Czytaj książkę: «Abducted»

ONE

Sarah Gallagher stood frozen in shock as Dominic Jett lurched through the clinic door, a limp body draped over his shoulder. The hot Mexican sun etched his bleeding face in golden fire. Why was he here in her clinic? She must be seeing things.

Peering at Sarah through swollen eyes, Jett sighed. “I really hate hospitals.” His legs buckled and he dropped to his knees, letting his burden slide to the floor. His collapse finally jerked Sarah from her frozen shock.

She ran to the men, Juanita two steps behind her. Juanita called for their teenage helper to summon her father, the doctor, from the next village. Somehow she and Juanita wrestled the two men onto cots. It was a harder job with Jett, who was six feet five inches of ornery muscle and bone. He might not be in the navy anymore, but he kept his fighting trim. Sarah examined him, pleased to see his eyelids flicker open, revealing the chocolate-brown eyes that haunted her dreams, now hazed with pain. As they slowly opened, she recalled being lost in those eyes, her high school sweetheart, her everything. She blinked away the memory. “Can you tell me your name?” she asked.

“George Washington,” he said, pushing her hands away. “I’m okay. Stop poking me.”

Typical. He was the same stubborn, reckless man she’d known since they’d gone steady nine years before, except...different, as if the soul inside him had hardened into granite. She’d heard a rumor that he was working on a dive boat near the health clinic where she was completing her last medical mission, but she hadn’t believed it. “Just hold still and let me check your pupils at least. What happened? Did you say the wrong thing to the wrong guy again?”

“For your information, I saved that scrawny dude over there from the three men trying to beat him senseless. I was trying to be a do-gooder, like you.” His tone dripped with sarcasm. “See where that got me?”

She would not rise to take the bait, not now. Instead she pressed a wad of cotton to the cut on his forehead, her fingers grazing the strong bones of his cheek. He winced.

“Sorry,” she said, her stomach tightening at the intensity in his eyes. “Hold this while I get some disinfectant,” she commanded, pressing his fingers to the cotton, trying not to let the feel of his hand distract her. “Did you get hit on the head?” A blow on top of the injury she knew he’d sustained in his navy service could prove deadly.

His eyes narrowed, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “Just help him. I’m okay.”

“Jett...”

He sat up, wincing again. “I said I’m okay. Go minister to someone else.”

He was pushing her away like she’d done to him so many years ago. The lump in her throat surprised her. “Jett...”

An engine noise drew her to the door. She peeked out, heart dropping into her shoes at the sight of three men getting out of their truck. If she had any doubts about their intent, one look at what they carried told her the truth—one held a machete and the others baseball bats.

The tallest of them looked up, gave her a lazy smile. She slammed the door and dropped the bar across it. At least there were already stout beams in place covering most of the windows, an effort to keep away thieves.

Jett sat up. “What?”

“Three men,” was all she could get past her terrified lips. Jett dived off the table and started to drag a heavy file cabinet in front of the door. She went to help him, pulse thundering.

“I got this,” he snapped. “Go check the back.”

Though she knew the back door was locked and secure, she raced to the rear of the small clinic, where there was a single window covered with shutters instead of barred to allow for ventilation. As she watched, the shutters were ripped aside and a man’s arm plunged through the gap where the window had been raised a few inches. She skidded to a stop, shoes squeaking on the tile. While she looked desperately around to find something to use to fight him off, he cranked the window frame up and stuck his head inside. His eyes were red rimmed, wild, as if he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol or just plain hatred. There was an ugly purple bruise darkening his cheekbone—probably courtesy of Dominic Jett, she surmised.

She grabbed a teakettle from the stove and swung it as hard as she could. The man grunted, protecting his head with his crooked arm. His thin lips contorted in anger. He grabbed at her, catching her by the wrist and twisting until she dropped the kettle, gasping in pain. She could feel his hot breath on her face as he pulled her close, struggling to both get in the window and hold onto her.

If he managed to make it inside, they would all be dead, she had no doubt. His grip was so hard she felt her fingers start to go numb. With his other hand, he reached inside to grab for her hair.

She struggled to pull away, jostling a pitcher of disinfecting fluid with two pairs of surgical scissors soaking inside. The pitcher was inches from her grasp, and she strained to reach it. Muscles pulled tight and her neck aching with the effort, she finally grasped the handle. She heaved it sideways at the man, dousing him with the contents. Eyes stinging, he pulled back just enough for her to slam the window and lock it.

She expected him to grab the nearest rock and use it to smash the glass to pieces. Her mouth fell open in surprise as she saw him run away. Panting, trying valiantly to make her lungs start to work properly again, she returned on wobbly legs to the front room.

Juanita turned frightened eyes on her. “They’ve left, for now.”

“Why?” she managed, the terror making her tongue slow and unwieldy.

She soon saw for herself what had discouraged them as Jett let in a uniformed police officer. Don Rodriguez, Sarah knew, the commandant of the tiny Mexican village. She offered a relieved greeting, which he returned politely. Rodriguez stood, hands clasped behind his back, heavy brows twitching as he took in every detail of Jett and the unconscious stranger.

“There were men outside,” Sarah said between gasps. “They attacked Jett and they were about to break in here when you arrived.”

He shot a disdainful look at Jett. “It seems you have found trouble. Again.”

Jett wiped the sweat off his forehead. “This time, it found me. I was returning from picking up a fuel filter a couple miles down the road and I came upon three guys beating on this one.” He jutted his chin at the unconscious man. “They were trying to force him into their truck.”

“Does he have any identification?” the officer asked.

Juanita handed him a wallet she’d taken out of the victim’s pocket. “It says his name is Del Young.”

Sarah thought the officer’s mouth tightened at the name, but perhaps it was her imagination. Her nerves were still firing too erratically to trust her judgment. “Do you know him?”

“No. He is a stranger to me.” He looked at Jett. “And the men beating him? They showed up here?”

Jett confirmed with a nod.

“What do you know of them?”

“Three guys, short, stocky, plenty strong. One was missing part of his pinky finger.”

Now there was no mistaking the nervous look that stole over Rodriguez’s face. “I will look into this matter. Best to let this man go.”

“Go?” Sarah gaped. “He’s unconscious. He needs to be flown to a hospital before those thugs return to kill him.”

Rodriguez cocked his head, weighing his reply. “These men, the ones you fought,” he said to Jett, “they work for Antonio Beretta.”

Sarah felt her stomach flip over.

“Yeah? Who’s that?” Jett said.

Sarah gaped. “How could you have lived here for a month and run a dive business and not know Antonio Beretta?”

Jett pulled the bloody cotton from his forehead and tossed it in the trash can. “I’m not the neighborhood busybody. I try to mind my own business.” He gave her a sly smile. “But it’s nice to know you’ve been keeping track of my life. I didn’t know you’d paid attention to when I’d arrived.”

She rolled her eyes. “Beretta’s a very wealthy, very powerful man,” she said. “We treated one of his victims just before you arrived.”

“Victims?”

“Someone who crossed him.” And would never cross him again, she thought with a shiver. “Beretta runs drugs.”

“Rumors,” Rodriguez said.

“More than rumors.” Sarah looked at her patient. “You think we should leave this man because Beretta is after him for some reason?”

“This is a local concern. You should not be involved.”

“I’m a medical missionary, and he’s injured. I’m already involved.”

Rodriguez stared at her. “You have done good things for the people in my town, so I am telling you this out of gratitude. If you are in Beretta’s way, he will kill you and everyone with you, and no one, not even God Himself, will be able to save you.”

Her chin went up. “God brought me here for a reason, and I’m not going to leave my patient to die,” she snapped.

Rodriguez shrugged. “If Beretta is involved, he is already a dead man. Take him back where you found him and leave him there.”

Sarah stared him right in the face. “I’m not going to do that.”

“As you wish. It is no matter to me.”

“Well, aren’t you going to investigate?” Her cheeks flushed hot. “We need some protection, at least.”

“I have other matters to attend to.”

“You’re not even going to do your job?” she demanded.

He pointed a finger at her. “Please do not tell me about my job. You have no right to direct affairs here.”

“I am a part of this community.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Isn’t it true that you are due to leave next week, Senorita Gallagher?”

She didn’t answer.

“It is fact, is it not? Your mission in Playa del Oro—” his tone dripped with derision “—is nearly complete, and then you will fly away to your comfortable life in America and our lives here will continue on.”

“That doesn’t mean—” she started.

“You are an outsider, in case you have forgotten,” Rodriguez said, “and now you are on your own.” He whirled on his heel and exited the clinic.

Sarah walked to the door and watched him drive away. “He’s not going to do a thing,” she said. “Unbelievable.”

“But understandable,” Jett said, “if Beretta is such a bad dude.”

She stared outside, wondering when the men would return. “No, it isn’t, not to me.”

“Ah, Sarah, always the idealist,” Jett said, and she thought there was a tinge of longing in the words under the sarcasm. It confused her, and she turned back toward her patient.

The man on the other cot lay completely still. He was probably in his mid-thirties, thin, with blond hair that hung in sweat-soaked clumps almost down to his chin. Her heart went out to him. A stranger to Playa del Oro finds himself the victim of a violent attack. Not so unusual anymore in a town that struggled with a flourishing drug trade, poverty, gang violence and corruption. She’d grown to love the town and the people here in her last two medical missions. But Rodriguez was right, she was scheduled to leave, and this time she would not return, since she was starting down a new path, retiring from nursing to join the family private investigation business.

Young’s cheeks were swollen and bruised. She wondered who he was, if his family was worrying about him, if he had a wife somewhere standing by, waiting for the phone to ring. Was he a father? Her heart squeezed. She knew how huge a hole a father’s death could leave in a family.

Juanita’s face was grave. “He’s got a serious head injury. There’s a laceration on his arm and cheek that need stitches.”

And they had no CAT scan machine, not here in the Playa del Oro mission clinic. “We’re going to need to move him to Puerto Rosado as soon as we can stabilize him. The hospital there can handle this.”

Jett was sitting up now. “I can take him up the coast in my boat. We have to get him and you out of here before the Three Stooges return.”

She bit her lip. “We’ll find someone to fly us. It will be faster.”

“No, it won’t. The airport is an hour away, and you’re going to have to pay a king’s ransom for a pilot, not to mention they’ll soak you for fuel.”

He was right, of course, but she wasn’t ready to admit that to him. “For now we’ll monitor his vitals, stitch him up and wait for the doctor to check him out. We’ll keep the doors and windows locked.”

“That is a ridiculous plan,” he snapped.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

“I’m offering it, free of charge. You can’t stay here and...” Jett’s head jerked up. He made for the front door again and looked out. “Too late,” he said. “They’re back, and this time they’re not going to leave until they finish the job.”

There was a sound of shattering terra cotta, a baseball bat decimating the pots of bougainvillea on the porch. Then they began to batter down the door.

* * *

The bat struck so hard the walls shook.

In spite of the urgency, Jett admired the fire in Sarah’s hazel eyes, the firm tilt of her delicate chin as she’d tried to figure out how to save her patient. He attempted to shake off the ringing in his ears that had roared to life again when he’d taken on the thugs. Great. He’d finally overcome the seizures, leftovers from the grievous injury that had ruined his navy career and reduced him to being the dive master on a rinky-dink boat in Tijuana. Now the ringing was back.

He ground his teeth together. You’ll overcome this, too.

The next crack of the bat against the door sounded like cannon fire. Both women jumped.

Jett tried for what he figured was a reasonable tone. “We’ve got to get him out of here.”

“It’s not safe to move him. He might be bleeding internally,” Sarah said.

“He’s going to be bleeding externally, too, if we don’t move, and so will the rest of us.” Another pot shattered outside.

She trembled, the crown of her blond head barely brushing his chin as they hauled the kitchen table over to join the file cabinet. “Just because Marco sicced you on me doesn’t mean I have to take orders from you,” she fired off.

He tensed. “Marco didn’t sic me on you. He asked me to make sure you were okay during your missionary stint, and since I was in Tijuana, it was easy for me to make my way to this part of the coast for a while.” A partial truth. Even if his bank account hadn’t been down to his last hundred bucks, he still wouldn’t have taken the job so close to Sarah if Marco Quidel, his mentor and a protector to the Gallagher sisters, hadn’t asked him to. He wouldn’t let Marco down for anything. You’re a sap, Jett, for all your tough-guy moves.

One of the men was shouting now, whacking his baseball bat against the walls of the clinic as he looked for windows or unlocked doors.

Sarah went pale. “Will anyone come to help us?”

Jett braced himself against the next blow as boots began to smash against the flimsy door.

“Sorry, Sarah Gal. We’re on our own.”