She rushed outside, anxious to reach the Victoria Falls Bridge.
Her cell vibrated. She read the text: Max’s sister, Laila, wasn’t in a car crash. She was severely injured in an industrial accident and died two years ago at the Heros family estate. Let me know if you need more.
Two years? It had been eighteen months since she and Max had had their intimate conversation about their sisters, and he’d told her Laila was alive and suffering. An ache settled in her chest. Why would he lie to her, especially about that?
Chapter Seventy-Two
Thea’s vision blurred, her head throbbed, and her mind churned. She’d only felt like this once before, and it meant serious trouble. A quick check of her smartphone. Blood sugar 437 mg/dL. Dangerously high.
Bone-weary, she plodded, one foot in front of the other, circumnavigating the hotel to avoid the few remaining rebels battling with the prime minister’s guards. Except now, her special-ops team would give Mamadou’s men a decisive edge. She hoped the team had found Rif. She wondered where her brother was.
A cry shattered her thoughts—it sounded like an injured animal in unbearable pain. Funnels of dark, greasy smoke billowed out of the jungle a few hundred yards away. What the hell was going on?
She had to get back inside and find her supplies. She couldn’t help Rif, Nikos, or anyone else until she stabilized her blood sugar. The hotel was fifty yards away, but the distance felt more like five hundred. She scanned the area. No soldiers. The battle was raging on the other side of the complex.
Smoke from the hotel drifted with the shifting wind and mixed with pelting rain. She reached the door closest to the conference room they’d been in earlier. Her hand hovered over the doorknob, but her palm told her it was too hot to touch. She’d have to work her way around to the front, take her chances there.
She stumbled along the hotel’s exterior, Glock in hand. The building was a fuzzy white block. The world felt surreal, as if she was Alice in Wonderland, falling through the rabbit hole. She could almost visualize sugar crystallizing in her cells.
One more corner to go.
Carefully she inched forward, checking that the coast was clear. A young soldier slumped against the wall, an AK-47 in his hands. Blood oozed from a leg wound. His eyes scanned back and forth, on full alert. A rat cornered.
She pulled behind the corner, trying to think. She had to get past him. What to do? She didn’t have the energy to climb a water pipe to avoid him.
No time to waste. She raised her Glock and focused the sights on the largest exposed section of his AK-47, just above the trigger guard. Her hands didn’t feel steady, but the distance was only twenty yards. She could make that shot.
Her finger caressed the trigger.
A sharp metal clang. Bull’s-eye. The rifle bounced out of the soldier’s hands, the ricochet nicking his forearm. He screamed. Glock raised for protection, she stumbled across the yard. His eyes widened in fear, but she held her fire. The kid wasn’t a serious threat, given his leg wound, and she didn’t want to kill him for nothing. All she could think about was securing that syringe. She stumbled to the double doors at the front of the hotel, holding on to the wall for support. Fumbling with a knob, which was cool to the touch, she managed to open one side.
A blast of smoke greeted her as she entered the lobby. She crouched low, lifting her shirttail to breathe through it. Fire licked the walls, singeing wallpaper. A wave of dizziness hit her hard.
She had to keep moving. Dropping onto all fours, she crawled toward the conference room. Ceiling beams creaked and groaned. She tried to hurry, but her limbs felt heavy, as if she were slogging through heavy muck.
The fire crackled, devouring the endless supply of wood in the structure. She entered the conference room and scuttled up the central aisle to the Paris delegation table.
A loud rumbling above, and a large beam crashed to the floor in a hiss of fire, landing between the two delegation tables and spraying debris everywhere. Still on her knees, she grasped for her jacket as smoke swirled around her. She fumbled for the thermal cooling pouch that held the syringes, her fingers slow and awkward. Removing one syringe, she grabbed a fold of skin on her belly, stuck the needle in, and squeezed.
Another beam crashed down, this one closer. She depressed the needle to ensure that all the insulin had been injected. Now she needed to get the hell out of there.
Through her mental haze, she heard pounding footsteps that sent a surge of adrenaline through her veins. She reached for her Glock, prepared to defend herself.
But it wasn’t a rebel.
Rif stood above her, staring at the syringe in her stomach.
For a long moment their gazes met.
“Let’s get you out of here.” He squatted down, lifted her in his arms, and sprinted for the exit. Flames framed the doorway but he ducked low and burst through them, carrying them both out of the hotel.
Chapter Seventy-Three