Armed And Dangerous (The McKinnon Legends - The McKinnon American Men Book 2)

I would be remiss in failing to thank those in my life who had faith in my dream.

Anne, Donna, and Tom - Thank you for the suggestions and feedback.

To my Husband - Thank you for supporting my vision and being my partner through life.

“Mamma, Mamma!” Ten-year-old Jesse sobbed helplessly over her mother's slain body. “Someone help us, please!” she yelled over the waves of the blue Pacific Ocean. The grisly scene was incongruent with the peaceful, tropical setting of the Panamanian coastline.

Emilio Del Torres, Panama’s most feared drug and crime boss discovered his mistress thanks to Jesse’s cries for help. Jacqueline Bassett-Vozarosa lay sprawled facedown in the sand, her body in the surf line just past the secluded private cove of Del Torres’ beachfront villa on the Pacific side of the mainland.

Emilio pulled his lips tightly past perfect teeth. “There will be hell to pay for this,” he reasoned. Jacqueline was an American citizen with a small child. She was his girlfriend. Even more importantly, she was the wife of his enemy. “Diego, take the boat out and let her body go past the reef near the wall. No mistakes, understand?” Emilio pointed at his second in command. It pained him to do this, yet he saw no other alternative. Should her body be found on his turf, the war resulting would be bloody.

“No!” Jesse screamed as Del Torres pulled her away from the lifeless body of her mother. “No, you can’t just dump her! I thought you loved her,” she sobbed.

“I do, but not enough to go to jail for a murder that I did not commit. Diego, go! And you, come with me.” He jerked Jesse up by the elbow and dragged her screaming away from the beach and to the villa where he locked her away in her room.

Jesse kicked him in the shin, earning her a backslap which sent her to the floor of her room.

Jesse glared up at him. “You bastardo. Just you wait until my family comes for me. You will be sorry,” the little girl vowed.

“Shut up before you go join your mother.” He needed to think. This was not going to end well unless he planned very carefully.

She seethed at the man who would dare dishonor her Mamma. She was a McKinnon and family meant everything. Her father and Cousin Mason would save her. There was never a question in her mind. She pulled out her cell the minute the door of her new prison slammed shut and called her father.

“Daddy?” Jesse whispered as she crawled under the massive canopy bed, using the dust ruffle as a shield from prying eyes and to muffle their conversation.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” Josh McKinnon, Sheriff of Martin County Texas, felt his insides twist. His paternal instincts went int hyper drive. There was something terribly wrong.

“I need you to come get me,” she softly begged.

Josh heard the tiny sniff on the other end of the phone. He knew his daughter. She was a trooper. If she was crying there was something definitely wrong. Physically or emotionally his child was not on even footing, and he was certain his ex-wife was fully to blame.

“Of course. Where are you, and where is your mother?” Josh wondered.

“I’m in Panama, Daddy. Puerto Escondido.”

Holy Shit, Josh thought.

“Alright.” He took in a deep, calm breath. He did not want Jesse to think he was angry with her. "Go get your mother right now, baby. I want to speak to her,” he demanded softly. He was seething, but he would never let her hear it. If he ever got his hands around his ex-wife’s throat, he just might kill her, he thought.

“Mom is dead. Julio shot her and left her on the beach,” Jesse confessed in a single rush of breath.

“Oh, jeez, baby.” That stopped him short. He may not love Jacqueline or even like her, but she was his daughter’s mother and he had loved her at one point. “You sure? How do you know?”

“I saw it happen.” Her voice was distant, flat, and totally detached. Her mind had taken hold to shield her heart purely out of self-preservation.

Josh closed his eyes. He fully understood the emotional ramifications this day would hold for both of them. “How?” He almost hated to ask her to relive it. However, he needed answers if he was to get her safely home.

“Julio shot her for kissing Emilio Del Torres. Please, Daddy, please come get me.”

His ex-wife had defied a direct court order by taking his child out of the country. Look where it had gotten them. Her husband had shot and killed her right in front of Jesse’s eyes, leaving her a captive to one of Central America’s most dangerous criminals. The child would never be the same. If he managed to get her home alive, he would hire the best doctors that money could buy to straighten this out emotionally for her.

“I’m scared,” her small voice penetrated Josh’s thoughts.

He wanted to cry. He felt and heard the pathetic emotion coming through the phone. His baby was all that mattered to him, and she was in a fight for her life.

“I know you are, just hold tight, Baby Girl. Help is on the way. Now, I need to ask you a few questions, and it is very important you think clearly. Can you do this?”

“Yes.” She took in a deep breath. She understood that she was his eyes and ears on the ground. The more she could tell him the better her chances would increase of survival.

“Can you tell me how many men are there with him?”

“I don’t know, maybe fifteen to twenty.” She crawled out from under the bed going to the window to see if she could see anything helpful. “They have lots of big guns and cameras,” she said while noticing the surveillance equipment for the very first time. “The wall surrounding the area is taller than our house and it is pink. Who paints an outlaw's house pink?” She asked while shaking her head,

“Dogs, Jesse, do you see or hear dogs?”

“No. The housekeeper has a little dog, but she keeps her in the back locked in her room. She is really old and deaf, too.”

“The housekeeper or the dog?” Josh needed to be absolutely clear.

Jesse laughed softly. “Both, actually.”

Good, Josh thought. She still has some sense of humor. That would have to carry her through.

He was happy to hear that there were no dogs. Dogs complicated things. However, until he got a visual he was not going to assume that the dogs weren’t there. A fortress without dogs was unusual.

“Where are they holding you, Jess?” Josh was already dialing his cousin Robert for reinforcement.

“I’m in Emilio’s house. We got here late yesterday afternoon.”

“Are you sure?” Josh asked needing to be absolutely sure where she was held.

“Yes.” Jesse knew her father well enough to know the next question and answered before he even asked. “I’ve been here before, Daddy.”

Josh pinched the bridge of his nose. Damn it, why had Jesse kept this from him? He guessed she did not want him jumping feet-first into it with his ex-wife. He was not going to make a bad situation worse by scolding her for keeping this from him. She needed reassurances, not lectures.

“Do you have a guard, baby?”

“No, I don’t think so, but I am locked in my room on the second floor.” Jesse cringed. Her dad was smart. He would catch what she was confessing without coming right out and saying it.

“You have been there enough to have your own room?” Josh was quick to pick up on the inference of that comment just as Jesse knew he would.

“Yes, Daddy, please don’t be mad at me,” she begged, understanding that had she been honest with him, she might not be in the jam she found herself.

“I’m not mad. At least I'm not mad at you, and it is futile to be angry with your mother at this point. So listen to me very carefully. I know you are scared, baby, but you have to hold it together for me. Can you do that, Sweat Pea?”