“I didn’t realize,” she said, her eyes moving slowly over the artwork before shifting to the other tattoo that marked my chest.
I pulled my shirt back on, turning my back to her. “I don’t suppose you had any reason to guess.”
“I made an assumption and I shouldn’t have.”
“We all make assumptions.”
“Yes, well, I hate it when people do that to me. Just because of who my father is…”
She stopped, clearly realizing she was about to give away information that could be dangerous to a woman who was forced to accept the hospitality of a man she didn’t know. Too bad she didn’t know that I was already aware of her father’s identity. In fact, I knew details about her that she’d probably forgotten herself.
“I’ll take you to bed,” I said after she remained silent for several minutes. “You should really get some rest.”
I scooped her up out of her chair, her body seemingly lighter and lighter each time I carried her. She remained limp, not fighting me in the least this time. In the small bedroom where the air mattress sat partially deflated on the floor, I carefully bent low and laid her down.
“I don’t mean to seem ungrateful,” she said, snagging the front of my shirt before I could fully pull away from her. “I’m just… I’m a little frightened. I’ve never had such a large gap of memory before.”
“I’m sure it’ll all come back to you.”
She nodded, smiling halfheartedly, her eyes filling with tears again. This time I believed them to be genuine. I pulled away, turning my back on her as much out of respect as anything else.
“Thank you for the meal. It was delicious.”
“There’s more where that came from tomorrow.” I turned at the doorway. “Try not to force it, Valerie. I’m sure it will come back to you before long.”
I stepped through the door, closing it firmly behind me. I almost felt sorry for her. If I could tell her the truth… but then everything would be ruined, and we needed this score for reasons I didn’t even want to begin considering. My hands were tied.
I couldn’t let her get to me. No matter how frustrated she was, no matter how frightened, I couldn’t let her get to me. She was just a target. Nothing more.
Yet, somehow, she already was getting to me…
Chapter 12
Valerie
I waited until I heard his footsteps drifting away from the door before I got up, hobbling over to the low dresser. I looked around, trying to find something I could use to pry the bandage off my leg. I’d taken a good look at it and could see that he’d glued it with something, some sort of hard adhesive. Picking at it hadn’t done much good and pushing at the material was nearly impossible because it was stiff. Heavy. He’d put it on there in such a way that it wasn’t going anywhere.
I couldn’t move my ankle, couldn’t determine if there really was an injury or not. I needed to see it.
I wasn’t bruised. There was no injury to my head. He claimed I’d been in a car accident, but there was little soreness. I mean… there was soreness on the side of my hip, and my ribs ached a little. My arms felt as though someone had been dragging me around by them for days. But a car accident would result in a seatbelt bruise across the chest, a bruise or even a cut on the forehead from hitting the steering wheel. There should be evidence of the airbag hitting my face, of the forward motion that would have tossed my body around with incredible force.
The evidence on my body said that I wasn’t in a car accident. It was more likely that I’d been knocked unconscious and then manhandled before I arrived here. I mean, really, who did he think he was fooling? Did he really think I, a doctor, wouldn’t figure that out?
I found a piece of wood hanging from under one of the drawers, a support that had come loose a while ago. I tugged it free of the single nail still holding it on and hobbled back over to the air mattress, dropping down so hard that the mattress provided no support for my bottom, allowing it to smack against the hard floor with a good whack.
“Shit!”
I glanced at the door, a little worried my jailer might have heard the noise, but no footsteps sounded in the hallway, no indication that he’d heard a sound. Maybe I’d lucked out and he’d gone to sleep. The moment I got this useless thing off my foot, I was going to make a dash for the front door. I was going to get out of here and find my friends, figure out what the hell had happened once and for all.
I slid the stick between the heavy bandage and my leg, forcing it with some strength because the bandages were fairly snug against my flesh. Once the stick was about halfway down my calf, I levered it up against the material, hoping just a little bit of push and tug would find a weakness in the fabric. However, it proved more difficult than I’d imagined it would. It was just cloth, for crying out loud! But it was stiff with whatever he’d used to glue the loose edge onto the rest of the material. I tugged the stick free and moved it over to another spot, one toward the back where I thought I could provide more power to the leverage. But it didn’t do me any good. I was just digging the end of the stick into my calf.
I pushed the stick around to the side of my ankle and pushed it against my injury, expecting it to cause pain or give me an idea of any swelling that might exist. I couldn’t feel anything, but the material was so stiff that it was hard to tell where I was and what I was pushing against.
I cried out, throwing the stick across the room in frustration.
I knew I’d been kidnapped. I could still feel the man’s arm around my shoulders, could still smell the sickly-sweet chloroform. It was there in my memory, so clear that it could have happened just a moment ago. And I knew women got kidnapped every day in countries all around the world, even the United States, and especially Mexico. It was what they wanted that worried me a little. I was still alive. That suggested only two things: they were waiting for someone to come and take me wherever they planned to break me down and turn me into some sort of prostitute, or they were hoping to get a ransom from my father.
This wasn’t my first rodeo. I’d been kidnapped once before.
I was nine. I’d been in Galveston with my father, but he’d been called back to Houston for an emergency at the office. He’d left me with the housekeeper who had come to make our meals and do our laundry at the Galveston house. He didn’t know that she had a boyfriend who’d just gotten out of prison and was looking for a quick, easy score. They’d taken me in the middle of the night, hiding me in a dingy apartment in Houston, arguing over how much ransom to ask for and the threats that he wanted to make to my father about my safety. They were a couple of drugged-out losers who couldn’t have planned a trip to the park, let alone a kidnapping.
I’d slipped out of the apartment window in the middle of the night, had run to a nearby convenience store, and had the clerk call the police. I was back in my own bed within twenty-four hours of the actual kidnapping.
A million dollars. That’s what they’d finally decided I was worth to my father. I later learned that my father already had an account set up for just that possibility and it contained ten times their demand. And it had only continued to grow over the years.
Oliver could get his hands on quite a bit of loot if that was what he was after.
I leaned back against the wall, staring down at the hateful bandage around my leg. It was hindering my ability to get around, which, I supposed, was the entire purpose of putting it on. I’d tried walking on it, but there was something about the shape of the bottom of the thing that made it nearly impossible. It threw off my balance and made my foot ache in intense ways. It was like he’d purposely wrapped it around my foot in such a way that it would make it impossible for me to walk.
He was smart. I had to give him that.
I didn’t know what to think about Oliver. He wasn’t like anyone else I’d ever met. He was angry. But he was kind. He was very intelligent, but he’d ended up in prison after a stupid, avoidable accident. Had he been drinking? Otherwise impaired? Was it something to
do with his time in the military?
I had to admit that it had really shocked me to learn he’d been a navy SEAL. He didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would have the wherewithal, let alone the desire, to undergo such intensive training. To make it through that training and then go to war—which he had to have done considering our country had been at war for more than a decade, a war that required the best of the best, and the SEALs were the best of the best—took character that I rarely saw in criminals. To go from that to a stint in jail to kidnapping… it almost didn’t make sense.
But that was what he’d done.
Right?
I threw myself down on my pillow and tossed an arm across my face. Did he kidnap me? Or was there a real car accident? Was it possible I’d somehow escaped the man who took me and crashed the getaway car? Then again, the car he’d described to me was the rental Scott had procured for our time down here in Oaxaca.
Nothing made sense to me.
I lay there for a long time, straining to remember what’d happened on that little porch outside the clinic. I could feel the rain, could hear the voices of patients and clinic staff inside, including Taylor’s distinct laughter. I even thought I’d heard TJ’s voice in something of a whisper just before that arm came around my shoulders. I could remember the feel of that arm, the thin, white shirt covering part of the forearm, the scent of cologne—something spicy, like what TJ had been wearing back in Houston. And the smell of the chloroform.
I tried to focus on that shirt, tried to remember all the little details, but sleep slowly began to overcome me. My thoughts became jumbled, confused. I went from the tight details of that arm around me to the vague memory of another man’s arms around me. There’d been few men in my life, fewer who were allowed into the intimate circle I maintained around myself. I’d known intimacy, but not as often or as regularly as I would have liked. It was difficult to find time for those sorts of things when studying medicine, harder still when I got my degree and discovered that guys outside of the medical arena found my degree intimidating. Emasculating, one guy actually told me.
That’s why it was a little funny that it was the feel of arms around me that my mind seemed to stick to. Not arms with that white sleeve, but someone else. At first, it was a little fuzzy, just the feeling of a warm body holding me, of a man’s arms braced against my ribs. But then it came more into focus, the feel of a body against my back, of those arms moving, of a strong vibration… of being on a motorcycle.
I’d never ridden a motorcycle in my life. But I had this thought that I had been, that I rode in front of a faceless man, racing across miles and miles of wet pavement. That was all I had, just the feeling of riding over miles of wet asphalt and dirt. Lots of dirt.
Why would I be on a motorcycle? Had that happened after the chloroform? Didn’t my kidnappers have a better way to transport me?
And then sleep took over and my thoughts disappeared, the images or memories or whatever they’d been long gone.
If they were real, they were nothing more than a wisp of smoke now.
***
“Breakfast,” a male voice said somewhere close by.
I opened my eyes and found myself staring into dark eyes that were more copper than they’d ever been brown. I wanted to get lost in those depths for a moment, lose myself in a gaze that concerned, that affectionate, that kind. But then he pulled back and I suddenly remembered who he was, who I was, and where I was.
I immediately sat up.
“What did you say?”
“It’s time for breakfast. Or more like brunch.” He smiled, a little crinkle touching the edges of his eyes. “You slept in a little.”
“What time is it?”
“A little after eleven.”
I grunted, reaching up to brush a bit of loose hair from my face. He reached out at the same moment and brushed the same piece of hair back from my face, tucking it nicely behind my ear. I blushed, and he smiled slightly wider.
“Do you want to use the restroom first?”
I nodded, allowing him to scoop me up like I weighed nothing. The bathroom was small, simple to navigate. He set me on my feet and I managed to hobble over to the toilet without making too much fuss over it. I heard the door click closed, but hadn’t even thought about the possibility of privacy, the urge to go was that strong. When I was done, I washed my hands more out of habit than anything else, scrubbing hard for reasons I couldn’t begin to decipher even for myself. I caught sight of my image in the mirror and stopped for a second, staring into eyes that were no longer familiar, at features that seemed foreign. It was my face, but something had changed so profoundly that it just seemed different.
“What are you doing, woman?” I hissed at the image. “Why are you here?”
I lifted my hair off my neck, twisting it into a knot that wouldn’t require a clip or any other mechanism to keep it up. As I did, I caught sight of something I hadn’t noticed before: a slight bruise on my neck right above the carotid vein. I pressed my fingertip to it, not surprised to find that it wasn’t particularly sore. It looked… I leaned closer to the mirror just to be sure. It looked like a puncture mark, like something a particularly aggressive injection might leave.
Had I been drugged? The feeling of sluggishness I’d felt when I first woke up the night before, that sense of fog that overwhelmed me for a bit, came back to me with new understanding. Someone had injected me with a sedative.
“Are you ready?”
I jumped when Oliver opened the door, almost expecting to see a syringe in his hand. I quickly dropped my hands and switched off the water, turning toward him with a forced smile. “Ready whenever you are,” I said.
He offered me an arm, guiding me out into the narrow hallway where it would be easier for him to pick me up. Once again, he carried me like a groom taking his bride over the threshold of their new home. We went into the kitchen, where he settled me in a chair at the table, tugging another chair over so that I could rest my foot on it. There was oatmeal and fresh fruit on the table, a glass of apple juice already poured and set at my elbow.
“It looks lovely.”
“Do you want brown sugar? Or some honey?”
“Brown sugar is great. Thanks.”
He brought a small container to the table, then settled in a chair to my left. I watched as he dug into his food, scraping it up in quick scoops, almost as if he were afraid someone might take it from him.
“Where are you from, Oliver?”
He glanced up at me. “San Antonio, born and raised.”
“Really? I’m from Houston, born and raised. I did medical school and my residency in Chicago, but got back to Texas as quickly as I could.”
He nodded. “I’ve traveled quite extensively, but never found anywhere outside of Texas I’d want to make my home.”
“Where have you visited?”
He rolled his shoulders. “Europe, mostly. Afghanistan. Germany.”
I picked up my spoon and stirred a little sugar into the oatmeal, watching it liquefy as it melted in the heat of the cereal. I wasn’t terribly hungry, my thoughts too busy, too terrified. How was I supposed to have a normal conversation with this man when I was pretty sure he was holding me against my will?
“Where did you serve your time?”
His expression tightened slightly. “Huntsville.”
My eyebrows rose. “And the La Eme tattoo on your chest? What’s that about?”
He’d finished his oatmeal before I’d taken a single spoonful. He put down his spoon and sat back, watching me with something kind of like curiosity, but more like annoyance. “What do you know about that tattoo?”
“I know it stands for the Mexican Mafia that began in the United States, not here in Mexico.”
He lowered his head slightly. “Whoever taught you about prison tats knew what he was talking about.”
“Why would you get a tattoo like that? Are you part of that gang?”
“Would it surprise you if I
said I was?”
“You don’t strike me as the type.”
“And what is the type? Do you think that group is only for Latinos? Or is it something else? Do you think gangbangers can’t start over, get a full-time job and live their lives on the straight and narrow?”
“I honestly don’t know what to think.”
“Eat your oatmeal, Dr. Cole.”
“How do you know my name?”
He stood up, carried his dishes over to the sink. “You told me.”
“I told you my name was Valerie. I never mentioned my last name.”
I could see tension come into his shoulders. He stood there in front of the sink the same way he had the night before, his shoulders hunched, his head lowered. Then he took a deep breath and turned, regarding me with hooded eyes.
“I’m going to go see if the roads are passable. Will you be okay here alone?”
“I’m fine.”
He hesitated a moment, still watching me. Then he pushed away from the sink, snatched up some keys from the counter, and rushed into the living room. I got up and hobbled after him, holding my injured leg out to one side as I hopped along like a child. As I watched, he opened the front door with a key that he took from his pocket, a key separate from the others. He stepped through without looking back, his body blocking most of the view, but I did catch sight of a blue sky and a hint of the dry earth just beyond the front of the old, rundown trailer.
It wasn’t raining anymore.
I hopped quickly toward the door, reaching it just as he turned the lock in the handle, securing it once again. Then I heard the deadbolt snap into place, too.
Two locks. Both fairly secure.
I pulled on the doorknob, looking for any sort of play in it, any sort of hope that I might be able to pry it loose from the frame of the door. But there wasn’t any movement, nothing that might suggest it was less than solid. Besides, if I managed to get it loose, the deadbolt was still there, still securely locked. And I knew there wasn’t anything getting that off, short of breaking the doorframe.
Caballo Security Box Set Page 7