by Cyndi Raye
Jake jumped out of the car and ran after her. The brakes on the Impala squealed as the driver stopped and rammed the car in park. The guy in the back seat jumped out without using the door and started after Maggie. She stumbled again and Jake lifted the gun out of his waistband. The punk was not going to hurt her, not if he could help it.
Jake ran towards the guy with the dirty blonde hair as Maggie got further away. She looked back and stumbled when she realized it was Jake.
“Keep going Maggie, run!” he yelled but doubted she heard the words.
She stood in the distance, her hand to her throat and screamed. He needed to pay attention to these guys, he tore his eyes from her and ran towards the dirty blonde who also stumbled. He cocked the hammer and was right behind him when the punk swung around. There was no gun and Jake let out a deep breath. Right now he had the upper hand. “Hands up, now.”
The blonde didn’t put his hands up. A smirk on his face made Jake aware too late his cohort was close by. The moment he twisted his head, he saw the dark haired punk with the darkest blues eyes right behind him. “Sorry man, it’s got to be done.” Those were the last words Jake heard, right before what sounded like a whip cracked through the air. He supposed his head found the backside of other gun.
<><>
Maggie screamed and ran, her footsteps taking her right back into the lion’s den. Jake was on the ground and she flung herself on him. “What did you do?” she screamed at the two who stood over the fallen man. “Jake, wake up!” she cried as soft, gentle hands dabbed at the blood that trickled from the wound on his head.
The blonde began to laugh. “You killed him, good job Jesse!” He tried to high five Jesse but stopped short when blue eyes glared at him.
Maggie stared at the scene in front of her. “You killed him,” she whispered, her hands on Jake’s head, his still body underneath. “Oh no, please! No, he’s not dead, he’s not dead!”
Tires squealed from the car Jake rode in. The blonde took off after the car. “Get the hell out of here,” he yelled as he picked up one rock after another and threw it at the car making its escape.
“He’s evil and so are you,” Maggie screamed at Jesse. She held out her hands, bloody now from Jake’s head. “We have to get help,” she cried, the tone of her voice desperate as she begged Jesse. She didn’t care if he were a criminal or not, Jake needed an ambulance.
He reached down and began to pull her away from Jake. “No! We can’t leave him here by the side of the road!” She shook her head back and forth and tried with all of her might to pull away from this man who kept her tight in his grasp.
“He’ll be all right, I promise,” the man said, his voice stern. “Listen to me, I’ll make sure someone helps him.”
“How can you say that after what you’ve done!” she wretched her arm free from his grip. Maggie pulled back and slapped him hard. His neck jerked and a glint of anger crossed those blue eyes.
Maggie didn’t care. She wanted him to feel pain for what he did.
The man gripped her by the upper arms and shook her. “Get a grip,” he said, his voice now gruff. “I know what I’m doing and the blow didn’t kill him. You need to get in the car now and follow orders. Trust me.”
“Trust you? You’ve got to be kidding!”
He shook her again. “Shh, here comes the jerk.” Maggie had called the blonde jerk whenever he spoke to her. His name was Jerry, but she refused to call him by his proper name. He talked to her as if she were a piece of trash and she didn’t care if she were his hostage or not, she would not allow someone to degrade her, ever. Jesse seemed to get a kick out of it because during the ride in the car he chuckled under his breath. At first she even thought Jesse was a good guy caught up in something bad. “I need you to calm down and do what I say.”
A battle of wills ensued as Maggie stared hardcore at the man with intense blue eyes. How could she trust someone who knocked out the love of her life? Could she trust him to get help for Jake? He put pressure on her arm all of a sudden and began to drag her towards the Impala.
“I can’t leave him here like this, alone and hurt,” Maggie told Jesse. The jerk came up behind her and shoved her down in to the seat.
“Too bad, we’ve killed him and you’re coming with us.”
“Why can’t you leave me here and take the car? Please. I can’t leave him.” Maggie begged the blonde, who leered at her. He raised a hand as if he would slap her. She stiffened for the blow.
“That’s enough, Jerry.” Jesse’s cold, hard voice stopped Jerk in his tracks. He slid in the back seat and began to mumble. The driver turned to Jerry. “I agreed to take you to the drop point. I got you one of the biggest deals you’ll ever see in your life and you can show your boss the goods. It doesn’t include hurting a woman. You’ve already side-tracked us by going after that kid who stole from you. We don’t need any undo attention brought on us and if you lay a hand on her again, I’ll kill you and sell the goods to someone else.”
The blonde laughed. “I doubt that Jesse. You’re as hungry as I am to double your take on this deal. Money talks. My dad can give you the world and you know it.”
Maggie stared at Jesse’s profile. She could see a muscle twitch in his face. He wanted to hurt the guy, but why? The things he said to her were strange as well. Why didn’t he kill Jake instead of knock him out? Why did he direct the jerk away from her every time he began to get nasty. It was almost like a movie, as if he were undercover? Shoot! The sudden realization hit her because she was in the middle of an undercover investigation and Jesse was the one hiding his identity. Fear engulfed her and twisted in her gut. This was bad.
Jesse glanced over and the instant her eyes met his she knew he realized she figured it out. Maggie researched undercover work for a series she wrote once. All the signs were here. It may not be obvious to the average person, but her intense research gave her a hand up on things like this. She slammed her eyes closed. She could not deal with all this chaos. “Oh please get help for him,” her low words were all but a whisper. When she opened her eyes again, he was pressing a button on his watch. He raised his hand to the steering wheel, and she was so aware of that watch because a tiny glare from a light inside caught her attention.
A spy watch with a microphone. Brilliant! Maggie glanced from the watch to Jesse’s profile. He seemed unaware she stared at him and yet she knew he watched every single move.
The sirens in the background sounded louder as the Impala peeled away from the scene, the driver determined to get back on the road before someone came after them. Maggie turned in time to see Jake stir a bit before the ramp took him from her view. Her hand went over her mouth and she willed him to hear her silent words of love.
Chapter 9
Jake groaned and forced his eyes open. Two paramedics stood over him as daylight came in to view and then felt the rush of pure oxygen as a mask covered his face. He gasped and sucked in the air with the little energy he had left. He didn’t know how he got here on the ground. All he remembered was seeing Maggie as she stood in the far distance as she called out his name.
He was in a vortex of some sort. Jake tried to reach out to her as her body slipped away. She placed her hand on her throat and her eyes widened and then she screamed. The piercing sound of her voice as she cried out his name bounced around inside his brain over and over again. First it sounded so close as if she were almost on top of him, then so far away he had to listen with all his might to hear the whisper of his name on her lips. But it was only a dream. He tried to reach out and pull her closer. He wanted to snuggle before they continued on their road trip.
Jake’s eyes flew open with the sudden realization he wasn’t in a dream or vortex or another world. He tried to lift his arm to rip off the mask. He tried to look around, to find Maggie. All he could see were the paramedics and the two guys who drove him here hovering over him. He tried to look left and then right but there was something holding him back.
“Be still, sir.
You have a head wound and possible neck injury. We have you secured so there’s no use trying to struggle. You’re not able to move, relax.” A soothing voice spoke. Jake thought it was the paramedic, but when he tried to focus his eyes on her mouth, it didn’t move.
He could feel Maggie’s phone vibrate in his pocket. Jake began to inch his hand towards the slit in his pocket, he had to get to the phone. What if she got away from those bastards and needed him. He jerked back and forth, grunted and tried to shake the mask off but they had him so secure not even Houdini could get him out of this contraption.
He felt something in his arm. Sonofabitch! He could feel himself begin to slip away. Whatever went through his veins made his heart rate slow down. The warmth filled him from the tip of his toes and moved in slow motion through his groins and now up his whole body until he felt wrapped in a cocoon. He couldn’t help Maggie this way. Jake needed to find her before something bad happened.
He left her name slide off his mouth as he moved once again into oblivion.
<><>
Maggie knew the paramedics were there and would save Jake. But it didn’t stop her from being so afraid for his life. He took a blunt hit to the head even though Jesse said he didn’t kill him. She saw it all when she turned around in the field. At first she wanted to keep going, to get as far away from the two bad guys as she could. Then something happened to slow her steps. Almost as if fate held her back. For a split second she knew without a doubt he was in trouble. Like you know when danger lurks ahead. That’s how it felt and she stopped and turned around to find Jesse behind Jake, the butt of the pistol aimed at his head.
“Why did you hit him?” she asked, her voice low. “I don’t know why you had to hurt him.” She talked in a low tone because jerk was in the back snoozing, something he did a lot of. Maggie blamed it on the pills he popped in his mouth on a regular basis. Even though he slid the pills in between his teeth in hopes no one would notice, she did. She caught his actions out of the corner of her eye. Maggie was good at doing research and part of the reason was because she didn’t miss too much going on around her. It was a gift, she guessed.
Now all she wanted to do was take her gift and go home to Jake.
“It couldn’t be helped. He could cause too much trouble. Jeopardize everything,” Jesse said under his breath. His words could mean anything if jerk listened from the back seat but she knew he meant his undercover work.
“What!” she seethed, her voice low. “Do you have any idea what you have unleashed? The moment Jake gets up from that fall, he’ll hunt you down and there will be no stop to Jake Hatfield when he finds the both of you!”
“Jake Hatfield?”
“Yes, the Jake Hatfield of one of the most -”
Jesse held up his hand. “I know who he is.”
Maggie leaned closer. “How do you know Jake?”
Jesse down shifted into a lower gear as he began to slow down. “I’ve heard of him through a mutual friend. Seems something happened with his twin brother a while back that involved our friend.”
Maggie relaxed. She tried to think of who would know about the incident at the camp ground, the one where Jon and Abby went undercover because someone hurt her beloved pet Penny. It was kind of adventurous until all hell broke loose. At the time she was on deadline so Maggie missed a lot of the action.
“I need more!” Jerk groaned from the back seat. Maggie twisted her head around to see him empty his pockets. The frantic look in his eyes made her pause. What if the guy was on drugs and he flipped out because he needed a fix. She looked at Jesse, worried.
Jesse popped open a small plastic bottle and threw some pills in the back seat. Jerk scrambled to pick them off the floor where they landed. “Why are you handing him pills like candy?” she asked, annoyed. “I saw him take some earlier. He thought he was hiding them.”
“It keeps him calm. Keeps me calm too.”
“I need to get word to Jake that I’m okay. He’ll be so worried.” Maggie bit her bottom lip. She knew Jake had her cell phone and there was no way to communicate with him. “Why do you need me? Take this car and do what ever it is you need to do. Let me go.”
Jesse shook his head. “I can’t blow my cover,” he mouthed. “I’m sorry.” She noticed a trickle of sweat down the side of his face. His nerves were on edge too. The man in the back seat was someone big, someone this undercover man didn’t trust. “I promise when we get to our destination, I’ll find a way for you to escape. Jerk will be filled with so much greed the closer we get, he won’t notice if you’re gone.”
She watched as Jesse tripped another button on his watch. He looked over at her and said in a clear voice, “Did you say that was Jake Hatfield we left in the dust back on the ramp at Parsons crossing?”
Maggie realized what he was doing. “Yes I did,” she said loud and clear. “The Jake Hatfield, Real Estate Developer. You’ll be sorry you messed with my love,” she yelled as an after thought.
Jesse pushed something on his watch again and nodded to her. She could see the tiny movement as he told someone on the other end of the microphone who laid in the dirt back there. She wondered if it were Jake’s friend. If so they put him in one horrible predicament.
Jake would stop at nothing to find her. He would search and search and leave no stones unturned. It was the reason she loved him so much. He put every ounce of his six foot muscular frame into every single thing he did from building a super power company to sweeping Maggie off her feet and loving her every single day.
“Where are we going?” she asked out loud.
She heard jerk shuffle in the back seat. “None of your business,” he spat. She could feel his hot breath close to her. Maggie hoped Jake would hurry and find her, she was getting tired of this guy. She couldn’t wait for her love to knock this guy out. Even so there was something nasty about him that scared her. Perhaps something evil. She knew not to cross the line, so she didn’t say a word even though she wanted to.
What she wanted to do was turn around and spit in his face.
<><>
Jake tried to pull the IV from his arm again. For the sixth time a nurse came in as soon as the pump began to make a loud racket indicating he wasn’t getting the fluids meant to replenish the body fluid lost. He tried to do it when the room was empty the first few times, but the minute he jerked the IV loose, the beeping began and a nurse pushed through the doors. He heard a tsk tsk from one or two and then they proceeded to stick the needle back in his arm again. “I feel like a dam porcupine,” Jake grumbled.
The charge nurse giggled. “If you stop trying to take out your IV, we wouldn’t have to poke you full of holes.” She stared at him over her long, dark lashes. “To be honest, I don’t mind how many times I come in here.”
The meaning was clear except he loved a dark haired beauty in the grip of danger with two demented men with an agenda. “Get my brother, Jon Hatfield. It’s time I get out of here.”
The nurse smiled. “Dr. Hatfield is looking over your chart. He said you’d we were to ignore all your complaints. He also said if you tried to leave, we had his permission to give you a shot that would render you harmless.”
Jake roared. “Get my brother in here right now!” Jake tried to sit up but fell back on to the bed when he realized how weak his body was. What did that guy hit him with? He figured it was the butt end of the gun but Jake had a headache that did render him useless.
Jon Hatfield strolled in to the room. “Can’t believe we got you in a hospital.”
Jake grunted. “Not for long. I’ve got to find Maggie. She’s with them guys, they got her against her will and there’s nothing I can do about it. Jon, I can’t lose her.”
“Come on Jake. Josh told you earlier she would be fine. She’s with one of their agents. The important thing here is to heal.”
“What if he can’t protect her? I have to help. I can’t lose her, not like-”
Jon sat on the side of the bed. “Mom? Is that what you mean.”
Jake looked down at the sheet, unable to face his brother. “Yeah.” His head pounded, his heart raced out of control. He wanted to smash his fist into the wall. Jake breathed in and out through his nostrils.
“Jake, take a deep breath buddy. Maggie’s not going to wind up like our Mom. Josh told me Jesse Storm is one no one to mess with. She’s in good hands. He’s got a watch on with a gps so we know their every move. Do you understand Jake? She is in good hands.”
Jake almost fell apart in front of his brother. He didn’t feel like the tough Jake Hatfield everyone knew. “Thanks, bro. I need to get out of here. I can’t let her out there alone.”
“She’s not alone. Maggie’s with Jesse Storm.”
Jake growled. “He’s not me!” He slammed his head back on the pillow and moaned. If the pain would stop he could find his Maggie, his love, and protect her. Right now she doesn’t have anyone to turn to. “She’s got to be scared out of her mind.”
