Fatal Harvest (25 page)

“Northeast Africa. It’s landlocked, except for a little strip on the Red Sea. Sudan is where I-FEED operates a major feeding station. Matt’s looking for a man named Josiah Karume. He runs the Africa division of the program out of Khartoum, and he’s just been elected international chairman of the organization.”

“I thought Matt was hot on the heels of Hector Diaz.”

“Sounds like he’s changed his tack. Now that Matt’s in Europe, Josiah would make a lot more sense than Hector. He has a great deal of power.”

“Power for what?” He gritted his teeth. “My son is sixteen! Why is he going to Africa? Why does he need this man?”

“I’m not sure, Cole.”

She reached toward him, but he brushed her hand away. “No! Why did you do this?”

“Cole, I—”

“Why has this happened? He’s a child. A boy!”

“He’s old enough to—”

“No, he’s not! If you had a kid, you’d know. He’s barely old enough to function on his own. He can’t find anything around the house. He’s always tripping over his own shoestrings. He loses all his jackets and caps. He doesn’t know how to cook or wash his own clothes or balance a checkbook—not one adult thing. He’s never held a job or gotten himself to a doctor’s appointment. Do you understand that?”

“Yes,” she said softly, hurting inside at his words.

“It seems like yesterday he was in diapers,” Cole went on. “He was crawling around on his hands and knees. Drinking from a sippy cup. He learned how to walk and then run, and now he thinks he can fly to Africa? No!”

“He’s still your baby.”

“Yes, he is. He’s my baby—and he is a baby.”

“Not in his own mind.”

“It doesn’t matter what’s in his mind. I know him.”

“Do you, Cole?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. I know him a lot better than you think. I may have spent a lot of time out in the field, but I’m not blind. I’ve watched him. Josefina talks to me about him, and I listen. You don’t have to be with a kid every minute of the day to know what he’s capable of—and what he’s not. You see these boys in the classroom, so you have a distorted view. If you had a child of your own, you’d know what I’m saying.”

“I don’t,” Jill said. “I don’t have a child.”

He was silent, his chest rising and falling with emotion. “Well, why haven’t you gotten married?”

“Nobody’s asked.”

“Then they’re a bunch of idiots.”

She cracked a smile. “You’re in a fine mood.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I did—about you not having kids and all that. It’s none of my business.”

“It’s okay. There’s no big dark secret. I’ve dated, but I haven’t found the right person. Or he hasn’t found me. So I don’t have children.”

“You’d make a good mother.”

“I think so, too.”

He laughed. “Always the confident Miss Pruitt.”

“That’s probably why I’ve turned away potential husbands. I haven’t been meek enough.”

“Who wants a meek wife? Not me.”

She couldn’t help looking at him. “You’re not the average man.”

“Never said I was. You met my mother. I grew up around a strong woman. I like a lady who knows her own mind.”

“I guess Penny is a strong woman.”

He dropped his head back on the seat. “Penny…she’s probably pulling up to my house about now. She’ll go ballistic when she finds out I’m gone.”

“Strong is good…ballistic is not.” Jill studied the road. She shouldn’t have said that. Cole had chosen to marry Penny, and he must feel good about his decision. Who was she to cast aspersions on his fiancée?

“She just doesn’t get certain things,” Cole spoke up. “Like the fact that sometimes I have to take care of other things. Like that I have a life beyond her. I cannot ignore my farm. And I will not stop searching for my son.”

“You’re willing to follow Matt to Africa?”

“Of course. But I just don’t see why he’s so fired up to go to this…this…” He paused. “Where is it again?”

“Sudan.”

“I do understand why he’s running, though. Those men will hurt him, Jill. They’ll kill him if they have to. You’ve seen how far they’ll go. Tonight when they came after me with the car—they wouldn’t stop. They were shooting out the window. They’d have run me down….”

His voice trailed off, and Jill instinctively touched his arm again. “Do you have your pills, Cole?”

“I can’t take anything that would knock me out.”

“At least have an Advil.” She reached behind the seat and fished in her tote bag. “Here—take a couple of these.”

Swallowing the pills dry, he took her hand and pressed it between his, as if that might somehow relieve his discomfort. “Jill, do you know much about Sudan?”

“I’ve been there.”

“How hard is it going to be to get into the country?”

“Hard.” She forced herself to switch gears. In a way, she felt relieved to move away from the personal tone of their conversation. Though she couldn’t deny she enjoyed talking to Cole, the intimacy of the topic felt dangerous.

“Khartoum is the capital,” she explained, “and it’s an Arab-dominated government. Tourists are practically unheard of—too much violence and little to see but rubble. The Sudanese people have been at war for twenty years. Civil wars, religious war, tribal war—it’s a mess.”

He nodded. His hands felt comforting around hers. Despite the uncertainty that lay ahead, Jill sensed security in Cole’s presence. Accustomed to taking care of herself, she had expected to reject any man who wore an aura of strength and old-fashioned male protectiveness. But somehow, with Cole clearly so unthreatened by her own bold spirit, she welcomed it.

“Surely they’re fighting about something you can point to,” he said.

“Oil, mostly.”

“Surprise, surprise.”

“It was discovered in 1978 in the south,” Jill said. “That region is considered African rather than Arab, and it once had a lot of autonomy. When the government moved to control the oil, war broke out.”

“So the northern army is trying to take over the southern oil land. Is the southern army legitimate?”

“Guerrillas. The south is controlled by rebel troops, some of which have organized themselves into the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. They want full independence.”

“How are these people going to react to two American teenagers roaming around their country?”

“Not well, I imagine. Neither side is friendly with the U.S. We passed a law banning trade with Sudan, for one thing. Mostly it’s because both sides have committed horrific human rights abuses—scorched-earth raids on villages, abductions, slavery. They use child-soldiers. I met seven-year-olds with battle scars.”

“You went to Sudan to feed the kids?”

“Everyone is hungry. When I was there, several relief agencies were operating. But in November 2001 most of them left. They anticipated a big grain harvest that didn’t pan out. I-FEED is about the only agency left now. The last time I talked to Josiah Karume, he told me most of the people were down to eating peanuts and nothing else. Whole villages have been deserted for lack of food.”

Cole’s grip on her hand tightened. “It was all just stories in the newspapers to me. I never even read them. More interested in football scores and commodity prices.”

“They’re real people, though. Somehow Matt understands that.”

“But he doesn’t understand reality, Jill. I’m telling you, he doesn’t even know how to live in America—he’s a fish out of water at the local high school. He’ll never survive a place like Sudan.”

Jill’s stomach tightened as she heard her own fears echoed in his words. She tried to think of something reassuring. The very idea of Billy Younger acting as Matt’s guide through the war zone of Southern Sudan gave her nightmares. And this stranger the boys had met…what comfort was an unknown Frenchwoman?

“God is with Matt,” she said finally. “We can count on that. We just have to keep praying.”

He nodded. “I wish my faith was stronger.”

“It’s pretty easy to trust God when nothing’s at stake. I guess I’ve grown my faith by leaning on it through some dicey situations.”

“I lost my wife. I ought to be a faith giant.”

Jill fell silent, absorbing his words and the pain that accompanied them. “Sometimes normal life takes over,” she said. “Teaching school is like that for me. I get into the swing of it, and most of the time I’m just zipping along doing what I do. But the faith that grew inside me during the rough times is still there. I may not be talking with God the way I did down in Mexico when I was so scared you were dead, but my faith in Him hasn’t faded.”

He didn’t respond, and for a moment she wondered if he’d fallen asleep. But when he spoke again, his voice was rough.

“I’ve prayed more about Matt than I ever prayed for Anna. I loved my wife. Loved her a lot. But maybe my capacity for love is bigger now. Like a field where you get an average harvest one year and twice that the next. Same field, different conditions.”

“If your capacity for love has grown, so has your capacity for faith. You have a lot stronger faith than you know, Cole. Just use it.”

He gazed at her. She grew uncomfortable, aware of his strong fingers still wrapped around hers. Driving one-handed all this time hadn’t been difficult. The road was straight, and the land barely rose toward Albuquerque. But alone with
Cole in the darkness, feeling his warmth against her bare skin, Jill knew a sensation she hadn’t ever felt. She wanted this man. What would it be like to feel his powerful arms around her, to know the touch of his lips against hers, to revel in the intimacy of his presence? Her desire to slip her fingers through his hair and comb out the bits of grass and twigs made her ache inside. How would it feel to run her hands around the hardened muscle of his shoulders? What would it be like to hear him whisper in her ear?

Jill stared at the short strip of highway illuminated by her headlights. Grounded in reason and educated to admire mathematics and technology, she tried her best to shake off this whirlwind of irrational desire. God had put her and Cole together for one purpose only. They were to join forces in search of Matt. That’s all. Cole belonged to another woman. He planned to marry Penny Ames, and Jill had absolutely no right to think of him in any way but as a colleague. A friend. A Christian brother.

There. That was it. She would see him as a brother in Christ. Like the men in her singles’ Bible study at church.

“Jill, I’ve never met a woman like you,” Cole said into the darkness. His voice was just above a whisper. “I know I said some crazy things the other night when I was drugged up. Singing and all that. But I do remember what I said to you. It came from someplace real. I do…I have come to care about you.”

She realized she hadn’t breathed for almost a minute. Obviously, she wasn’t hearing him right. He was telling her things, but she was interpreting his words as something different from what he meant. Or not. Or whatever. The main thing was that she had to take in air, and she had to come up with intelligent, logical things to say. Spiritual-sounding things. He was her Christian brother, that’s all.

“Well, I care about you, too, of course, as a very good friend,” she fumbled, forcing her voice to sound light and
cheery. “I mean, look at all we’ve been through. This has been so crazy.” She slipped her hand out of his on the pretense of needing to run her windshield washer. “Wow, that’s dusty. Amazing how much dust blows through Artesia in the spring. So I hope Penny didn’t run into those Agrimax men. I guess she’ll be all right.”

“Yeah, she…I probably ought to try to reach her.”

“You can use my phone. Here.”

He held the cell phone in his injured hand and pressed his fiancée’s number with his good fingers. Jill noted she was breathing again. This was better. He would reconnect with Penny, and their love for each other would be so obvious that Jill would be forced to stop misinterpreting his words. Soon he would marry Penny, and Jill would go back to teaching her kids, growing her garden and making mission trips. That’s how it had been, and how it would be again. Absolutely.

“Penny?” Cole said into the phone. “Hey, it’s me.”

Jill fiddled with the vent lever, letting in the night air. Apparently Penny had a lot to say. Cole was quiet a long time, his breath warming her cell phone.

“I’m sorry.” His voice sounded so tired. “Yeah, I had to take off in a hurry…. Listen, don’t talk to anyone around there, Penny. Don’t even stay around my house. You need to just turn around and—”

He fell silent again, listening. Jill tried to remember how it felt to be romantically involved with someone. Good, she thought. At least entertaining. Some of the time. Movies, dinner, football games. Arguments, though. Differences, disagreements, disappointments. She suspected all relationships were like that, even marriages.

“I could not stay at the house,” Cole said, his voice harder now. “I had to run, Penny. I barely got away. Dangerous people are after my son, and I’m—”

Jill reflected on how she had felt when Cole was holding
her hand a moment ago. That had been new. Heart-stopping. Spine-tingling. She wondered if he knew that sensation when he was with Penny. If so, he shouldn’t be saying he cared about Jill. It wasn’t right. Not unless he meant it in a generic sort of way.