She sat down and booted up the system, shoveling bites of chili into her mouth while the computer hummed through the start-up.
Attacked.
There were so many varying accounts of how bad it had been that she couldn’t actually get her head around it. And she didn’t want to try and guess. She’d played the worst-case scenario game all last year while he was on sabbatical and she knew all it did was give her ulcers.
But in the back of her head, in the soft spot on her neck, she felt a chill. Whatever had happened, it was bad enough to send Jack, wounded and wasted, back to the Rocky M.
She went to the BBC website and typed in Darfur.
The last article was dated four weeks ago and she clicked on it.
The first headline exploded across the screen and she dropped her spoon.
Scientist Killed in Crossfire.
“No,” she breathed, panic an animal clawing its way out of her body. “No, no, please no.”
She scanned the article, picking apart information. Searching for Oliver’s name. Her brain barely able to process everything.
“Read it,” Walter demanded. “Out loud.”
“Ahh...” Her voice shook. “Three hydroengineers working in tandem with Water for Africa were repairing a broken water well outside the Sudanese city of El Fasher, when the Sudanese government broke its cease-fire with rebel militia forces in the area.
“The area was bombed late last night. Oliver Jenkins, part of the engineering team responsible for the revolutionary drill and well system, was...” She stopped. The next word, right there in horrible black and white, was stuck in her throat. She couldn’t say it. Because it couldn’t be true. Couldn’t possibly.
Not Oliver.
“He dead?” Walter asked. “That Oliver guy?”
That last night, in Santa Barbara, Oliver’s laugh had filled the room. His eyes had picked her apart, found her pain and tried to help. He’d seemed, he’d always seemed, somehow larger than life. Larger than all of them.
“Yes,” she whispered, her entire body breaking and splitting with a grief so hard and horrible it felt like something else. Like anger. Like pain. “He’s dead.”
“What else does it say?”
Walter was worked up, his eyes damp. His skin red.
“The well was destroyed,” she said, finishing the last of the article. “And surviving engineers Devon Cormick and Jack McKibbon were evacuated to Kenya where they received treatment.”
She pushed away from the desk. Her emotions needed action. Her confusion needed answers.
“That’s it?” Walter asked. “That’s all it says?”
She nodded, and before she could think better of it, she turned and headed down the hall toward Jack’s old room.
Oliver was dead and Jack was back here like some kind of ghost, and she was just supposed to sit back and…what? What the hell was he doing here? What did he want?
She pounded on the door and then waited for an answer but got nothing but silence.
“I know you’re in there, Jack,” she cried, her voice breaking with the tears she was swallowing like so much glass.
When he didn’t answer she grabbed the knob and turned. There were no locks on any of the doors, a little leftover from Victoria’s reign of terror, and so the door slid open, across the thick carpet in Jack’s old room.
It was bare now. All the posters and music, the science fair ribbons and rock samples, the stacks of books—all gone. He’d taken them when he left, erasing himself from this house like he’d never been here.
But Jack sat on his single bed, staring out the bare window at a bright white moon.
His sandy hair gleamed in the bruised twilight and her grief outran her, bringing her up short.
“Oliver?” she whispered, and Jack’s head bent.
She turned and faced the doorframe, biting her lip until the tears drained from her eyes and she could speak.
“What happened?” she asked, pressing her thumb against the notches in the wood that had grown along with Jack when he was a boy.
Jack didn’t answer. He sat there, staring at his hands. Silent as stone.
“What the hell happened, Jack?” she cried, circling the bed to face him. He didn’t look up, and all she saw was the bone-white part in his hair. “He was my friend, too!” she yelled, her fists clenched against the emotions that threatened to pull her to pieces.
Finally, he glanced up and she gasped at the sight of his eyes. Dry as dirt, but wasted all the same. Ghost eyes. Empty.
“Mia,” he breathed, his voice damaged and raw. “Please—”
She saw something pull apart in him, a long string unraveling. And she remembered Oliver and Jack, brothers in a way. Conspirators and teammates. More than friends. As bad as her grief was, she couldn’t imagine what he felt. The loss he carried. Not just his friend, but his life’s work. Gone.
Sympathy leveled her.
“I’m so sorry, Jack. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when it happened.” She crouched down beside him, careful not to touch him, because she wasn’t sure where he wasn’t hurt.