by Linda Ladd
“Okay, but don’t waste time getting out of here. Get going now. I’ll call you when I get him.”
Doc nodded. “Just get that child to a hospital stat. I think she’ll be all right, given some time. She’s a lot better off now than she was when she got here.”
“Has she said anything?”
“No. She mumbles occasionally and tries to open her eyes. Hasn’t made it all the way awake yet, though. The antibiotics are helping. She’s breathing easier and the fever’s gone. She’ll be okay when she comes to, and I think that’ll be soon. She probably doesn’t want to wake up, not after what she’s been through.”
The child was lying on a couch at the back of the bunker. Auroria was holding the girl’s head on her lap. Very gently, Novak lifted her into his arms. He carried her out to the helicopter, and Claire and Black got out and started walking toward him. Black was a doctor, a psychiatrist, but he could help her. He’d know exactly what to do.
“My God, she’s so little. Just tiny.” That was Claire.
Black stepped up and felt her pulse and examined the splint on her wrist. “Yeah, she needs to be in a hospital. Come on, let’s go. Tell Doc and his wife to hurry.”
“They’re going to stay with her family for a while. Doc says they’ll be safe there.”
Within minutes, Black and Claire were back in the front seat and Black was lifting off and heading out over the jungle again. Novak sat in back, the little girl stretched across the seats. He stared down at her bruised face, at her frail body, and made plans for what he was going to do to the Mayan when he got his hands on him. He thought about that all the way back to the coast of Belize.
The closer they got to Jenn’s beach house, the more worried Novak became. She was still not answering any of her cell phones. She always answered eventually. Maybe she wouldn’t if she was transitioning an asset, but she would return the call as soon as she could. Something was wrong, he knew it, and he feared the worst. The Mayan knew how to find people. He had found Jenn; Novak was sure of it. And if that was the case, Jenn was dead. Novak could not stand the thought of it.
Black set the chopper down on the wide dirt road that led down to Jenn’s beach. Her house was small, with big airy porches and a widow’s walk on the roof. Everything looked okay, untouched, just the way he remembered it. He pulled out his gun. “Wait here. I’m going in.”
“No way, Novak. We’re going with you.”
Claire had that look on her face, the one he’d come to know that he couldn’t argue with. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Claire. I brought Jenn into this crap, and I’m going in alone. I’m afraid he got to her.”
“No, you are not going in alone. You got us down here, and we are going to help you. Somebody’s got to.”
Novak didn’t have time to argue with her. He just nodded and started out toward the house. They left the child safely locked in the backseat and followed, spreading out on either side of him, keeping about ten yards’ distance between them. Novak stopped at the edge of the beach. “You guys circle around to the front. I’ll take the back. Stay outside until I clear the house.”
They moved off and then angled around toward the ocean. Novak made his way up to the back deck, climbed the steps, and stood silently beside the kitchen slider. A gray Nissan was parked on the side of the house. It was the car he’d seen the blonde driving in Chetumal. She had been here, all right. Jenn should have seen him by now and opened the door—unless they were walking into a trap. The Mayan could still be inside, holding the women captive. Maybe it was a good thing Claire and Black had come along, after all. He pushed on the door handle. It slid easily to one side, so he pushed it open enough to edge inside. Everything looked the same as it had the last time he’d been there. Brown wicker furniture, white walls, white cabinets and countertops, but everything else awash with bright primary colors.
The first thing that hit him was the smell. Sick, horrible, stomach-turning. The smell of spilled blood. Novak knew then that Jenn was dead. His heart twisted. Every instinct told him to prepare himself for the worst, that he would find her dead and butchered any minute. He listened. Heard nothing but the low roar and ebb of waves sliding in over the hard-packed sand outside the front of the house. The camera over the refrigerator was tracking him. If Jenn was alive, she would have been watching and would have already shown herself.
Novak took a deep breath and covered his nose and mouth with the tail of his shirt. Then he moved across the kitchen, down low and slow. The light was shadowy inside, all the plantation shutters closed against the hot sun. That was normal. Jenn always kept them drawn to keep the place cool. A big bamboo ceiling fan rotated in the kitchen. Novak could feel the draft on top of his head. The smell was almost overwhelming. He moved past the kitchen table where he had eaten so many meals with Jenn, where he had made love to her once. He stopped at the door to the kitchen and kept his gun ready. He thrust the door open and the sickening odor intensified.
The living room was a mess. A big-time struggle had gone down. Jenn had fought her attacker tooth and nail. The glass coffee table was broken, Jenn’s books scattered all over the floor. A vase of fresh daisies was overturned, the blossoms wilted now. All the security cameras had been taken down and smashed. Near the front door, he found the most blood—lots of it—a big puddle that had oozed under a wicker rocker and pooled against the white wall behind it. A river of red. Somebody had been murdered right there, not a foot in front of him. He stepped around the couch and looked down at so much blood that Novak could hardly believe it. Too much blood loss for any human being to survive. The Mayan had gotten her in the jugular. Or maybe he had gotten the woman he thought of as Marisol, who hadn’t known how to fight back.
He checked all the rooms and found no sign of Jenn’s body or evidence of another murder. He still had hopes of finding her alive. It was hard for him to believe that anyone had gotten the jump on her. Then he moved to the front slider. That’s where he found Jenn’s shoe—one of the sandals she had been wearing the morning she’d taken off with Marisol, the red ones with tiny little mirrors on the straps. It lay on its side in a pool of blood. Jenn’s blood. Had to be. More blood was smeared across the floor and on the bottom of the door. The Mayan must have stabbed her right here while she was fighting for her life. No body, but again, this massive amount of blood could mean only one thing. Both women had been killed inside this room. There were no footprints in the blood leading away from the altercation.
Novak’s heart started squeezing in upon itself. It got so tight for a moment that he couldn’t breathe. He had been the one who had signed Jenn’s death warrant, and Marisol’s, whoever she had been. If he hadn’t sought Jenn out, if he hadn’t put her in this guy’s crosshairs, she’d be right here, alive and playing her favorite Sting CDs, or lying in the shade in the hammock, or taking care of her beloved plants. He tried to shake off the pain, the guilt. But he hadn’t found her body. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe she was alive somewhere. Hiding. He searched the house again. Went up to the widow’s walk. Nothing. Everything else looked in order.
Novak opened the slider and stepped out onto the covered front porch. That’s when he saw another lake of blood, right outside the door. It had turned black now from the heat. It was sticky, like a pool of tar, with a stench that made him gag. Too much blood to have survived.
Claire and Black stood out in the front yard, waiting, looking as grim as he felt. They’d seen the blood, too, and knew what it meant.
“I think he killed Marisol first. Inside the house,” he told them. “I think Jenn made it outside. I think he cut her throat right here. Right here in front of me.”
“We found a trail of blood leading down to the beach.” Claire pointed toward the low sand dunes between the house and the sea.
Blood spatter speckled the front steps, too, and great swaths of smeared blood. Novak found Jenn’s other red sandal at the bottom of the steps. The Mayan had dragged her body down to the ocean. It looked as if she might have still be
en alive then, struggling for her life. Or maybe she had made a run for it after having been stabbed. He followed the blood spoor out over the soft warm sand. The Mayan had made no effort to cover it up. At the top of the dunes, it looked as if a body had lain in the tall seagrass. The grass was pressed down, and then shallow grooves in the sand revealed drag marks. Novak walked to the edge of the waves. The trail ended there. No more blood. No bodies. He had disposed of the bodies in the ocean. Maybe the tide had taken them out. Maybe he had put them in a boat and dumped them far out past the breakers.
Novak stared out over the beautiful turquoise sea that blended gradually into azure shadings with a strip of deep cobalt blue at the horizon. God, Jenn was dead. She had been surprised, even as careful as she was, and then murdered by a monster. Novak locked his gaze on the incoming waves and let his heart grow hard. Let his jaw lock down. Let the internal rage erupt and flood white-hot through his bloodstream.
Novak had always been methodical. He went about his business in a pedestrian fashion, got the job done, did whatever it took. He pursued bad people, some worse than others, all deserving of what they got. This time it was different. This time it was Jenn. She was special, and she had died a terrible death at the hands of a brutal serial killer. He was going to find the Mayan bastard and put him in the ground. Because the house, the beach, the blood, all were his calling cards. He had wanted the girl pretending to be Marisol, and he had finally gotten her. Novak didn’t even know why the Mayan wanted the girl dead. Jenn had been collateral damage. And Jenn had been there because of Novak.
Novak turned abruptly and walked back to the helicopter, already planning how he would obtain his pound of flesh. Claire and Black followed him, both silent, aware of his anger and anguish, and respecting it. They knew what he had to do now, and they were going to let him do it. And they would help him, if he wanted them to. All he had to do was ask.
Chapter Twenty
On their way back to Goldson International Airport in Belize City, Novak listened to everything Claire and Black had to say, but he already knew what his next move would be. The Mayan was going to die. Claire was insisting on taking the sick child back to her place in Missouri. Black agreed that the girl would be safest there, far away from everything bad that had happened to her and from the assassin still hunting her.
“What do you think, Novak? C’mon now, snap out of it already. Talk to us,” Claire was saying.
“Can we get her through customs?” Novak asked, staring down at the sleeping child. She looked so innocent lying there. Just a little kid, caught up in a nightmare.
“I can take care of that. No problem.” That was Black. He didn’t elaborate, but Black never overestimated anything and was cautious to a fault, so Novak took him at his word.
“We’ve got top security at the lake,” Claire was telling Novak now, “both at Cedar Bend Lodge and at my cabin. Good grief, you should see the security systems Black put in at my new house. I mean, he got me a safe room and everything. The house isn’t quite finished yet, but finished enough to make do. It’s got its own private cove and private gated road. You’ve seen it yourself, Novak. We’d see this guy coming a mile away. Please, I don’t want to leave her down here where that guy might find her. Black can take care of her medical needs. He’s a doctor. There’s just not a downside to taking her home with us.”
Novak didn’t resist. “Okay. I’ll go along with you and get her settled. Then I’m coming back and finishing this thing.”
Claire and Black glanced at each other but knew better than to object. Novak would do what he had to do. They couldn’t stop him. They wouldn’t even try.
Black’s fancy new Gulfstream jet was waiting for them inside a hangar, gassed up, flight plan ready, all systems go. They took off for the United States half an hour later. Black’s regular pilots manned the cockpit, so the three friends sat down together in the main salon and discussed their plans. Which didn’t amount to much—not yet, anyway. Truth be told, they sat around pretty much in silence and contemplated how bad things were. Black had settled the child in the bedroom at the back of the plane and checked on her often. He said she was doing fine. Novak finally lay down on a long couch in the main compartment and forced himself to quit envisioning Jenn in death, how she must have looked after the killer had slit her throat, how she must have looked sinking down under the waves off the coast of the home that she loved so much. He had to make himself get some sleep. He was going to need it.
Novak had been in Missouri at Claire’s beloved Lake of the Ozarks a couple of times, and both times had been for her weddings. The first one hadn’t panned out, through no fault of her own. The second try had come off without a hitch. Back in late July when they’d finally wed, Black’s posh lake resort had been the height of luxury and elegance. Claire’s little A-frame on the lake had been just the opposite, small and cozy and comfortable. Novak had liked her place better, mainly because of its privacy, until it had been completely destroyed in an explosion. So he wasn’t quite sure what to expect when Black set the helicopter down at the Cedar Bend Lodge helipad. The weather was unusually mild and sunny. The hotel was crowded with lots of guests everywhere, enjoying the indoor pools and golf course and tennis courts. Other people flocked to his casual cafes and posh five-star restaurant.
As soon as the rotors slowed, Novak caught sight of a small boy racing toward them with a tiny white poodle right on his heels. He had to smile, happy to see the kid again. The boy’s name was Rico, ten years old or so, and the bravest boy Novak had ever known. He wasn’t Claire and Black’s son, but he was currently living with them. He seemed overjoyed to see them back home and jumped eagerly up into Claire’s arms the minute she stepped out of the helicopter. She laughed and hugged him, and then he ran around and hugged Black’s legs. Claire scooped up the excited poodle and baby-talked it. Novak remembered the dog’s name was Jules Verne. It was a happy homecoming. At least, it was for them.
Uneasy, Novak looked around, really examining their surroundings. This many innocent civilians rushing around everywhere made him damn nervous. The big resort would provide cover for a bad guy stalking a child. The Mayan would know that. Novak wanted to get the little girl inside a safe place and keep her there. Very gently, he lifted her into his arms. She had awakened on the flight home. But she hadn’t said a word, just staring up at him out of big brown eyes full of fear. Hell, he didn’t blame her. She didn’t know who they were or what they were going to do to her. He spoke softly to her in Spanish, telling her that it was all right, that she was safe, and trying to explain where they were and what they were trying to do for her.
“Nobody’s going to hurt you, I promise,” he had whispered. “We’re here to protect you. Nobody’s going to hurt you anymore.”
The child had closed her eyes after that but her body remained tense. He needed her to talk to him. He needed her to tell him who the Mayan was and why he’d held her captive. More importantly, Novak wanted to know where he could find the bloodthirsty bastard. But she wasn’t going to tell him anything, not anytime soon. She wasn’t going to trust them, either, not for one single second. Even more surprising, she cowered away from Claire and hid her face whenever Claire tried to talk to her. The child seemed more comfortable with Black than with anyone else. He knew what he was doing. When he talked to her, he leaned down close, his voice soft, and placed a gentle hand on her hair. If she would grow to trust any of them, it would be Nicholas Black.
Novak carried the child across the hotel grounds toward the private elevator that went up to Black’s penthouse apartment. Rico was running alongside them, very happy to see Novak, too, but even more interested in the little girl. He kept demanding to know what was wrong with her. She had her eyes shut tight now and wouldn’t look at anybody. Tears squeezed out from under her lids and slid down her cheeks.
“C’mon Rico, back off, you’re scaring her,” Claire told him. She grabbed his hand and knelt down in front of him. “Tell me what you’ve be
en up to. You been good and minded Harve?”
“Harve’s teaching me to play chess. It’s fun. I almost beat him last night.”
“Good for you. Is he upstairs?”
“Yes, he’s been waiting for you to get here. He got that hospital bed all fixed up with clean sheets the way you asked, you know, all that stuff.”
“Good job, Rico.”
Once they were inside the elevator, Novak felt a bit better about being there. He trusted these people. The child would be safe enough, now that they had her inside. Safe enough for him to return to Mexico and finish the job. On the other hand, the killer appeared desperate to get the girl back. He had wanted her enough to hold her captive on his boat, which wasn’t even close to his usual MO. The way Novak saw it, the assassin just murdered anybody who got in his way. Novak felt that this kid was the key to everything that had happened. His gut was telling him the Mayan would come for her. She needed to let them know what was going on, so they could prepare, but she wouldn’t, not until she trusted them. So it was up to him to get Claire and Black on board with the plan he’d come up with during the flight home. They would agree, he wasn’t worried about that, not now that they knew what had been done to the defenseless child.
Once they had the girl back in bed with her own private RN sitting beside her, the rest of them moved off down the hall to Black’s vast living room. Huge windows looked out over the beautiful blue lake. Sailboats were out, scooting along under brisk winds. Novak felt another quick burn of anger over the loss of his boat. One more loose end that he had to take care of. He sat back and watched the others reunite and was glad for them. They had become almost like a happy little family. Even Harve, Claire’s old partner at the LAPD, was part of it. He had been paralyzed in the line of duty years ago and was confined to a wheelchair, but it didn’t stop him from living his life. He absolutely adored Rico, and spent most of his time with him. The boy reciprocated his love. It didn’t take long for them to take off again, this time on a fishing trip at the hotel’s dock. Harve promised them an old-fashioned fish fry when they got back with a stringer of bass.