Turning Point (The Kathleen Turner Series)

by Snow, Tiffany

  Terror streamed through my veins, then the cold rush of adrenaline. I leapt from the floor to try and get away, though where I thought I could go on a boat, I didn’t know.

  “No, Matt, please!”

  I could hear Lucy begging on my behalf as I ran, though the guard caught me easily, grabbing my hair and yanking. I felt the stab of a needle in my arm and I cried out in pain. Then I twisted and bit his hand until I tasted blood.

  The guard roared, dropping me as I dodged his grasping hand. His brutal face was livid now and he snarled curses at me as I ran. The drug he’d injected me with was starting to take hold, but I fought it, knowing that if I didn’t, I was worse than dead.

  The wind from the sea caught at my hair as I hit the deck running. A set of stairs heading upward caught my eye and I climbed them, twisting on the top step to send a kick toward the pursuing guard. The ball of my foot got him squarely in the nose, and blood spurted. I turned and ran again, not waiting to see if I’d slowed him down.

  The upper deck was even windier, whipping my hair into a frenzy and plastering my clothes to my body. To my dismay three more guards stood post up here, all of them turning to look at me as I emerged from the stairway.

  A noise behind me made me turn. The bloodied guard was coming up the stairs, his malevolent gaze unblinking as he came for me.

  I backed away, my steps faltering as the drug-induced lethargy began to take hold. I blinked rapidly, trying to focus on the four encroaching men. The panic and terror were receding now, replaced by a cold nothingness that I knew was more deadly than fear.

  My progress was stopped by a metal bar at my back. Turning, I saw that I was at the very front and top of the boat. The guardrail had stopped my steps, protection from the drop into the waters below.

  The decision to climb over the rail was an easy one, though the execution proved more difficult. My limbs were heavy, not wanting to cooperate.

  “Stupid bitch is gonna take a swan dive,” one of the guards observed. They’d stopped moving forward now, just watching me.

  I glanced down. The ocean was churning, the waves beckoning to me. In a corner of my mind not yet altered by the drug, I could appreciate the deadly irony of my predicament. I hadn’t saved anyone, hadn’t helped anyone. My sacrifice to try and help Lucy and Billy had come to nothing but my own death.

  Looking back up at the guards, I took a deep breath. At least my death would be my decision, not theirs.

  My hands loosened on the rails as my eyes slipped closed.

  A grunt and a thud made me pry my eyes open, harder to do with each passing moment. Two guards lay sprawled on the deck, blood leaking from their heads. The remaining two had their guns in their hands, looking around wildly for the source.

  Then another dropped, half his head blown away. He hadn’t even hit the floor before the last guard was shot dead, too.

  I was in shock, staring at the carnage around me. How had that happened? Was I dreaming?

  I squeezed my eyes shut, opening them again with effort. To my amazement, I saw black-clad figures climbing over the rails of the yacht from all sides. They were silent, any sounds masked by the wind and the waves.

  Gunfire rang out from below, and now I heard yelling, but it didn’t seem to faze the invaders, their movements precise and deadly as they disappeared onto the deck below me.

  I didn’t know what to do. Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw the water. The waves seemed to hypnotize me, their randomness becoming a pattern. My grip loosened even more, it becoming nearly impossible to hold on to the rail as my muscles began refusing to obey my commands.

  “Kathleen!”

  My name on the wind. How strange.

  I tore my gaze away from the beckoning sea. One of the invaders stood among the dead bodies, his gun slung across his back. His face was painted black, making his green eyes stand out. One arm reached for me as he slowly approached, as though fearing I’d run away.

  “Kat, it’s me,” the man said, coming closer.

  My mind sluggishly tried to process the words, unable to reconcile what he’d said with what he looked like. He had a gun over his shoulder, another at his hip, dark grease in his hair, and black body armor strapped to his chest.

  “Lucy,” I said, forcing the word from between lips gone numb. “Lucy and Billy. You’ve got to save them. He’s going to kill her.”

  “It’s all right,” the man said. “They’re okay. We have them.”

  Relief flooded me. It hadn’t been for nothing after all. They were going to be okay. I hoped Chance would be, too. I thought he and Lucy would be good together. Maybe they’d have a little girl. She could be called Lana, after Lana Turner, keep the tradition going. Mom and Dad would like that. I wondered if Mom knew where I was. She worried if I came home late from work, though she knew the bar didn’t close until late. Maybe Scott would fill in for me tomorrow. I didn’t feel well. My stomach churned and I was so tired.

  “I think I should lie down,” I mumbled. I was exhausted. My eyes drifted shut.

  “Kat!”

  My eyes opened again. The man was still there, only much closer.

  I panicked. “Stay back!” I warned him. “Don’t touch me!”

  He froze. “Kat, please. It’s me. It’s Blane. Remember me?”

  The name sparked a memory, but it was too difficult to grasp. My mind was filled with cobwebs and it just took too much effort.

  “I’m here to help you,” the man said. “Take my hand.”

  I stared at the hand stretched toward me. “Okay.”

  I reached for him, but my foot slipped on the edge of the deck just as a gust of wind pushed at me. Then I was hurtling through the air. I stared at the man as I fell, an odd peace coming over me. I watched in detachment as he climbed on the rail and dove after me with no hesitation. Then I hit the water.

  Cold water closed over my head, bringing clarity to my fogged brain. I sucked in a lungful of liquid before my head broke the surface. I was choking, gasping for air, when a wave slammed into me, submerging me yet again.

  Up was down and down was up. I couldn’t see a thing, and the cold seeped into my bones just as the drug had. My lungs burned with the need for air as I tried futilely to find the surface, the fear that I was swimming the wrong direction at the edges of my mind.

  Something snagged me around the waist, pulling me. A moment later, my head broke through the surface and I choked, trying to get air. Hands under my armpits lifted me and I was lying flat, but I still couldn’t breathe.

  Pushing, painful pushing on my stomach. Water filled my mouth, streaming out through my lips and nose, again and again. Then I was coughing, retching, and was turned on my side. More water came up as I coughed, but finally I could breathe.

  My body was shaking uncontrollably. Someone wrapped a blanket around me. My eyes were shut tight, but I could hear men talking.

  “Rico call it in?”

  “Yeah. Got the girl and kid in the other RHIB. All hostiles neutralized.”

  “Let’s bug out.”

  “Roger that.”

  The rumble of the boat’s engines was loud in my ears. A man slid his arms underneath me, picking up my limp body and cradling me on his lap, tucking the blanket securely around my shoulders and legs.

  “Doc, take a look. Something’s not right. She wasn’t in her right mind up there. Didn’t even know who I was.”

  My head was too heavy for my neck, and when a hand gently turned my chin, my head lolled back on the arm of the man holding me. A bright light flashed in my eyes.

  “Drugged.” My arms were pulled from under the blanket and examined. “Needle tracks. They’ve been drugging her for a while.”

  “Will she be all right?”

  “I don’t know what they gave her, so I don’t want to try to counteract it. Best to let it wear off. She needs fluids, though. I’ll start an IV.”

  Beyond the doctor, I could see a couple of others in the boat. One was driving, and another ju
st watching. They all seemed familiar somehow, but I couldn’t remember. My teeth cracked together hard as my shivering intensified. The man holding me pulled me closer, his arms wrapping tightly around my back.

  “You’re okay, Kat,” he whispered softly in my ear. “I swear to God you’re going to be okay.”

  I felt a stinging sensation in my arm, but I was used to it and didn’t care. I focused on the green eyes staring intently into mine. They were beautiful, mesmerizing. The man’s hand brushed my head, tangling in the wet mass of my hair.

  “Stay with me, Kat. Stay with me, baby girl. Nothing’s going to hurt you now. You’re safe. I swear.”

  He seemed so upset, his words strangling in his throat and coming out as hoarse whispers. I wondered who he was, wished I knew of a way to comfort him. But my body wouldn’t obey and neither would my tongue. So I just listened, staring into his eyes as he kept whispering to me, his promises and pleas melding into one melody of sound. I listened until I could no longer resist the warm pull of sleep and I slipped down into the depths of exhaustion.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A week. I’d lost an entire week of my life, with no real memory of the events I’d witnessed or what I’d endured.

  I stared at my reflection in the mirror above the sink in the hospital bathroom. The bruises on my face had finally begun to disappear, the black and blue fading to yellow. My lips were no longer swollen, cracked, or bleeding. I’d lost weight—my clavicle bones protruding sharply underneath my skin, my arms sticklike. Even the bones of my hips jutted out further than I would have wanted. Granted, I’d always wanted to be slightly less curvy, but I thought I just looked sickly now.

  None of those things held my attention for long, though. It was my eyes that I couldn’t look away from. The eyes that stared back at me in the mirror held a knowledge and sadness that hadn’t been there before. Gone was the optimistic innocent; in its place was a woman who knew firsthand the evils there were in the world, the people who would treat other human beings as though they were cattle, to be used and slaughtered. I would have been one of them, for the rest of my life, if not for Blane.

  I hadn’t believed my eyes when I’d woken from my drug-induced stupor to see Blane sitting in a chair next to the hospital bed. He was leaning forward, his head resting on his folded arms, asleep. Even in sleep, his hand maintained a firm grasp on mine.

  Confused, I’d looked around, realizing I was in a hospital, safe. It was late. The window showed a dark sky, and muted lights bled underneath my door.

  “Blane?” I croaked.

  His head shot up immediately, instantly alert.

  “Where am I?”

  Thankfully, he knew what I meant without me having to elaborate.

  “Home,” he replied. “We’re in Indy.”

  Tears burned the back of my eyes, but I held them back. Home. I hadn’t thought I’d ever see it again.

  “How?” My voice was a rasp of pain, my throat burning.

  “The GPS,” he replied, pouring water into a paper cup nearby. Sliding an arm behind my back, he helped support me so I could take a drink. “It tracked you to an island off the coast of Cuba.”

  “Cuba?”

  Well, that explained the tropical part.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Once you were in their territory, the feds couldn’t do anything. Todd and Rico run a security business, they still do a few ops on the side. They put a team together to come get you.”

  I leaned back against the pillows, my throat feeling better now after the water.

  “What happened to the cops?” I asked. “I was so sure they would come any second, and they never did.”

  Now Blane’s face turned to cold granite. “In the middle of the operation, the feds showed up, told the police to shut it down, that they were inhibiting a federal investigation. The cops were going to come get you, but the feds wouldn’t let them, told them it was more important to track where they took the women than to stop them. Their goal was to shut the whole operation down, not just this branch.

  “I got out, came after you myself,” he continued. “But I was outnumbered.”

  “They shot you.”

  Blane nodded. “About then the feds finally let the cops come help me. They arrested the men still standing and got Chance out.”

  Relief flooded me. Chance was okay.

  “But that was the most they were allowed to do. They were kept from interfering when the plane took off, and I was out cold from the bullet wound.” His hand brushed the hair from my forehead. “I’m so sorry, Kat. I never should have let you go. I’m sorry that I failed you.”

  “Stop,” I said, lightly pressing my fingers to his mouth. “It’s not your fault. It was my decision to try to find Chance, my decision to try and help Lucy and Billy. You did all you could. I trusted the cops. Trusted them to have my back.”

  He kissed my fingertips and gently held my palm against his cheek.

  “I almost lost you,” he rasped. “Again. Forever. When you fell from that boat…”

  His eyes squeezed shut for a moment, then reopened, their deep gray depths tormented.

  “Shh,” I soothed him. “We’re together now. That’s all that matters.”

  Blane reached into his pocket, and my eyes widened when his palm opened to reveal my diamond engagement ring.

  “How did you find it?” I breathed in wonder.

  Blane took my hand in his, gently sliding the ring back onto my finger. “Found the bastard that took it. He regretted that action, very, very much. I… encouraged him to cooperate with us, tell us where Matt had taken you. That’s how we found the yacht.”

  I didn’t want to think through the details of what that “encouragement” had entailed, but I hoped it had been extremely painful.

  “They were able to trace Amanda Webber’s whereabouts from the intel we gathered on the island,” Blane continued. “She’s recuperating at home with her family now. I thought you’d want to know. The island where they took her and you is in Cuba’s territory, but the Navy is keeping an eye on it. I doubt they go there again.”

  That was a relief. I couldn’t imagine the hell the women were going through who hadn’t been rescued.

  “Xtreme has been shut down. Several of the employees have been arrested for their involvement in the operation.”

  I hoped one of them was Jack, the bastard.

  “What about Matt?” I asked. “Is he in jail?”

  “He’s dead.” Blane’s voice was cold and flat. “I made sure of it.”

  My eyes slipped closed in relief and Blane’s grip tightened on my hand.

  Blane didn’t leave my side again.

  After three days in the hospital, I was more than ready to go home. Pushing away the memories that disturbed me, I pulled on the soft yoga pants and sweater Blane had brought from home. The doctor had taken his sweet time releasing me, and it was already after five and dark outside. He’d pressed a card into my hand as I left, speaking vaguely about “people to talk to” and “specialists in this sort of thing.”

  I wished I had something to tell a specialist, but the truth was I couldn’t recall most of the ordeal. The doctor had told me the drug cocktail they’d injected me with had scopolamine as its primary ingredient, which accounted for why I couldn’t remember so much of the time I was missing. Usually used to treat motion sickness, a high enough concentration of it combined with other chemicals and it acted much like a date-rape drug.

  I insisted on walking out of the hospital. I’d never gotten used to their rule about wheelchairs and wasn’t about to start now.

  “Did you announce your candidacy while I was gone?” I asked Blane once we were in his car and headed home. He just looked at me strangely.

  “You’re joking, right?”

  I flushed and he continued. “I put all that off. Nothing else mattered. Only finding you.” His hand found mine, linking our fingers on the empty space between us.

  “You’re still going to run, rig
ht?” I asked. I didn’t want what had happened to me to cause him to not pursue his dreams.

  He hesitated. “Maybe now’s not the right time,” he hedged.

  “Blane, you can’t do that. You can’t put your life on hold just because something awful happened. You want to run for governor, then run for governor.”

  Blane glanced at me, then back at the road.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “It’s your life,” I replied.

  “It’s our life,” he corrected. “This affects you as much as it does me.”

  I smiled weakly. “I don’t have a degree in Politician’s Wife,” I said ruefully, “but I love you. I believe in you.”

  “That’s all that’s required,” he said with a soft smile.

  Mona greeted us when we got home, as well as Tigger, who’d fattened up since last I’d seen him.

  “And you certainly could use a few home-cooked meals,” Mona said, tears sparkling in her eyes as she gave me a bone-crushing hug.

  “That sounds wonderful,” I replied. It felt so good to have a mother figure fuss over me again. Were we ever too old to not want our mothers when life got to be too much?

  I had another nightmare that night, waking screaming and drenched in sweat. Blane folded my shaking body into his arms, hushing me in gentle tones. He rocked me, pressing his lips against my temple every now and again, until I’d calmed. I’d had bad dreams in the hospital, too, refusing to take a drug that would knock me out. I was through taking any drugs I could reasonably avoid.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, wishing I didn’t have to burden him with my fears, no matter how unconsciously done.

  “Don’t apologize,” he said fiercely. “If there’s anyone who can understand, it’s me.”

  That made me feel slightly better. We sat in silence for a while, my racing heart slowing to a more normal speed.

  “Is there anything you want to talk about?” Blane asked. His voice was quiet in the stillness of the night.

  I tensed in his arms. “What do you mean?”

  “Anything that… happened… while you were gone? Sometimes it helps. Talking about it.”