Chapter Fifteen
She screamed his name and scrambled toward him, only to be snatched back by the hair, stumbling, scraping her forearm on the asphalt. Despite the pain, like needles prickling her scalp, and the gravel tearing at her skin, she clawed the ground to get away, to get to Alex. Her throat burned with unshed tears, with an agony no amount of screaming could alleviate. He couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t. Not because of her. But if he was alive, he would be moving. He would be trying to get to her.
The scene was a nightmare. She couldn’t reach him. Her vision telescoped and suddenly her breath was forced from her lungs as one of the other men lifted her over his shoulder, carrying her away, away from Alex.
He hadn’t moved. Not a muscle.
She kicked, twisted, screamed, but was held firm and dumped in the SUV. As soon as the man released her, she bounced out of her seat, heading for the door, only to be met by a fist to the temple.
And blackness.
Alex fought for breath as he stared at the sky and heard the plane’s engines start. Damn it, damn it, Isabella was on that plane and he couldn’t move, couldn’t go after her. The stars blurred, darkened, came back into focus, but only silence now. The plane was gone.
Isabella was gone. His gut churned with pain and despair. He’d failed her. She was back in the hands of the monster.
The next thing he knew, Julian was over him, cursing him, and ripping the bullet proof vest from him. Alex couldn’t pick out his words because, well, Alex was trying to draw air into his lungs without pain. What had they shot him with, a cannon? His chest felt like it had caved in.
Then he realized Julian was cursing him in Spanish. Too much effort to listen, to translate. Instead, he grabbed his friend’s arm and forced his attention. “Saldana was here. He took Isabella.”
“We’ve got satellite tracking him,” Julian said grimly. “I told you not to engage.”
“He took Isabella,” Alex repeated, each syllable a struggle.
“Yeah, well, you didn’t save her now, did you?”
Alex let his head fall back to the asphalt, released Julian’s shirt. “He’s going to kill her.” After he made her suffer for leaving him.
“We’ve got eyes on him, buddy. We know where he’s going.”
Alex shoved himself up on one elbow, but the movement made him dizzy as hell, and nauseated. His head throbbed like a son of a bitch. Still. “I’ve got to get to her.”
“You’ve got to get to the hospital for some x-rays,” Julian retorted. “Looks like you hit your head pretty good. Might need some stitches. There isn’t a plan in place yet, anyway.”
Alex ground his teeth. “The longer she’s with him, the more danger she’s in.”
“It won’t be long,” Julian insisted. “You just need to get patched up. We’ll get her back.”
“You keep an eye on her.” He scanned the area, what he could see with his telescoping vision. Great. A concussion. Just what he needed. “I got Danes and some of Saldana’s men. They still down?”
Julian glanced behind him. “I don’t see any bodies. Lots of blood, though.”
“Didn’t get Saldana—scared I’d hit Bella. Stupid.”
“Not stupid. You can’t risk a hostage.”
“Not a hostage.”
She wasn’t—she was the woman he’d sworn to protect, a woman who trusted him to keep her safe. He’d failed her.
“The SUVs? There were two. Expeditions, I think.” He strained to see past Julian’s shoulder across the dark tarmac.
“Gone.”
He closed his eyes again. “Maybe surveillance footage—”
“We got it covered, Shep. We’ll take care of it.”
“Don’t let him hurt her,” Alex said and passed out.
Alex sat on the narrow cot in the emergency room and watched for the nurse he’d sent to get him a shirt. Bruised ribs, they said. Could have been worse. Thank God he kept the vest behind the seat of his truck, and had taken time to put it on. Also, a minor concussion, and eight stitches in his scalp. Still, the amount of blood on his shirt made it look like he’d been butchered.
Julian was coming to pick him up now. Why he couldn’t have attended to Alex in the field, Alex didn’t know. It wasn’t like he’d never gotten stitches without anesthetic, or continued on a mission with a concussion. The rest of the team probably wanted him out of the way while they made their plan, the bastards. Julian had better be here before the nurse returned—or Alex would walk back to DEA headquarters, find out what they’d learned from satellite and cell phones. He didn’t know if they were still tracking Bella or if they’d found Saldana. Goddamn, he hated being helpless.
He had to force himself not to think about what she was enduring, only what he could control.
Which wasn’t a hell of a lot.
The nurse returned with a shirt. Her lips pressed together matter-of-factly as he grimaced. He pushed her hands away to button it himself.
“You have my phone?” he asked.
“Your ride will be here soon enough,” she said shortly.
“I want to call my dad.” Tell him he’d killed his friend. Get absolution. Hear his voice.
The woman’s eyes softened marginally. “Yeah. I can get you your phone. I’ll be right back.”
For the first time he hoped Julian wouldn’t come just yet. He needed to talk to his father with the privacy of a confessional.
The nurse returned with his personal effects. He dug out his phone, and holding it reassured him. He hadn’t realized how out of touch he’d felt. He dialed with shaking fingers. “Dad.”
“Hello, son,” his foster father replied in his deep, calm voice.
“Dad, I—” He swallowed hard, shaking all over now. “I just killed Lionel Danes.”
He heard his dad’s intake of breath, could sense him controlling his questions, knowing as a former Ranger himself what he could and couldn’t ask.
“What happened?”
That question left it open to Alex to decide what to share.
“It’s my fault,” Alex said. “I went to him. I needed his help here and he got us out of town and gave us a place to stay, and then—he took the woman I’m trying to protect.”
“Took her?”
Alex swallowed against the burning in his throat. “Kidnapped her. I thought she was safe alone, he came and got her. He said she had a price on her head. He was holding a gun to her—” He broke off.
“You were assigned to keep this woman safe.” His father’s voice was calm, reasonable, as Alex had hoped it would be. Had feared it wouldn’t be.
“No. I was assigned to let her lead us back to the bad guy.”
“Ah.” The single syllable held a world of meaning.
“It’s not like that.” Damn, he never lied to his foster father. Not anymore. Usually his father could see through it. Alex had to hope the phone gave them enough distance. “She’s young, she’s looking for her child. He’s only three years old. A kid that young needs his mother, right?”
“He does.” His father dragged out the last word leadingly.
“I made a mistake.” Alex rubbed a hand down his face as if he could erase that fact. “More than one. Lionel Danes is dead because of it. She’s gone, taken by the man Lionel gave her to. Because I worried more about the woman than the job.”
“Alex, you’re a good soldier. Lionel Danes was a man who always had his own best interests at heart.”
Alex resisted the pull of those words, the hope that they were true. “He was a Ranger.”
“You know yourself not all Rangers are saints.”
He did know. “But if I hadn’t killed him, he could link us to Saldana, to the kid.”
“He still could. You just have to work backwards. If he was in that deep, he would have killed you to get what he wanted, Alex.”
“I know.” He’d heard it in the old man’s voice earlier tonight. “I know.”
“You did what you had to do, Alex. You’ve done it before. Odds are you’ll have to do it again.”
His father was right. Hell, he may have to do it before this was over.
“Call me when you can,” his father said with a sigh when Alex didn’t say anything. “I love you, son.”
“I love you too, Dad.” He flipped the phone closed just as Julian walked back. The grim look on the younger man’s face made Alex’s stomach twist. “What happened?”
“We lost Saldana.”
Alex’s stomach dropped, and he jumped to his feet, ignoring his swimming head. “Isabella?”
“We don’t know.”
“Where did you lose track?” He grabbed up the plastic bag with his belongings and started for the exit, staggering just a bit on unsteady legs.
Julian fell into step. “Near Jacksonville.”
But at least not heading back to Honduras. How long had it taken the DEA to find Saldana the first time? Years? Isabella didn’t have that long.
“Have they traced the SUVs? What about the plane? It’s not like there are a lot of places they could land—did you get the flight plan?”
“Yeah, we have it, and we have a team on its way to the airstrip, but Saldana’s avoided authorities for a long damn time. You don’t think he’s playing by the rules now, do you?”
Alex whirled on his friend, who steadied him when he swayed. “We’ve got to start somewhere, got to find her.”
Jesus. What was she going through right now? Because if Saldana touched her, Alex would tear him apart. She’d been through enough.
He slammed his fist on the gurney. “How could you lose her? Do you know what he’ll do to her?”
Julian shook his head. “I’m sorry, Shep.”
“I shouldn’t have left her alone. I trusted Danes, and I left her alone while I did him a favor. I killed her.”
Julian rested his hand on Alex’s shoulder. “We’ll get to her in time.”
Alex shook his head. “It’s already too late.”
Isabella woke on a rolling bed, the scent of fish—no, the scent of the ocean—surrounding her. She took a quick inventory. Her head and her stomach ached from where Santiago had hit her once she was in his custody, but she was dressed and hadn’t been raped.
Thank God.
But Alex was dead, and that was the worst pain of all.
Without opening her eyes, she tried to measure the room, to discover if anyone was here with her. She listened for the sound of breathing, anything that would give her a clue. But she heard nothing but the lapping of waves against the hull. A boat, then, but no motor. No other sounds surrounded the boat, no voices, no other boats. They had to be in open water. How would anyone find her now?
Slowly she opened her eyes. The room was clean, bright enough to hurt her eyes, gleaming wood and brass. A yacht.
She sat up abruptly. Hector could be here. If Santiago was leaving the country, he would certainly bring his son.
The fact that she wasn’t bound struck her and reaffirmed her fear that they were out on the ocean. Nowhere to run.
She was his prisoner again.
She rolled off the bed, staggered, and not from the pitch of the boat. Was she drugged or just hungry? She hadn’t eaten since the chili in the trailer with Alex. She had no idea how long ago that had been.
Cautiously she tried the door handle, not wanting anyone on the other side to realize she was awake. The door was locked from the outside. Her heart dropped, but she shouldn’t have expected otherwise.
Head spinning, she sat on the floor, hard. She only wanted to know where she was and if her son was on board. She glanced toward the windows that lined the room near the ceiling. Too narrow to crawl out, and even if she managed, what would she do next?
She needed to find out what hell she was sailing into.
Alex squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again, trying to focus as he stared out at the bobbing boats in the marina. His head throbbed like a son of a bitch and every bump Julian had hit from the airport to the marina in the rented Jeep had only made it worse. Julian had instructed him to stay in the Jeep and though Alex rebelled, he knew now was the time to let others do the legwork. When it came to tracking Isabella down, he needed to be ready to go. Which meant he needed to rest while his team canvassed the area.
Saldana had screwed up at the airfield. He’d probably thought no one saw him split his crew, two men taking the Lear Jet, two more plus Saldana and an unconscious Isabella taking another SUV here to the marina.
Classic decoy. Good thing the mechanic working in a nearby hangar had kept himself hidden or he might not be going home to his family this morning.
Unconscious. The mechanic’s words had been “out of it”, but Alex’s mind ran with the possibilities. She was hurt, she was drugged, she was dead.
No, Alex couldn’t believe that. Which meant that she was out there somewhere with a man who would hurt her, and she was defenseless.
His own helplessness hurt more than his damn shoulder. Now, if she was out at sea, how could he find her? She could be any damned where.
Julian pounded on the driver’s side window, making Alex jolt, then swear as pain shot through him.
“What the fuck?” Alex demanded when his friend opened the door.
“We have the boat. Fifty-foot sailboat, registered to a Javier Bustos out of Belize. The plan they filed with the harbor master said they’re heading back there, but it could be another decoy. Trouble is, they’ve got the GPS turned off. Could be anywhere.”
The longer they took to find her, the more trouble she was in.
Please God, don’t let him have taken her out to sea to dump her body. He had to see her again, had to hold her again, had to make sure she was safe before he turned away.
Isabella balanced on her toes on the narrow bunk and shoved at the latch on the window, but it was too high and she couldn’t get leverage to push it open.
She whimpered in frustration, just stopping herself from pounding the frame with her fist.
Behind her the door handle turned and she whirled. Too late to pretend she was still unconscious. Trapped. Her heart rabbited as she waited for the door to open.
The man who walked through was unfamiliar, and big. His eyes widened to see her standing on the cot. He stepped into the room and she hopped to the other side, keeping the bunk between herself and the stranger.
“Come with me.”
The big man’s voice didn’t match his body, more high pitched than Isabella expected, as if she wasn’t off balance enough. Her own voice sounded distant to her ears when she asked, “Where?”
“You are in no position to ask questions.”
Even his tone was unexpected, not unkind. But when he approached, her trembling grew out of control so she had to grip the edge of the bunk to stay upright. Was he going to throw her overboard? The only question was if he’d shoot her first, or let her drown.
She wouldn’t see her son again, or Alex. Bile bolted up her throat at the thought but she battled it back.
“I want my son.” She wondered if he could understand her through her chattering teeth. “Is my son here?” If he was, whatever she had to do to pay for running from Santiago would be worth it, if she could only see him, touch him, hold him.
Something like sympathy flickered in the big man’s eyes. “It’s better if you come with me under your own power.”
He was right. She struggled for self-control. To be forced to appear before Santiago would reveal her fear.
Still, he’d smell it on her, and feed on it.
She couldn’t let her terror overwhelm her, though it threatened to pull her under. She had escaped from his compound, dropped over the side of a cliff, run through the jungle, attempted to seduce a guard, danced for information, run from men with automatic weapons and watched the man she loved shot as he tried to save her.
She could face Santiago.
Chills ran over her body as she moved past the big man into the narrow hall. Only one way to go, with a wall to her left. Her shoulders bumped the paneled walls with each sway of the boat, so how had this big guy made it through?
“Where?” she asked, wondering which of the doors hid her biggest nightmare.
If any held her deepest hope.
“Up the steps, and right.”
The man didn’t follow too close. He must not think she was much of a threat. Of course, he probably saw she could barely move because of her trembling. She managed the steps to the next level, and sunlight streamed over her as she reached the deck, warming her chilled skin. Every nerve screamed to turn left, jump over the rail, anything other than face the man who could destroy her.
She turned right and saw Santiago through the glassed-in room, leaning back in a leather chair, holding a highball glass containing God-knew-what. From experience, she knew it could improve his mood or increase his violence. Preparing herself for either outcome, she straightened her shoulders and reached for the door handle.
The room smelled of cigar smoke and power. She gagged on it. Santiago turned only his eyes to her, those light eyes that saw too much, that narrowed now in hatred. The animosity snagged her breath in her throat. What would he do to her before he killed her?
“Isabella. You look like hell.”
She hadn’t even thought of that. She, who had paid attention to every detail of her appearance when she lived with him, had not so much as looked in a mirror since before she and Alex ran to the Everglades. She resisted the urge to finger-comb her hair now, to show him any sign of vulnerability.
“Where is my son?”
Santiago’s eyes widened a moment. “I do not remember you being so single-minded. You will see your son soon if you meet my conditions.”
“What conditions?” But she knew and already mourned the fact that everything she’d had with Alex would be erased by the depraved acts Santiago would have her perform to see her son. Memories were all she had left of Alex now.
She might not live long enough to save Hector. Under Santiago’s tutelage, he would become like his father. That thought weakened her knees more than fear for herself.
Santiago’s eyes flicked toward the two men standing on either side of the doorway. Neither one was Pablo, thank God, but she knew them to be her punishment. The only thing, the only thing to keep her from wishing for death was the chance to see her son again. To ensure that she did, she had to fight. She tightened her jaw to hide its trembling.
“It doesn’t matter what you do to me. The DEA has proof you killed Eric. Now you’ve killed an Army Ranger. They will never stop hunting you.”
He inclined his head and swung his glass to the side, the gesture unconcerned. “They have to know where to find me. They’ve not been able to so far.”
“They’ve never had greater motivation.” She took a step closer, though her anger was quickly being swallowed by fear. “Know when they come for you that they found you because of me.”
She didn’t see the glass tumbler swinging toward her until it was too late. It cracked against the side of her head hard enough to break. Pain sliced through her scalp and the upper part of her ear, and she dropped to her knees. The two men moved forward to grab her arms and yank them behind her. As her head swam, she prayed to fall into unconsciousness again. Even then, she knew Santiago would only make the men wait until she was awake and aware of every dirty thing they did to her.
She lifted her face to Santiago as warm blood trickled down the side of her throat. “I want to see my son,” she repeated. Her choice had been made the moment she stepped out of the compound. “Whatever you want in payment, I’ll do. Please. Is he here?”
Santiago leaned forward, forearms on his knees, a pleased expression on his face. “You will have plenty of time to pay for your mistakes before we get to Hector.” He nodded to one of the men, who pushed her to her knees in front of Santiago.
Terror rose in her throat at the anticipation of what he wanted her to do. She couldn’t bear the thought of taking his flaccid penis in her mouth. Already the scent of him gagged her.
He wrapped his fist around her hair and tugged hard, tearing strands loose from her scalp, and he kissed her hard, crushing her mouth, grinding her lips against her teeth, filling her with his filthy taste. She resisted the urge to bite down. She would do what he wanted until she saw her son.
He released her suddenly so that she slumped to the floor. “Where is your fight, Isabella?” He sat back and wiped his hand across his mouth. “Take her back to her room.”
The man who’d pushed her to her knees now pulled her upright by her hair. She couldn’t stop the squeal of pain, and she lifted her hands to relieve the pressure as she fought to get her feet under her.
“Give her time to think about all the things she knows I can do to her.”
They’d drugged the food. Isabella realized it after a couple of bites of the mouthwatering grilled vegetables and fish. Now she felt woozy, and the scent of the food she’d set across the room made her stomach growl. To keep her mind off her hunger, she’d gone through the room, looking for a weapon. Yes, she’d said she’d do anything to get to her son again, but she hated the feeling of helplessness. If she knew she had something to protect herself, she would feel braver. The problem was every drawer was empty. But the action had at least given her something else to think about. She’d finally stopped shaking after her encounter with Santiago, but she refused to be broken until after she saw her child.
She could imagine Hector wriggling in her arms, anxious to get away from the kisses she longed to give him. So she would indulge him, playing the games he loved—hide and seek, treasure hunt and blowing bubbles. They’d sing and she’d tell him stories, and cuddle him every chance she got. She could almost smell him, and her heart swelled with longing.
The door handle turned and Isabella bolted off the bed, pressing her back to the window.
The same man from earlier came through the door and her trembling started anew. She resisted looking at the bed, where her punishment would no doubt come. Instead, the man left the door open and beckoned her.
“He wants to see you.”
He glanced at the food on the tray and pressed his lips together, but said nothing, stepping to the side as she walked on wobbling legs toward the hall, forbidding her mind to go to the dark places Santiago could take her.
This time she was guided to another bedroom, stately, at the bow of the boat, windows looking over the horizon in what would be a beautiful view if she wasn’t so terrified.
But she didn’t see Santiago.
The door closed behind her and a fist struck the back of her head. Surprise and pain drove her to all fours. When she tried to push upright, to see past the fall of her hair, a hand pressed between her shoulder blades, holding her down. Another tugged at her jeans, and she felt the weight of a man’s thighs against hers.
Her empty stomach roiled, and she choked her nausea back. She would endure this. She would. She just had to remember how to shut out the feelings she’d allowed to surface when she’d been with Alex.
The blow must have affected her hearing because she heard a buzzing. The weight left her body and she looked up to see Santiago move to a window, his attention drawn to the edge of the boat. Despite her dizziness, pain and fear, she scrambled to her feet.
A Coast Guard cutter approached, churning up water, destroying the peaceful view. Joy bubbled through her, but she banked it. So much had gone wrong, she was afraid to hope.
Until she saw Alex standing at the rail of the cutter, automatic weapon at the ready, suited up in a helmet and a bulletproof vest. His stance said they weren’t getting out of here without going through his team of Rangers.
He was alive, standing strong. And he’d come for her.