KIDNAPPED, A Romantic Suspense Novel (21 page)

Ick.
Dirt and dust covered the wood floor and old couch in front of the fireplace. Thankfully nothing moved.

This would have to do. And with a fireplace, maybe she could get them all warm for the night.

Hurrying back to the truck, she shut off the engine, grabbed the duffel bag and slung it over her arm. Then she helped Nicky out of the truck. “We’re going to have to stay here tonight.”

“It is scary, no, Sami?” He took the quilt she handed him from the back seat, his voice etched with uncertainty.

She hunkered down beside him, taking his small shoulders in her hands. “I’m not going to lie to you, Nicky. It looks frightening, because no one has lived here in a long time. I’m scared by it a little, too. But I’m more scared of not making Jake better. And right now, that’s the most important thing. Right?”

Nicky nodded.

Sami hugged him. His courage seemed to know no bounds.

She hurried over to the passenger door to help Jake out. When she flashed the light at the window, her heart caught in her throat. Light sparked off the shards of glass in a cut on his head. He’d slumped against the door, blood flowing from his forehead down over his eye, cheek, jaw and neck. It looked terrible. Knowing most face and head wounds looked worse than they actually were because they bled so profusely didn’t make her feel any better.

This was no stranger needing her help in the ER. This was Jake.

“Jake,” she whispered, opening the door carefully and reaching in to support his head. “Please, please be alive.”

She cradled his head against her chest. Feeling the warmth of his skin against her hand, she felt for his pulse. Rapid, but not weak. Shock hadn’t set in yet. She flashed the light at his left arm. A jagged piece of glass protruded from his heavy denim jacket. With any luck it hadn’t hit a major artery.

“Jake?” She lifted his head to get a better look at him. “Jake, can you hear me?”

His eyelids blinked, then opened. She flashed the light in his eyes. Reactive and equal. Good. At least there wasn’t any obvious neurological damage.

“Head hurts,” he whispered and clenched his eyes against the flashlight’s beam.

“I bet it does. You may have a concussion.” She handed Nicky the flashlight. “You’re going to have to shine this on the path in front of us. Do you think you can do that?”

“I can do, Sami.” He immediately flashed the light at the ground.

Sami pulled Jake’s arm around her shoulder. “You’re gonna have to help me get you inside. Do you think you can walk?”

“Will try,” Jake whispered, then he lurched out of the truck.

She nearly crumpled under his added weight. Over the years, she’d caught many a fainting patient, so her knees automatically gave until she could handle him. Then she slowly lifted with her thighs. The man was all muscle–-hard, heavy, muscle.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, and she felt a little of his weight leave her.

“It’s about ten feet. Just don’t pass out until we get inside.”

He tried to move without her and they almost landed face first on the gravel. She held on tight and dug in her heels to stop their forward movement.

“Hey, no way can you make it without me, so we best do this together. Got it?”

He grunted in reply.

They took an unsteady test step and both remained standing. “Frankly, Jake, this lone wolf act of yours…” she muttered as they took another step, “…is beginning to tick me off.”

They stumbled across the mud and grass covered gravel drive to the porch, where Nicky stood holding the light for them.

“Put the quilt on the floor near the fireplace,” Sami instructed as they squeezed through the cottage’s main door.

The boy hurried to spread out the quilt on the dusty hardwood floor. Once it was in place, Sami struggled to help Jake down, without injuring him further.

“Damn,” he hissed as he fell back onto the floor.

“God, I’m so sorry.” She helped him move to a more comfortable position. A sound from the corner drew her attention. Nicky stared at Jake with frightened eyes. She motioned him to come sit beside Jake. “Stay with him, Nicky. Talk to him, and don’t let him go back to sleep, honey. It’s really important.”

If Jake really had a concussion like she believed, the last thing she needed for him to do was lose consciousness.

Sami ran back to the truck, then pulled it around the rear of the house, So it couldn’t be seen from the road. Then she grabbed the remainder of the water and food supplies they’d packed earlier in the day. Finally, she opened the rear of the Suburban and pulled out the roadside emergency kit Matt had insisted she always carry with her, especially since she’d started working the evening shift.

Something hooted. A mournful howl followed by faint barking far off in the distant night. A shiver ran over her.
Great
. Just what she needed. Visions of every horror movie her brothers forced her to watch as a kid flashed through her mind. She ran back into the cottage as if the hounds of hell nipped at her heels, slammed the door closed, and leaned against it, panting for a minute.

“Sami? Is something out there?” Nicky whispered from beside Jake, who was struggling to sit up.

“Is it…the Kreshnins?” Jake asked, reaching for his holster and looking a little on the confused side.

“No. No one’s outside.” She rushed to kneel beside them. Pressing her hand to Jake’s chest, she gently stopped him from rising. “I just got a little scared is all. I told you. I’m a city girl, born and bred. The country sounds just spooked me.”

Jake let the gun drop to the floor and collapsed back onto the quilt, his eyes closing with exhaustion for his efforts. “Thought something…was wrong.”

What wasn’t wrong?

The men hunting down Nicky were somewhere out there trying to find them. The only place she’d found to spend the night was this dilapidated building straight out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie, in the middle of who-knows-where, surrounded by who-knew-what kind of wild animals. They had no heat, no water and very little food. And to top it off, the man who’d finally gotten through the wall surrounding her heart, was trying very hard to bleed to death on her grandmother’s antique quilt.

Shoving her desperate thoughts aside, Sami focused on the matter at hand–patching up Jake. Again. She set her supplies on the quilt next to him.

“Let’s get you out of this coat, so I can see how badly you’re injured.”

With great effort and little grace, he leaned forward to let her work his coat and shirt off his right side. The blood from the gash on right side of his head, which had slowed considerably, had flowed down his face and neck to soak clean through the collars of both pieces of clothing. She worked the coat off to the left side, but stopped when she eyed the four-inch piece of glass protruding from his arm.

“This is going to hurt,” she murmured as she grasped his arm in one hand and the glass shard in the other.

Her eyes held his for a moment, then he nodded.

“I’m sorry.”

She pulled steadily. The shard ground its way back out of his arm, the shirt and coat sleeve. Jake sucked in air through gritted teeth, filling the room with a hissing sound.

Working quickly, she jerked the coat and shirt off the remainder of his injured arm. A gash about three inches in length lay along the distal aspect of his upper arm, crusted over with dried blood and oozing new from her removal of the shard. At least no artery spewed blood from the wound.

From the duffel bag she pulled a piece of clean gauze and taped it to the site for a temporary bandage. Then she focused her attention to the gash on Jake’s forehead, just beneath the hair line.

“Nicky, can you hold the flashlight like this?” Angling the flashlight, she showed him how to shine it at the wound, but not directly into Jake’s eyes, then searched through her backpack for her make-up case and the pair of tweezers she kept there.

She opened a bottle of water and soaked one of the gauze pads. Gently, she washed as much blood as possible from around the site, without causing more bleeding to occur. Splinters of wood and shards of glass littered the laceration.

“Do you remember what happened back at the cabin?” she asked as she worked.

“You two…were out the window. I’d just climbed over the edge…when the bad guys…burst into the back room. They shot the place up…pretty bad.” He reached out to hold her by the wrist. “I’m sorry about…the damage to your…cabin.”

She gave him a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry about that. It can all be fixed.”

With a shaky smile of his own he released her hand and relaxed back on the quilt.

Taking a fresh gauze pad, she wiped the blood from the side of his face. “I’m just glad we all got out of there before they started shooting.” Finished cleaning him, she picked up her tweezers and leaned closer.

“Wished we’d been a little faster.” He winced when she began pulling out the pieces of debris from his wound. “I remember pain…in my head and arm as I let go of the ledge. Thought I was gonna blackout for a second when I hit the ground.”

“Looks like you got hit with part of the window.”

He gave a harsh laugh, then winced again. “Felt like it, too.”

“I’m going to have to clean both these wounds.” She lifted the bottle of peroxide, then leaned over and kissed him softly.

“What was that for?”

“An apology. This is going to hurt.”

* * *

Chuck Berry’s
Mabeline
played on the cell phone in Petrov’s office. The former KGB man usually loved hearing the decadent western rock and roll song. This time he cursed the interruption in his native tongue, then pushed the half naked blonde off his lap. He hauled his body off the leather couch and reached for the irritating piece of Western technology,

“Da.”

“They got away, Petrov,” Ivan said on the other end.

“How did you miss him? The Shadowman said they were at the cabin. All you had to do was kill them.” Petrov considered throwing the phone at the wall, but the cost of replacing them was starting to add up.

“Brother, Carlisle is slippery as eel. We had him cornered, but he escaped out back of cabin with the woman and Nicholai.”

Ivan paused and Petrov had a feeling his brother wasn’t telling him all the bad news.

“What else is wrong?”

“Three of our men are wounded. Sergei is bringing them to Danitskov.”

Danitskov had been a doctor back in Russia. Petrov had paid to have all the doctor’s family transported to America. In return the doctor fixed any or his men’s injuries whenever needed and without asking any questions.

“And Carlisle?” The damn American was costing him money, time, respect, and now men. Petrov wanted to hit something. He eyed the girl and leveled a backhanded slap to her face. Petrov smiled.
Oh, that felt good
.

“There was blood on the windowsill he went out,” Ivan continued. “Carlisle must be injured. Ilya and I searched the area. There is no sign of them. They just disappeared like smoke.”

Petrov growled.

At the sound the girl tried to scoot into the couch’s corner and cover herself. He leveled a glare at her and signaled her not to move any further. She released her blouse and froze, like a little frightened schoolgirl. Her cheek had turned red from his hand. The site made him stiff once more.

“What do you want me to do now, brother?” Ivan asked through the static on the phone.

“Get back here. We’ll have Shadowman find him for us.”

“The Shadowman will be angry we missed.”

“Too bad. He has much to lose if Carlisle and Nicholai are not found.”

Petrov turned the phone off, laid it on the table and poured a tumbler of Bourbon and stared at the girl trembling on the couch.

Her fear pleased him. He slapped her again, this time making sure he got her mouth. She tried to bolt, but he grabbed her by the arm and flung her back onto the couch. Her puny efforts to flee excited him. Maybe he wouldn’t have to send her to the stables just yet. There was still some spark left in her for him to break.

First things first, though. He swallowed half the whiskey in the glass, then flipped his phone over, punched the numbers and waited.

“Don’t tell me, your men missed again,” the cold voice on the other end said without greeting.

“Your information was bad,” Petrov lied. He didn’t want the Shadowman to know they’d missed the target. The man’s arrogance already irritated him. If he weren’t so useful, he’d put a bullet through his head tonight. “The cabin was empty as Soviet banks. I think Carlisle has taken pigeon and gone into foxhole. I cannot…how do you Americans say?…waste him until you find him.”

“The cabin was a long shot,” the Shadowman said. “I’ve already taken steps to squeeze the net around them tighter.”

“You will do this how?” Petrov took another swallow of bourbon and reached down to cup his growing erection as he stared at the girl’s swollen and bloody lower lip.

“In this country, police don’t like cop killers, especially if it’s one of their own. The morning paper will carry the story that Carlisle killed his captain.”

“Why will they do this? Too many know he did not do this thing.” Petrov opened his fly and pulled the girl to her knees in front of him.

“I’ve learned one thing in this business. If a story is leaked to the media the right way, the television and newspapers can make anyone guilty of anything.” The Shadowman gave a harsh laugh. “Once the local and state police know he’s a cop killer, they’ll flush our prey out into the open. If we’re lucky some hot-headed cop will do the deed for us.”

The other man’s icy tone cooled Petrov’s own anger. Even during the last days of the Soviet rule in Russia, he’d met few men as ruthless as his partner in this new country. He’d give Cossacks a lesson in barbarity.

* * *

Jake watched the flames flicker and dance across the wood in the fireplace. After Samantha had patched him up—which had hurt like hell, just like she’d promised—she’d dragged some old boxes and newspapers into the room from other parts of the house. He’d talked her through the process of making sure the fireplace’s flue was open. Which resulted in her getting covered with soot.