by Lynde Lakes
Sara Jane dashed forward and grabbed the lantern in the man’s hand before it hit the ground. With both hands free, the man clawed at the rope. Nick reeled him in and tightened the loop until the man fell unconscious to the ground. Quickly, he hog-tied him and cut the remaining rope to use later. Sara Jane bent and removed the man’s gun. The lantern light dimmed and Nick looked up. His heart hammered as he watched Sara Jane run ahead and fall in step behind the kidnappers. What the hell did she think she was doing?
The leader shouted, “Ricardo, check on your brother. The last guy in line turned and headed back toward Sara Jane. With shoulders squared, gun in one hand and lantern in the other, Sara Jane continued walking like a lamb to the slaughter. Hugging the wall, Nick crept after her.
When she almost reached Ricardo, the Mexican’s mouth fell open and he stopped. “Caramba!” he said.
Nick hurled the loop of his remaining rope and caught Ricardo around the neck and yanked tight. The guy’s thick neck was solid muscle and no matter how hard Nick pulled the guy wouldn’t go down.
“Auda!” Ricardo croaked, crying for help.
Nick judo chopped him in the windpipe. Ricardo fell. Nick grabbed Sara Jane and shoved her behind him. Quickly, he hog-tied Ricardo. Two down, four to go.
“What’s going on back there?” the leader growled. His accent had lost its Mexican flavor. But Nick figured that Ricardo would answer in Spanish.
“Esta bien,” Nick called in a muffled voice. But things couldn’t be much worse. In unison, all flashlights turned in their direction and the leader whirled and shot. The bullet ricocheted on the stone wall over Nick’s head, missing him by inches. He drew his Glock.
“Alicia, duck!” Sara Jane called.
Alicia stiffened, and for a split second stood motionless. Then, rather than drop to the ground, she wrestled herself from her guard and, as though zeroed in on the location of the familiar voice, she ran blindly toward it.
“Stop or I’ll shoot,” her guard called.
Nick held his fire. He felt Sara Jane go rigid. He held her arm tightly.
“Let me go,” she said, thrashing against him. “Alicia will trip over Ricardo’s body and they’ll catch her again.” Sara Jane jerked away from him and darted to meet her cousin. “Stay low and to your left Alicia,” she called.
When Sara Jane reached her cousin, she yanked the cloth sack from her head. She lifted the lantern to get a good look at her. Nick saw Sara Jane wince at the sight of Alicia’s bruised and swollen face.
“Damn those bastards!” she said. A bullet zinged on the wall behind her and rained pebbles down on the women’s heads.
Nick returned fire. “SJ, get the hell out of there!”
Sara Jane grabbed Alicia’s arm and guided her along. As they passed Ricardo’s unconscious body, Sara Jane bent and scooped up his gun with the ease of a pro. Pride and anger warred in Nick as he met the women and shoved them out of the line of flying bullets. He had both girls—now all he wanted was to escape the cave with them alive. He fired more shots to pin the men down.
Alicia made loud guttural sounds. Sara Jane ripped the tape off her cousin’s mouth and removed the gag. She whispered, “You were gagged. But I heard you scream.” It was a question, not a statement.
“That’s why they stuck that blasted rag in my mouth.”
Nick wanted to gag both of them. He sent a sharp glance at each of them as he handed Sara Jane his knife. She sawed the ropes that bound Alicia’s hands until the twine shredded and gave. Sara Jane pressed one of the guns into her cousin’s hand. Alicia checked the barrel then tucked the .38 into her waistband.
“Do all ranch girls know how to shoot?” Nick whispered, as they retreated back toward the tunnel that would lead them to the main entrance and safety.
“Me and Sara Jane do—an’ that’s all y’all really need to know,” Alicia said in her thick Texas drawl, made breathy by her gasps for air.
Curses echoed behind them, and bullets zinged all around.
“Stay low,” Nick whispered. With the kidnappers on their tail, they headed deeper into the unfamiliar passageways, forced to move too quickly to look for the initials Sara Jane had scrawled into the walls. They swallowed cool, dank air in agonizing gulps. They ran faster, stumbling, putting a distance between them and their pursuers.
After more twists and turns they came to three forks in the tunnel. “Something’s wrong,” Nick whispered. “This isn’t the way out.” His heart hammered. Somewhere in this maze they’d taken a wrong fork. He blew upward, uncertain which tunnel to follow.
“I know these tunnels,” Alicia said. “This section of the cave is where Amber hid me from the kidnappers when I was little. That was before she married my dad and became my mom.” Nick noticed that Alicia had accepted Amber so completely as her mother that she didn’t use the term stepmom. It surprised him that Alicia had remembered being kidnapped since she’d been so young. But how accurate could her memories be?
“It’s all true then?” Sara Jane asked, her voice rising as though she’d still found it hard to believe.
“’Course it’s true, silly.” Alicia’s whispery voice sounded almost childlike.
Nick’s nerves tightened another notch. “Look, Texas Belles, this isn’t the time to reminisce.”
Alicia drawled, “Don’t get your jeans in a twist, FBI. You have more problems than our gab. Your wrong turn reversed things—the kidnappers now block our path to the main entrance. If we go the left, we’ll immediately run into a dead end.” She pointed at the tunnel to the right. “This way. There’s a place to hide up ahead, but y’all have to step carefully cuz jus’ before it there’s one of them cracks that go clear to hell and back.”
Nick gave her a hard look. “Let’s hope your lil’ girl memory hasn’t faded because I guarantee you there’s no return ticket from Hades.”
****
Sara Jane tuned out Nick’s and Alicia’s dueling whispers, wondering how many more of her cousin’s stories were true. Had she, too, been kidnapped, as Alicia claimed. If so, why didn’t she remember? If it was all true, it explained her family’s paranoia and her own uneasiness with strangers. Maybe it even explained why she hadn’t left the ranch to start her business when her dad weighed her down with more and more restrictions. Did she instinctively know it was unsafe to be on her own? Or did she remain because, in spite of the overprotection, she loved her family and the ranch more than the personal freedoms she had to give up?
Alicia and Nick moved silently now as the kidnapper’s voices echoed closer.
The leader shouted to his Mexican crew, “Aqui, pronto. Quit draggin’ your asses. Look for lights. Listen for sounds. Don’t expect they’ve gone far.” His accent was all over the place—part Mexican, part Texan.
The words don’t expect repeated in Sara Jane’s head. There was something familiar about the words and the way the honcho had spoken them. She hadn’t seen much of his face, only his dark, high cheek bones. She brought up a shadowy image of his lean hips and muscular shoulders. She’d seen that body before!
She whispered in Alicia’s ear, “Did you get to see any of your kidnappers?”
Alicia shook her head. “They covered my eyes when they grabbed me. But I heard the leader talking on the phone. I know who he is.”
Sara Jane’s pulse raced. “Who?”
“That lowlife, Hamm Ross.” Alicia kept her voice muted. “Only his real name is Angelo De Fuego. Your dad put his grandpa in prison and Angel-Boy planned to trade my life for his gramp’s freedom. He speaks fluent Spanish. Guess he fakes the Texarkana drawl. To think, when he had dessert at our table, I even flirted with the slimeball.”
Sara Jane vaguely remembered hearing her parents discuss a man named De Fuego. Was his grandson Hamm…Angelo or whatever his name was…tied to Kitty’s murder? An image of the body lying in the bushes flashed in Sara Jane’s mind—the red hair, the slender frame. It was looking like she probably had been the intended victim.
&
nbsp; Nick kept his head low, seemingly preoccupied with watching for the fissure Alicia mentioned, but Sara Jane knew—with him leading their close V-formation—that he had heard her conversation with Alicia. How much did Nick know about all this? It irked her that from the beginning he had known more than he let on. That was another reason she couldn’t give her heart to an FBI man—men with the Bureau were forced to keep too many secrets.
****
Nick tightened his jaw. So, De Fuego was behind everything. Did that mean that his grandson was just a copycat Honey Killer? If he wasn’t the real McCoy, Nick knew that even if he succeeded in bringing the guy down, he wouldn’t find peace. He had to remind himself that his chief had ordered him off the H.K. case. His job now was to save the unpredictable Ryan cousins. To make matters worse, his wrong turn had positioned the kidnappers between them and freedom.
The inky unknown stretched ahead. The wall seemed to be curving. Sara Jane gripped Nick’s arm and pointed to a faded drawing over the entrance to a new section. It looked like a flat hand with a fist against it. Although the meaning was clear to Nick, Sara Jane and Alicia confirmed it when, in unison, they whispered, “Dead end.”
Chapter Nine
Sara Jane stared with a sinking feeling at the wall of stone that blocked their way.
“Damn!” Nick said. Sara Jane glanced at him. Lantern light flickered on his face. His eyes seemed deeper in their sockets. Day-old stubble darkened his jaw. He’d had little sleep and she was amazed that he was didn’t let loose much stronger words. He probably wanted to shake Alicia or worse. But, maybe for their sake, he wasn’t losing his cool.
“I remember now,” Alicia said sheepishly. “The dead end means that we’ve gone too far and missed the hiding place.”
Nick grabbed Sara Jane’s hand, then shaking his head, he grabbed Alicia’s too and they ran back the way they had come. “Pray we find cover before the kidnappers find us,” he said. When they paused a moment to scan the walls, Sara Jane sensed that the inner drive that urged Nick had escalated to an almost crazed determination. She could hardly believe he was the same man she had met only days ago. But then, she wasn’t the same woman. Unspent passion, fear and running for their lives had changed them both. Nick must have felt her gaze because he gave her hand a squeeze, giving her hope that somehow they would survive this.
****
Nick studied the passageway. The tunnel had widened between a smooth, slate-like facade on one side, and a ragged wall on the other. With all the twists of the cave and the way sound echoed through the tunnels, he couldn’t tell by the shouts and boot steps exactly how close their pursuers were. They could be as close as a half mile or as far back as a mile. The snaking maze worked in his group’s favor. For now, they didn’t have to douse their lights. But soon they’d have to go to complete blackout. Feeling the seconds ticking away, he flashed the beam around. If he didn’t find a place for the three of them to hide, they were as good as dead.
“Hold the lantern a little higher,” he told Sara Jane. “I think I see something.” The rocky wall was a mass of shadows, but it was the two mini caves about ten feet up that interested him. One looked deep enough to hide the girls and another a little higher up might hide him if he tucked up his long legs. One big catch—they didn’t have cleats or ropes. He pointed to the covered indentations above them. “I think those would work. Anyone have any suggestions how to get up there?”
Alicia laughed. “Jus’ strong bodies and determination, FBI. Ain’t no elevators in our caves.” She studied the wall for a moment. “Lace your fingers and give me a boost and I’ll show you how it’s done.”
Both resenting and admiring the take-charge bossiness that ran in the Ryan family, he bent and complied. She dug her fingers into the holes in the rocks and started climbing. She seemed to know where to put her hands and feet. “This is where Mom hid me when I was a kid,” she said between gasps for breath. “I reckon if she could climb this wall carrying a child, we can hoist our sorry butts up there.”
He shook his head. Alicia had nothing to cover her hands and only one arm was protected by a sleeve, but she sure as hell had grit. Once she was out of the way, he turned to Sara Jane and met her gaze. “You game?”
“Are you kidding me? If Alicia can do it, I sure enough can, too.”
Nick chuckled. He loved these girls.
He took the lantern from Sara Jane and placed it on the floor. She pulled some leather gloves from her pocket and jammed her slender fingers into them like a pro-climber, then faced the wall as though sizing it up. Shouts and curses and the thunder of booted footsteps seemed louder. This was taking too long. He grabbed Sara Jane by her firm little waist and lifted her over his head. She locked her fingers onto a couple of protruding rocks, stuck her toes into the toeholds, and climbed like a monkey. Nick watched both girls, willing them ahead faster. He sighed in relief when Alicia made it to the ledge.
Now he just had to worry about Sara Jane. With her long-sleeved shirt and gloves, she was better protected from scrapes and scratches than Alicia. But climbing this wall was no piece of cake. Sweat dripped from her forehead. She teetered on a narrow toehold. Nick’s breath caught. He reached up ready to catch her if she fell. After climbing about seven feet, she looked down and swallowed. “You’re almost there,” he said with a lump in his throat.
She nodded. “Almost there,” she whispered like a mantra.
Rigid, he watched her climb. The next toehold crumbled, loosened rocks rained to the cave floor. She froze, as though stiff with fear. His heart skipped a beat. “Only another foot, baby.”
“Baby! I’m no baby, UC.” She inhaled deeply then clambered upward again, fueled by anger.
He hadn’t intended to make her mad. He’d forgotten how touchy she was about being treated like a grown woman. He wouldn’t forget again. The detail might be useful later. Nick sighed in relief when she finally hoisted herself onto the ledge.
With both girls squeezed together up there, he could see that the small cave wasn’t as deep or its ledge as wide as he’d thought. But they’d have to make the best of it. Nick turned off the lantern and hid it behind a boulder, then stuck his flashlight into his back pocket, beam upward. Deep shadows obscured the toeholds. Sweat broke out on his brow as he hoisted his body from one hold to another. He gave silent thanks to the tough AF sergeant who had pushed him mercilessly in basic training and for the FBI rigorous feats he lived through at Quantico.
When he passed the girls’ cubbyhole he whispered, “Be prepared to shoot at my signal, but not a second before. If we’re lucky, the kidnappers will think they lost us in the maze of tunnels. If not, they’ll search every cubbyhole along the passage way. The key to our survival will be instinct and quick action.”
“You can count on us,” Sara Jane said with a tremor in her voice.
Nick wanted to reach out and touch her hand, but he didn’t dare. He kept both hands clamped on the wall and continued to climb. Finally, he reached his cave about twelve feet above the tunnel floor. He hoisted himself up and flashed a beam of light to the girl’s cave two feet below. He couldn’t see Alicia, but Sara Jane hugged the edge. He let the light linger on her. She held her tangle of auburn hair high off of her slender neck. He’d like to be down there with her, blowing a gentle breath across that swan-like stem.
“You girls okay,” he whispered.
“Couldn’t be better,” Sara Jane said. When she looked up at him, she leaned out over the edge.
Nick’s heart pounded. “Stay back from the edge.” He took a calming breath. “How about you, Alicia?”
“My legs are cramping, and I feel like a pretzel.”
“You’ll live. Quiet, now.” Nick flicked off his flashlight, plunging them into darkness.
Minutes later, lights flashed on the opposite wall as Angelo and his men paraded past below their hiding place, guns and flashlights in hand, and disappeared around the curve in the tunnel.
When Angelo discovered the dead
end, he swore. “We lost them in the tunnels!”
Sara Jane leaned out to watch the men come back around the bend. Nick wanted to shout “Get back,” but the men were right under them now.
Suddenly Alicia moaned, kicked out, and knocked Sara Jane off the ledge. Alicia gave a muffled gasp. Sara Jane fell onto Angelo. He cursed in Spanish as they crumpled to the floor. He shook his head, looking stunned. Gasping for breath, Sara Jane rolled off him. She glanced around as though looking for the gun she’d lost in the fall, but one of the kidnappers had already retrieved it and pointed it at her.
“Freeze,” the husky Mexican growled.
Ignoring him, she half rose. Angelo grabbed her ankle and yanked her down.
“You bitch,” Angelo shouted. “You’ll pay for resisting me!”
Heart pounding, Nick aimed his gun, but Sara Jane kept getting between him and a clear shot. Stay out of the line of fire, damn it. He couldn’t yell out and give away his position before he got a shot off.
Scooting on her rump, Sara Jane scrambled back, kicking Angelo repeatedly. Red faced and eyes narrowed in rage, Angelo let go. Sara Jane jumped to her feet and ran. He tackled her. Her forehead hit the stone floor in a thud. Angelo lurched forward and grabbed her by the neck, and shook her like a hawk shakes a baby bird before devouring it.
If Nick didn’t stop him, he’d kill her. He aimed and squeezed the trigger. His gun locked. Chucking training and good sense, Nick jumped and landed on Angelo and grabbed him in a headlock.
Three men rushed forward, dragged Nick off Angelo. Two of them pinned his arms behind his back while a third jabbed him in the gut. Nick turned his head to avoid a blow to the jaw in time to see Angelo grab up the flashlight that had rolled across the floor when Sara Jane dropped on him. Angelo stuck it into his back pocket, beam up. Was he planning a quick exit?
A shot from the ledge above winged one of the men holding Nick. When that captor let go, Nick broke loose from the other guy, twisted and performed a flying judo kick, knocking all three men down. Then he headed for Angelo who held Sara Jane in front of him as a shield. Angelo pressed his gun to her temple. “Stay back or she’s dead.”
