The load I was carrying was heavy, but I wasn’t going to let Timothy see me struggle. My adrenaline was pumping, and I stood up slowly and used the car to steady myself. The weight was difficult, but not impossible. I only had one long block to walk, so it would be manageable.
“Remember to keep your head down and good luck,” Timothy said before he sped away.
I did as he advised and walked straight to the large, white Resolve Oil building. I didn’t look up and I didn’t look around. My focus was set on getting to the side of the building and knocking on the door as I had been told.
To my left, I heard what sounded like a door close and it took all the will power I could muster not to look that way. Instead, I continued straight and stood in front of the door before I looked up and down the street and knocked three times.
I counted to ten and then knocked three times again before the door cracked opened and a man looked out at me. Before he had a chance to slam the door shut, I blurted out that Timothy had sent me.
“I’m friends with Timothy Anders. I have food and water,” I said as I pointed to the large jugs of water on either side of me.
“Why are you here?” the man asked me.
“I’m here with your supplies.”
“Why are you here?” he asked again in a more agitated tone.
My mouth went dry and I thought that he might not have been one of the office workers who was trapped in there. The man standing on the other side of the blue door could have very well been a rebel who had taken over the location or was hiding out there as well. But it was too late; I was standing there with nothing to protect myself.
“I’m with a group that Resolve Oil hired to rescue you all,” I said in an effort to get him to open the door.
My lies about working for Nate’s company had compounded over the last few hours, but if they kept me safe, I would just have to continue with them. And the lie worked, because the man quickly opened the door and pulled me inside. He locked it behind me and led me through the building quickly as we made it up to the fourth floor.
What I saw made my stomach seize in pain. There were dozens of women and children in the room sitting all around the ground. I counted 12 men in the group. All of whom were armed and several were on alert and looking out the windows.
The man grabbed my food pack and handed it to the women who got to work preparing and separating everything out. He then took the water from me and handed one to the men and one to the women. I just stood there in shock as I looked over the group and wondered how on earth I was going to be able to help them.
Chapter Eighteen
NATE
“I’ll do some intel on the location tonight, and then if all goes well, we could go gather them tomorrow. How’s that sound?” I asked the guys.
“Good to me. I’ve found a couple SUVs we can borrow from the Red Crescent. We have the weapons now. I think we need to get out there and see what that block looks like. It’s only three blocks south of here; you can easily check it out tonight,” Baller said.
“Nitro, there’s a call for you,” Sandbag said as he turned the laptop around and I saw my brother Chase’s face on the Skype call.
It was very unusual that Chase would contact me while I was on a job. There had only been a couple of instances where he had done so and they had all been related to our father becoming sick. Then I thought about Jordan and her pregnancy and hoped it wasn’t something to do with that. She wasn’t far enough along to have the baby. I couldn’t take any more bad news from home though.
“Chase? What’s up? Is Jordan all right? Dad?” I asked.
“Yes, everyone here is all right. But I got a call from Ana,” Chase said as he quietly looked around his house. “I don’t want Jordan to hear.”
“What? Ana called you? What’s going on? I heard she left my boss’s house and was going to prove herself or something like that. Where is she?”
“I don’t know where she is for sure, but she said she would meet you at the office building and that there are fifty people not twenty.”
“What?” I screamed as I stood up and again knocked my chair over.
All three guys were around me in a moment to see what was going on. I couldn’t believe my ears; Chase couldn’t possibly mean that Ana was there in Syria. How the hell could she have gotten there? Better yet, how could she have gotten into the office building with the employees? I must have misheard him. There just wasn’t a way that Ana could have managed to get herself all the way over there and into an office building that we still hadn’t managed to get intel on.
“I’m just the messenger,” Chase said in response to the shock on my face. “She sounded like she was doing well. That’s all I know.”
“Fuck, shit, goddamn it,” I swore. “Thanks, Chase. I’ll let you know when I hear more. You do the same, please.”
“Will do.”
As I hung up, I couldn’t fathom how on earth little, scared Ana could have gotten herself to Syria. Furthermore, I couldn’t figure out why she would have come. She had been safe at Blankenship’s house, I was going to be back there shortly, she had nothing to worry about. My mind was all twisted with the idea that Ana was actually there; I felt like it had to be some sort of a trap.