Going down from the hills alone went a lot faster than climbing, carrying a child on her back and herding half a dozen more. Within minutes, Alex reached the edge of the village.
She hid behind the first wall she came to, pushed the scarf she wore down around her neck and listened, her heart beating so loudly against her eardrums, she could barely hear anything.
The gunfire had ceased, but men shouted. A woman screamed and vehicle engines rumbled.
The reverend’s wife had been in the home of a woman who’d given birth to a baby boy. The baby had been breech, complicating the birth. Both had survived, but were weak and unable to travel.
Mrs. Townsend had been caring for the two since the baby’s birth.
Alex dared to peek around the side of the hut. The narrow street between the dirt-brown mud-and-stick buildings appeared empty. She sucked in a deep breath and ran to the next structure.
A man shouted nearby. Footsteps pounded in the dirt, along with the rattle of metal against metal or plastic, like the rattle of a strap on a rifle.
Alex held her breath and waited.
Shouts grew closer. The sound of something smashing made Alex jump and nearly cry out.
She clapped a hand over her mouth and slipped farther back into the shadows.
Another man yelled, the noise coming from inside the building behind which Alex huddled.
Voices argued back and forth, and then...bang!
Knowing it was too late to change her mind about coming back to the village, Alex shrank into a dark corner and prayed the men in the hut didn’t come out and discover her there.
The home the reverend’s wife had been in was a couple huts over from where Alex hid. If she could get there without being seen, perhaps she could convince the missionaries to leave before the men found them.
Voices sounded again as the men exited the building and moved to the next.
Alex waited, fully expecting them to come around the corner and start shooting.
She froze and made herself as small as she could in the meager shadow.
A loud bang erupted nearby, as if someone had slammed a door.
The men in the street said something, and then more footsteps pounded against the dirt street, moving away from Alex’s hiding place.
She let go of the breath she’d been holding. After another moment or two, she rose and eased to the corner. The street was clear.
Someone shouted from a couple houses over.
If she was going to move, she had to do it before the men returned.
Alex ran across the street, skirted another hut and checked around the next corner.
It, too, was clear.
She started across the street, heard a cry and nearly froze. Realizing she couldn’t make it around the next home in time, she dived through a door and squatted inside, trying to control her breathing in order to hear the enemy’s approach.
Footsteps clattered along the path outside the hut. Then they stopped.
For a long moment, Alex heard nothing. She waited a little longer and then eased toward the door.
Before she reached it, an arm wrapped around her middle and a hand clamped over her mouth, stifling a scream rising up her throat.
She struggled to free herself, but the arm holding her tightened, trapping her arms against her side and her back against a hard wall of a chest. “Shh,” he whispered against her ear, his breath heated and minty. Not what Alex would have expected from an enemy rebel.
“Check in that building,” someone said in French outside.
Alex froze. Though she was unsure of her captor, the men outside had been shooting. She’d make her escape from the man holding her after the other men passed in the street. Until then, she held still against the warm, hard surface of a hulking, big man with arms like steel vises. As she waited, she listened for the sound of movement outside the building.
Someone called out next to the door, “I have this one, you check the next.”
The door jiggled.
The hand over her mouth dropped to her arm and she was shoved backward, behind the man.
If she wanted, she could escape him. But to what?
She couldn’t go back out into the street and risk being captured by the rebels storming the village. She’d be better off taking her chances with her unknown captor in the dark interior of the hut.
The door swung inward.
Alex was shoved behind the opening door as a beam of sunlight slashed across the floor.
A man in black clothing stepped into the building, pushing the door wider with the rifle he held in his hands.
As the light beam fanned out, it chased away the darkness of the rest of the room. In the gray light out of the sunshine’s wedge, Alex studied her captor.
He wore a desert-camouflage military uniform and a helmet, and carried a wicked-looking rifle of the type the Special Forces units carried. She searched for some indication of whose team he played for. Was he American, French or—God forbid—one of the paid mercenaries so often found in conflicts where they didn’t belong? He wasn’t from Niger. The skin she could see was too light. Granted, it appeared tanned, but not the rich darkness of the native Niger people.
The man who’d pushed open the door stepped inside the room, his weapon raised. Then he fired several bullets.
Alex flinched and shrank back into the corner. If the shooter turned any farther in their direction, he’d hit her captor.
The rebel turned slowly.
Alex’s captor leaped forward, slamming the butt of his weapon into the side of the shooter’s head. The weapon dropped from his hands and fell to the floor. Before the man could react, the military guy pulled a knife and slit the shooter’s throat. Her captor bent to retrieve the other man’s weapon. With equally efficient movements, he removed the bolt, slid it into his pocket and laid the remainder of the rifle on the ground next to the dead man.
Then her captor turned to her and held out his hand. “We have to move.”
She remained frozen in her position crouched on the floor of the hut, her heart beating so fast she could barely breathe to keep up with her need for oxygen.
His hand shot out, palm up. “Now!”
Alex stared at the big, calloused hand that had just dispatched a rebel fighter with such ease and efficiency of movement. Would he do the same to her?
Shouts outside the open door of the hut shook Alex out of her stunned silence.
Her captor dropped his arm, eased up to the door and glanced out. Without turning, he spoke softly, “If you want to live, come with me now.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Introductions later. Run now!” He hooked her arm, jerked her up off the floor and rushed her to the doorway.
After a quick pause, he dragged her out into the street and back toward the hills.
They’d gone past several huts when Alex remembered why she’d returned to the village in the first place. She dug her heels into the dirt and ripped her arm out of his grasp.
He wheeled around, his gaze shooting in all directions. “Why are you stopping?”
“I came to help Reverend Townsend and his wife,” she said.
His lips pressed into a thin line. “You can’t help anyone if you’re dead. We have to get out of the village, before they find that man’s body.”