“Maybe because she made a fool of him and his elite team of mercenaries. Tubeec can’t allow that to go unpunished, or it will weaken the fear he wields across the continent. He has to make an example out of Mena by …”
“What?” Julian said, ice-cold settling in his veins.
“I promise you, we’re doing everything we can to find her … before it’s too late,” Sunny said.
Jerking the I.V. and wires from his body, Julian threw the hospital covers on the floor and stood up.
“What are you doing?” Sunny said, rushing toward him.
Julian stumbled, then regained his bearings as the room stopped spinning. “Where are my clothes? I’m going back to find Mena.”
“We don’t even know where she is, and you aren’t strong enough yet to be any use to the teams searching for her. Get back in bed,” Sunny implored, grabbing at his arm.
Julian pushed her away. “I have to find Mena.”
The door to his hospital room opened. Reggie Kamau stepped inside, his face creased with concern.
“Actually, you don’t,” Reggie said, walking over to Julian. “My team found Mena. She’s alive … barely.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The sound of the long-hand of the clock ticked loudly.
Only an hour had passed since Reggie had given him the devastating news about Mena. Wangari was flying to the hospital in Wajir with Mena’s parents in the Irungu family jet. He’d had offers from Reggie and Sunny to take him there, but Julian had refused to go.
He would join them later. He wasn’t ready to go through the torrent of emotions in front of an audience.
The woman he loved, left for dead on a dirt road outside of Wajir, brutally violated. The act had weakened Reggie’s resolve that al-Harakat was behind the attack. Rebel groups in the area were more likely the culprit for a kidnapping and violent rape.
Mena was suffering from internal bleeding and undergoing emergency surgery, which might last several hours. Once they’d assessed the extent of her injuries, more surgeries could be needed.
It would be several hours before he could see Mena again.
Touch her.
Hold her.
Stumbling out of the hospital against doctor’s orders, Julian had refused Sunny’s offer, and instead he’d had hailed a taxi. At first, he didn’t know where to go. His mind was a jumbled mess, trying to process the information Reggie had shared. He couldn’t think clearly. All he wanted was to be away from Sunny and Reggie, to be away from the truth of what had happened to Mena.
Sitting in the back of the cab, Julian had barked, “Just drive.”
The cab driver had obliged, weaving in and out of traffic through the heart of downtown Nairobi until Julian felt a magnetic pull to be in the one place that could help him focus.
“Westlands, Siren Condominiums,” Julian had said after twenty minutes. The cab had taken him to the home he shared with Mena in record time. Swiping the key card, he walked inside the apartment and almost crumbled to the floor as Mena’s familiar scent of sandalwood and orange hit him like a ton of bricks. Staggering toward the slate-gray couch, he slid down onto the cushions. His eyes drifted to the wall where he’d made love to Mena. Julian reached a hand over and stroked the surface, wishing he could be back in that moment, when Mena was safe and unhurt, before Tubeec Hirad had inflicted this terror upon their lives.
Julian turned and punched his fist into the wall. Pain radiated in his knuckles, but it did nothing to stop the anger and sadness warring within him. He punched the wall more, harder, hands flying against the light gray surface. Splotches of red from his bleeding fists staining the surface.
He’d failed to protect her.
The pain she’d suffered was his fault.
He should have left the house in Giriftu immediately after talking to Hakeem. Sticking around to indulge his own pleasures was foolish. He knew better. His own stupid mistakes had led to the ambush.
Just like in Central Sulawesi.
When would he learn?
How many lives had to be destroyed before he got his shit together?
