“Come,” Carter says, grabbing my hand and pulling me forward as he steps over the blood smear and walks toward the front door.
I stumble along, almost dipping my toes in the thick blood as I trip over it. “Where exactly are we going?” I ask.
“The southwest office,” he grumbles.
“Yeah, but where is that?” I ask.
“To the south, then to the west,” he replies flatly.
I roll my eyes. “Great.”
“It is great. You’ll be safe there,” he says, pushing open the front door.
“I don’t see any threats here,” I say, looking around the moonlit front lawn. There isn’t a soul in sight, save for a guard wearing sunglasses by the garage. How can he even see in those with how dark it is out?
“I didn’t think there were any threats in the house either until someone shanking the fuck out of George and spilled his guts all over the kitchen floor. Godammit,” he says, stopping suddenly once again and whirling around to face me.
“What?” I ask, worried by the concerned expression on his face.
“I forgot my coke,” he replies. “Wait here.”
“Really?” I ask in disbelief as he rushes past me back into the house.
He doesn’t answer, disappearing inside just to get something to drink. It’s not like we couldn’t stop at a gas station and grab something to drink on the way there.
A cold breeze reminds me of how vulnerable I am out here all alone. The night is young, and we have enemies. I’d rather not be alone in my nightgown, waiting for my husband to grab a soda from the house before we get to safety.
But before I can work myself up into a frenzy about Carter abandoning me, he appears again, striding out of the house with an arrogant smirk. He cracks open a can of cola, fizz flying through the night air as he skips down the steps and rejoins me on the walkway to the garage. “I may not need sleep, but dehydration will kill a man,” he says.
I wonder if he’s taking a jab at my desert situation from weeks ago, but I doubt it. He doesn’t know what I’ve been through. Not many people do, honestly. One moment I was relaxing in the shade, and the next, I was sinking into the burning sand, praying that I would just die already so that I didn’t have to suffer any longer. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I made it out of that alive.
“Hey, give me a sip,” I say, quickening my pace to bring myself to Carter’s side.
He chuckles and hands the cold can to me. “Drink up, buttercup.”
I raise the cold beverage to my lips, and the memories come flooding back.
Chapter Nine
Honey (Two Weeks Prior to the Wedding)
Gunshots pop off in the desert heat like balloons at a birthday party. I’d give anything to be at one now, slicing into a cheap cake while wearing a stupid shiny cone hat on my head. Instead, the balloons are replaced with guns, and they don’t stop after one pop. They keep going, hot brass shells falling in the sand as men around me take their last breaths.
I thought I was dead already when they began firing on us, but the Valangana care more about their camels than they do people, so running toward the startled creatures was a smart move. A frightened camel can kick your head up, but it’s a hell of a lot better than running into a storm of bullets.
Once I manage to clear myself from the fire, I sneak around the side of the compound, desperately searching for a way over the barbed wire, but others came with me, and soon the Bheka’s men are on us again, trying to tear our bodies apart with led.
Now, I’m running as lactic acid builds in my tired muscles, watching the bodies of the men I came here with fall beside me into the sand, gone from this world, and already beginning their journey into the next. I’m not sure that I care if I live or if I die alongside the rest of our men now that my father is dead. He was my world, and I was his, and that world has been broken into pieces. What good is it to with the bloody pieces of a once happy life?
My brain might not care about my life anymore, but my body does. Adrenaline surges through me like a triple espresso with a side of meth, and I find myself climbing up the barbed wire, cutting the soft flesh of my palms on the rusted metal blades that separate me from my freedom.
I feel the sting of blades cutting my knees and tearing into the porous linen that covers them, catching on the hooks and twisted bits of hot rusted metal as I reach the top of the fencing. I’m deaf to the rattle of gunshots, blood pumping into my head with so much pressure I’m surprised I haven’t blacked out.
Then, like a leaf finally breaking from the tree in autumn, I fall. It feels like minutes, but it’s only a second before I hit the hard sand with my shoulder and roll over onto my back. It knocks the wind out of me, but the glaring sun reminds me that I can’t stay here wallowing in self-pity. Even if the Valangana let me go, the sun will kill me if I don’t move.
The muscles in my body are weak and strong at the same time, both reluctant and desperate to take me away from this horrid place. I didn’t have a chance to use my gun before, but I pull it from the holster against my thigh as I get to my feet, pointing it back toward the compound and as I begin to stumble away. I feel like I’m walking away from my father and leaving him for dead.
Except, he’s already dead.
It’s over.
I can’t save him.
I’ve never prayed before in my
