by Dale Mayer
When his phone vibrated, he nodded with satisfaction. “We are confirmed to meet a couple estates over,” he said. “It’s not far, about two miles.”
“Why can’t they pick us up here?”
“Because the two of us are here on the property,” he said. “We parked the vehicle so it was hidden from view near the house.”
“Two miles is a long way,” she said.
He looked at her, concerned. “Did they beat you?”
“No. Starved, yes. And drugged. I’m still dealing with those aftereffects.”
Understanding whispered across his face. “I’ll see if he can find a closer rendezvous point.” Even as they talked, he quickly sent off a text.
She was grateful and said, “We need probably what? A half hour to go two miles?”
“At least,” he said. “If we were running, we could do it in fifteen minutes, but, if you can’t run, then we’d be hard-pressed to walk it in that time.”
“So let’s go,” she said bravely.
He picked up the pace slightly, and she caught him glancing at her several times in concern. She thought she’d been doing better, keeping up fine.
Then he said, “This isn’t working.” He bent down and picked her up.
She gave out a small shriek as she was suddenly airborne. He was carrying her at a run, and she was no lightweight. She was 130 at least.
He started to jog now.
“Good Lord,” she said. Her arms went around his neck, as she hung on tightly, trying to stop the jostling. For whatever reason, it was killing her. Racking pain ran up and down her body. But she pursed her lips and hung on.
“It’s the only way to get there in time,” he said.
“Nothing closer?”
“Nothing doable,” he murmured. “Just hang on, and this will be over soon.”
“If you say so. How is it you can even do this?” she whispered. She could sense the effort he was putting in, and his body was already streaked with sweat as he carried her. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I wish I could do more.”
That startled a laugh out of him. “Don’t be,” he said. “If you were on my back, it’d be a different story. Carrying you like this is a little harder.”
“I can go on your back, if that’s easier?”
“Maybe,” he said. “I’ll let you know. In the meantime, I’ll keep going this way.”
“But you can hardly see,” she said. “I can barely see anything.” Indeed, her vision had closed down to a light gray everywhere. She closed her eyes and clenched them tight as she tried to catch her breath. If she could at least do that much, she could regain her feet and run beside him. “I used to run,” she said, “but I haven’t in the last few years.”
“Not an issue,” he said. “Let’s just keep moving.”
And though the pain still racked her, she buried her face against his neck and hung on. He had that raw male smell to him, mingled with sweat, some kind of aftershave she thought, topped off with a bit of beard bristle. She wanted to nuzzle in closer, but, when she moved in closer, she would then bounce back again.
“I’m sorry if this is hurting you,” he said. “You never did say if you were hurt in any way.”
“I don’t think so,” she said, “but the cold is just killing me. They said it was a reaction to the drugs, and maybe it was. I don’t know, but it was also a reaction to a lack of food and to the housing that they put me into.”
“That bare room?”
“Yes. And, yes, I had blankets,” she said, “but they only just gave those to me. Before that, I was alone on that cot with nothing to cover up with.”
“And that’s a good way to get sick,” he said. His breathing hardly appeared affected, even though he was jogging as he carried her.
“I know,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d ever get warm again. And honestly, I wasn’t really. I asked them for socks, and they gave me some. They were a help, but I caught a chill, and I couldn’t shake it.”
He nodded. “We should have brought the blanket with us.”
“No,” she said, “it’s all good.” At least she hoped it was because this was even more painful as time went on.
A few minutes later, he whispered, “We are almost there. Hold tight.”
She let out a gasp of relief.
He glanced at her sharply. “Are you sure you are not hurt?”
She shook her head. “I’m sure.” But, after this bumpy ride, something was jarring loose, she was sure of it. It seemed as if every part of her body had taken a beating. She didn’t understand it, but then she’d never experienced being carried like this before either. Hell, she didn’t remember ever being carried.
Even as a child, it wasn’t as if she had a father figure who took time to play with her in any way. Her father had always been a political demon, heading upward at all costs. It was good for his image to have children, so he had one. But he didn’t waste his time on her. Zadie’s relationship had been entirely with her mother, and, even if her father was shot and hung, Zadie would do what she could to save her mother because her mother was innocent in all this.
Wasn’t she?
Zadie had to believe that. When she got her mother safely away, they would have an honest heart-to-heart, and Zadie could figure out how involved her mother had been in her father’s illegal political activities. Despite the slip-ups her mother let by, Zadie was happy that at least her mother appeared to be fine and healthy when she’d seen her. The kidnappers hadn’t shown any interest in her parents at all—as if realizing trying to kidnap the pair of them while under guard was more than the kidnappers could do. Plus they were aging and not in the best physical shape. Go for the daughter appeared to be their motto.
Her mother’s mistake had been marrying a power-hungry politician. And one with very little in the way of ethics or morals. But her mother was not the same as her father, and neither was Zadie like her father, even though the world out there wanted desperately to paint both women with the same brush.
*
When she went limp in his arms, Zack looked down to find her unconscious. Swearing softly under his breath, he picked up the pace, racing toward his destination.
Thankfully he was decent at navigation in the dark. He’d taken a good long look along the way as they traveled here, once the arrangements had been made. But even now he was more and more concerned about Zadie. He shifted his grip on her legs and felt something sticky under his fingers. Now he had something else to worry about. She’d probably been cut on that broken window. If she was bleeding or bleeding badly, she probably wouldn’t have noticed with their mad panic run to escape her captors. And, since he’d been carrying her, they had no light to notice anything amiss on her. Would she not have felt something? Should he slow or stop to investigate when he neared the rendezvous point with Bonaparte?
Up ahead, Zack could see the shape of a vehicle. He judged the outline, realized it would be Bonaparte’s, and headed toward it. The light flashed once and then twice. As Zack neared it, he waved at the driver. And he kept on waving, making it look like something was wrong.
Finally the message came across, and Bonaparte hopped from the vehicle and raced toward him. He was only ten feet away when he reached him.
“Problems?” he asked in a low voice.
“Check her legs for me,” he said. “She passed out while I was carrying her.”
Immediately Bonaparte pulled up his phone, turned on the flashlight app, and checked. Indeed, a long gash with a steady flow of blood poured down her leg. Both of the men swore.
“We’ve got to get that stopped,” Zack said, immediately heading to the vehicle, slipping her into the back seat, then finding and pouring out a bag that he searched through. Coming back with clean socks, he quickly made a tourniquet around the top of her leg and folded a strip of gauze into a pad to put pressure on the wound. With that done, he tied it up with another piece of gauze that he grabbed.
Awkwardly holding her in his lap,
he got into the back seat and said to Bonaparte, “Drive quickly and carefully.”
“I can be fast, or I can be careful,” he said. “But being careful and fast, that’s a different story.”
“We have to get out of here,” he said, “and we don’t want to kill her in the process.”
“Understood, but that’ll need stitches.”
“I’m hoping we can get some pressure on it to slow down the bleeding,” he said. “It’s bleeding way too fast.”
“I know. I saw that. Anyway, we are on the road. Let’s keep to the schedule, and I’ll see what I can come up with.”
“I’ll stretch her out on the seat back here and see if I can work on that leg a bit more,” he said. He shuffled over, laying her on the back seat, so her legs were on his lap. He kept the pressure on her bandage as he mopped up the blood coming from her leg. Now that most of the blood was gone, he took a better look under the gauze. It was hard to see, but he had his phone flashlight to give him a little bit of light. “A piece of glass is in her leg.”
“Well, that’s got to come out,” Bonaparte said.
Zack nodded. “I know we probably shouldn’t stop but at least tell me when we get to a good long stretch of road with no turns or potholes or dips in the road or whatever, so I can do a bit of surgery here.” He fished into the back of his wallet; he had a couple tools in there, but it wasn’t like he had tweezers. With his phone’s flashlight and the vehicle’s interior light, it wouldn’t be enough. Yet this embedded glass was why he couldn’t apply too much pressure to the wound, or it would just cut her deeper.
“Are we good for a while?” Zack asked Bonaparte.
“I can give you like four minutes, starting now.”
Zack had a little lockpick set, and, using that, he carefully dug underneath the glass and popped it to the surface. He pulled it out and immediately clamped down tight on the wound with more gauze. “I got out the glass piece,” he said, “but I can’t be sure more isn’t in there. If it’s all out,” he said, “the bleeding should slow down, unless something vital has been hit.”
“Not in that location,” Bonaparte said, “unless she’s got a second injury.” A few minutes later, Bonaparte called back, “Is it easing?”
“I hate to lift my hand and check,” he said.
“If you got any water handy, keep that bandage moist. You don’t want it to stick to her leg and dry out.”
“And, if I leave it moist, we will have blood everywhere,” he said.
“I know. I hear you. But you need to clean the wound anyway.”
He pulled out one of the bottles of water in Bonaparte’s bag, popped open the little cork with his teeth, and lifted the gauze slightly to look. He poured water around the wound to clean it as best as he could, then clamped down again with pressure, using a clean T-shirt from Bonaparte’s bag. Zack mopped up the rest of her leg and washed it down as much as he could. She had pants on, but the glass had cut a long strip open. He noted she had a slight scratch as it got deeper and deeper to where her skin had been gashed open, so she must have put her weight on the broken glass as she went through the window.
Why didn’t she say something? She had said she was cold. Maybe her sense of touch was numbed? She was probably too panicked and maybe even in shock to notice her injury until she couldn’t keep up. He should have checked her sooner. He swore to himself for his oversight. “I shouldn’t have let her run as much as she did,” he said. “She’s lost a lot of blood.”
“She’s young and healthy,” Bonaparte said. “She will bounce back.”
“True enough. It’s just frustrating,” he murmured. He looked down at the sleeping woman to see the waxiness on her skin. Her tummy was also concave, as if she hadn’t had anything to eat in quite a while. He frowned at that. “Do we have any food in here?”
“I have a couple protein bars but nothing else.”
“Depending on how long ’til our destination, she’ll need food when she wakes up. They starved her in there.”
“Bastards,” he said in an aggravated tone.
“Left her for days without any kind of heat or blankets, until today,” Zack said quietly. “She said the freezing was one of the biggest problems when she caught a chill. She couldn’t get warm again.”
“Is she well-dressed now?”
“No,” he said, noting her feet were covered in socks, and that was it. “She also has no footwear.” He studied her and swore softly and fluently. “Jesus, I should have picked her up right from the beginning. She would have done much better that way.”
“But how could you know?” Bonaparte asked. “You can’t blame yourself now. We got her away from there. We fixed the leg, and it’s all good. Job accomplished.”
“I wonder about that,” he said.
“I have to get gas,” Bonaparte said. “We are crossing the border as soon as we can, heading toward Greece. I believe Komotini is the closest big city there.”
“ETA?”
“We’re looking at 222 miles, so three hours for a normal driver.”
“Well, with you driving, it will be faster.”
“Definitely,” he said. “And, once we get on the road in Greece, we’ll stop and pick up some food somewhere.”
“Good enough,” he said. “I’ll update Levi.” Using his free forearm, he gently kept pressure on the wound as he texted Levi. Zadie is free, in our vehicle heading toward Greece, not out of Turkey yet.
A text came back. Do you want a flight?
He thought about that and responded, Passport?
It would take at least one day to get paperwork, Levi texted back. Two days, most likely.
Zack looked at Bonaparte. “Levi is asking about a flight.”
“If we had the paperwork for her already, we could,” he said, “but it won’t come that fast.”
“True enough. We can get a small private plane and make it, but we’d still likely be in trouble if we can’t get out of this country first.”
“I suggest we hit Greece first,” he said, “where we can get her leg checked over and then make plans from that safety point.”
Zack quickly passed that on to Levi.
Levi responded with, Good enough.
At that, Zack added, Apparently Zadie’s captors were a separate faction, two brothers and a wife, at the same place where the parents are being held under guard by the current regime. The trio are trying to get the brothers’ father out of jail. Somehow they thought Zadie would give them leverage.
Why would they care?
I don’t know.
I’ll do some research, Levi said.
When his phone rang, Zack answered it. “We could have done this from the beginning,” he said humorously.
“Maybe we should have. How bad is she?”
“Bleeding pretty badly, but I’ve slowed it down.”
“And yet you’ll wait until you get to Greece?”
“The cuts are deep,” he said, “but we want to get out of Turkey for sure. If we can find a place to stop and do some basic surgery, we’d do that too. Otherwise we need a clinic somewhere.”
“Just across the border there’s a small Greek village,” he said. “A medical center is about a mile in. The doctor there is an expert, and he can fix her up.”
“Now that would be perfect. Have you got us on satellite?”
“Yes, you’re about ninety minutes out.”
Zack had his phone on Speaker at that point.
Bonaparte laughed and said, “We’ll make it in sixty.”
Levi swore at him on the other side. “Bonaparte, safety first.”
“Always.” But immediately the car surged forward much faster.
“Well, we will either make it in sixty minutes,” Zack said, hanging on to Zadie, “or we’ll be dead.”
“Check in either way,” Levi said.
Just as Levi was about to hang up, Zack called out, “Wait. What’s the doctor’s name?”
“Passmore. Henry Passmore.”
And, with that, there was nothing but a click on the phone. “We’ll go see Dr. Henry Passmore.”
“I heard. Keep her alive until then.”
In fact, fifty-six minutes later, Bonaparte called out as he pulled off into the little village. Zack just shook his head. “Jesus Christ, you drove like a madman.”
“But in control,” he said. “Speed is good, but it’s only good if you are in control.”
“If you say so,” he said.
They drove through the small town, and now just enough light was on the horizon, and Zack guessed it had to be around five or six in the morning. “The doctor won’t even be at the clinic yet,” he said.
“Tell Levi to contact him.”
“I’m already doing that,” he said. He sent a text to Levi. We’re here. How do we find the doctor? It’s hardly waiting room hours.
Go to the clinic. He’s waiting for you.
He smiled at that. “Apparently the doctor is waiting for us,” he said. He looked up the street. “Go forward two more blocks, then take a left.”
Bonaparte followed his directions past several more corners; then he pulled into a small building with a little parking lot in the front. A light was on inside. As soon as he pulled up, Zack opened his passenger’s door, gently slid her into his lap with her feet out the door first and struggled to get her outside the vehicle.
Once parked there, Bonaparte shut his door and asked, “Do you want me to carry her?”
Zack shook his head. “There’s nothing to her.”
They walked toward the clinic, when the side door opened, and a man in a white coat stood there. “I’m looking for Zack and Bonaparte,” he said.
“We are looking for Henry Passmore.”
The other man nodded agreeably. “You’ve found him. And this is the young lady with the leg wound?”
“Yes,” they said.
He held the door open wider and said, “Bring her straight into one of my exam rooms.”
They carried her through a series of rooms and finally to a bed, where Zack laid her on top. The doctor bustled around, turning lights on, bringing over a tray with instruments. He immediately cut away the lower part of her pant leg and asked, “How did she get this?”