“Do as I tell you.” This time her voice came out as a sharp command, and the girl jerked back. Isabella couldn’t bring herself to feel bad. This had to be done. She dropped her head back onto the pillow. “Go now, promise me.”
“I promise. I will bring back the change. I will bring you something to eat.”
“Can you give me some aspirin, please? It is in my purse.” Isabella kept her eyes closed, the light hurt her head. Carmen found the pills and again lifted her head to put the tablets in her mouth and raise the glass of water to her lips.
“Is she going to die, Carmen?”
“No, Victor. If she’s not better by tomorrow, we’ll take her to the hospital.”
Isabella tried to open her mouth to argue, but everything went black.
Chapter 3
“Somebody has stolen her identity. It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Leif said as he pressed his foot down harder on the accelerator.
“Yeah, I agree. I think if we lean hard enough on the folks at the car dealership and the motel, we’ll find out who used the credit cards,” Caleb said as he scanned the highway, on the lookout for any patrol cars.
“If we’re really lucky, they’ll have some security cameras.”
“Leif, you’re going to have to slow down,” Caleb cautioned. “We’re going to be pulled over, and then we’re going to lose time.” Caleb watched as Leif eased off the accelerator. He knew that Leif felt guilty for having waited a day to make the journey because of his sister’s gallery show. But this lead wasn’t a very hot lead in Caleb’s estimation. Truly what they really needed was for Isabella to make a call.
A friend of theirs, Ian Ransom, who was a wizard with electronics, had managed to log into the telephone company’s mainframe. Anytime Isabella made a call her phone would be immediately tracked. That would be when they could find her. This was just a lukewarm lead, so waiting a day in hope of more definitive evidence with which to track Isabella was fine with Caleb. He understood how important Leif’s family was to him.
They had left Fate Harbor at three that morning and were getting into Wilama at seven. Normally, the drive took five hours, but Leif made it in four. Caleb figured it didn’t hurt that their big extended cab was black, and wasn’t as easily seen as it sped down the highway in the darkness. Because of the early hour, they stopped at the motel first. The clerk on duty was a young man just finishing the Saturday night shift. He called the manager to have him come in early, although he wasn’t actually due in until 8:00 a.m. Caleb and Leif walked around the perimeter of the motel. They watched as two young Hispanic girls got into an SUV and drove away.
“They were too young to be driving,” Leif noted to Caleb.
“There was a younger child in the room that one of the girls left. Did you notice that?” Caleb asked Leif.
His friend nodded. They went up the stairs to the second floor and noticed how some of the curtains were slightly pulled back as young faces peered out when they walked by. Something suspicious was definitely going on. When they got to the door that one of the girls had come out of Leif knocked. Nobody answered, but a baby started to cry. Leif knocked again, still no answer.
Finally the curtain at the window beside the door moved and they saw half of a young face peering out at them. Neither of them turned, and instead they continued to stare at the door, just taking note of the face out of the corner of their eyes. It was a little girl, and she was terrified. The two men looked at one another and nodded. They turned and left.
“Jesus, Leif, something bad is going on. I think maybe Isabella’s identity hasn’t been stolen. I think she has something to do with all these little kids.” Caleb knew that if he had any hair on the back of his neck, it would be standing up. He rubbed his bald head and looked at Leif.
“The manager should be here by now. Let’s go see what he has to say.”
The man was waiting for them at the check-in desk.
“Why did I have to come in early?” he asked in a surly voice. Oh, Caleb so loved it when a man was senseless enough to start out angry and stupid. He and Leif just stood there and stared at him. Nothing more, just stared, the same way they had when dealing with stupid young enlisted men. It didn’t take long. It never did. The man started to get red in the face, and then he lost all color.
“Now, where was I? Oh, yes. How can I help you, gentlemen?” The nightshift clerk, who had been slouching at the other end of the counter, looked up, surprised at his boss’s about-face. Caleb turned to him briefly, and then looked back down at the magazine he had been thumbing through, happy to be out of the discussion.
“We are checking on charges made on a credit card. We’re trying to determine if they were made fraudulently or not.”
“They better not have been. We have a strict policy to check I.D. with every credit card that is used. What was the name on the card? What was the total amount charged to the card? What time did the charges run?” Caleb wasn’t surprised to see the man’s professional and attentive demeanor with Leif. Leif was one scary son of a bitch. Caleb appreciated that about him.
“There was a charge on Friday morning for over $1,000.”
“I authorized that myself. It was made by a Mexican school teacher. She needed six rooms for three nights. They’ll be checking out tomorrow morning. They’re here from Seattle touring the apple and pear fields. I checked her I.D. personally. Hold on and I’ll get you copies of her card and I.D.” The man scurried to the back office.
Caleb couldn’t believe their luck. This had to be about all of the children they had seen in the motel rooms. Something fishy was definitely going on. What didn’t make sense was why Isabella was letting such young girls drive a car. So that meant something seriously wrong was going on. If Isabella had made the charges herself and was hiding out with these children, Leif and Caleb would need to back out of questioning the manager quickly. They didn’t want him calling the police. She had to be hiding out for a reason.
The manager came out carrying a file.
“This is a copy of her driver’s license and her credit card.” He looked relieved to be able to show Leif. Leif gave him a satisfied nod. Caleb moved forward.
“Damn it, Johansen, it looks like her soon-to-be-ex-husband is a stalker.” Leif turned to him and answered slowly.
“Looks like.” He turned back to the manager. “We’re on a case where the woman’s husband said her identity had been stolen, and he wanted us to track down the person who had done it. It looks like he really wanted us to find her so that he could harass her or something. I hate to lose this fee, but we need to warn the wife.”
“Oh God,” the manager said. “My sister had to put a restraining order against a boyfriend who wouldn’t leave her alone. Is there anything I can do?”
“Should anyone else call for her, if you could keep her whereabouts to yourself that would be helpful. In the meantime, I think we’re going to see if she can leave early before Monday. I don’t suppose you have any idea which room she’s in?”
“Hold on, she arrived early. I think she was getting permission to find out what fields to visit. Eddie, isn’t that what she told us?” the man asked the nightshift clerk.
“I don’t know.”
The manager checked his computer. “She’s been in room 213 since Monday night.”
“Thank you.”
“Is there anything else that I can do for you gentlemen?”
“You’ve been extremely helpful and we appreciate it,” Caleb jumped in, and smiled. The manager gave him a relieved smile in return.
When they left the office, the SUV the girls had left in was back in its parking spot and the door was just closing to room 213. They walked slowly to the bottom of the stairs, talking all the way.
“Good call on the ex-husband,” Leif said. Caleb nodded. He had used their code. Whenever one of them referred to the other by their last name, it signaled that they were trying to get something important across. Leif immediately caught on that Cale
b didn’t want the manager suspicious of Isabella.
“I’m really worried. Bella wouldn’t allow those underage girls to drive if she were okay.”
“Agreed.” Leif continued. “She also would have gone to the authorities if she could have, instead of keeping a bunch of kids in a motel. Something is really wrong with this whole situation. She’s too smart for this,” Caleb agreed with his partner’s assessment. It was one of the reasons he had found himself so attracted to this woman. She was smart as a whip. She was also one of the most attractive women he had run into in a long time. But it was her kind and nurturing nature that had him hooked. He knew what did it for his partner. It was her definite submissive nature when dealing with the two of them. Leif was drawn to her like a bear to honey.
Now upstairs standing outside room 213, Caleb knocked on the door as Leif stood to one side. Normally, they preferred to stand on either side of an entrance in a combat scenario, per their military training. However, Caleb felt it was best for him to be fully visible to whoever might want to look through the peephole. The door was cautiously opened and one of the young girls looked out from behind the chain.
“Can I help you?” Suddenly a little boy pushed in front of her, shoving his face between the door and the jamb.
“Mr. Caleb, it is you!” he said in accented English. He spoke rapidly in Spanish to the girl standing over him. Suddenly she smiled and closed the door. Caleb heard the distinctive sound of the chain being undone. The door opened and the little boy launched himself at Caleb. Caleb instinctively held out his arms.
“Mr. Caleb, thank God you’re here. Miss Isabella is so sick, and we’ve been so scared.” Suddenly he sank to one knee holding the boy, remembering their time together at the Cesar Chavez School. The boy had played a mean game of basketball for someone who hadn’t really played before. He was extremely polite and cheerful, and Isabella had spoken highly of him. More significant, he recalled that none of the Velarde children had been back to school since Monday.
“It’s okay, Victor. We’re going to take care of everything.” He pointed toward Leif.
“Mr. Leif!” Leif prepared for Victor’s running jump, and he picked him up and held him.
“Okay, little man. What did you mean when you said that Miss Isabella is sick? Can you take us to her?” Leif asked. The boy wiggled to be let down, and Leif set him on the ground.
Victor held out his hand to Leif. “She’s in here. Carmen got her to drink orange juice, but she threw up! It was gross.” Caleb followed as the boy led them into the darkened motel room. “The light hurts her eyes, that’s why the drapes are closed.”
It took a moment for Caleb’s eyes to adjust and when they did, he swore. He could see the girl who had answered the door sitting on the bed beside Isabella. She was holding her head up as Isabella retched into the trashcan at the girl’s feet. Caleb rushed over, his eye immediately drawn to Isabella’s lower leg, swollen to nearly twice its normal size and completely red and inflamed.
“Mother of God. What the holy fuck is going on here?” Two sets of wide brown eyes turned to Leif’s loud voice. Caleb and Leif were standing over the bed in less than a heartbeat. Isabella turned to the trashcan and retched again, but it was obvious that there was nothing left for her to throw up. She was just dry heaving.
“Carmen, can I help?” Caleb asked, reaching for the trashcan. The girl nodded at him. Caleb hoped that she remembered him from school, though he didn’t remember her. She allowed him to sit in her place and hold the can, while supporting Isabella. This allowed him to see just how hot she was. He turned to Leif. “Her fever has to be at least 103, if not higher. We’ve got to get her to a hospital, stat.”
“No,” Isabella said weakly. Her eyes turned beseechingly toward Caleb. “Mr. Samuels…Caleb, you have to help the children. The sheriff—” She broke off as she turned toward the can and heaved. He gathered her mass of curly black-brown hair away from her face, uncaring that some of it had already landed in the can of vomit. Caleb had touched and dealt with much worse than this in his Iraq deployments. When she was done, Isabella looked up to notice Leif standing behind him.
“Caleb, Leif, you have to help the children. The sheriff was in on keeping them in a forced labor camp. If you take me to the hospital, the children will be unprotected. They are more important than me.”
“Fuck no, Isabella. You’re all important. We’ve got it under control, but you’re going to the hospital right now, no arguments. Caleb will take care of the kids, and he won’t involve local law enforcement.” Leif turned to Carmen and Victor. “Can you two explain to Caleb what’s going on?”
“Si. Please just don’t let Miss Isabella die,” Victor said, his voice trembling.
“She won’t die. Mr. Leif will take care of her,” Carmen said as she hugged her little brother.
“Caleb, you good?” Leif asked.
“Affirmative. You?” Caleb asked as Leif bent down to pick up Isabella.
“Yep. Just help me get her into the truck. I’ll keep you updated from the hospital. Are you taking them all the way back to Fate Harbor?” Caleb opened the door to the motel room and looked outside. When he was sure it was clear, he motioned for Caleb to come out. They double-timed it to the truck. Leif laid Isabella down in the back seat of the full-sized truck. As they lowered her into the seat, they both got their first real view of the wound in the sunlight. They could see that the redness had crept up her leg from her ankle, which was red and inflamed and oozing puss. It was much worse than it had looked in the dark motel room.
Leif tucked the bedspread around her that he had taken from the motel when he picked her up. He couldn’t believe this was the same vibrant woman they had seen just nine days ago. Caleb realized she was suffering from sepsis. There was a real possibility she could die, and he was stunned at just how much the thought gutted him.
Caleb finally answered Leif’s question. “I’ll either take the kids to Shirley in Snoqualt or to our place in Fate Harbor. I don’t know which yet. I’ll let you know.” Caleb watched as Leif pulled out his phone, found the nearest hospital and displayed the map.
Leif raced to the driver’s side and slammed the truck into gear and was off without saying good-bye. Caleb thanked God for Leif’s ability to drive fast. If they were right and Isabella was in the late stages of sepsis, she was going to need every second.
Chapter 4
Leif winced when he heard Isabella’s groan of pain. When he realized what he had done he took a deep breath and forced himself into the zone. As they had driven through town toward the motel, he had noticed the blue hospital signs, so he knew where he was going. He focused on that, not the woman in the backseat. Focusing on the mission was what saved lives. Isabella mumbled something as he took a right turn onto the highway.
“Mr. Johansen? The children?” He blocked out the fear at the weak sound of her voice.
“Leif, God damn it, baby. Call me Leif. The children are safe. Nobody is going to get them away from Caleb. I can promise you that.” He looked down at the speedometer. He was pushing ninety miles an hour. The truck could easily go one twenty, but he needed to slow down because Washington state commuters were starting to enter the highway and they usually went no more than seventy. He calmly went in and out of traffic. He needed to go just a little further at this speed. His exit was in eight more miles.
“Thank you for taking care of them.” He shoved down the anger that her self-dismissive statement caused. How dare she think that her life didn’t matter, just the lives of the children? He needed to stay focused. Just two more exits. He got over to the right hand lane.
“…Need help.”
“I know you do, Isabella. We’re almost to the hospital.”
“Not me, the others in the camp. They’re going to move them, now that the children have escaped. Must rescue…” He pulled off the highway, driving on the shoulder, ignoring the honks of angry drivers. Heading toward the big medical center, he blocked out what Isabel
la was saying, unable to listen to her continuing patter about helping others. He needed to focus on the mission of getting her to the hospital. She was still conscious and coherent, which were very good signs that the infection wasn’t too far along. But he had seen some bad shit while in Iraq, and he wasn’t going to be satisfied until a team of doctors had a good look at her leg and pumped her full of antibiotics.
“Mr. Johansen. I’m sorry, but I’m going to be—”
“Leif, my name is Leif!” he yelled, as he slammed his hand against the steering wheel. He took a left turn into the hospital parking lot in front of traffic, causing more cars to honk at him. He didn’t care. He just concentrated on navigating toward the emergency entrance. He screeched to a halt, and got Isabella out of the back, carrying her through the sliding doors. A nurse looked up from behind the desk.
“Sepsis.” He pulled back the blanket so the woman could see Isabella’s leg. The nurse yelled, and another nurse rushed up and had Leif follow her to a bed. Two doctors and several nurses quickly surrounded Isabella, forcing Leif back. He finally felt that sense of relief that came at the end of a mission. The difference between this and any other mission was that he had been left with an overwhelming sense of terror. Hell, he didn’t even really know Isabella. He had just been trying to get to know her. He guessed the best way to describe their relationship was that he and Caleb had been courting Isabella, so how could he be this damn out of his mind with fear? It made no sense.
“Sir? Sir!” Leif realized that there was a nurse standing in front of him. How could he have missed her?
“Yes. What do you need?”
“I need you to leave. There’s a waiting area across the hall. We’ll come and tell you her status as soon as we’re done.” Leif looked around, realizing that he was still standing in the small area set up to assess ER patients. He’d been concentrating on all that had been happening to Isabella, the oxygen, the IV’s, her barely stifled scream as they pulled the bandage from the wound. More moans and whimpers escaped through Isabella’s gritted teeth, as they pressed down on the wound, assessing the depth of the laceration, and the amount of puss. He shrugged his iceman persona on around himself like a well-worn leather jacket, taking small comfort in the knowledge that these skilled professionals were Isabella’s best chance at a full recovery, if not her actual survival. No matter how much he wanted to crack their heads with Isabella’s every wince, he clenched his jaw, commanding himself to stand by and watch their every move, ensuring they did nothing to harm her.
Isabella's Submission [Fate Harbor 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 5