Nigeria
JUBAL PIERCE KNEW he probably wouldn’t live to see the next dawn. It wasn’t that he had seen many dawns in...what was it? One year, two years? Maybe longer since he’d been taken prisoner by a band of terrorist rebels?
He knew his time was limited because his most frequent guard had brought him something more than a small dish of insect-filled rice.
“Gift,” the tall, thin figure said in the limited English he’d picked up while guarding Jubal.
Jubal grabbed the bowl with his chained hands. The usual rice, but this time there was also some kind of meat. There was no spoon. He was expected to eat with his fingers. He was allowed nothing that could be turned into a weapon. His sole possessions were the filthy pants and remnants of a shirt he was captured in.
“Why a gift?” he asked, using his hands to help the guard understand.
The man simply shrugged.
Jubal bowed his head in thanks. The guard left, closing the door to the tiny windowless hut that was home. There were enough cracks that he could hear activity outside. Excited chatter. A lot of movement.
Jubal ate the food, licked the sides of the tin bowl, then struggled to get to his feet and walked the length of the chain attached to the wall. He was so damn weak from lack of food. He figured he had lost nearly half of his two hundred and thirty pounds. With pure strength of will, he finally stood and peered through a crack.
His eyes slowly adjusted to daylight. Most of the fifty-some members of this particular group were scurrying around like ants. Tents were being loaded in an ancient truck. Three men, including his keeper, gestured wildly.
They were leaving. Something had happened and it didn’t bode well for him. The terrorists didn’t know who he was. If they did, Jubal knew he would be dead. All they knew—or thought they knew—was that he was a doctor.
His SEAL team had been sent to rescue a medical unit caught between warring tribes in Nigeria. They were too late. The medical civilians and their patients had been killed, and enemy soldiers were waiting for them.
His fellow team members had been killed as well, and Jubal was badly wounded. But so was one of the rebel leaders. When Jubal claimed to be a doctor instead of a soldier, he was tasked with saving the life of the wounded leader. He had enough medic training to stop the bleeding and was taken along to care for the leader.
When the man recovered, Jubal was kept prisoner to provide care for others in the tribe. After several escape attempts, he was kept chained.
Jubal was quite sure that he, like his teammates, was believed dead. There had undoubtedly been a search, but the clinic had been burned with the bodies of his team and medical unit members inside. All identifying objects had been stolen as souvenirs.
He knew that he could die any day, especially after the supplies they had taken from the clinic ran out and his patients started dying. He heard the loud debate outside his hut after one fatality. But the head man, whose life he had saved, prevailed. Jubal knew, though, that time was running out...
Now something—or someone—had alarmed his captors. A rival tribe? A government raid? The question was whether they were taking him with them or planning to kill him. He suspected the latter. He was in no shape to move. That meant they would either kill him directly or leave him locked in the hut to starve to death.
His guard stepped inside, threw him a chunk of bread, then left without a word. Another “gift.”
He heard the truck take off, then the three jeeps followed with armed men hanging onto the sides. No one looked back at the hut...
To them, he was already a dead man.
Chicago
DR. LISA REDDING woke instantly at the loud ring of the telephone. She glanced at the clock. Three a.m.
Her heart skipped a beat. It couldn’t be the hospital unless there had been a horrible accident. She’d just come off her twenty-four-hour stint as a resident three hours earlier.
“Dr. Redding?” the voice on the other end of the phone said.
“This is Dr. Redding,” she replied.
“I’m Officer Kent Edwards, Chicago Police. I understand you’re the guardian of Gordon Redding.”
“Yes. What happened?” She tried to keep her voice calm as her heart started to race. She had arrived home after midnight and hadn’t bothered to check on her brother and sister. Her aunt, who looked after them, was probably still asleep downstairs.
“He’s been arrested. He’s down at our station.”
Lisa’s heart slowed. Not dead, then. That was her first thought after seeing so many maimed juveniles in the hospital. Then it sped up again. Gordon? Arrested? “What are the charges?” she asked with an audible tremor in her voice.
“Car theft and possession of drugs,” the officer said.
She took a deep breath. She knew Gordon was having a tough time, but this? “Where is he?” she asked in a voice she’d trained to be professional in the worst of situations.
The officer gave the name and location of the precinct, and she was relieved it was one just three miles away. She knew it, in fact. She even knew some of the officers since they often visited the hospital to talk to both victims and offenders. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” she said.
She hurriedly dressed, went downstairs to wake her aunt, who’d been staying with them since Lisa’s mother had died nine months earlier.
Lisa knocked at Aunt Kay’s door and when her half-awake aunt opened it, she explained what had happened. “I’m going down to the precinct now, but I didn’t want you to wake up and find two of us missing.”
“I stayed up until he went to bed at ten,” Aunt Kay said. “He must have left after I fell asleep.” She shook her head. “I just don’t know what happened to that boy,” she said. “But I don’t think I can handle him.”
Lisa’s heart dropped. She was home enough to know how difficult Gordon had become. She had hoped he would snap out of it. But the death of their mother had sent him on a downward spiral. He had become rude and dismissive of both her and Aunt Kay, who’d moved into the Redding home to take care of her youngest niece and nephew while Lisa finished her residency.
Lisa gave her a quick hug. “I understand,” she said. “I don’t know when I’ll be back but we’ll talk then. Try to keep everything normal for Kerry.” Lisa grabbed her purse and car keys and drove toward the precinct. The late summer air was still hot, the sky dark with clouds. She concentrated on the empty road ahead and tried not to think what this would mean for Gordon, or Kerry, or her career.
She reached the precinct and identified herself, and almost instantly a young man in uniform hurried over to her. “Dr. Redding? I’m Kent Edwards. I understand you’re Gordon Redding’s sister.”
Lisa simply nodded.
“I’ve seen you at the hospital,” the officer said. “I’m sorry this happened, but your brother isn’t helping himself.”
“What happened?”
“At two-thirty this morning, my partner and I stopped a car that was reported stolen. Your brother