WAR: Intrusion (36 page)

Lachlan’s phone rang. He growled softly in annoyance. But when he glanced at the screen, his annoyance turned to concern. “What’s wrong?” he said as he picked up the call.

Leaving Lachlan to his news, Helen skirted around him and walked into the bedroom. Only then did she realize that she didn’t even have a bag to hold the clothes that had been left for her that first night. Lachlan had explained that the clothes had been paid for by his organization, but picked out by the woman who cleaned the bungalows when no one was in residence. Finding her lack of even so basic an item as a backpack brought tears to her eyes. Not knowing what else to do, she gathered everything together on the end of the bed. But the pathetic little pile only increased her melancholy.

She sighed. There were a few shops in the town nearest the hospital. Maybe, if they arrived in time, she could convince Mrs. N’Dorah to go shopping with her. Helen would like to start off her job with an adequate supply of toiletries and other essential items.

But even the prospect of performing such an everyday task as shopping didn’t keep her mind occupied for long. She glanced at the bed, then shook her head. Forget a nap. Between her excitement over her new job and her anxiety over her upcoming good-bye with Lachlan, Helen knew she’d never relax enough to fall asleep.

She almost went back out into the other room, but when she listened through the door she heard Lachlan deep in discussion with his men about some mission. So she pulled out the paper and pen she kept in her medical bag for taking notes in an emergency and began to make a shopping list. Anything to keep her distracted.

But making the list didn’t take very long and she soon found herself writing notes about the past several days. She became so immersed in trying to put words to the experience that she startled when Lachlan knocked on the door.

“May I come in, lass?”

She shoved the notes into the medical bag, then stood up. “Yes. Of course.”

When Lachlan stepped into the room he was wearing his mission face.

“What happened?” she asked. “Is one of your teammates hurt?”

“No. But we’ve had several developments that may lead us to Natchaba. My team has been ordered to investigate.”

“Oh.” She glanced down at her hands, fighting back disappointment. Which made no sense. Hadn’t she been dreading spending hours in the car with him? Hadn’t she told herself that it was best that she ended things now with Lachlan? Before she ended up caring so much for him that she started compromising her beliefs?

Yet now that their good-bye was at hand, she found that she didn’t want to let him go.

“This bungalow is the safest place for you, Helen,” Lachlan said. “You should stay here until my team and I return.” Yet the resignation in his tone indicated that he already knew her answer.

“No. I won’t hide away when lives are at stake. It’s not who I am.”

His eyes bored into hers. There was such a morass of emotions there, she couldn’t catch her breath. Once again she felt herself being pulled toward him.

No.

She dug her fingernails into her palms and looked away.

Lachlan blew out a breath of frustration. “Did you get the name of that security firm for me?”

She glanced around the bedroom, then realized that she’d left her phone in the kitchen. When she found it, she saw that she had a text from the hospital’s administrator. “Here.” She held the phone out for Lachlan.

He nodded his thanks and typed the name into his phone. “Let’s see what Obi knows about them. In the meantime, Dr. LaSalle has recommended a security firm here in the city and one of their men will be riding to the hospital with you.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “I saw you talking to Dr. LaSalle at the festival site. How do you know him?”

Lachlan gave a slight smile. “Rene has saved the life of practically every one of my teammates, myself included. He also provides other forms of assistance for us when we’re out in the field.”

“Other forms of assistance?”

“Intelligence. Names of contacts. Temporary safe houses. Even equipment.”

“Ah.”

“Helen.” Lachlan stepped forward and took her shoulders in his large hands. “Please, don’t go. Stay here. Stay safe. There will be other opportunities for you to help.”

“I’m sorry,” Helen said. “I can’t change who I am.” She gave him a sad smile. “I have to go where the need is greatest, and this hospital desperately needs my help.”

A dark expression filled his eyes, hinting at a fierce need to protect her. His fingers tightened almost painfully on her shoulders and for a millisecond she feared he might either kiss her, or snap and lock her in the bedroom for her own protection. But the moment passed. Lachlan stepped away. Turned his back on her and ran his fingers through his hair as he struggled to get himself under control.

Tears sprang to her eyes. Fighting against them, she shook her head, unable and unwilling to put voice to what she was feeling. Because if she spoke it, then it would bind her. And she saw nothing but heartache in binding herself to this complex warrior. “I’ll be in the bedroom until my ride arrives,” she murmured.

The muscles on his back twitched. He nodded sharply.

She clenched her hands into tight fists to stop herself from reaching for him.

Then he said, almost too low for her to hear, “How many lives do you have to save before you realize that you don’t have to prove yourself better than your mother?”

His words chilled her. “What?”

“You heard me,” he said, keeping his back to her. “You’ll take on any risk, so long as it’s physical, in order to prove that you’re not the callous woman your mother was. But you’re an emotional coward.”

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”

“Don’t I? The truth appears clear to me. You’re too afraid to stay and fight for what’s between us.” He turned around. The vulnerability on his face stunned her. He was letting her see everything he was feeling. No barriers between them and no judgment. “You matter to me, Helen. Don’t shut me out. Please.” His voice was jagged, as if it had been ripped from the depths of his closely guarded soul.

“No. I can’t do this.” A tight fist squeezed all the air out of her lungs. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Spinning on her heel, she fled, knowing from the pain in her heart that he’d already claimed part of her soul.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The
United African Republic

West Africa

TWO
WEEKS LATER, Helen checked the chart of her teenage patient and nodded in satisfaction. “You’re making good progress, Charles,” she said in the local language. “I think we’ll be able to release you in a few days.”

He beamed at her, then turned to grin at his mother.

Helen put the chart back in its holder on the wall, then put a mock serious expression on her face and wagged her finger at him. “But from now on, if you see a man with a shotgun, you run away, okay? Don’t play hero again.”

“This I told the boy many times,” his mother said, fighting a smile. “But he never listens.”

“Well, you had better listen this time, isn’t that right, Charles?”

He nodded somberly. “Being shot is no kind of fun.”

“That’s right.” Helen talked a bit more with the two of them, but when she saw Charles starting to tire, she excused herself. As she walked down the hall toward her office, she nodded at one of the local nurses and received a friendly smile.

God, it felt so good to be back here. The facility had been updated since her first assignment and now boasted some of the most advanced diagnostic tools in the region. Not only that, but it was a joy to work in a fully stocked operating room, rather than having to improvise and perform minimal care due to lack of equipment. If Charles had been brought to her clinic, she wouldn’t have been able to save him. The damage to his abdomen had been too severe. But between the equipment here and the skilled nurses, Charles would make a full recovery.

See, Lachlan was wrong. I’m not doing this because of my mother. I truly love making people’s lives better.

Dammit, just that one brief thought of Lachlan and her heart had started pounding as if a predator stood behind her. She had to divert her attention to something else before the volatile mix of emotions that he always stirred up sent her running back to her quarters, where she’d either cry until her head hurt or yell into her pillow until she was hoarse.

While she’d done as he’d asked and sent him a text confirming her safe arrival here, she’d forced herself not to reach out to him since then. The fact that he hadn’t tried to contact her just proved that he hadn’t really meant what he’d said about wanting to explore the connection between them.

She entered her office and settled behind her desk to write up patient notes. The logic required to summarize a patient’s presenting condition, the tests and treatment given, and the suggested recovery plan helped steady her nerves. She quickly lost track of time.

“Dr. Kirk! Come quick,” Tom, an orthopedic surgeon from Belgium, said from her doorway. “You must hear this.”

Helen bolted from her chair and the two of them raced down the hall.

“The rebels are driving down the Mataya River road,” the mechanically distorted voice of the announcer on Rebel Tracker Radio proclaimed as Helen skidded to a halt outside the staff room’s door. “Witnesses report that the convoy has bypassed several villages and seems to be intent on reaching a particular target. Speculation is high that the rebels are aiming for Koryani. Perhaps even their destination is the main hospital outside of Koryani. If you are in the vicinity of Koryani or the hospital, we advise you to evacuate to the east. We estimate that the rebels will be in your area within one hour.”

Helen froze. Was this her fault? Had Natchaba discovered where she was and sent one of his vicious bands of rebels to carry out another attack like the one that destroyed the villages near her clinic? Her stomach churned and she fought against the urge to throw up.

“What are we going to do?” Eileen asked nervously. The red-haired nurse’s Scottish accent reminded Helen so much of Lachlan that every time she heard it, her heart ached. This time, though, the young woman’s need for reassurance helped steady Helen’s nerves.

Plus, it made her realize that it was unlikely this attack was about her. There were seven foreign doctors and nurses on the staff. All of them had been working here for months.

About three-quarters of the staff had crowded into this small room to hear RTR’s report and when she entered, all eyes turned toward Helen. Each person had devoted his or her life to healing others. Seeing the varying degrees of fear on their faces, Helen vowed that the rebels would not hurt any member of her staff, or a single patient, without a fight.

She took a deep breath. Her senses sharpened and fear slipped away as the calm of her emergency mode settled over her. “Okay. If the rebels assault the town first, then we probably have more than an hour before we’re in danger. But to be safe, we have to assume that we’re the rebels’ target. I’m formally initiating the evacuation protocol. All of you know what to do. Work fast, but be thorough. I want every single patient to survive. And tell every visitor you encounter that we need his or her vehicle to help move the patients.”

Her staff gave nods of agreement and filed out of the room.

It was just bad timing that the hospital’s sole ambulance had left this morning on its daily run up to the area of most intense fighting. That left only a pickup truck and an SUV to be used in the evacuation until the townspeople who’d volunteered to provide transport in such a situation arrived.

“Kofi,” Helen said as one of the orderlies moved past her. “Please notify the security guards that the rebels are coming and we’re starting the evacuation process.”

“Yes, doctor.” He hurried toward the front door.

Helen indicated for the remaining doctors and nurses to accompany her to the critical care ward. Unfortunately, this clinic hadn’t been built by Layla’s Foundation so it didn’t have an underground safe room, just a morgue. The exterior doors were reinforced with steel and the windows were fitted with safety bars, but many of the interior rooms didn’t even have locks on the doors. Which was why the emergency protocol called for evacuation to an abandoned leper sanctuary a ten-minute drive north of here. The townspeople generally avoided the area, believing the sanctuary to be haunted. The overgrown road and the thick vegetation would help hide the tracks of the vehicles that dropped off the patients.

“Doctor Kirk,” Ateni called out.

Helen turned and saw the receptionist racing down the hallway toward her.

Ateni skidded to a halt in front of Helen’s group. “The phone line is dead.” Ateni’s job had been to use the landline to phone the telecomm center in town and notify them of the evacuation. The telecomm center would then contact people on the list of evacuation volunteers. Ateni would next have called the numbers of the embassies and other key contacts on the emergency list.

Pretending a calm she didn’t feel, Helen pulled out her cell phone. She’d been planning to send a text to Lachlan in the hopes that his team or some other group in the area could bring a helicopter in to speed their evacuation. But she had no signal.

“Does anyone have reception?” she asked.

A chorus of noes rose from the group.

Helen quelled a spurt of panic. Destroying phone towers was one of the tactics the rebels used to isolate a population before launching a major offensive.

“All right,” she said. “Tom, you and Ateni use the shortwave radio in my office. You know the emergency protocol.” She didn’t have much hope that they’d actually reach anyone in a diplomatic capacity. Too many embassies and consulates had recently shut down. Some had closed voluntarily when rebel forces presented a direct threat. Others, as with the U.S. embassy in this country, had been forced to close when the national government had broken diplomatic ties and publicly told all foreigners to leave the country in an attempt to forestall a rebel attack by removing the rebels’ primary targets. The only reason this hospital had been allowed to keep its foreigners had been because African lives depended on the medical care they provided.