Selfish Ambition



  Selfish Ambition

  Donna B. Comeaux

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2014 Donna B. Comeaux

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Published by Donna B. Comeaux

  Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

  All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version.

  Dedication:

  This is dedicated to my grandmother, Gracie Lee Coleman, who died at the time of this publication. Thank you, Grandmother, for creating heartfelt childhood memories. I will never forget your hard work and sacrifice to help me become everything I hoped to be.

  SYNOPSIS

  Shortly after Sherelle Lindsey transmits her dissertation to the Journalism Department heads at the American University in Cairo (“AUC”), a bomb blasts through her classroom. When she awakes, she’s frantic to know who’s captured her. To her surprise, Army Special Forces and Major Laurence “Lennie” Williams are responsible. How does she thank this wounded soldier? Betrayal. Twisted by aspirations to become managing editor of a Washington, D.C. newspaper, Sherelle struggles to come clean.

  For Major Williams, rescuing someone from the throes of danger is not only his job, but the adrenaline rush he needs to survive a lonely life. After he’s wounded and loses his wings to this lovely beauty, it doesn’t take long to know he’s in love. Though Lennie can’t explain it, he unequivocally believes God has put them together. But can he convince Sherelle of that? Or has he misinterpreted God's plan?

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to take this time to thank Shari Cross of Tulsa, Oklahoma for proofing this novel in its early stages. Thank you for being a true friend for so many years, Shari.

  To the www.CritiqueCircle.com organization for providing a platform for writers like me to expose their work and receive much needed (and still in need of) critiques and advice.

  To my youngest son, Aris Joseph, for taking time out of your busy schedule to proof the military aspects of this novel. You know how much I love you. I'm proud to be your mother.

  To my eldest son, Gerren Earl, for the countless times you’ve picked my self-esteem off the floor and saved me from many nights of tortuous agony. There is no way I could have made it this far without your presence, encouragement, and love. I loved you the moment I laid eyes on you.

  To my dear and beloved husband and friend for making sure I had all the resources I needed. You listened endlessly, offered crazy advice (most of which I never took, but it was fun), you laughed, and you always always always believed I could do this. No way I’d make this journey without your unconditional love and support.

  To God be the glory. Amen! Thank you, God, for approving I take this journey. You lit my path and made sure I planted my feet in the right place at the right time. Without your guidance and strength, I’d surely give up my dream and fall to despair. I love you, Lord. Amen.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Thank You

  Acknowledgments

  Synopsis / Book Jacket

  Dedication

  A Sneak Preview of Another Romance

  Chapter 1

  It was exactly four thirty. Students at the American University in Cairo (“AUC”) would end their spring semester in fifteen minutes. But the minute hand seemed stuck by a single drop of petrified molasses. No matter how often everyone eyeballed the black and white disk on the wall, time lingered.

  Sherelle Lindsey was anxious. Like many foreigners at AUC, she wanted to get as far away from Egypt as possible. She never thought she’d say it, or think it, but she missed Seattle’s rainy days. Once she made it home, she promised to stand in the middle of the street until rain drenched her clothes. To fulfill that promise, she had to remain calm and get through the next fifteen minutes.

  As Sherelle walked all three aisles of her classroom, she tromped her heels onto AUC’s linoleum flooring. Though she kept keen eyes on the clock, her sharp ears stayed attuned to the escalating riots in Tahrir Square. She pressed praying hands to her lips and said another prayer as someone yelled for help. Then she waited. With steel patience, she waited.

  All eighteen of her graduate students shared her concerns. Their writing utensils tapped desktops and gravitated through test papers at rapid speed. They heard feet scurry through hallways. Shadows flickered under the door. Periodically, someone twisted the door handle before letting go, inflaming fear on everyone inside. They almost jumped out of their seats when someone opened the door then slammed it shut.

  Until a half hour ago, it seemed as though most might escape without incident. But protesters’ scuffle with government authorities rose to incredible levels. Yelling intensified. Pipe bombs exploded. Bottles broke. Shots fired. People screamed.

  “Stay focused. We’ve gone through this before. It’ll all be over in . . .” Sherelle checked the clock, “. . . ten minutes,” she said in a calm voice, a striking contrast to her frayed nerves.

  Sherelle squeezed her biceps until they burned and radiated pain to her shoulders. That did nothing to extinguish her growing anguish. Why hadn’t she heeded the United States’ warning six months ago and boarded a flight home? What excuse would she use for ignoring another warning last week?

  With nine minutes left, Tahrir Square erupted and brought the semester to an abrupt halt. Sherelle rushed to the window and pulled on Venetian blinds. She saw relentless young protesters fight with the aggression of full-armored soldiers. Someone screamed “Fire!” Ignited in flames, an Egyptian soldier fell to the ground. Sherelle clamped one hand on her mouth then jerked when she heard thumps of tear gas expel in the air.

  Books hit the floor as her students tried to exit the classroom all at once. Sounds of the mass exodus pulled her away from the window. “Be careful! Please be careful! Go straight home,” she warned. She feared many wouldn’t make it. She pondered her own safety, but had to suck it up. She’d made the conscientious choice to stay and finish her dissertation. If she got hurt, she had no one to blame but herself.

  Sherelle slipped her purse strap on her shoulder then leaned on the wall and stared at the door. Should she make a run for it? Should she stay? She wanted to go home in the worse way. It’d be nice to smell bacon and hear fluttered activity coming from the kitchen. With eyes shut tight, she imagined her mother setting the table; her father gnawing on his fireless pipe while reading the morning paper.

  Tempted to weave through the crowd and head for the airport, she looked at the menacing mob once more. Sherelle grimaced. She had to wait it out.

  “Sher
elle! Get out of here!” a professor shouted as he rushed to the door. Jammed in his arms, a black leather folder stuffed with papers threatening to spill to the floor.

  “Have you seen this crowd? We’ll never make it. Sanjay, stay with me. We can wait this out just like before.”

  “This is bad. This is really bad.”

  As she started to plea with Sanjay one last time, he left.

  On the brink of despair, she forced herself to reexamine the streets. She recognized no one. Various people lie in Tahrir Square cloaked in plumes of soot. Riot police and military personnel hurled runaways into vans then searched the carnage for more survivors. A policeman jostled one body with his boot. Another man lay flat on his belly with smoke escaping from his back. He squealed in pain and tried to crawl to safety. Sherelle strained to identify him, reminded a month ago one of her female students had died, while two others sat in jail, if not already dead.

  Today had a different feel to it from the very beginning. In the predawn hours as her feet hit the floor, the warm April morning seemed lifeless. Almost no one moved. Sherelle woke, perplexed. She didn’t understand why persistent silence had replaced daily squabbles over the shower. Even more disturbing, mothers had soothed wailing babies to mere whimpers. Doors that squealed and woke her before sunrise didn’t move at all.

  On her way to class, Sherelle had hurried through an empty but eerie Tahrir Square. She quickened her pace, unfailing to look left then right. At one point, she walked backwards. Had she been followed? Though she saw no one among its many dark portals, she’d kept acute eyes on the AUC building anyway. No doubt somewhere in the shadows piercing eyes watched her. Rising tension made her stomach feel as warm as the early morning heat. Sherelle felt sick. She thought it’d do her good to spew her guts. Sherelle had resisted. Too risky.

  Once inside her classroom, she had turned on lights then her computer. After settling in, she proofed her dissertation one last time. Often, she’d stopped for a moment and looked into the empty square, curious about the spooky feel of the day and that annoying clicking reverberating through the air. Sherelle tried to convince herself those late nights she’d spent finishing her dissertation had created her nervous tension. Still, something hadn’t felt right.

  As she had studied the vexatious scene, she noticed a police car sitting underneath an arched portal with no one inside. And a strange man stood alone smoking a cigarette as he leaned against a large column. When she heard wheels squeal, Sherelle tilted her head. Pumping as fast as he could, a barefooted young boy hurried his bike across Tahrir Square. His shirttail fluttered in the wind. That clickclickclicking she heard earlier sounded again and pulled her gaze from the boy to a room only visible when a door opened to a soft-lit room. She craned her neck and soon saw a man going in and out the door.

  Now, in this late afternoon hour, she speculated if all that she’d witnessed earlier had been a preamble for the riot in the street. She may never know. She only hoped Sanjay and her students had escaped. However, the body count in Tahrir Square exposed her greatest fear. Hardly a soul that left the building had survived. Even if they had, the military police had assuredly hurled them into a vehicle and took them away to who knows where.

  In a hurry, Sherelle attached her dissertation to an e-mail addressed to the Journalism Department. She paused. Had she spell-checked it? Was the formatting correct? On impulse she hit the send button.

  Relieved, Sherelle couldn’t wait to lay in her own bed. She planned to sleep late for the next two days before giving any thought to pursuing a managing editor's position. That reminded her, she needed to phone her parents and give them her arrival time. She retrieved her phone and started to dial. Nothing. She tried again. Nothing. She attempted to type: Mom / Dad, be home tomorrow at . . ., but nothing happened. After staring at the cell phone for a moment, Sherelle threw it in her handbag and bit her lower lip.

  The Egyptian government had disrupted the phone service.

  Sherelle sat straight when tanks rumbled and vibrated the building. Her hands and knees shook. She rose, removed the cell phone from her purse and shoved it inside her left pants pocket. Her charger—where had she put her charger? She looked on bookshelves, in drawers, underneath papers, and next to her computer. Then she realized she didn’t need it. Service was down.

  She pawed through her purse again and felt along the lining for one of many safety pins she kept handy. After she unfasteneed the pin, it fell to the floor. Her shaky hands couldn’t pick it up. Sherelle placed her tiny New Testament Bible inside her right pocket, but replaced it with her passport and driver’s license. Several times she tried to fasten another pin to her right pocket to secure her ID, but Sherelle had a hard time closing the pin. With her body slumped forward, her hands between her thighs, she prayed. “Oh God, please get me through this one last time.” Sherelle held her breath, pinned the right pocket then exhaled.

  After gunshots fired, Sherelle lifted one slat of the Venetian blinds. The same man who’d tried to reach safety lay motionless in Tahrir Square. A policeman had put a bullet in his head. Horrified, Sherelle turned away. When she looked again, someone emerged from a dark portal on the ground level and stared in her direction. Fear pushed her to the wall. She had to get out. Fast!

  As she reached for her purse, a blast bolted through the building and threw her onto the floor, landing her face down onto shards of glass. Dust and debris consumed the room. To breathe, Sherelle pressed her nose into the armpit of her cotton blouse and drew air in slow deliberate breaths.

  Her head hurt. She felt heat somewhere behind her. It took every ounce of determination to anchor her forearms to the floor and move away from electrical wiring threatening to singe her clothes. Voices in hallways got louder. Glass crackled under foot. People cried out. She had to hide. Where? The only place in the room where her one hundred and twenty pound frame might fit was a supply closet at the other end of the room.

  She tried to reach the closet, but distorted images rotated above her and obscured everything. She felt dizzy. Her head hit the floor, her breathing slowed, her eyes burned. Sherelle’s blurry lens searched for a more accessible way out. But in her line of vision was the computer monitor, face down, sparks flying almost in slow motion like a Fourth of July celebration. After the monitor popped and sputtered, it died. She stared at a snaky rise of smoke as her best efforts to stay awake failed. Had she hit the send button? Would she graduate? Unsure, she blinked once then twice before something clawed and lifted her from the floor. She gasped. Then everything went dark.

  ###

  Major Laurence “Lennie” Williams emerged from the shadows just in time to grab Sherelle’s attention. Had she seen him?

  He checked his watch. Four minutes to move her. After the rescue, he’d use the stolen police car as his quick escape. If everything went as planned, he’d take her to an undisclosed area where a helicopter crew awaited. They’d fly her to the nearest Army Forward Operating Base (“FOB”) then on to the United States.

  His military file revealed Sherelle Lindsey had a Ph.D. in Journalism. When he examined it, he hadn’t overlooked her high honors, high class ranking, or that her features made him pause—twice. He weighed the possibility of finding a fighter behind all that beauty. It might even help if she knew how to use a gun. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Regardless, with sixteen rescue missions under his belt, Major Williams felt confident he and his unit could handle any scenario. If Sherelle Lindsey fought like a tiger, Williams was okay with that. If she acted like an abused animal, he’d handle that too.

  It stunned him when the trigger-happy Egyptian Army fired without provocation. Heavy armed soldiers had decimated most of the crowd. Major Williams ran through Tahrir Square less worried about the female’s demeanor and more concerned with finding her alive. Once he reached the destruction on the second level of the AUC building, he saw a policeman standing over Sherelle Lindsey’s lifeless body. Major Williams suffocated a rage of terr
or rising inside him. At once he pushed the policeman aside. He pulled the female by the hair then hurled her against the wall. She gasped. Thank God! She’s alive, he thought.

  “This one is mine,” Major Williams shouted in Arabic. “Back off!” The policeman frowned, but stood at a distance. Major Williams tied thick roping tight on her wrists then placed a sack on her head. One hard tug and she flung into his arms then over his shoulder.

  Chapter 2

  Sherelle woke to discover her hands tied behind her back. The musty, itchy cloth on her head nearly smothered her, making her breathe, at times, through her mouth. Ringing in both ears exacerbated a headache. She waited a moment for it to subside then she leaned forward and tried to remove the sack by shaking her head—to no avail.

  Her throat felt as if someone had scrubbed it with sandpaper. She grunted, licked her dry lips then wiggled and tried to get free. Twine tightened rather than loosen its grip. With fear overpowering her courage, she collapsed against the chair.

  Sherelle rocked back and forth as she retraced her movements during the week. Had she violated any Egyptian rules? She’d paid her rent and remembered with distinct clarity she’d worked on her dissertation every waking moment. So what did they want? Would she die? Here? Alone? No! She had to get free. Sherelle tried to remove the sack again, but failed.

  Her father’s voice screamed inside her head, “Fight!” Sherelle knew better than to give up. She’d have to answer to Eric Lindsey if she did. With slanted eyes, she tried to see through small openings of the sack. She saw nothing but light. Where had they taken her? Who were they? The Egyptian police? The Egyptian Army? Protesters? Terrorists? Tears streamed and soaked her neck. Moldy fumes from wet burlap made her gag.

  If this was the end for her, she’d not see her parents or be greeted at the door by her twelve-year-old chocolate Lab. If she must die, she wanted to read her bible first. She tried to retrieve the New Testament from her pocket. Twine cut through flesh and burned her wrists. Fingertips touched but never reached the inside of her pocket. Determined to try again, a dire realization struck her. She’d left the bible on her desk.