by Cindy Dees
And that was when he saw it. The picture of Chandler and his buddy on the football team. Pete Riccolo was the kid’s name. The same youth who’d been driving the night Chandler had tried to kill Ana. Who hadn’t tried to help her. Who’d kept driving the truck when Chandler attacked her in the back...
“I think I know who her kidnapper is!” he called out.
A bevy of FBI agents went to work as soon as he gave them the guy’s name. It didn’t take long for the agents to find out Riccolo had changed his name a while back.
As soon as someone at a computer called out the name, Marti Frick, Jackson blurted, “He’s a construction supervisor on my movie. He works at my damn studio!”
“We lost her cell phone!” someone called from across the command center.
The agent-in-charge ordered his team to look for any place in the mountains tied to Marti Frick. In seconds, someone called out, “Got it. He’s leased a cabin in Big Sur.”
“Dispatch a team up there, ASAP. That helicopter still standing by on the roof?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You coming with me, Mr. Prescott?”
“Wild horses couldn’t stop me.”
* * *
Ana’s panic mounted as the urban sprawl of the coast fell behind Pete’s car. This was not good. Not good at all. She needed to make her escape where there were other people around who could help her.
The highway whizzed by at over seventy miles per hour. Even a stuntman with experience jumping out of fast-moving cars wouldn’t attempt it. At this speed the impact with the pavement would kill her for sure.
Terror at the notion of having to jump for her life rolled over her. She might have learned how to jump out of a car, but that didn’t mean she’d ever overcome her deep phobia of doing so. Her hand crept to her belly. Hang in there, Sparky. I’ll figure out a way to get us out of this. I promise.
If only Pete would slow down. But instead, his foot pressed down even harder on the accelerator. It was almost as if he’d heard her thoughts. The miles flew by, and with each one that passed, her hope for a rescue diminished a little more.
Finally, Pete turned off the highway onto a smaller road that quickly turned to dirt. Great. She was going to cut and scrape the bejeebers out of herself when she made the jump. If she could bring herself to do it. If he ever approached something resembling civilization again, and if he ever slowed down below about thirty miles per hour, which would be her safe maximum for taking the leap.
Trees started to dot the arid mountainsides around them. She was so hosed. They would never even find her body out here after this nut was done with her. Poor Jackson. He was going to blame himself. If this didn’t put him off of women for good, she would be shocked. And he was such a good man at heart. He’d have made a great father. Such a waste.
The vehicle turned onto a smaller road that wound up a mountainside. And more importantly, the curves forced Pete to slow down. There wasn’t even a hint of other human beings nearby, but she was out of time. Like it or not, she was going to have to jump and take her chances with escaping Pete on foot.
* * *
“Almost to the last place we pinged her,” the pilot announced. Jackson scanned the road below through binoculars for any sign of a vehicle. He didn’t see a car, but he did use a trick he’d learned on a movie shoot and announced, “I’ve got dust on a side road in our three o’clock position.”
The pilot veered right, tracking down the source of the dust trail. They topped a ridge and a valley sprawled before them. And in the distance, a car sped along the road, which tracked along one side of the valley about halfway up. The right color of car. Jackson used the zoom feature on his binoculars to take a closer look.
“Tallyho,” the pilot called in the traditional phraseology of having acquired his target.
The helicopter raced forward, devouring the gap between aircraft and car in a matter of seconds. The steepness of the mountain was such that the pilot had to run up along the left side of the car.
“That’s Riccolo,” Jackson announced. “Positive ID.”
The FBI field agent moved over practically into Jackson’s lap to peer down at the vehicle. “Visual on the victim?”
The helicopter pulled a few feet ahead of the car and Jackson gritted out, “I’ve got her in sight. In the front passenger seat.”
“Let’s stop this bastard,” the FBI agent ordered the pilot.
The car swerved as the helicopter swooped in low overhead, but it did not stop. The copter tried again, all but planting a skid in the vehicle’s windshield.
“There’s a pregnant lady in that car,” Jackson ground out. “Be careful, for God’s sake.”
“We’re gonna have to take out the driver,” the FBI agent replied. “This guy’s not gonna stop.” To that end, the agent strapped on a harness and prepared to open the sliding door of the chopper to shoot Riccolo.
“Wait,” he bit out sharply. “Ana has stunt training. She can egress that car if we can get it to slow down.”
“Any suggestion how we do that, given that putting a skid in the guy’s face didn’t get him to blink, let alone slow down?” the FBI agent snapped.
“Let me jump on the car.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No. I’ve got stunt training, too. I do most of my own stunts in movies.” He didn’t add that he only jumped on cars that stunt drivers were operating and he only jumped out of helicopters flown by stunt pilots.
“That’s insane, Prescott.”
“Let me try. Worst case, I roll off the car and get a little scraped up, and you can shoot the driver and crash the car then.”
The pilot interjected, “Whatever you’re going to do, it had better be soon. The end of this valley is coming up fast. Once he climbs into the mountains and trees, we won’t get another shot at him.”
Jackson stared at the FBI agent, willing him to agree to this plan. If that car crashed, Ana and the baby would be hurt or worse.
“All right. Do it,” the FBI man bit out.
Jackson moved into the doorway and stepped out onto the skid. “Lower!” he shouted into his headset. He yelled directions at the pilot to guide the guy into position in front of and above the racing car. Now, if only the driver would keep the speed steady until he jumped.
“On my mark, dip down six feet fast,” Jackson called.
“Roger. Standing by,” the pilot replied.
“Three. Two. One. Mark!”
* * *
Ana watched as the helicopter swerved around overhead and Pete swore up a storm.
“You know this ends badly for you, right?” she asked him. If she could distract him, pull his attention away from the helicopter, maybe he would lose focus and make a mistake. Like slowing down the car. He was tooling along at about forty miles per hour, which was about twenty miles per hour too fast for this rough, slippery gravel road.
“They’re going to shoot you if you don’t stop,” she commented.
“Shut up!”
“Did you know they can land that bird on top of your car? They can force you to stop whether you like it or not.”
“I said. Shut. Up.”
She grabbed the door handle, ostensibly to steady herself after he swerved again. Dang. The pilot had nearly put a skid through the windshield that time. The problem was, if Pete got too rattled and went off the left side of the road, they would tumble down the mountainside for hundreds and hundreds of feet. She was highly doubtful anyone would survive that kind of crash. Not at this speed.
Shoot. She might have to take her chances and jump even if Pete didn’t slow down any more. She tensed, reviewing her training and preparing to force open the door and jump.
The helicopter dipped abruptly and something large and dark flew at them without warnin
g. She screamed as the car lurched and something slammed into the windshield.
A familiar face glared into the car and Pete shouted incoherently. Reflexively, the guy slammed on the brakes. Jackson was thrown off the front of the car, but not before she saw him mouth a single word to her.
Jump.
She didn’t stop. Didn’t think. She just trusted him and did as he ordered. She threw the door open and jumped. She curled into a ball, hands thrown over her head and neck as she hit the dirt.
The impact was incredible. Her body rolled over and over and over like a rolling stone. And with every roll, some new part of her body slammed into the hard, gravel-studded ground. She rolled so many times she lost track of where up and down were and grew too dizzy to see.
The rolling slowed. The sky righted itself overhead, and the ground was hard and painful beneath her.
Jackson. Ohmigod. He’d been thrown from the car at a much higher speed than she’d come out of it. Was he all right? Had he plunged off the mountain in his heroic bid to buy her an escape?
She pushed to her hands and knees. Her palms burned like fire and it felt like there was no skin left on either knee. She pressed painfully to her feet. In time to see the helicopter ram Pete’s car from behind. The car plunged off the road at a high rate of speed. The sound of metal crunching and a cloud of dust rose ahead of her.
She turned to look behind her. Where was Jackson?
She took a stumbling step. Another. Broke into a shambling jog. Coordination returned gradually and she picked up speed, running for all she was worth to where Jackson had been thrown off the hood of the car.
Please be alive. Please be alive. Please be alive...
Chapter 20
Jackson blinked his eyes open and squinted against the glare of the hot sun in his face. Damn, it was bright.
A female voice sobbed from somewhere nearby. Something about thanking God that devolved into a diatribe about stupid heroics that nearly got people killed. But mostly, he registered pain. From head to foot. Not one part of his body didn’t hurt right now.
“Ana?” he rasped. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, you big idiot. I’m right here. And I’m fine.”
He tried to smile, but the effort was more than he could manage. He sighed and let his eyes drift closed.
* * *
Ana sat back on her heels, shielding her face from the flying gravel and dirt as the helicopter set down a dozen yards away from her and Jackson. A man in a dark blue jacket with big white letters announcing him to be FBI ran from the chopper toward her.
“Is he alive?” the agent shouted over the noise of the helicopter.
“Unconscious!” she shouted back.
“You okay?”
“Yes,” she yelled.
“Can you help me carry him to the bird?” the agent called.
She nodded and lifted Jackson’s limp arm, draping it over her shoulder. The agent grabbed Jackson’s other arm, and between them, they horsed him upright. Dragging his dead weight between them, they got him over to the helicopter and dumped him inside as gently as they could.
Jackson moaned, but that was the only indication of life from him.
The ride back to Serendipity went fast—the pilot flew like a bat out of hell—but every minute of it was agony for her. She knew all too well the risks of the kind of fall he’d taken. Broken bones were the least of it. The bigger worries were spinal-cord injury and brain injury. Paralysis. Death.
They landed on the roof of the county hospital, and a trauma team whisked Jackson out of the chopper and onto a gurney with shocking speed. He disappeared into the building as the team sprinted away with him.
That was when she noticed her legs felt kind of weak. And she was feeling a little light-headed.
“Whoa, there,” the FBI agent said sharply. He grabbed her around the waist moments before her legs went out from under her. He scooped her up in both arms and carried her toward the same door Jackson had gone through a minute before. Someone came outside with a nice, soft bed, and the agent laid her down on it. Everything faded to bright white light. And then to black.
* * *
Ana woke up, disoriented, unsure of what had woken her. There it was again. Something pounding like a hammer on wood. No. Fingers. Drumming impatiently on a hard surface.
She turned her head toward the noise and was shocked to see a hospital room take shape around her as her eyes slowly came into focus. Her eyes closed again.
“Wake up, baby. It’s me.”
Jackson. With Herculean effort, she did as he ordered and opened her eyes. And there he was, looking more beautiful than he’d ever been on screen, even with scratches and bruises covering one side of his face. She whispered through her incredibly dry throat, “You’re real? You’re alive?”
“Yup. I’ve just got a little concussion. Nothing a few aspirin won’t fix right up.”
Her hand lurched to her belly in sudden alarm. “The baby?”
“Fine. Tough little fella. You executed that jump perfectly. Rolled up in a tight little ball and protected our son from any harm at all.”
“It might be a girl,” she retorted.
“Yogi Surhan said it’s a boy, and he’s never wrong.”
She rolled her eyes at him, but doing so hurt. “Why am I in here?”
“You fainted. Doctors decided it would be good for you to sleep a little while and they gave you something in that IV to help you rest. You had quite a scare.”
“It was Pete Riccolo—” she started.
“Chandler’s buddy.”
“He said they killed three girls and did...things to them.”
Jackson laid a gentle finger over her lips, stopping the flood of horrified words. “He’s dead, Ana. He’s not ever going to hurt anyone else. You’re safe.”
Tears came then. Jackson just gathered her in his arms and let her cry all over his shirt. Which was progress for him, she supposed. Usually, he panicked and bolted at the first glimpse of tears. Slowly, she cried out the stress and fear of the kidnapping and her certainty that she and the baby were going to die.
“That jump onto the hood of Pete’s car was idiotic,” she eventually mumbled.
“It worked, didn’t it? Slowed him down enough for you to get out of the car.”
“How did you know I would jump?”
“I knew you were brave enough to do it and that you would want to live for me and the baby.”
She lifted her head from his chest to glare up at him. “It was a hell of a risk you took.”
He stared down at her for a long time before he finally murmured, “You’re worth it.”
“Are you drunk?” she demanded.
He laughed shortly. “God knows I could use a drink. But no.”
“Don’t ever do anything that stupid again, Jackson.”
“Or else what?”
“Or else I’ll have to kick your butt,” she retorted.
“You and what army?” he laughed.
“I don’t need an army. I’ll get Minerva to help me.”
“No fair.”
“All’s fair in love and war,” she declared.
The humor drained slowly from their eyes as they stared at one another.
“And which one is this? Love or war?” he asked quietly.
“Which one do you want it to be?” she replied. All of a sudden she felt queasy, and butterflies were sprouting in her stomach.
If only she didn’t care how he answered her question. But she did. She always would. Like it or not, this was a man she was always going to love. Her heart would always bleed for him and she just had to get used to it. He pushed away from her and paced the confines of the small hospital room liked a caged animal.
He
whirled abruptly and blurted, “I’m glad we’re having a baby together, Ana.”
She stared at him in shock. She hadn’t seen that one coming. “Glad?” she breathed. “Why?”
He shoved a hand through his hair. “I think we’ve established pretty thoroughly that I suck at this relationship stuff. And God knows I’m no artist with words, so I’m probably going to screw up saying this. But hear me out, okay?”
He hesitated, and she took pity, saying gently, “Just spit it out.”
“I’m really sorry about how I reacted the night you told me you were having a baby. I had flashbacks to my mother and freaked out. But you’re so not my mother, I can hardly describe how different you are from her. I know you would never take advantage of me or of an innocent baby.
‘I’m sorry I got you into any of this. I should have stayed away from you, but for some reason, I just couldn’t. You were irresistible.” He sputtered to a stop as he ran out of words.
“Jackson, my life was never going to be the same once we made love, whether I got pregnant or not.”
“Why’s that?”
It was her turn to struggle for words. “After that first night, I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t love you at least a little. I’ve been crazy about you pretty much from the moment we met, but you barely gave me the time of day. I mean, you were nice, but you didn’t open up emotionally. I tried to convince myself I didn’t care that deeply for you. But after we made love and you knocked my world totally off its axis, I had to admit the truth to myself.”
“And now?” he asked soberly. “How do you feel now?”
How in the hell was she supposed to answer that? She would be a complete idiot to lay her guts out first, to declare her love for him without any hint from him about how he felt. The first rule of dealing with alpha males like him was never to give them both the upper hand and the lower hand. A girl had to hold out a few cards of her own to play in an emergency.
