WHAT’S WRONG WITH her?” Micah bumped Nick out of the way and picked Kaylan up, cradling her.
“She’s probably just dazed. Possibly in shock.”
“Kaylan, Kaylan.” The two teens who had yelled Kaylan’s name across the street skidded to a stop in front of them. Nick instinctively stepped between them and Micah.
“She is our friend.”
Another barrage of bullets tore through the air, and Nick and Micah instinctively ducked and ran. While Micah cradled Kaylan, Nick scanned the area for rogue shooters. Too many were already dead from the quake. Did their fellow countrymen not care?
They rounded a corner, and the two teens sprinted in front of them, nimbly dancing through debris.
“Clinic this way,” the one in charge shouted and looked back to make sure they were following. Nick didn’t want a clinic. He wanted an American hospital, knowledgeable doctors, pain medication, and clean quarters. But nothing was clean or pristine in Haiti. The streets reeked of death and dust.
Kaylan’s eyes were squeezed shut, her arm draped loosely around Micah’s neck. She looked frail, sick, broken. Nick’s heart ached at her bruises and the blood on her leg. What had she lived through? He knew from experience that the memories hit at the worst times. What would she remember?
Lord, help her forget.
They reached a series of sheets hung haphazardly over metal rods and sticks. People huddled under the tents, statues cracked and disfigured after the events of the past hours and days. At the end of the row, sheets covered several still forms.
“They wait for the truck to take them for mass burial. There are too many to save. Too many to bury. I am Abraham. Kaylan calls me Abe. This is Stevenson.” Stevenson nodded but remained silent. The cuts and bruises on his arms and legs spoke of desperate struggle.
“Come. We will take you to Rhonda.”
A row of draped sheets faced Nick and Micah as they approached the clinic. Abe sprinted ahead, returning with a woman with blonde frizzy hair and dust streaking her face. Nick knew immediately it was Rhonda.
“What happened to her?” Rhonda rushed to Kaylan and felt her head, noting the blood seeping through the bandage in her leg. “This way.”
Nick and Micah followed her back to a matchbox office. “Set her in the chair.” Rhonda reminded Nick of his Senior Chief—quick and efficient, removing emotion and niceties to complete the task at hand. No wonder she was still on her feet. She hurried from the room to collect supplies.
“My fault.” Kaylan mumbled as Micah knelt in front of her.
“Kayles? Look at me.”
“Micah? What . . . ” Her head dropped and Nick wanted to snatch her from the chair and put her on the first plane back to Alabama.
“We’re here to take you home. I need you to talk to me. Where’s Sarah Beth? Kayles? Stay with me.” Micah’s frustration grew. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Let me see.” Nick took Micah’s place in front of Kaylan and felt her head, searching beneath her hair for a bump or cut. A gash ran from her forehead into her hairline and was patched. Her face was blue and yellow with multiple smaller cuts.
“What’s wrong with her, Hawk?” Micah looked like a caged bulldog, and if there was someone to blame for this, Nick knew Micah would hunt them down. “She’s alive, and she’s banged up, so why isn’t she talking to us?”
“She has seen things, done things. You do not know. No one is all right in Haiti. Kaylan has lived through much, as have we all.” Abraham materialized in the doorway, but Nick kept his hands on Kaylan, refusing to acknowledge Abe’s statements. She was his priority until Rhonda came back.
Micah turned on Abraham. “What do you mean? Where’s Sarah Beth? What all has she seen and done? Where was she when the quake hit?”
“I will show you when Ms. Rhonda returns. Best not to relive the details in front of her.”
Micah ran his hands through his hair, his frustration wearing Nick thin. Maybe this was too personal. There was no way to remove the attachment to this situation.
“Chill, Bulldog. We’ll get answers, and then we’ll take her home.”
“Nick?” Her voice was faint.
His head snapped to meet Kaylan’s eyes. “Yeah, Kayles. It’s me.”
“What? How?”
“We came to take you home.”
She gripped the front of his shirt and fell against him. “I can’t leave her. My fault. All my fault.”
He cradled the back of her head, wondering at her lack of tears. “What’s your fault?”
“Sarah Beth. All my fault. I won’t leave her. Please. I won’t leave her.”
“We came to take you both home, Kayles. We wouldn’t leave her here.”
“I won’t leave her. She’s all alone. She needs to be with people who love her.”
Nick glanced at Micah, his face a sick shade of green, his eyes wary. Their gaze darted to Abraham, pinning him to the wall.
“What’s she talking about?”
Abraham’s brown eyes lowered to the floor, and Nick’s stomach dropped like a rock. No. It couldn’t be.
Rhonda bustled into the room. A dirty rag hung from one hand and a needle and thread were poised in the other. Nick stood to give her room and get answers from Abe, but Kaylan wouldn’t release his shirt.
“Please don’t leave me. It’s my fault. I have to help. I won’t leave her.”
He cradled her face and rested his forehead on hers. “I promise I won’t leave you.” He kissed her forehead and carefully untangled her hands from his shirt. Her body drooped in the chair, her eyes closing as Rhonda began to stitch her wound again.
By the set of her mouth and compassionate but brash interaction, Nick could tell Rhonda had long ago ceased to confront the Haitian culture. She had adapted to it, a fact that allowed her to roll with the catastrophes that seemed to strike every couple of years. There was always something wrong with Haiti.
Nick didn’t blame her. From the little he had seen of the country, it felt as if they fought a losing battle. He doubted that her attitude had gone over well with Kaylan, though. Kaylan had come to change culture, to stop the cycle. She was green, but Rhonda had roots here. Haiti had changed Rhonda. Had her short time there changed Kaylan as well?
Nick held her hand. Micah’s eyes met his. They would get to the bottom of this. And they would get her home. Fast. Something was wrong. Everything was wrong.
Rhonda pulled them aside minutes later while Kaylan rested in the chair. “I’m worried her leg is becoming infected. She sliced it open in the quake and has refused medicine and proper supplies so we could use them for other patients. But she needs attention and quickly.”
“I’m her brother, and this is her, well . . . ” Micah offered a small smile. “This is a friend. We’re taking her home as soon as we can arrange a ride.” Micah’s tone left no room for argument, and Rhonda nodded.
“I think she’s also dehydrated and undernourished. I’ve noticed she’s given the little she had to some of the children and young mothers. We ran out of food yesterday, and I’m not sure when we will have more. She hasn’t slept more than a few hours since before the quake. Her mind and body have reached their limit.”
Nick’s desire to leave Haiti and never come back doubled. “What about Sarah Beth? We need to take her home too.”
Rhonda shook her head and looked down at the floor. “Abraham and Stevenson buried her outside the city while Kaylan watched. She won’t talk about it, so I don’t know what happened. Abraham knows more. I would talk to him. My house is rubble, but if you can salvage anything of Kaylan’s or Sarah Beth’s, do so. It may help her once she gets home.”
Nick nodded and studied Kaylan. What had she seen? What had she been through? He had nightmares of his own, and to help her through hers, he needed to know the extent of her injuries. Every painful detail. Flanked closely by Micah, he crossed the room and stopped in front of Abe.
“I’m sorry if we were rude. But after that scene in the market you can understand why.”
“I understand.”
“I’m Nick. This is Micah.”
Abe nodded. “Boyfriend and brother.”
“You’re right on one account. Not sure Nick has earned that title yet.” The first smile in days tugged at Nick’s lips.
“You braved much to come here. You want to see where I found her?”
“Please. We need to know what happened. Everything.”
“You ask much. I can only tell you what I saw. Kaylan will not speak of the rest.”
“Show us.”
Minutes later they stood outside two outer walls, all that remained of Rhonda’s home. As the walls had collapsed, they had created pockets, enabling Kaylan’s survival. Nick wanted to shoot something. The earthquake was an act of God, one he didn’t understand. Why?
“How did she live through that?” Micah sounded close to tears.
“Barely.” Nick noticed the hole through which they had pulled Kaylan. He wanted to go in. He needed to see. If he was going to walk her through this, he needed to understand.
“Abe, is it safe to go in?”
“It is difficult to say. Rubble no longer shifts, but you never know.”
“What happened?” Every house on the block was dust and crumbled stone. They reminded Nick of the brevity of life. From dust he was made, and to dust he would return. Many had died. How many had stepped into eternity with the Lord?
“It took us a couple of hours to dig her out. I found her holding Sarah Beth. Lots of blood. Covered in dust. She would not leave her. Stevenson and I pulled her from the room, kicking and screaming.”
“How did she escape and Sarah Beth die?”
“Part of the ceiling fell and pinned Sarah Beth. Stevenson and I came back and did our best to dig her out. She didn’t have a chance.”
“Can you show me where you found her?”
“The hole goes to the bedroom they were in. You have to crawl. But you cannot miss it. There is still blood.”
Without hesitation, Micah dove in to the small opening in the rubble. Nick followed close behind, feeling as if he were crawling through the trenches. Glass and gravel sliced his palms. He wound around pipes and jagged cement. There was no question, he was in a war zone—a war zone of a different kind.
“Blood.” Nick pointed to a large rock. Near the chunk was more dried blood on the debris-covered floor.
“Looks like she crawled too.” Micah slithered over rocks, barely squeezing under the low ceiling. Nick pulled himself over to the pocket where Sarah Beth must have died.
“Is this it?” he called to Abe who crouched at the hole.
“Yes. Stevenson and I shifted the ceiling. You can see where Sarah Beth probably coughed up blood. The blood on the floor is from Kaylan’s leg.”
“She cut it in here?”
“Looks like she cut it on this rebar,” Micah shouted. “There’s blood on the tip. That’s where the blood trail begins.”
“Where was she coming from?”
“Her bed, it looks like. I can see more blood under the bed at the foot. Man, Hawk, the bed took the weight of the ceiling, and rocks are stacked around it. How did she make it out of that?”
Nick heard Micah shifting rubble. He studied the area where Kaylan had held Sarah Beth. Something silver caught his eye in the meager light from the hole. He shifted aside shards of rock. The necklace he had sent Kaylan lay in the rubble, the chain snapped but the lily still intact. He stuffed it in his pocket to give to Kaylan later.
“Look what I pulled from under the bed where she was hiding.” Micah scooted over to Micah, his back scraping the fragile ceiling.
Nick reached for the box he had given Kaylan weeks before in the dance studio. He opened the lid and ran his fingers over the envelopes. “Wow. These letters have officially survived a war in Afghanistan and an earthquake in Haiti.”
“When did you write these?”
“On our deployment. I gave them to Kaylan before she left for Haiti.”
Silence descended as they both gazed around the shattered room. Normally Micah would have given him grief for writing letters to his sister, but under the circumstances . . .
“Find anything else under her bed?”
Micah shook his head. “She was pinned pretty tight. I don’t know how she managed to wiggle out. The only reason the box survived was because it was under the bed. Apparently she made it under there before the house crashed around her.”
Nick surveyed the room and crawled toward the gap. “I’m not sure I want to know the details.”
“I wish there was a bad guy to chase.”
“Yeah, no joke.” They would help Kaylan through this, but Nick had a feeling that what lay ahead would be his most difficult mission yet.
They reached the opening and pulled themselves through, landing on the street. Abe helped them up.
Nick dusted himself off then looked at Micah. “We’re outta here. Today. She needs a doctor, and she can’t stay here.”
Micah nodded. Nick skirted around rubble, his feet kicking up dust. Each step took him closer to Kaylan and to getting her home. But would she ever recover from what she had seen?