Aside from a few scraps as a kid, no one had ever hit her before, deliberately causing her pain. The beating had been methodical and emotionless. She wasn’t sure if that was almost worse than having them yell at her. Of course, she’d never been beaten before so she had nothing to compare it to.
They hadn’t reacted to her cries, her begging. Her screams. She whimpered quietly, cringing at the memory, the terror still all too real.
Agony. Fear.
One man had held her while another beat her, everyone else looking on. She’d thought she’d be raped. Instead, they’d sat her up and taken photos of her. She didn’t get it. Obviously, they were asking for a ransom, and her father did have money. But why kill everyone else in the village? Why not just take her? A cry escaped her lips, and she quickly squelched it. She could not fall apart. If she gave in to the hysteria trying to overload her system then she was letting them win.
She laid down, resting her cheek against the cool, dirt floor. It was the only way of grounding herself. Otherwise, she almost felt weightless. A bit like when she was swimming. Except then, at least, she could see. She liked to lie on the bottom of the pool and open her eyes, looking up, seeing the light glistening against the water. She remembered doing that once while Curt and Amelia were over. It was shortly after their wedding. She’d been their flower girl. She snorted at the memory. Amelia had been an absolute bridezilla. A total brat. Jenna had hated having to wear that hideous, white dress with all the bows and lace. She still shuddered at the memory. Luckily, she’d managed to keep it clean until after the ceremony.
As she’d walked down the aisle, with Curt at the other end, she’d imagined she was the bride.
God. She’d had a crush on that man for over twenty years now. That was a little sad. A case of hero worship when she was younger that had morphed into a teenage crush. And now . . . well, she hadn’t seen him in years. Apparently, he’d left the navy a while back and had gone to work for some private security company.
She wondered if he thought about her at all.
Of course he doesn’t, idiot. You were just a silly kid to him. He’d just been a nice guy who’d taken pity on his wife’s little cousin. Eventually, he’d probably hear she’d been kidnapped and killed and he might feel a little sad, but that was it.
He certainly wouldn’t come to her funeral. Or go off the rails like he had when Amelia had died. She’d heard the stories about his drinking. The bar fights. Getting into trouble with the navy.
He must have really loved Amelia. And his unborn child. She swallowed heavily. That was one thing she never had to worry about. Losing a child. She placed her hand over her stomach. Even if she made it out of here alive, and with each passing hour it seemed less likely, she’d never get pregnant. A car accident when she was ten had damaged her uterus.
She could still remember her mother screaming at her dad in the hospital. Her dad had been driving and he still felt guilty over what had happened. He’d been driving too fast and overcorrected, sending them spinning off the road. It could have been worse. Luckily, Daddy hadn’t been charged. He’d beaten himself up enough. And her mother was likely to never let him forget she’d never have grandchildren. Jenna was surprised she even wanted grandchildren. Growing old gracefully was not a term that applied to Lorraine Jasons. If there was a procedure to reverse the signs of ageing, she’d had it.
Jenna sighed as she closed her eyes. She wondered what it would be like to have a man love her as deeply as Curt had loved Amelia. Not likely to ever happen, especially since she’d barely dated over the last few years. She’d been too busy getting through medical school and then she’d taken this job with Doctors without Borders. It didn’t exactly create many opportunities for romance. She snorted. Most of the time she worked fourteen or sixteen hour days, got back to her tent, washed as best she could, ate, then fell into bed. Then she got up and did the same thing again. Nope, romance was the last thing on her mind.
It didn’t help that she compared every man to Curt—and found them lacking.
You have got to get over it, Jenna. He’d never be interested in you. She was nothing like Amelia. Her cousin had always looked perfect. Her clothes, her hair, her social skills. If Jenna’s socks matched, it was pure luck, and she didn’t give a shit about fashion or makeup. As for her social skills, yeah, she knew how to hold a dinner party. How to make small talk. Her mother had made certain of that. But when was she ever going to use those skills when she had no one to invite to dinner?
“Sad, Jenna. Really sad.”
If she got out of here, she was going to make some changes in her life. She was going to stop being so damn focused on her career and try to live a little. All she’d ever wanted to be was a doctor. To make a difference. To help. And look where that had got her.
Every time the door to her hut opened she was so terrified it would be the time they dragged her out, beat her, raped and murdered her. She was so stupid. She’d been so sure she’d be fine. That nothing bad would ever happen to her. What an idiot.
Now she was paying for her naivety. Her mother had told her over and over that coming here was too dangerous. How she should leave this to other people. Jenna had just ignored her mother’s dramatics, like she always did. What had surprised her, though, was that her daddy hadn’t wanted her to come here either. She’d thought he would have been proud of her for doing this, but he’d asked her not to go.
And now, she really wished she’d listened to them. She’d give anything to be home. If only she was stronger, the warrior princess Daddy liked to call her then she might be able to figure a way free from this hellhole.
A loud noise made her jump and she gave a scream, huddling in on herself.
Screams. Terror. Death.
The first warnings of danger had been the gunshots. Then the screams. They’d just gone through the whole village and killed them all. Men, women, and children. All of her colleagues. She could still hear Alana begging for her life on her knees, tears streaming down her face. Then the gun had turned on her.
Nausea bubbled in her stomach, and she dry-wretched, huge sobs rocking her body.
Oh, God, please let this be over soon. She didn’t know how much more she could take.
***
He’d learned how to control his rage, to bury it deep where it wasn’t at risk of exploding out, but his defenses were down and his barriers had been chipped away, making it hard to keep the fury contained.
The icy façade had all but melted in a pool of fiery anger.
“You sure you can do this?” Travis whispered, as he crouched next to him in the bush, his night vision binoculars trained on the circle of huts below them. Black-Gray, the security company Curt worked for, had been hired by Jenna’s father to come to Sudan to rescue her. He clenched his hands into fists. What the fuck was she even doing in Sudan in the first place? She should never have put herself in danger.
As Travis turned to look at him, he took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. Travis had taken lead on thi