Veiled by Choice (Radical Book 3) by Anne Garboczi Evans

Author:Anne Garboczi Evans [Evans, Anne Garboczi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-05-22T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

Nose pressed to the back window, Jessica watched her husband make a phone call by moonlight. Inside, the house was still, the Yazidi woman and all the children already asleep. Outside, the soft moonlight beckoned, enticing her to stand out there with Kaleb and let the evening breeze blow against her skin and hair like she used to as a teenager in England. Of course, she couldn’t though, because she was a woman.

Shoving the mobile in his back pocket, Kaleb turned and walked toward the house. His footsteps fell on the back stoop.

At a desperate speed, Jessica wrapped the AK-47 she’d stolen from Raja’s house in her abaya and stuffed it behind the brooms in the almost empty pantry. Her heart pounded. Losing a hand was the penalty for theft. If Kaleb discovered the gun, she’d say she’d kept it from her time serving Allah in Al-Khansaa. He wouldn’t know that Umm Sultan had confiscated all her weapons.

The door handle twisted and the door creaked. Kaleb scraped his boots against the mat. He glanced into the lighted kitchen where she stood.

“Coffee?” She turned off the gas burner as the comforting smell rose around her. When she tasted coffee, real coffee without any cardamom spice added, she could imagine for a few moments that she was back in England.

For a moment, Kaleb hesitated at the entrance to the kitchen. “Know what, after a day like today, sure.”

Jessica motioned to the couch in the dining room as she bore two steaming mugs of coffee.

The saggy couch shifted as he dropped his weight on it. She sat on the cushion across from him, free of the suffocating robes now, and extended one coffee mug toward him. The light from the kitchen flickered off his dust-stained shirt.

“You were great tonight. Got that umbilical cord tied off like a pro.” He smiled at her as he took a drink.

Warmth rose through her, and not just because of the coffee heating her insides. Kaleb had saved a baby’s life tonight.

As for the poor woman, Jessica shivered. She’d seen all too much death these last three years. She couldn’t tell Kaleb the truth about Ava’s husband either. He would lose his mind, attack his sister’s husband, be executed, and Ava’s husband would surely carry through on his threat to divorce Ava. Let alone what ISIS would do to her as the wife of a murderer. Jessica shivered against the afghan covering the couch back.

Kaleb was a good man for caring about his sister so much though. Her father hadn’t even cared about her or her mother, let alone a sister.

“Great coffee,” Kaleb said. “Thanks.” He stifled a yawn with the back of his hand.

With those same hands, he’d saved a baby’s life today, and who knew how many other countless hundreds before that at the hospital these past days. Jessica’s heart stirred within her.

“Strange night, huh?”

Jessica nodded.

“Sorry about that. You shouldn’t have to deal with my crazy life much longer.”

“Are you thinking of divorcing me?” Terror shook through Jessica.

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