Finding Kate Huntley

by Ragan, Theresa

  “It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s dead. He can’t help anyone. Now unlock me.”

  “I don’t have the keys. I’m just doing my job,” he told her.

  “What did they do, send a rookie after me?” She pushed her bangs out of her face. “What does the agency want with me?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  She cocked her head. “I guess I’m not as smart as I look. Talk.”

  “You’re the only one who might know what happened to one of the most important scientists of our century. Ten years ago,” he went on, “the world was on the brink of finding a cure for AIDS.” He drew in a breath. “Then you and your father traveled to the Caribbean and never returned. Your boat was found days later...destroyed in one of the worst storms in the Caribbean’s history.”

  He attempted to sit up, but she held firm. “It wasn’t long,” he said, “before your father’s body washed ashore. That’s when the agency knew it wasn’t the storm that killed your father. Divers were sent to look for your body, but obviously,” he said as his eyes roamed over her, “nothing turned up.”

  “They never found another body?” Kate asked.

  “Why?” His eyes narrowed. “Should they have?”

  She opted to ignore his question. Her instincts told her he had no intention of doing her harm, so she eased her knee from his side. “Listen, rookie. I don’t know you. I don’t like you, and I don’t want anything to do with you. Once I get these cuffs off, I’m going to let you go and you’re going to pretend you never laid eyes on me.”

  “Can’t do. I need you to come back to the States with me.”

  “In your dreams, FBI man.” She chuckled as she leaned over him, frisking him from his knees to his ankles. “How did you know it was me?” she asked. “I don’t look anything like the little stringy-haired teenager I once was.”

  “Can I sit up?”

  She thought about it for a moment before she pulled her knee fully from his side. He sat, she squatted, his right wrist connected to her left wrist.

  “I used to work in the Missing Persons Department,” he told her. “I have what they call eidetic memory—clinical term for photographic memory. I’d recognize any face on that list.”

  “But that doesn’t explain why you’ve come. Why now?”

  “We’ve been looking for a man...a drug lord. We picked up his picture via satellite during a funeral. You happened to be standing in the background when the pictures were snapped. I recognized your face immediately. If you ask me, I’d say you’re hanging out with the wrong crowd.”

  “I didn’t ask you. Was my picture made public?”

  “No.”

  Her gaze focused on a bulge near his left bicep.

  He shot her a worried look. “What?”

  She pulled off his tie and dragged his jacket halfway off of his left shoulder. Taking a firm hold of the top of his white button-down shirt, she tore it wide open. Buttons popped. Before he could protest, she slid her hand down the sleeve. The keys were duct taped to his arm. “Clever.”

  He gave her a wry smile.

  She ripped the tape off of his arm.

  “Ouch! Have some mercy, will you?”

  “Get to your feet,” she said. “Then I’ll unlock the cuffs. After I free myself,” she warned, “I won’t be able to stick around. I have no idea who murdered my father. I can’t help you. Go back to your people and tell them to stop wasting their time...and mine.”

  “What about Dr. Forstin?” he asked.

  She concentrated on getting to her feet, determined not to look him in the eye. “Never heard of him.”

  “Liar.”

  They managed to get to their feet at the same time. As far as she was concerned, Jack Coffey didn’t need to know that she had any contact at all with Dr. Forstin.

  The handcuffs forced them to stand close, face to face. Uncomfortably close. Goose bumps swam up her spine. As she fidgeted with the lock, her fingers trembled slightly, frustrating her. The fact that she could smell the starch of his shirt and the light earthy scent of his soap wasn’t helping matters. The men she usually hung out with worked outside for a living. Their hands were callused, their hair long and tied back. She’d never been this close to a guy in a suit, a guy who took showers on a regular basis. It was hard to tell how old he was, but with his shirt torn open she couldn’t help but notice that he was well-built, hard in all the right places. Under different circumstances, she might be tempted to run her fingers through his hair and press her lips to his.

  He raised a curious brow.

  “I’m trying to guess how old my captor is.”

  “Thirty-two,” he said. “And I’m not your captor.”

  She held up the arm still hooked to his. “I beg to differ. If you weren’t my captor, I wouldn’t be handcuffed to you.”

  Unease crept into his mesmerizing blue eyes as if her close proximity made him nervous. She leaned into him, brushing her chest against the thin soft fabric of his shirt. “Or would I?”

  Jack felt sorry for her. She looked exhausted, as if she’d been running from ghosts every hour of every day for the past ten years. The emptiness in her eyes and the hollow sound to her voice only served to make him more determined to bring her back safely. The agency had lots of questions. They needed her, and whether she knew it or not, she needed them. For ten years she’d managed to hide from the world. He wasn’t going to lose her now. “If you hadn’t run,” Jack said, “I never would have used the cuffs in the first place.”

  Her attention was elsewhere. Her eyes had grown round and sharp like that of a trapped fox.

  “Are you alone?” she asked.

  He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand and nodded. Looking over his shoulder, he followed her gaze, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. “Is something wrong?”

  She fumbled with the key again. There were two holes in the metal cuffs, but she kept sticking the key in the wrong one. Since he wanted to keep her talking, he didn’t tell her what she was doing wrong.

  “My father never would have told me to hide from the world if it wasn’t necessary,” she told him. “Damn cuffs. For ten years I’ve survived by listening to my instincts. And right now my instincts are telling me something’s not right.”

  “I never would have come looking for you if I thought I was putting you in danger.”

  “Oh, that’s charming.” A shaky laugh escaped her. “What are you, FBI man in shining armor?”

  Ignoring her sarcasm, he noticed she kept looking behind him. Once again he looked over his shoulder. “What are you looking—”

  A bearded man wearing sunglasses and dressed in khaki shorts and a short-sleeved print shirt stepped onto the deck, gun drawn and aimed in the vicinity of their heads.

  Jack tensed. “Shit!”

  Kate moved fast. She slapped the keys into Jack’s hand, then reached behind him and whipped out the gun he didn’t think she knew about. She jerked back the safety latch with her thumb. With a shoot-now, ask-questions-later mentality, she shot the man in the shoulder. His gun skittered across the deck and out of reach.

  “Jesus!” Jack said. “What the hell are you doing?”

  She was ignoring him again. That much was clear. She was also stronger than she looked. Dragging him along, she stepped over the injured man and kicked his gun off the boat and into the water.

  Just when Jack thought things couldn’t get worse, a second man stepped out from behind the cabin. He was Haitian. His long hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

  Kate jabbed an elbow into the newest arrival’s gut. Nothing happened, so Jack came up hard and fast with the hand that was connected to hers and knocked the thug flat on his back.

  “Jump,” she said right before she leapt off the boat and onto the dock.

  If not for his keen ability to follow orders, Jack might have found himself flat on the deck. Instead, their shoes thumped against the dock as they ran toward the crowded streets.

  When they reac
hed the boulevard, Kate shouted, “Run!”

  “What do you think I’m doing?”

  Psssss.

  A bullet whizzed by Jack’s head, leaving an eerie ringing in his left ear.

  People shouted and ran in every direction.

  Jack stepped up his pace and they were nearly run over by a taptap when he charged ahead of her.

  Purposefully, he fell a step behind, and she yanked him hard to the right and led him into the same alley she used earlier. A bullet hit the mural in front of them.

  A woman screamed and pushed her child to the ground.

  Kate took another sharp turn, this time to the left. She didn’t bother glancing back to see how close the man chasing them was, and since Jack didn’t want to lose his arm, he concentrated on keeping up with her. She was fast, and she was hardly out of breath. Jack, on the other hand, felt as if he was sucking in dust instead of air.

  After a moment, the bullets stopped coming. Kate stopped and shook her wrist at him. “Unlock us. Quick!”

  He had the cuffs off in less than ten seconds. The cuffs fell to the dirt. She scooped them up and shoved them into her pocket.

  Jack’s breathing was labored, his shirt drenched in sweat.

  Kate handed him his gun. “Good luck,” she said before she took off down another alley.

  Grimacing, he took off after her. Within seconds, he was on her heels.

  “I told you I can’t help you,” she shouted over her shoulder, slowing to a fast-paced jog. “And in another minute,” she added, “you won’t be able to help yourself either because that goon will come around the corner so fast you won’t know what hit you.”

  “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  She stopped and took a couple of deep breaths. “I’m not going to get myself killed over some misguided rookie agent who doesn’t know when to lay off.”

  Bullets ricocheted off the metal roof behind him. They both threw themselves to the ground and crawled inside the nearest hut. The empty hut smelled like dead rodents.

  On all fours, Jack followed her across the dirt floor. He’d been hit, but he wasn’t about to tell her. Following her lead, he squeezed through the small opening that served as a window and followed her into another hut on the other side of the path. As if she sensed him falling behind, Kate turned around and noticed the blood. “Damn it, rookie boy.” She pulled him into the shadows of the hut, pushed him to the ground, snatched the gun from him again and said, “Don’t make a sound.”

  He was in too much pain to argue. Rookie boy? Clutching his side, he remained quiet. A dog’s bark ended with a sharp squeal. Heavy footsteps and heavier panting replaced all other sounds.

  Motioning for him to stay put, she crouched low behind the hut’s entrance. At first glimpse of the goon’s shadow, she sprang forth and used the gun to punch him in the jaw. His over-sized belly hit the ground with a thud, sending up a cloud of dust.

  She gave her hand another shake and dug the toe of her boot into the man’s side to make sure he was unconscious. “That’s what was supposed to happen to the thug on the boat,” she said with a huff. She cocked her head for a better look at the man. “He’s not one of the guys from the boat,” she told Jack. “How many men did they send after us?”

  She reached into her front pocket and tossed the cuffs to Jack. “Put those on him, will you?”

  Ignoring the pain from his wound, Jack crawled to the man’s side. He managed to get the cuffs around the guy’s wrists while Kate searched the man’s pockets and shoved a few items into a bag strapped around her shoulder.

  She tossed Jack the man’s I.D. “Like I said, you can’t trust anyone.”

  Jack looked at the card. “Ben Sheldon. FBI.” He pressed the man’s thumb onto the I.D. Then he wrapped the card in a handkerchief and tucked it into his back pocket.

  “What are you doing?”

  “It could be a fake I.D. If the name Ben Sheldon doesn’t show up on the agency’s list of criminals, the prints will. I want to know who the hell is trying to kill me.”

  “First you might want to work at staying alive.” She went back into the hut. “Here,” she said, throwing him a rag. “Hold this over the hole in your side.”

  “I was hardly nicked.”

  “Just do it. I don’t need you leaving a trail of blood for his friend to follow.”

  “So, I guess this means you’re going to cooperate?”

  Her eyes sparkled. “I’m going to save your sorry ass, if that’s what you mean.”

  Jack smiled. “Ahh, you do have a soft spot after all.”

  “Let’s get one thing straight, FBI man. There’s nothing soft about me.”

  Chapter 2

  Kate stayed off the road since it was pocked with craters two and three feet deep. Instead, she headed straight up the mountain. They had kept a steady pace for thirty minutes with no sign of the men with guns, but Jack was beginning to fall behind. “You’re going to have to keep a faster pace,” Kate said over her shoulder, “or they’ll catch up to us before dusk.”

  When Jack failed to respond, she turned to look at him. Blood dripped from his side and down the front of his shirt. She frowned. “You said the bullet hardly nicked you. Why didn’t you tell me you were bleeding like a goddamn sieve?”

  “I didn’t want to slow you down. And stop swearing. You’re too pretty to talk like a thug.”

  As she trudged back down the hill toward him, she shook her head. “And to think I was beginning to like you.”

  His body swayed, the loss of blood making him woozy.

  “About slowing me down,” she said, “what the hell do you think you’ve been doing for the last half hour?”

  None too gingerly, she eased off his jacket and tossed it aside. “I don’t know why I’m helping you,” she muttered as she tore apart his blood-soaked shirt. “You lied about having the keys to the cuffs, you lied about the gun, and now you lecture me about my use of profanity. Never mind your lying to me about being alone.”

  “I didn’t know I was being followed.”

  She snorted. “What kind of FBI man are you anyhow?”

  “Special Agent.”

  “Give me a break.”

  He shrugged. “Until they approached me two weeks ago, I was a Computer Specialist...Cyber Division, Unit One.”

  That explained it. She wiped the blood around his wound and examined his injury. “The bullet in your side is going to have to come out. Until we can get you help we’re going to have to do our best to stop the bleeding. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  His face looked deathly pale, making her work faster. She ripped his already torn shirt clean off, and then tore the bloody cloth into strips. “You don’t exactly fit the stereotypical special agent type,” she said, taking inventory of his broad shoulders and rock-hard stomach. The suit had not done him justice. When she touched his side, he sucked in a breath. “And what would those characteristics be?” he asked.

  Hoping to keep his mind off the fact that he could die on his first job as a special agent, she talked as she worked, efficiently binding his side with the strips of cloth. “I always pictured a special agent as the sort of man who could run miles in the heat without breaking a sweat—a weather-toughened Navy Seal or a gun-toting Terminator.”

  “Hmmm.”

  She tied two ends of cloth into a tight knot. “So, you’re used to working on computers, huh? Behind the safety of your screen?”

  A muscle twitched in his jaw.

  She hit a sensitive spot.

  “The guys I’m used to going after are a lot scarier than the two guys back there,” he said.

  She grabbed the jacket he’d been carrying and eased it back on. Next, she pulled his good arm around her shoulder and urged him onward. Although she didn’t like the idea of taking him to the chief priestess, she didn’t have much of a choice if she wanted to keep him alive. “Tell me about the guys you’re used to chasing.”

  “They’re called cyberstalke
rs, pedophiles, persons with grudges, criminals, young, old, white, black, short, tall—” He winced in pain, but kept moving.

  Afraid he wouldn’t be able to go on much longer, Kate stepped up their pace.

  “Most cybercriminals think they’re anonymous,” he went on after a moment of silence. “They think they can’t be identified.” He inhaled. “I joined the agency to prove otherwise.”

  Kate listened as he talked about criminals who crept into people’s homes without anyone ever knowing it. These guys didn’t come through the front door or the window; they came through computer monitors, using words to entice. Thousands of children were disappearing every year. Chills crept up the back of her neck.

  With each word Jack seemed to be losing ground. If she didn’t get him help soon, he was going to die.

  Jack felt like he was suffocating. Once again, he tried to wake himself. He gritted his teeth and moved his head from side to side, anything to stop the tickling sensation sweeping across his face. He wasn’t sure what was worse: the never-ending thumping of his head as the beat of a thousand drums shook his skull or the light touch of the object brushing across his nose and cheeks. Every movement, every twitch of his eye, felt as if hundreds of needles were being shoved into his body.

  Something tickled his nose again. Somebody was trying to snuff out his life with a—he forced open an eye—feather.

  Jack pushed the feather aside with his good arm right before he saw the sharp tip of a knife coming at him. He tried to escape, but two warm hands stopped him from falling off the cot. It was Kate.

  On the other side of the cot was a woman holding a sharp blade, a big dark woman with an earring in her nose and wildly tousled hair. She used the knife to cut a string from his binding and set the knife to the side.

  The walls, Jack noticed, were made of mud and sticks. He was inside a hut. In the far corner of the room sat a man beating drums. Sensing Jack’s eyes on him, the drummer stopped playing and rose to his feet. Standing at about six foot six, the drummer had to stoop to keep his head from hitting the adobe ceiling. His dark body was a canvas of tattoos—twisted figures and hieroglyphic marks. Queequeg, the harpooner from Moby Dick, came to mind. Without saying a word, the drummer picked up his goat-skinned covered drums and left the hut.