Jack felt sorry for her. She looked exhausted, as if she’d been running from ghosts every hour of every day for the past ten years. The emptiness in her eyes and the hollow sound to her voice only served to make him more determined to bring her back safely. The agency had lots of questions. They needed her, and whether she knew it or not, she needed them. For ten years she’d managed to hide from the world. He wasn’t going to lose her now. “If you hadn’t run,” Jack said, “I never would have used the cuffs in the first place.”
Her attention was elsewhere. Her eyes had grown round and sharp like that of a trapped fox.
“Are you alone?” she asked.
He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand and nodded. Looking over his shoulder, he followed her gaze, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. “Is something wrong?”
She fumbled with the key again. There were two holes in the metal cuffs, but she kept sticking the key in the wrong one. Since he wanted to keep her talking, he didn’t tell her what she was doing wrong.
“My father never would have told me to hide from the world if it wasn’t necessary,” she told him. “Damn cuffs. For ten years I’ve survived by listening to my instincts. And right now my instincts are telling me something’s not right.”
“I never would have come looking for you if I thought I was putting you in danger.”
“Oh, that’s charming.” A shaky laugh escaped her. “What are you, FBI man in shining armor?”
Ignoring her sarcasm, he noticed she kept looking behind him. Once again he looked over his shoulder. “What are you looking—”
A bearded man wearing sunglasses and dressed in khaki shorts and a short-sleeved print shirt stepped onto the deck, gun drawn and aimed in the vicinity of their heads.
Jack tensed. “Shit!”
Kate moved fast. She slapped the keys into Jack’s hand, then reached behind him and whipped out the gun he didn’t think she knew about. She jerked back the safety latch with her thumb. With a shoot-now, ask-questions-later mentality, she shot the man in the shoulder. His gun skittered across the deck and out of reach.
“Jesus!” Jack said. “What the hell are you doing?”
She was ignoring him again. That much was clear. She was also stronger than she looked. Dragging him along, she stepped over the injured man and kicked his gun off the boat and into the water.
Just when Jack thought things couldn’t get worse, a second man stepped out from behind the cabin. He was Haitian. His long hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
Kate jabbed an elbow into the newest arrival’s gut. Nothing happened, so Jack came up hard and fast with the hand that was connected to hers and knocked the thug flat on his back.
“Jump,” she said right before she leapt off the boat and onto the dock.
If not for his keen ability to follow orders, Jack might have found himself flat on the deck. Instead, their shoes thumped against the dock as they ran toward the crowded streets.
When they reached the boulevard, Kate shouted, “Run!”
“What do you think I’m doing?”
Psssss.
A bullet whizzed by Jack’s head, leaving an eerie ringing in his left ear.
People shouted and ran in every direction.
Jack stepped up his pace and they were nearly run over by a
taptap
when he charged ahead of her.
Purposefully, he fell a step behind, and she yanked him hard to the right and led him into the same alley she used earlier. A bullet hit the mural in front of them.
A woman screamed and pushed her child to the ground.
Kate took another sharp turn, this time to the left. She didn’t bother glancing back to see how close the man chasing them was, and since Jack didn’t want to lose his arm, he concentrated on keeping up with her. She was fast, and she was hardly out of breath. Jack, on the other hand, felt as if he was sucking in dust instead of air.
After a moment, the bullets stopped coming. Kate stopped and shook her wrist at him. “Unlock us. Quick!”
He had the cuffs off in less than ten seconds. The cuffs fell to the dirt. She scooped them up and shoved them into her pocket.
Jack’s breathing was labored, his shirt drenched in sweat.
Kate handed him his gun. “Good luck,” she said before she took off down another alley.
Grimacing, he took off after her. Within seconds, he was on her heels.
“I told you I can’t help you,” she shouted over her shoulder, slowing to a fast-paced jog. “And in another minute,” she added, “you won’t be able to help yourself either because that goon will come around the corner so fast you won’t know what hit you.”
“I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
She stopped and took a couple of deep breaths. “I’m not going to get myself killed over some misguided rookie agent who doesn’t know when to lay off.”
Bullets ricocheted off the metal roof behind him. They both threw themselves to the ground and crawled inside the nearest hut. The empty hut smelled like dead rodents.
On all fours, Jack followed her across the dirt floor. He’d been hit, but he wasn’t about to tell her. Following her lead, he squeezed through the small opening that served as a window and followed her into another hut on the other side of the path. As if she sensed him falling behind, Kate turned around and noticed the blood. “Damn it, rookie boy.” She pulled him into the shadows of the hut, pushed him to the ground, snatched the gun from him again and said, “Don’t make a sound.”
He was in too much pain to argue.
Rookie boy?
Clutching his side, he remained quiet. A dog’s bark ended with a sharp squeal. Heavy footsteps and heavier panting replaced all other sounds.
Motioning for him to stay put, she crouched low behind the hut’s entrance. At first glimpse of the goon’s shadow, she sprang forth and used the gun to punch him in the jaw. His over-sized belly hit the ground with a thud, sending up a cloud of dust.
She gave her hand another shake and dug the toe of her boot into the man’s side to make sure he was unconscious. “That’s what was supposed to happen to the thug on the boat,” she said with a huff. She cocked her head for a better look at the man. “He’s not one of the guys from the boat,” she told Jack. “How many men did they send after us?”
She reached into her front pocket and tossed the cuffs to Jack. “Put those on him, will you?”
Ignoring the pain from his wound, Jack crawled to the man’s side. He managed to get the cuffs around the guy’s wrists while Kate searched the man’s pockets and shoved a few items into a bag strapped around her shoulder.
She tossed Jack the man’s I.D. “Like I said, you can’t trust anyone.”
Jack looked at the card. “Ben Sheldon. FBI.” He pressed the man’s thumb onto the I.D. Then he wrapped the card in a handkerchief and tucked it into his back pocket.
“What are you doing?”
“It could be a fake I.D. If the name Ben Sheldon doesn’t show up on the agency’s list of criminals, the prints will. I want to know who the hell is trying to kill me.”
“First you might want to work at staying alive.” She went back into the hut. “Here,” she said, throwing him a rag. “Hold this over the hole in your side.”
“I was hardly nicked.”
“Just do it. I don’t need you leaving a trail of blood for his friend to follow.”
“So, I guess this means you’re going to cooperate?”
Her eyes sparkled. “I’m going to save your sorry ass, if that’s what you mean.”
Jack smiled. “Ahh, you do have a soft spot after all.”
“Let’s get one thing straight, FBI man. There’s nothing soft about me.”
Chapter 2
Kate stayed off the road since it was pocked with craters two and three feet deep. Instead, she headed straight up the mountain. They had kept a steady pace for thirty minutes with no sign of the men with guns, but Jack was beginning to fall behind. “You’re going to have to keep a faster pace,” Kate said over her shoulder, “or they’ll catch up to us before dusk.”
When Jack failed to respond, she turned to look at him. Blood dripped from his side and down the front of his shirt. She frowned. “You said the bullet hardly nicked you. Why didn’t you tell me you were bleeding like a goddamn sieve?”
“I didn’t want to slow you down. And stop swearing. You’re too pretty to talk like a thug.”
As she trudged back down the hill toward him, she shook her head. “And to think I was beginning to like you.”
His body swayed, the loss of blood making him woozy.
“About slowing me down,” she said, “what the hell do you think you’ve been doing for the last half hour?”
None too gingerly, she eased off his jacket and tossed it aside. “I don’t know why I’m helping you,” she muttered as she tore apart his blood-soaked shirt. “You lied about having the keys to the cuffs, you lied about the gun, and now you lecture me about my use of profanity. Never mind your lying to me about being alone.”
“I didn’t know I was being followed.”
She snorted. “What kind of FBI man are you anyhow?”
“Special Agent.”
“Give me a break.”
He shrugged. “Until they approached me two weeks ago, I was a Computer Specialist...Cyber Division, Unit One.”
That explained it. She wiped the blood around his wound and examined his injury. “The bullet in your side is going to have to come out. Until we can get you help we’re going to have to do our best to stop the bleeding. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
His face looked deathly pale, making her work faster. She ripped his already torn shirt clean off, and then tore the bloody cloth into strips. “You don’t exactly fit the stereotypical special agent type,” she said, taking inventory of his broad shoulders and rock-hard stomach. The suit had not done him justice. When she touched his side, he sucked in a breath. “And what would those characteristics be?” he asked.
Hoping to keep his mind off the fact that he could die on his first job as a special agent, she talked as she worked, efficiently binding his side with the strips of cloth. “I always pictured a special agent as the sort of man who could run miles in the heat without breaking a sweat—a weather-toughened Navy Seal or a gun-toting Terminator.”
“Hmmm.”
She tied two ends of cloth into a tight knot. “So, you’re used to working on computers, huh? Behind the safety of your screen?”
A muscle twitched in his jaw.
She hit a sensitive spot.
“The guys I’m used to going after are a lot scarier than the two guys back there,” he said.
She grabbed the jacket he’d been carrying and eased it back on. Next, she pulled his good arm around her shoulder and urged him onward. Although she didn’t like the idea of taking him to the chief priestess, she didn’t have much of a choice if she wanted to keep him alive. “Tell me about the guys you’re used to chasing.”
“They’re called cyberstalkers, pedophiles, persons with grudges, criminals, young, old, white, black, short, tall—” He winced in pain, but kept moving.
Afraid he wouldn’t be able to go on much longer, Kate stepped up their pace.
“Most cybercriminals think they’re anonymous,” he went on after a moment of silence. “They think they can’t be identified.” He inhaled. “I joined the agency to prove otherwise.”
Kate listened as he talked about criminals who crept into people’s homes without anyone ever knowing it. These guys didn’t come through the front door or the window; they came through computer monitors, using words to entice. Thousands of children were disappearing every year. Chills crept up the back of her neck.
With each word Jack seemed to be losing ground. If she didn’t get him help soon, he was going to die.
Jack felt like he was suffocating. Once again, he tried to wake himself. He gritted his teeth and moved his head from side to side, anything to stop the tickling sensation sweeping across his face. He wasn’t sure what was worse: the never-ending thumping of his head as the beat of a thousand drums shook his skull or the light touch of the object brushing across his nose and cheeks. Every movement, every twitch of his eye, felt as if hundreds of needles were being shoved into his body.
Something tickled his nose again. Somebody was trying to snuff out his life with a—he forced open an eye—feather.
Jack pushed the feather aside with his good arm right before he saw the sharp tip of a knife coming at him. He tried to escape, but two warm hands stopped him from falling off the cot. It was Kate.
On the other side of the cot was a woman holding a sharp blade, a big dark woman with an earring in her nose and wildly tousled hair. She used the knife to cut a string from his binding and set the knife to the side.
The walls, Jack noticed, were made of mud and sticks. He was inside a hut. In the far corner of the room sat a man beating drums. Sensing Jack’s eyes on him, the drummer stopped playing and rose to his feet. Standing at about six foot six, the drummer had to stoop to keep his head from hitting the adobe ceiling. His dark body was a canvas of tattoos—twisted figures and hieroglyphic marks. Queequeg, the harpooner from
Moby Dick
, came to mind. Without saying a word, the drummer picked up his goat-skinned covered drums and left the hut.
The woman with the knife hovered closer. “We have established contact with the Iwa,” she informed him. “You will not be joining the dead after all.”
Jack didn’t know what to say to that, although it sounded reassuring so he nodded.
“This is Alourdes, Chief Voodoo Priestess,” Kate told him. “She has called upon Gran Bwa himself to heal you.”
The large woman’s wide grin revealed yellow teeth. She replaced the knife with something that looked a lot like a snake’s vertebrae and waved it over his body. When that was done she simply left the room.
“That was...interesting.” His throat felt scratchy, parched.
Kate smiled. “She’s a wonderful person.”
“No doubt.” Jack tried to remove the crick from his neck. “I feel like I’ve been to hell and back. How long have I been laying here?”
“Two nights now, thanks to the concoction of herbs Alourdes prepared for you.”
He lifted a skeptical brow.
“You needed the rest. It’s morning now.” She handed Jack a dented tin cup. “Drink this. You don’t want to get dehydrated.”
Jack put the cup to his lips. The water tasted bitter, but he finished it off in a couple of gulps. “I hope there weren’t any animals sacrificed in my honor.”
“There’s much more to Voodoo than the usual clichés of ‘animal sacrifices’ and ‘black magic.’”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding,” she said. “It’s a religion just like any other—an expression of the human spirit. Some say Voodoo is the power of the will to overcome oppression.”
Jack nodded, entranced by her mouth, the way her lips moved, the sound of her voice. She had saved his life. An overwhelming desire to help her washed over him. She’d been running for too long. Whatever happened on that boat ten years ago had scared her enough to keep her in hiding for a decade. Many people speculated over her father’s death. A few believed Kate had a hand in it, but he’d seen the shock in her eyes when she learned only one body had washed ashore so many years ago. Somebody else had been on that boat and Jack was determined to find out whom. He reached for her hand. “I owe you my life.”
She pulled her hand away, then moved to the other side of the cot and began to examine his wound. Obviously, she wasn’t the sort to make a big deal out of saving one’s life.
Jack watched her with growing interest. She wore cargo pants and a white tank top. Her long red hair was pulled back into a pony tail, making her eyes look larger, greener. Her skin, bronzed by too much sun, glistened with perspiration. She was petite and graceful. If he hadn’t seen what she was capable of, he never would have believed she could shoot a gun with deadly accuracy or put a two-hundred and thirty pound man out cold with a couple of jabs of her elbow.
She expected a lot from herself; every muscle in her body worked to its maximum capacity, defined and lean. Ignoring his scrutiny of her, perhaps not even aware of it, she looked up and caught his gaze. Her fingers gently probed the skin around his wound. “How are you feeling?”
“Stiff. Sore. Basically like crap.”
“To be expected,” she said with little sympathy. She retrieved a bottle of antiseptic from a rusty cabinet behind her and returned to his side. “Why don’t you tell me what you know about Dr. Forstin?”
He raised a brow. “So, you did know him?”
“What do you mean ‘did’?”
“He’s dead.”
Her face paled. “How?”
“Murdered while working in his lab.”
“By the same man who killed my father,” she stated more than questioned.
“Possibly.”
“Definitely,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“I listen to my instincts. Something you might want to work on.”
He ignored her flippancy. “How often did you and Dr. Forstin communicate?”
“Not nearly often enough.” She swallowed a lump in her throat. “A few years after my father’s death, I called Dr. Forstin—surprised the hell out of him actually.” Her eyes brightened as if she was replaying the moment in her mind. “After that first conversation, we talked a couple of times each year. For the past ten years he’s been pouring over my father’s notes, trying to fill in the gaps. Last time we spoke he told me he was almost there.” She sighed, long and deep. “I can’t believe he’s gone.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why I’m telling you any of this. What difference does it make whether I talked to Dr. Forstin? I still can’t help you.”
Jack sighed. The tips of her fingers felt cool against his skin.
“It’s looking better,” she said. “The bullet wasn’t as deep as I thought. The swelling has gone down.” She wiped his chest and side with a cool wet cloth. “Another day or two and you’ll be as good as new.”
He rubbed an open palm over his jaw. What he needed was a long hot shower and a shave. He also needed to get in touch with the agency. After Kate finished reapplying fresh bandages, he slid his legs over the side of the cot. Kate retrieved his pants from across the room and handed them to him.
“I hope you know I never meant to put you in danger,” he said.
She raised a disbelieving brow.
“Dr. Forstin knew I was coming for you,” Jack told her. “He was worried about you.”
“How would you know that?” she asked. “Did you meet with him?”
He nodded. “After going through your case file, I called him, and he asked me to meet him at his lab. He sounded relieved when I told him I knew where you were and that I was going to bring you back to the States. He was worried about you since you failed to call as scheduled.”
“I was babysitting an American family of—” she waved a hand through the air. “It’s not important.”
Jack nodded. “I received word of Dr. Forstin’s death moments before I boarded the plane to come here.”
Kate’s green eyes blazed. “Did you ever stop to think that there might be a connection between your desire to reopen the case and Dr. Forstin’s murder?”
“Yes, but...”
“And you came anyhow? Knowing that the same cold-blooded killers could be watching your every move?”
He gingerly raised the arm on his good side, testing it out. “My boss, Agent Harrison, assured me—”
“Jack,” she cut in, visibly shaken. “Who, other than Agent Harrison, knew you were reopening the case?”
“The agency determined it best to keep our plans quiet. I agreed.”
She touched his shoulder. “Don’t you find it odd they picked you, Jack? Why you?”
“Because of my eidetic memory and because they knew I would get the job done.”
Frustration lined her brow. “I don’t think you realize the danger you’ve put yourself in. Someone is determined to stop the discovery of a vaccine for AIDS...someone in a high position, somebody with power, money, and contacts.”
“I’m listening.”
“Two years ago a vaccine known as AidVac completed Phase III of clinical trials...the last step before food and drug companies can seek approval from the FDA.”
Jack nodded.
“Dr. Forstin followed the clinical trials closely. Before the initial results were ever made public, Michael Lang, the inventor of AidVac, was hit by a truck, killed on impact. Two days later another valuable researcher died of an apparent heart attack while on a family picnic. He was forty-one years old. What are the odds?”
“I’d like to see the autopsy reports,” Jack said. “When I get back to the States, I’ll look into it. I promise.” He reached down and struggled to get his pants on with one arm.
Kate went to her knees and helped insert his feet into his trousers. Her hand brushed against his leg. “In a few days,” she said, “you might want to start exercising the arm on your bad side to get the blood flowing. You won’t be able to lift anything heavy for a while.”
“Haitian Medical School?”
“No, just good old common sense.” She got his pants as far as his knees and said, “Now try and stand.”
He did as she said, but his Joe Boxers couldn’t hide the fact that her close proximity had affected him. She raised her hands in surrender and backed off. “I think I’ll let you take it from here.”
“It’s not often I’m dressed by a beautiful woman,” he said in his defense.
She shook her head at him as if he’d lost all sense.
Although he would have preferred to have her help, he managed to get dressed on his own. When he accomplished that task, he looked at her and smiled.
She smiled back, catching him off-guard. She didn’t smile often, but when she did, her eyes lit up, emitting a warm aura around her. She was a survivor. And she was beautiful, her mouth nothing short of mesmerizing. He leaned forward and kissed her. When he pulled back, he had a hard time deciphering what she was thinking.