crush her. Over the past five days she’d dreamed of some handsome Special Ops soldier coming to her rescue. In her dreams everything might have ended happily ever after, but there was only one ending for this scenario if they tried to escape and got caught. And, she realized, only one ending for Ana if she was left behind.
“Where is she?” Grant whispered.
“Right here with me.” Maddie turned to Ana. “Do you want to leave with us?”
“Yes—”
“I’m not sure that’s possible,” Antonio interrupted.
“We have to take her,” Maddie said, pulling a thin blanket around the girl’s neck and grabbing the backpack she’d had on her when she’d been abducted. She had so many questions, but all of them would have to wait for now. “And we need to hurry. The guards are eating and won’t be paying a lot of attention for the next few minutes, but they’ll be done soon. How far do we have to walk?”
She tightened her grip around Ana’s waist. There was no way the girl could walk out of here on her own.
“Just over a kilometer,” Grant said. “We’ve got a car waiting. Then we’ll drive to the airstrip where we have a plane ready to pick us up.”
“I’ll carry her,” Antonio said, reaching down to pick her up.
Maddie nodded and turned back to Grant, wishing she could see the familiar bright blue eyes she remembered all too well. “Thank you. Both of you.”
“You can thank us later, once we get out of here in one piece,” Grant said.
She slipped through the shadows behind them toward the edge of the compound, trying to swallow the fear threatening to engulf her. Because she’d seen what they had done with her coworker from the hospital. And knew what they’d do to her if they caught her trying to escape.
She glanced back at the cooking fires, before hurrying to catch up with Grant. The men were still busy eating, and there were no signs of any of the guards in front of them. But even that didn’t help calm the panic. She quickened her steps across the tangled mass of vines beneath her feet, her rib cage pressing against her lungs as they hurried over a low section of the wall and then hastened into the forest. She was terrified the men were following in the darkness. Terrified this wasn’t really over. Because somehow, she’d become the prey in a game she didn’t know how to play.
She stumbled, but Grant was there to catch her. She felt his arm wrap around her waist. Felt the warmth of his hands as he steadied her. And caught a glimpse of his expression as he looked at her.
“We’re almost there,” he said, breaking into her thoughts.
She caught a glimpse of the waiting car as they came out of the thick wooded area. A second later, a streak of orange lit the night air in an arch and then dropped back toward the horizon, enveloping the car in a ball of flames.
Maddie watched in horror as flames completely consumed the vehicle. She stumbled backward, away from the heat radiating from the car. Someone had to have seen them escape, which meant they needed to run. But where? Darkness had long since settled in around them. Without a vehicle—without knowing where they were going—finding their way out of here was going to be almost impossible.
And whoever had set off the explosion was somewhere nearby. She searched beyond the blaze lighting up the night sky, but saw no one.
Please, God, please... You’ve brought us this far. There has to be another way out.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“We run!” Grant grabbed Maddie’s hand as she continued to pray, pulling her away from the scene with Antonio carrying Ana right behind them.
Smoke filled her lungs as they ran. Her eyes burned, and her legs threatened to give out, partly from fear, partly from the excursion. Her mind scrambled to sort through the facts as she knew them, while trying not to stumble beside Grant. She’d seen the explosion. Someone had purposely blown up that car. Which meant they were out there. After them. Guilt slivered through her. Grant should never have tried to come after her. Even with his military background, he’d put not only his life, but the life of Antonio at risk. And she’d seen the kind of men who had been holding her. Even if they ran, they would come after them.
Lit only by the night sky, Maddie clutched the strap of her backpack with one arm and struggled to keep up with Grant as they ran along a narrow dirt path, shielded on one side by the thick forest. She glanced back, worried about how long Antonio would be able to carry Ana. Worried about how long all of them could continue at this pace. All she could do was pray that the shadows would play to their advantage and hide them from the rebels.
Grant’s hand gripped hers as they ran. Silvery traces of moonlight encircled them, bathing the surrounding terrain in a hazy glow. How had her situation escalated to this? Until the past few days, she’d firmly believed her decision to come to Africa had been worth any inconveniences of life in a foreign country. Even if her decision to come had been partly selfish.
After four years of dating “Mr. Right,” reality had hit her, and she’d realized she was about to make the biggest mistake of her life in settling for what everyone else wanted for her. But not what was best for her. In joining a medical team working in Guinea-Bissau and escaping the American rat race, she’d hoped to find a missing part of herself in helping others.
What she’d found had been far more than she’d expected.
While her family had been convinced she was crazy for even considering the idea, it had been here, in one of the poorest countries in the world, that she’d found an unexplainable joy.
