Now it was shoved in an awkward spot by the toilet—and directly under the small, high window.
His heart kicked up a pace as a small glimmer of hope shot through him. Rosa could fit through that window. She was petite, even with her pregnancy. If she heard a gunshot, would she have cowered in here like a frightened rabbit or would she have tried to run? He had to believe the latter. She had already proved her courage and strength. He couldn’t imagine her just waiting in here for her fate.
He was convinced when CSU dusted the windowsill, they would find Rosa’s prints there. It didn’t mean she had escaped, he reminded himself. The shooter easily could have figured out the same thing and followed her. But at least it was something to hang on to.
The hot spurt of adrenaline in treating a trauma victim, especially one she knew and cared about, sustained Lauren through the next fifteen minutes as the air medics arrived and were briefed on Teresa’s condition.
She stood back and watched them load the litter into the waiting helicopter for the short flight to the city.
“You riding along, Dr. Maxwell?” Jolie Carr, the flight nurse, asked her.
She thought seriously about it for maybe half a second, then shook her head. “Her condition is stable. You have things under control for the fifteen-minute flight and I know you don’t need the extra weight. Since we have a possible kidnap victim out there somewhere, I’d better stick close just in case I’m needed here.”
Jolie nodded and strapped down the gurney. “Understandable. We’ll take care of her.”
“I know you will. Have the attending at the trauma center page me if there are any questions.”
“Will do.”
She climbed in and closed the door behind her. Lauren stepped back and watched the chopper lift off, swirling the powdery snow in a cloud as it rose into the air.
She pulled her sweater closer around her, chilled to the bone by more than just the temperature and the chopper’s vortex. She had done all she could for Teresa. Now she could only trust in the University of Utah trauma team and pray.
She blew out a breath and returned to her house, which bustled with activity. Cops and emergency workers from every nearby jurisdiction had already descended with remarkable speed.
Inside, she saw Daniel giving orders to several other man. He towered over them and even from here she could feel the air of command radiating off him.
When she looked beneath the surface, she had to close her eyes and whisper another prayer, this one for him. Under the layer of control and authority, she could just catch a glimpse of something else, something raw and dark, almost tortured.
Since she returned to town and opened her clinic, she had seen Daniel in action in the all kinds of tough circumstances. Bad car accidents, mine rescues, ugly domestic disputes. No matter what the situation, he always seemed to have an air of quiet competence about him. He was a deep pool of calm in a troubled sea.
Right now, despite his thin veneer of control, he looked adrift.
When he seemed to finish talking to the others and they left for their respective duties, she walked to him and on impulse and laid a hand on his arm.
His dark eyes seared into hers with a raw emotion and her chest ached with the urge to wrap her arms around his waist and never let go.
“I think she’s going to be okay, Daniel. She’s tough and help arrived not long after it happened. That’s a big plus in her favor.”
If she hadn’t followed impulse and returned to the house when she did, she feared Teresa would have bled to death right in her entryway, but she didn’t tell Daniel that. His eyes burned with too much guilt already.
“This is my fault. I should have been here.”
“Then you would have been the one with a bullet in your gut,” she pointed out.
“I don’t have two kids who need their mother.” The anguish in his voice destroyed her. She squeezed his arm again.
“I think she’s going to be okay,” she repeated. “We just have to wait and see, but she’s young and strong and has the thought of those kids to help her hang in.”
He nodded, and she thought her words penetrated.
“Any sign of Rosa?” Lauren asked.
“There’s a chance she may have gone out the bathroom window.” He paused. “You saw her this morning, didn’t you? Do you remember what she was wearing?”
She tried to picture Teresa and Rosa as they chattered around the kitchen table. “Jeans and a sweatshirt. The yellow one.”
“What about shoes? I bought her a pair when I picked up the other stuff, but she hasn’t worn them except that first day I brought her here.”
Lauren shook her head. “I can’t say. I didn’t notice her feet this morning. I hope so. I hate to think of her out on the run somewhere in the snow with no shoes.”
“Sure as hell beats the alternative,” he said grimly.
She shivered. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”
“If she’s out there, we’ll find her, Lauren.”
“I know you will.”
She paused, her mind racing with a hundred things she wanted to say to him. This wasn’t the time for any of them. “Be careful,” she murmured instead.
He nodded absently but before he could answer, Kurt Banning hurried over to them. “Sheriff, we think we may have something. Joe Pacheco, a mile or so down the road, called Peggy to report some movement in his horse barn. He thought he saw someone sneaking in there. He thought it might be a kid, by the size, but he thought with all the activity down this way, he should let us know.”
“If it is Rosa, she’s probably terrified out of her mind. We can’t just run in there with guns blazing. She doesn’t know who the good guys and who the bad guys are here.”
“She knows you,” Lauren said. “She won’t be frightened if she sees you.”
“You’re right. Kurt, take charge here. I’ll take a couple of the county deputies and see if we can roust her out. Lauren, she may need treatment for frostbite and exposure, especially if she ran a mile through the snow without shoes.”
“Right. I’ll go back to the clinic and meet you there.”
He hurried away, that brief glimpse of emotion shielded now. All she could see was a tough, determined male. He would find Rosa, she assured herself. If anyone could bring her back, it was Daniel.
Her car was hemmed in by rescue vehicles so one of the deputies rushed her to the clinic before hurrying off to the roadblocks at the routes leading out of town.
She unlocked the doors and headed immediately to her treatment room to begin prepping it with any items she could think of that might be needed to treat someone with possible exposure.
She was putting clean blankets in the clinic’s small warming unit and wishing for one of her nurses to help her with some of these details when she thought she heard the outside door opening.
That was fast, she thought. Amazingly fast! Such speed had to be a good sign, didn’t it?
“Daniel?” she called. “I’m in the treatment room. Bring her straight back here.”
No one answered, and she frowned. Had she been hearing things? She turned away from the warmer to investigate, then gasped and stumbled backward, just managing to stop before she burned herself.
To her shock, Kendall Fox loomed in the doorway, but this was a far different man than the polished charmer who flirted with every nurse in the hospital. His hair was messy, his clothes disordered, and he looked savagely furious.
Her heartbeat kicked up a notch. “Kendall!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
Even as she asked the question, somehow she knew. It wasn’t possible, it couldn’t be, but she couldn’t come up with any other explanation.
Her mind raced, trying to piece together a puzzle that made no sense. Teresa had reported her shooter was a blond white male about five-ten, which described Dr. Fox perfectly.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
She played for time. “Who?”
“You know,” he growled. “The stupid little bitch who is ruining my life. Where is she?”
Panic sputtered through her and her eyes darted around the room, frantically looking for some kind of weapon. Warm blankets wouldn’t exactly cause lasting harm, she was afraid, and any sharp medical implements were wrapped in sterile packaging.
She had a feeling Kendall wouldn’t sit patiently and wait while she peeled back the plastic on a surgical kit for something sharp.
Think, she ordered herself, but she couldn’t focus on anything but her shock and fear.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she finally said.
“Don’t play stupid. You suck at it. You know. The girl you’ve got staying at your house. If I’d had any idea she was one of ours the night you brought her in, you can bet she wouldn’t have made it out of the E.R.”
Icy cold blossomed in her stomach. “You don’t mean that,” she said, sickened at the blunt claim, especially delivered in such a cold, emotionless voice.
“Don’t I? No way am I going to let her testify to some frigging grand jury and destroy everything.”
This couldn’t be happening. She knew Kendall. She had talked with him—even laughed with him—just a few hours before. Could she really have been so blind as to have missed the darkness skulking inside him?
One of ours, he had said, and the implication behind the words sickened her further.
“You’re the fifth man in the smuggling ring.”
“I’m not the fifth anything. I’m number one, baby. The whole thing was my idea. You would not believe the kind of money a few stupid whores have put in my pockets.”
“They’re not whores, they’re children! Young girls who had no choice about the things they were forced to do! What you’ve done is obscene. Despicable.”
Rage spasmed over his features and he stepped closer. She had nowhere else to go, with the blanket warmer at her back. “Don’t sit in judgment of me, Dr. Self-Righteous. I didn’t have a rich, crooked daddy to put me through med school. I had debts. Big ones. I had to do something.”
“By kidnapping girls and forcing them into prostitution? How does a med student go from the Hippocratic oath to peddling human flesh?”
“I’m not some kind of monster!”
Could he honestly think what he had done was anything but hideously monstrous?
“I went to med school in San Diego and my last year I started working a clinic over the border,” Kendall said. “It was a legitimate job. But then I got the brilliant idea to make a little money on the side. I started packing a few things back over each trip I crossed the border. Prescription drugs, Ruffies, that kind of thing. After a while, I thought, why not people? And here we are.”
She let out a breath. “Here we are. You’ve now moved from drug smuggling to kidnapping, enforced prostitution and attempted murder. Nice career move, Dr. Fox.”
“Shut up,” he snarled. “You don’t know anything about this.”
“You’re the one who sent Gilberto Mata to Rosa’s room at the hospital, aren’t you? I wondered how he knew where to find her.”
“What the hell else was I supposed to do? She was going to ruin everything. She said she was going to go to the police and tell them everything she knew. We couldn’t just leave her running loose to flap her gums to anyone who would listen. We were screwed. Gilberto said he could take care of things. My only mistake was in trusting him.”
“How did you figure out she was here in Moose Springs?”
“Lucky guess. I saw the way you hovered over her at the hospital. I figured you would at least know where they took her after she was released, all I had to do was charm it out of you. I never imagined she was in your own house until you told me.”
She closed her eyes, sick to think she had led him right to Rosa. She had to find some comfort that Rosa was safe from him for now, or he wouldn’t be here looking for her.
She, on the other hand, was in serious trouble. So far he hadn’t pulled out any kind of weapon, but she knew he must have one, the same weapon he had used to shoot Teresa. He wouldn’t be telling her this if he had any intention of leaving her alive here.
She didn’t want to die. She needed to get through this, if only to tell Daniel she didn’t blame him for her father’s sins, that she knew and understood he had done nothing wrong during his investigation of her father.
That she loved him.
She wanted a future—a future with Daniel, if he would give her a chance.
If she could somehow reverse their positions slightly, she might be able to pull the instrument tray behind her to give her enough time to escape. It was a long shot, but she had to do something. She refused to stand here and accept the fate he intended for her.
She shifted slightly, edging in a barely perceptible half circle. “How many girls are we talking about here?” she asked to distract him.
He shrugged. “Enough. We have two houses in Utah, but the real money is in Vegas and Phoenix.”
She slid a little more to the left. She started to reach behind her for the instrument tray when she heard the outside door open.
“Lauren?” Daniel’s voice called. She and Kendall gazed at each other for half a second, then she opened her mouth to call a warning. Before the words could escape, Kendall moved fast, grabbing her in a choke hold and shoving his hand over her mouth.
Here was the gun, she realized wildly as he pulled it out of his pocket and held it to her head. “Not a word,” he hissed. “Or your sheriff is going to have a nice gunshot wound to the chest.”
She choked back her tiny sound of distress, fear a hard, vicious ball in her gut. Her brain felt numb, sluggish with sudden dread.
She couldn’t bear the idea of something happening to Daniel. If he walked through that door, she had no doubt Kendall would shoot him, just as he had shot Teresa.
She had to protect him. She had to, no matter what the cost.
Kendall eased them both behind the door and she felt the slick cold metal pressed against the skin at her temple.
She had one chance only. With a prayer for courage, she drew in a deep breath, then clamped her teeth as hard as she could on the flesh of his palm.
As she hoped, he instinctively moved his hand away, just far away for her to yell, “He’s got a gun!”
“You stupid bitch,” Kendall growled. He backhanded her exactly where her stitches were from the attack by Gilberto Mata, striking her so hard she whipped back and struck the wall.
For a moment, she was light-headed as pain exploded in her head and cheek. She reeled, her knees suddenly weak, and started to slide to the floor. He grabbed her before she could hit the ground and yanked her in front of him, the gun again at her temple, just as Daniel crashed through the door.
Chapter 15
A smart cop doesn’t just run headlong into a room when somebody yells gun.
He takes a minute to case the situation, to call for backup, to devise a strategy.
Daniel knew all that, but he didn’t give a damn. All he could focus on was the hoarse panic in Lauren’s voice and the tiny yelp of pain he heard her utter right after her warning.
Before he had time to even wonder what the threat might be on the other side, he whipped out his weapon and plowed through the door.
What he found was worse than anything he might have imagined. A man had her in a choke hold and had jammed a big, ugly black Glock against her temple.
“Stop right there, Sheriff,” the bastard holding her yelled, like something out of a bad Western. It took him only an instant to recognize the smarmy doctor from the emergency room who had been hitting on Lauren the night they took Rosa in, then a few days later in the hospital lobby.
Fox. Kendall Fox.
His mind registered a dozen things simultaneously—among them that she looked dazed, her eyes blurry with pain, and a tiny trickle of blood seeped from the bandage on her cheek.
He died a thousand deaths wondering what Fox might
have done to her—and trying to figure out his own next move.
The bastard had already shot one cop. He had to be the one who had wounded Teresa. If Daniel played this wrong, he knew Fox wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him, too, and then where would Lauren be?
And Rosa. Damn it all to hell. He should have at least taken the time to make sure she was safe before rushing in here.
“Let’s all just take it easy.” Daniel infused his voice with every ounce of calm he could muster, not an easy task when he wanted to rip the son of a bitch apart with his bare hands for hurting Lauren.
Fox was sweating, he saw, and the gun in his hand trembled ever so slightly against her head. “Shut up,” he barked. “Just shut the hell up and drop your weapon or I’m going to shoot her.”
This is the part where a good negotiator would placate the suspect, earn his trust, establish some sort of rapport. Daniel just couldn’t do it. Not when Lauren was in danger.
“You hurt her more than you already have and you can be damn sure you won’t take another breath,” he promised, in that same calm, controlled voice he had to hope cloaked his gut-wrenching fear.
The doctor’s hand trembled a little more on the weapon while Daniel forced his own hand to remain perfectly still.
Fox looked trapped, his eyes darting wildly around the room like some kind of wild creature looking for a convenient hole to slink into. It was obvious he was searching for any kind of escape from the mess he had created.
Daniel just had to make sure his way out didn’t involve any more harm to Lauren.
He took his eyes off the suspect for half a second, just long enough to reassure himself that she was all right. She still seemed dazed and he saw fear in her eyes. But when she met his gaze, they brimmed with a deep reservoir of trust that humbled him.
“All I want is the little puta,” Fox growled. “Where is she?”
He assumed the bastard meant Rosa. “I don’t know. We haven’t found her,” he lied. No way in hell was he going to tell the man she was out in his vehicle wrapped in blankets with the heater going full blast.
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