Cut Throat

by Sharon Sala

  “There’s a doctor here, honey. He’s going to fix you up.”

  She clutched at him, feeling the thump of his pulse beneath her fingertips. Wilson? Here?

  She lifted her arm, her fingers splayed out in the air, searching for confirmation.

  He caught her hand and lifted it to his lips, then held it against his face, unable to say what he felt.

  It was the tears on his face she felt first, and knowing that he cried for her was humbling. She rubbed her thumb along the curve of his lips, then lightly felt the shape of his eyebrows, remembering the way they arched. From there, it was a straight shot down the length of his nose to that perfect indentation in his upper lip. The sensuality of his mouth was familiar, but it was when she felt that single gold hoop in his ear that she knew for certain he was there.

  It was unbelievable to her that, no matter how many times she had hurt him—even shunned him—he had yet to turn his back on her. She was seriously going to have to rethink her life choices.

  “Miss…I’m going to try and set your ribs now,” someone she thought must be Dr. Scott said.

  Cat’s hands moved to her midsection, remembering the crushing kicks and blows from Tutuola’s hands and fists, and she discovered she was naked.

  “Clothes?”

  Wilson patted her arm. “I started to undress you, but you couldn’t stand the pain. I had to cut them off.”

  Dr. Scott pulled a syringe from his bag, then paused. “Miss…are you allergic to anything?”

  Cat could barely form the word. “No.”

  He filled the syringe, then swabbed an area on her arm with alcohol. “You’re going to feel a slight sting.”

  A sting? Every pore in her body was aching. A sting would just get lost in the crowd. She would have laughed, but she hurt too much to waste the sarcasm.

  Wilson pulled a strand of hair away from her swollen eyes, then ran a finger gently across her forehead.

  “Can’t see,” she mumbled.

  “I know, baby…I’m sorry, but the swelling will go down.”

  He watched her lick her lips again. When he dampened them once more, her nostrils flared.

  “You came,” she whispered.

  He laid a hand against the side of her face, then leaned close to her ear.

  “You had to know I would.”

  “The pain meds should kick in any time now,” Doctor Scott said. “I need to stitch up your cuts, so I’ll be numbing those areas after we bind your ribs.”

  Cat mentally braced herself for what was to come.

  She felt hands tracking the lines of bones beneath her skin, then fingers testing—pushing—testing—pushing.

  The pain that shot through her went all the way to her back teeth. In spite of her intent to bear it, she screamed, then moaned. The sound cut through Wilson like a knife.

  “I’m sorry, miss…I’m sorry,” the doctor was saying, but he didn’t stop working and Cat couldn’t stop screaming. She begged him to stop, and she begged Wilson to make him.

  Wilson gritted his teeth, wishing to God he could take the pain for her, then, finally, mercifully, she passed out.

  Thankful that she was momentarily oblivious, the doctor worked quickly, maneuvering the ribs back in place by touch. When he was done, he bound Cat’s midriff as tightly as he dared.

  “This isn’t a good idea,” Dr. Scott kept saying. “I’d feel a whole lot better if we’d gotten X-rays.”

  Wilson knew there was a body somewhere in Chihuahua that would eventually be found, if it hadn’t already. He wanted Cat as far away from the city as he could get her before someone realized the dead man had had help on his way to hell.

  “I’ll take her to a dozen doctors later, but not here. I need to get her back to the States.”

  Mack Scott narrowed his gaze as he looked from one to the other.

  “I don’t want to know what’s going on. I’m just giving you my best advice.”

  “I don’t want advice. I want results.”

  The man’s attitude was unwavering. Scott shrugged. It was their funeral. He began numbing the areas around which he would stitch, his entire focus on doing as little damage as possible.

  Wilson watched until he was satisfied by what the doctor was doing, then gave the rest of his attention to Cat.

  The doctor paused a moment, eyeing his handiwork and trying to decide where to start stitching. Inevitably, his gaze slid to the scar on her neck. Between old wounds and new, he was amazed at the punishment this woman had taken and still lived.

  “Look’s like she’s a survivor,” he said.

  Wilson sighed, then smoothed a tiny strand of hair away from her neck as the doctor began to stitch up her cuts.

  “You have no idea,” he said. “You have no idea.”

  Thirty minutes later, Mack Scott rocked back on his heels and straightened up.

  “Okay. That’s all I can do for her here.”

  He began gathering up his things. He dug a handful of samples from his bag, then handed them to Wilson.

  “Pain pills. If you’re bound and determined to move her, she’s going to need them. I’ve already given her a stiff shot of codeine, so don’t give her anything else for at least four hours. After that, she can have two of those pills every three hours until you get her back to the States. Then get her to a hospital ASAP. I’m still uncomfortable about possible internal injuries.”

  “Yeah. I get it,” Wilson said. “What do I owe you?”

  “A hundred bucks should cover it.”

  Wilson dug into his pocket again and pulled out a single bill.

  “Well worth it, and then some,” he said softly, then shook the man’s hand.

  “Safe journey,” Scott said, then added, “If you two are in trouble, don’t linger. Mexican jails are not pleasant.”

  Wilson nodded. “Thanks.”

  As soon as the doctor was gone, Wilson grabbed his cell phone and made a call.

  Mike Simms answered on the first ring.

  “What?”

  Wilson shifted the phone to his other ear as he moved to the window, eyeing the parking lot below.

  “We’re coming in. Should be there within thirty minutes, maybe sooner.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “No, but she’s alive.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  Wilson hung up, then paused a moment to look around the room. He needed to remove every vestige of Cat’s presence. He didn’t know if she’d registered under her own name, but he wasn’t going to leave anything of hers behind, just in case.

  He emptied dressers and the closet, took the stuff she’d tossed into the wastebasket and threw it in her bag along with everything else. He took her room key, then eyed the bloody bedclothes and towels.

  The maid, Asuncion, had seen Cat. She would understand and hopefully not raise any unwanted alarms. Just to make sure, he tossed a couple more twenty-dollar bills on the bedside table, and then, after a quick check of Cat’s condition to make sure she was still out, he stuffed a handful of wet washcloths into a valet-service bag, then took those along with her suitcase and headed down the back way to her car.

  He tossed her bag in the back, then took the wet cloths he’d brought with him and began to clean out the interior of Cat’s car. The water reactivated the coppery scent of fresh blood, and by the time he was through, he was almost sick to his stomach. This wasn’t just anyone’s blood. It was Cat’s. As badly as she’d been injured, he didn’t know how she’d managed to get herself back into the hotel. As he began, he soon found a gun beneath the seat. Without a second thought, he wiped off the prints and tossed it in a garbage bag.

  Not for the first time, he wondered exactly what had happened to Tutuola, but now was not the time to get curious.

  As soon as he’d finished cleaning the car, he tossed the washcloths back in the bag with the gun, then threw the bag in the Dumpster on his way back inside. The closer he got to Cat’s room, the faster he moved. By the time he reached
the second floor and turned down her hallway, he was running. The only plus to this whole nightmare was that this was the off-season for tourists. If the vehicles around the parking lot were any indication, the hotel wasn’t even half full.

  He opened the door with Cat’s key card and slipped inside. As he did, he thought he heard movement and rushed into the bedroom. Cat was awake. So damned much for the pain shot the doctor had given her.

  “Cat…honey. What in hell are you trying to do?”

  Cat turned her head toward the sound of his voice. “Wilson?”

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  “I need to pee.”

  “Lord have mercy, woman. I don’t know—”

  “Help…damn it.”

  He sighed. “Don’t blame me if you pass out before you can do anything.”

  “I…c’n do it,” she mumbled.

  He touched the side of her poor battered face, while trying to figure out the best way to help her up.

  “Okay…can you lift your arms?”

  She tried to lift them, then gasped when she reached too high with her right arm.

  “Can’t…”

  “One’s good enough,” Wilson said. “I’m gonna put one arm beneath your shoulders and my other under your knees. When I do, slide your good arm around my neck and hold on. Don’t fight me. Don’t move. I’ll do all the moving for you.”

  “’m…naked.”

  He stifled a frown. “One thing at a time, lady. One thing at a time.”

  He bent down, then hesitated. There was no way to do this without hurting her. Just as well get it over with.

  “Hang tough, baby…here we go.”

  He slid his arms between her and the mattress, then lifted her to his chest with one smooth motion. As careful as he was trying to be, she moaned, then hiccuped on a sob.

  “Jesus…Jesus,” Cat mumbled, unaware that she’d said the name aloud.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Wilson said, as he hurried into the bathroom with her, then eased her down onto the commode. “Can you sit upright without me?”

  “Yes.”

  He hated to let go. “You sure?”

  He saw her try to make a fist, and knew that she was angry with herself and the situation as much as with his persistence.

  “Yes…sure. Can’t move…can’t see…still know how to pee.”

  “Okay, then,” Wilson said. “I’ll be right outside. Yell when you’re ready.”

  He walked out, then closed the door. The longer he was here, the antsier he felt. As he waited, he heard footsteps coming down the hallway, then loud voices. He caught himself holding his breath, waiting for them to pass. When they did, he exhaled slowly.

  As he waited, it dawned on him that every stitch of clothing Cat owned was down in the car. Then he realized he’d never be able to dress her anyway, so the subject was moot. There was a hotel bathrobe draped across a chair. While he wasn’t in the habit of stealing from hotels, the situation called for extreme measures. He picked up the robe just as Cat called out.

  He opened the door and hurried in, tossing the card key onto the bed as he passed. “I’ve got a bathrobe here, honey. We need to get it on you so I can get you outside.”

  Cat froze. “Out?”

  “To the airport. I’ve got a chopper waiting to get you out of the country.”

  She nodded once, waiting for him to do what had to be done.

  By the time he had her wrapped and belted into the robe, she was in tears. Her shoulders shook with silent sobs, and when he picked her up again, she passed out.

  It was God’s own blessing. Wilson couldn’t take her down the elevator, because that led out into the lobby, and she wouldn’t have been able to bear the trip down the stairs without screaming in pain. Even then, as he was carrying her down the hall to the stairwell, he met a guest coming off the elevator who took one look at Cat and gasped.

  “Mugged. Watch your back,” Wilson muttered, and kept on going.

  He got to the parking lot and then opened the passenger’s door. He’d scooted the seat back earlier and left it in a reclining position. He laid Cat down without trying to fasten a seat belt around her. By the time he got behind the steering wheel, he was shaking. He glanced at Cat. Thankful that she was still out, he started the car and quickly drove away.

  It took fifteen minutes to get to the airport, and it was the longest fifteen minutes he’d ever spent in his life. Every siren he heard made him certain the Mexican police were in pursuit. Every police car he saw, he feared it would make a quick turn in the road and give chase. In spite of every preconceived worry he’d had, none of them came true. Only after he had turned off the main road and taken the smaller road to the airport did he begin to relax. Then he saw Mike standing by his chopper and pulled up beside it.

  Mike was smiling, but when he saw the passenger in the car, his expression stilled. He got all the luggage out of the car and tossed it into the chopper, then stood aside, holding the door open as Wilson carried Cat toward him.

  When Wilson saw the blow-up mattress on the floor behind the seats, as well as the small pillow and blanket his friend had scrounged, he nodded approvingly as he glanced at Mike.

  “Good thinking,” he said.

  Mike eyed Cat again and then quickly looked away, as if he’d done something wrong. His face was flushed, and his voice was shaking. “Goddamn, Wilson. Goddamn.”

  Wilson eased Cat down onto the mattress, then pulled the blanket up over her legs.

  “I’ve got to move her car,” he said. “Be right back.”

  “I’ll start up the engine,” Mike said.

  Wilson jumped in Cat’s car and drove toward the small building that served the airport. He parked and went inside, heading for the young woman who was standing behind a counter.

  She was a curvaceous Latino in her late twenties who was obviously proud of her big boobs and laser-whitened teeth, because she kept smoothing down the front of her blouse and smiling.

  “Miss…I need to park a vehicle here for a while. Is that a problem?”

  She glanced out at the SUV, then shrugged. “No problem.”

  He took a pen and paper from his pocket. “What’s the phone number to this airport?”

  She wrote it down for him, then flashed him another toothy smile.

  Wilson pocketed the paper and laid a twenty on the counter.

  “Thank you for your help,” he said. “I’ll be in touch about the car.”

  She palmed the money as she nodded importantly. “It will be safe here, señor. We have the twenty-four-hour security here, you know.”

  “Okay, thanks again,” he said, and headed for the door. Once outside, he ran to the waiting chopper. Not until he was buckled in and they were lifting off the tarmac into the air did Wilson finally begin to breathe easy.

  He glanced back at Cat a couple of times, reassuring himself that she was still okay, and then thumped Mike lightly on the shoulder.

  “I cannot thank you enough for this,” he said.

  Mike just shook his head and started explaining that he’d filed a flight plan that covered the shortest distance to the border.

  “We’ll worry about the fastest way to get her home later. Right now, I just want to get back into the States.”

  Wilson glanced at Mike, eyeing the set to his jaw and the glitter in his eyes.

  “Thank you,” he said again, softly, then glanced back at Cat. Thankfully she was, for the moment, beyond pain.

  They hadn’t flown more than a couple of minutes from the airport when Wilson realized they were flying low over some pretty exclusive property. Below, he could see opulent houses with well-cared-for grounds all around.

  “Hey…look at that,” Mike said, pointing down to his left. “That must have been one damned big fire.”

  Wilson leaned over and glanced at the huge, burned-out shell of a mansion, along with some nearby outbuildings that had suffered roof damage. He didn’t think much of it until he happened to no
tice the long, older model car parked in front of what must have been a garage.

  Suddenly his flesh began to crawl.

  He knew that car. They’d tracked it into Laredo, then across the border through Nuevo Laredo to that empty hacienda on the outside of town. The last time he’d seen it, Cat had been running past it as she’d apprehended Mark Presley.

  Tutuola. That was Tutuola’s car.

  Dear God, what had gone on down there?

  He stared at the place until they had passed it by, then looked at Cat once again. There would be time for questions later.

  * * *

  Houston and Jimmy Franks had staked out Wilson McKay’s bail-bond business for two days now, and still no sign of McKay. They’d seen his secretary coming and going, and while they intended to show her how to respect real men, they didn’t want to tip their hand too soon by messing her up just yet.

  Houston was getting bored with their original idea of payback and wanted to leave town. It was Jimmy who wouldn’t budge. He’d faced both Wilson and the secretary and come out on the downside. It wasn’t in him to forgive and forget, even if he had been responsible for the outcome himself, and with the meth he kept putting in his system, his sense of invincibility was over the top.

  The brothers were living out of their car, and it was beginning to smell like Sunday morning in a Saturday night bar. The trash they’d been throwing onto the back floorboard was now piling up and spilling over onto the seats. Houston was reaching for the last beer in the six-pack ring when Jimmy snatched it up, popped the top and downed a good third of it before he came up for air.

  “Damn it, Jimmy. You saw me reachin’ for that beer.”

  “Yeah, and you saw me get to it first,” Jimmy said, and took another long swig just to prove his point.

  Houston snapped.

  He slapped the back of his brother’s head just as Jimmy was about to take another swig. The last of the beer sloshed up his nose and down the front of his shirt to drip on his pants.

  Jimmy cursed, flung the empty can at Houston’s head and then doubled up his fists.