Hummingbird Lake Page 0,103

“Sounds like a fight.”

“What?” Sage lifted the child—a girl—from her mother’s womb.

“The Bible tells me so.”

With sharp, shining scissors, Peter cut the umbilical cord.

The bullet struck him in the forehead and blew off the back of his head.

From that moment on, seconds passed like days. Before Sage could even process what had happened, before Peter’s body toppled to the floor, before the new life in her arms let out its first cry, the room was overrun with men wielding guns and machetes and shouting loudly.

Pop pop pop. Rat-a-tat-a-tat. “No!” cried one of the British nurses. “Please, don’t. Please, I have children. I—” Rat-a-tat-a-tat.

The baby breathed and cried and Sage brought her up to her chest, cradling her against her own bosom. She saw the gun barrel turn her way. Funny how smoke curled up from the end of the gun that way. The black hole.

The children next door were crying and screaming. Rat-a-tat-a-tat. Sage started to sing, “Jesus loves me, this I—”

A gruff voice shouted, “No. Halt. She’s Dr. Sage.”

The gun lowered. The baby continued to cry.

Outside, the blended sounds of gunfire and screams abruptly cut off intensified.

The gruff-voiced man grabbed hold of her arm and dragged her away. Sage turned her head and looked back at Peter’s body just as the machete came down on the neck of her patient, mercifully still asleep from the anesthetic. Her arms clasped the child more firmly in reflex. So tiny. So helpless. So innocent.

Outside, she saw two flatbed trucks stopped in the center of the road in the middle of the village and … carnage. Blood splattered the hard-baked earth. Bodies lay everywhere. Men. Women.

Children.

The volume of gunfire, of screams, decreased. For the most part, the screams had gone silent. All around her, villagers lay either dying or dead. The physician in Sage told her to run to the injured, to attempt to save the dying. The punishing grip around her upper arm wouldn’t allow it.

One by one, the Zaraguinas returned to the trucks, lining up behind them, good little tin soldiers all. She saw one villager alive and standing, a boy of about eleven or twelve. He didn’t appear to be afraid, but rather in shock, unable to comprehend the butchery that he’d witnessed. Sage suspected her own expression looked the same.

Now the gunshots came in singular pops, moving from the far end of the village toward her. The baby in her arms found her own fist, and sucking it quieted her cries.

The sun baked down. Sage sang softly, “Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me.”

The passenger-side door of one of the trucks opened. A man stepped outside. Ban Ntaganda.

Sage’s gaze dropped to his left leg as he sauntered toward her. No limp. She’d done a good job. She hummed the children’s hymn softly as her body trembled.

The stench of death filled the air as he stopped ten feet from her. His gaze raked her up and down. “Dr. Sage. You saved my life. I return the favor.”

Sage closed her eyes in Africa.

In Eternity Springs, Colorado, she opened her eyes and said, “They took the boy with them, the eyewitness, to announce the massacre, which was punishment for the village elders having refused to pay the demanded tribute to the rebels. Cattle. They’d asked for twelve head of cattle. The village leaders refused because those cattle were the source of income for the village. So Ntaganda murdered everyone in the village. Men. Women. The children in the mission school. Everyone except for their witness and me. We were the only ones left.”

“The newborn?” Rose asked, horror in her tone.

Sage realized then that her sister had been squeezing her hand hard. She shook her head. That part she couldn’t say. She couldn’t bear to go there in her mind, and she never would.

She stole a glance at Colt. He stared straight out at the lake, his lips set in a straight, firm line, his expression as hard as granite. But his hand held hers with tender, gentle care.

She swallowed hard. “I don’t know how long I stood there. I’ve never heard such quiet in my life. Utter stillness. No animal sounds. No birds. Nothing. Everything was silent.” She drew a deep breath, then exhaled harshly. “Until the flies began to buzz.”

“What did you do, Sage?” Colt asked, his voice raspy. “How did you get out of there?”

“The missionaries had a radio. I sent out a mayday. It took two days for someone to show up.” Sage released Colt’s and Rose’s hands,