by Diana Palmer
“I wish I’d bitten him harder,” she muttered to herself, although she was sad that the man had lost his life for the attack on her. She would have liked to see him locked up. But it was possible, considering his violent past, that he would have killed her if Machado hadn’t shot him. She only learned later that the man had been in prison, serving time for a pled-down murder charge. It wasn’t the only one he’d committed, either, she was told. He’d killed at least two women, one of them his own sister.
Cold chills ran down her spine at the thought of how close she’d come to death, or something almost as bad.
Machado chuckled suddenly. “You have spirit,” he murmured. “Josita saw what you did while she was waiting for Angel to fetch me. She said you bit the pendejo very hard.”
She grimaced, remembering. “I’ll probably die of blood poisoning,” she mused.
He laughed. “No, I don’t think so. You were very brave. You fought back, when you must have known it might cost you your life.”
“At the time, it seemed the right thing to do,” she replied, and was thinking that in the space of a few days in a terrible situation, her life had turned right around. The vapid, scatty Gracie that her acquaintances knew had become someone quite different. She wasn’t sure she recognized herself in this strong, brave woman who flirted with certain death.
“They will sing songs about you around the campfire after tonight,” Machado told her with a gleaming smile.
“It was almost a death song,” she said wanly.
“Yes, perhaps, but still…”
He was interrupted by a sudden explosion just on the outskirts of the pueblo. Machado jumped to his feet, pulling his pistol. He yelled to his men and sent a flurry of orders at them in Spanish.
“Stay here, stay down,” he ordered Gracie and Josita. “It may be some of Fuentes’s men getting revenge for the death of their man.”
He turned and ran toward the rising flame of the explosion.
“Where’s Angel?” Gracie asked frantically.
“There.” Josita pointed toward the back of the adobe house. “Inside. No worry,” she added in her broken English and tried to smile.
Gracie let out a relieved sigh. But she was more nervous now. What if the men were after her, blaming her for the man’s death? She was responsible for it, even if she didn’t shoot him. What would they do if they caught her? Would she be executed?
While she was running through nightmare scenarios in her mind, she heard a sound just behind her. She turned her head, just a fraction, just in time to see a tall, powerful-looking man in black with a mask over his face and an automatic weapon in his hand leap toward her.
“WHY DOESN’T HE CALL?” Jason muttered, glaring at the phones. “It’s ten minutes past his own deadline!”
“Sometimes they play with the families of victims like his,” Jon Blackhawk said quietly, trying to reassure him. “It’s cruel, but it can be part of the game plan.”
“I know a game I’d like to play with them,” Jason said under his breath. With each passing day, he faced the prospect of losing Gracie forever. The past few days had been hell on earth. If he thought about it too long, he’d go mad.
Kilraven looked at his watch. “Back in a minute,” he told the others. “I have to call one of the guys at the office who’s covering for me.”
“And which office would that be?” Jon teased, because he knew his older brother was only playing a part as a Jacobsville cop. He was a card-carrying fed, working undercover there.
“Never you mind,” Kilraven mused. He left the room.
Jason stared at the phone, willing it to ring. But time dragged on, endlessly.
“IT’S ALL RIGHT,” a familiar voice said as the man in black caught Gracie by the shoulder.
She couldn’t see the face, but she knew that deep voice. It was Grange, Jason’s foreman! “What are you doing here?” she shrieked.
“I’m not here,” he replied drily. “You have to remember that.”
“You’re not here,” she repeated, still gasping for breath after the scare he’d given her.
“Dead right.” He motioned to another man, also in black, wearing a mask. “Stay with her until we make sure the diversion is keeping everybody else occupied at the other end of the camp. Don’t make any noise.”
“I’ll be as quiet as a church mouse,” the man beside her assured him.
“Wait,” Gracie said urgently, catching at his arm. “There’s a man here. He saved me from being…assaulted. He’s protected me. You must try to see that he isn’t hurt.”
He drew an angry breath. “Gracie…”
“Please!”
“What does he look like?” the man asked irritably.
“You can’t miss him—he’ll be the tallest man in the camp. He looks a little like the opera star, Plácido Domingo, but much younger.”
“That’ll be easy to see in the dark,” Grange said.
She glared at him. “Just do what you can.”
“All right.” He jerked his head at the other man, who nodded. Grange took off running toward a sudden burst of gunfire.
Gracie held her breath. So much violence. She wondered if she’d ever forget. And that kind man, the General, who’d helped her. What if they killed him trying to save her? Because she knew without a doubt that Jason had sent these men in after her. He couldn’t be too angry…
She glanced at the taciturn man beside her. His face was covered, too. “Did Jason send you?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She frowned. “Do I know you?”
He chuckled. “No,” he replied. “And it wouldn’t matter anyway, because I’m not here.”
She smothered a laugh. “I get it. You and the rest of those guys are here on the QT while somebody with a government agency is sitting beside a telephone waiting for a ransom demand.”
“Got it,” he said easily. “They say your stepbrother is catching things on fire with his language.”
“He can do that.” She felt warmer. But then she remembered Kittie and his defense of her, and tears pricked her eyes. Kittie would be there at the house, waiting, with all Jason’s nice new young staff. She couldn’t set foot in that house, not after the way she’d left it. What a good thing she had Barbara’s house to go to, and her job waiting when she returned. She wouldn’t have to depend on Jason’s charity. And somehow she’d pay him back for this rescue. If it took her forever.
A shadowy figure moved out of the darkness and suddenly rushed toward them, raising an automatic. The tall man beside her wheeled and let fly with a K-Bar. It hit the man dead center in the chest. The gun fell out of his hand and he crumpled to the ground with an odd hoarse cry. He didn’t move.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he said quietly. “Obviously one of the Fuentes bunch sent him to make sure you didn’t leave here alive.”
“Yes. Thanks,” she added huskily. She could have told him that she’d seen two men killed in her life already, and that her nerves were numb from the latest. But she didn’t.
He went to retrieve his knife, raising his head to listen. There were frantic yells far away, but nothing near them. Gracie hoped that Machado wouldn’t be hurt. She owed him so much.
They waited in a tense silence until Grange came back, moving stealthily, with two other men in camo carrying automatic weapons. They had a man with them. Machado!
“This guy knows a way to get you out,” Grange told Gracie in a low voice, indicating the newcomer.
“Sí,” the General replied before Gracie could spill the beans. “I work for El General,” he said, looking at Gracie. “I don’t like him much. I will help you get the señorita out.”
“We couldn’t find your benefactor,” Grange told her, “but we don’t think he was one of the men we took out.”
“Thanks,” she said, trying not to give it away. Machado obviously didn’t want to share his identity with the cavalry here. Only then did she notice that he was wearing a baseball cap
and a windbreaker and stooping a little to disguise his height.
“They’re looking for the source of the fireworks over there,” Grange indicated a flame that was shooting up against the blackness of night. “They haven’t even seen us, and they can’t. We need to get you out of here right now.”
“I’m ready when you are,” she said nervously.
Machado gave her a quiet look and nodded. She nodded back.
He led them off into the darkness. Minutes later, she and the men piled into a truck and roared away. Machado stood on the running board on the side of the ancient vehicle, giving directions. They drove to a pontoon bridge, where Machado got off.
“Buena suerte, señorita,” he told her with a flash of white teeth. “I will remember you,” he added in a soft, deep tone.
“And I, you. Thank you,” she said.
“We will meet again one day,” he said softly. “Go quickly! ¡Amigos, adios!” And he disappeared into the darkness.
“Gun it!” Grange called to the driver.
They shot across the river onto the shores of the Texas side of the border. There wasn’t a soul in sight anywhere as they turned onto a main road and started toward San Antonio. About a mile down the road, they stopped beside a big burgundy SUV. Grange and his masked companion got out, along with Gracie.
The men pulled off their masks and moved off the road. Two minutes later, they were back, dressed in jeans and shirts and boots and cowboy hats, minus the camo and weapons.
“Keep moving,” Grange called to the other men, who were now likewise divested of commando wear and gear. “I’ll see you both later. Thanks!”
They waved and took off. Gracie didn’t see their faces.
“I’m free,” she said, suddenly realizing it. “I’m free!”
“Damned straight,” Grange said with a grin. “We’ll drive you into San Antonio to the hospital. It’s closer than Jacobsville.”
“The hospital,” she protested. “But…”
“You need to be looked at,” Grange told her quietly. “Who roughed you up?”
“One of the Fuentes bunch,” she said. “The man who helped me shot him dead while he was trying to assault me.”
“Good for him,” Grange said through his teeth.
“I’m sorry we didn’t get to meet your protector,” Grange said.
She laughed softly. “But you did.”
“We did?” Grange frowned.
“Sure. He was the man who showed you how to get me out of the camp!” she told them.
There were muffled curses, which she pretended not to hear. “Somebody should phone Jason,” she said quietly after a minute.
Grange stopped the car and handed her his own cell phone. “Get your story straight before you call him,” he said firmly. “The drug dealers let you off on the side of the road. You don’t know why. A kindly stranger picked you up and is driving you to the Hal Marshal Medical Center in San Antonio, got that?” he asked before she could punch in the number. “The kindly stranger won’t stick around to be thanked, either. You’ll be there in—” he checked his watch “—ten minutes. But tell him fifteen, so he doesn’t kill himself getting to the facility.”
“I will. Thanks, Grange,” she said gently. “You, too,” she told the other man, who was tall and dark-haired. “I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”
“Thank Eb Scott,” Grange replied. “It was his operation. I just took point.”
“Yes, but you guys took the risk.”
Grange chuckled. “Call Jason. I imagine he’s chewing nails by now.”
The phone rang and a deep voice answered. “Pendleton,” he said gruffly.
“Jason?”
“Gracie! Where are you? Have they hurt you…?”
He sounded frantic. She clutched the phone closer. “I’m okay. They just turned me loose on the side of the road. This nice old man picked me up in his truck and he’s driving me to the Marshall Medical Center. We should be there in about fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll be right there.”
The phone went dead.
“Do you mind if I call my stepsister, too?” she asked Grange.
“Go for it. I’m up to my ears in leftover minutes.”
“Thanks.”
After her emotional phone conversation with Glory, she handed Grange the phone. “You’d better step on it,” she advised. “Glory and Rodrigo are practically next door to the hospital at the ballet, and are en route as we speak. But even though Jason has farther to go, he has a new Jag, and he needs a pilot’s license to fly it.”
“Yes, I know.” Grange stepped hard on the accelerator.
Gracie locked her fingers together nervously. She wondered if he’d bring Kittie with him.
“THEY LET HER GO!” Jason called to Jon and Kilraven. “She’s on her way to Marshall Memorial. I’m going over there!”
“You’re not driving,” Kilraven said at once, stepping in front of him. “You’ll wreck the car. I’m driving.”
“They didn’t ask for ransom?” Jon Blackhawk asked, aghast.
“She’ll explain when we get there. You coming?” Jason asked him.
“Do ducks fly? Hammock, pack up the equipment and lock up when you leave. I’ll hitch a ride with my brother. You go with Hammock,” Jon told his other colleague. “I’ll phone you later.”
The three men hit the front porch at a dead run and didn’t stop until they reached Kilraven’s car. They piled in, Jason in the front and Jon in back.
Kilraven left tire tracks getting down the driveway. He pulled out into traffic without braking and flashing blue lights suddenly spun into action behind them.
“Oh, hell!” Jason burst out.
“Not to worry.” Kilraven chuckled. He picked up the mike, keyed it and called dispatch to find out who was behind him. Given the officer’s badge number, he changed frequencies on his radio and talked to the prowler in pursuit. “I’ve got a pregnant lady here and we’re trying to get to Marshall Memorial,” he told the officer with a straight face. “I’m Jacobsville PD, off-duty. Can you give us a courtesy fifty-nine with all flags flying?”
“You’d better name it after me,” came the drawled reply. “Okay, I’m coming around you. Follow me!”
“You bet! Thanks!”
The patrol car sped past them, lights still running. Traffic was light at that time of night, so there wasn’t much to contend with.
Jason glanced at Kilraven. “I want to see you explain this if he sees us get out of the car,” he said.
“I’ll think up something. Hold on!”
Jason took time to phone Glory and Rodrigo, who were already on their way to the hospital from the ballet. Gracie had phoned her, Glory said. They promised to meet him at the hospital. He also called Barbara and asked her to relay the news to Mrs. Harcourt and Dilly. He wished he knew where John was, but he probably wouldn’t be aware of the kidnapping in the first place.
Kilralven roared into the emergency room parking lot, tooting at the officer who’d escorted them as he swung into a parking space.
Three men exited the vehicle and ran up the ramp.
“What the hell!” the officer yelled after them.
“Come on in here and I’ll explain everything!” Kilraven yelled back. “We’re feds on a kidnapping case! The victim is in here!”
A car door opened and closed, but they were still running.
Bureaucracy took over with a vengeance at the emergency room desk, manned by a bored matronly lady with a humorless face. Jason figured he’d end up in jail for causing a riot, but he was going through that lady if he had to in order to get to Gracie.
As it happened, that wasn’t necessary. Jon and Kilraven had their ID out before they got to the desk. All they had to do was flash it and give a cursory explanation to be admitted to the authorized area, along with Jason. The clerk checked on Gracie and told the men which cubicle she was in. Her family doctor was with her, she added.
Jason led the way dow
n the hall to the treatment rooms. Dr. Harrison was there, sure enough, watching for them. Glory and Rodrigo were standing just inside a cubicle.
“Gracie’s in here,” Bob Harrison said, pausing to shake Jason’s hand. “She’s a little roughed up, but…”
Jason was already past him. Gracie was sitting on a treatment table, her skin bruised, her clothing torn, her silky blond hair dirty and standing out all over. She looked beautiful to the haggard man facing her. He moved forward abruptly and caught her hard into his arms, burying his face in her neck. He held on as if he was terrified he might lose her. His powerful body shuddered and his teeth clenched. He was too choked up with relief to even speak.
Behind Gracie, Glory and Rodrigo saw his expression and exchanged odd glances. That wasn’t the expression of a man grateful that his stepsister was going to be all right. It was that of a man passionately involved with a woman who was his whole world. They felt almost like voyeurs, just watching him.
Gracie clung to Jason, shivering. She was safe. This was the only place in the world that she’d ever felt really safe, in Jason’s strong arms. If only she was a whole woman. If only she could offer him a woman’s passion and be held like this forever. But he was engaged. His fiancée hated her. She’d thrown her out of the house and she could never go back again.
As the memory came back full force of the past few weeks when Kittie was around, she began to pull back from Jason, her eyes downcast so that he couldn’t see what was in them.
He had to force himself to let go. And then he noticed what he hadn’t registered before. Someone had assaulted her. He let out a word that had the women in the room flushing.
9
“JASON!” GRACIE EXCLAIMED, SHOCKED.
“Who did that to you?” he asked furiously. “I’ll hunt him down and kill him if it’s the last thing I ever do in my life!”
She’d never seen him so enraged. “He’s dead,” she said at once. “I had a protector in the camp, Jason,” she added quietly. “He kept Fuentes’s men from harming me. He shot the man who…who tried to hurt me.”
