Abducted

ON THE RUN

When the high school sweetheart she never expected to see again bursts through the door of her medical mission clinic, nurse Sarah Gallagher can’t hold back her shock. But Dominic Jett isn’t there to catch up. He’s trying to save a life, and the thugs on his tail will stop at nothing to catch him. Now abducted and imprisoned on a remote island, Sarah and Jett become pawns in a tug-of-war between a powerful drug lord and a devious madman. And their only chance for survival is working together to find the valuable painting the dangerous men are searching for. But with someone trying to kill them at every turn, can they locate it in time to keep their reunion from turning fatal?

“Who is out there?” Sarah whispered.

“I can make out two men. Three maybe.”

“The police?” Her heart leaped as she sawed away at the bands around his ankle. “Rodriguez must have figured out what happened and sent help.”

Jett stared into the sunlight. “Uh-uh.”

Sarah worked frantically with the blade, freeing his ankles. “Jett, what are you thinking? Who are those men?”

“EODs have a motto,” he said slowly. “Always prepare for the worst.”

“How could this situation get any worse?”

Jett put his bound hands on her shoulder and held on, as if he could somehow anchor her there away from the danger. She reached for his hands to try to release them from the zip tie. “Jett?” she asked frantically. “What is it?”

“I don’t know, but I’ve got that feeling.”

“What feeling?”

“The kind of feeling I get right before something blows up.”

DANA MENTINK is an award-winning author of Christian fiction. Her novel Betrayal in the Badlands won a 2010 RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Award, and she was pleased to win the 2013 Carol Award for Lost Legacy. She has authored more than a dozen Love Inspired Suspense novels. Dana loves feedback from her readers. Contact her via her website at danamentink.com.

Abducted

Dana Mentink

www.millsandboon.co.uk

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

—John 16:33

To Laurie, Shelley and Lindsay, those darling three that have my back and fill my life with the kind of love that only sisters can give.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

About the Author

Title Page

Bible Verse

Dedication

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

Dear Reader

Extract

Copyright

ONE

Sarah Gallagher stood frozen in shock as Dominic Jett lurched through the clinic door, a limp body draped over his shoulder. The hot Mexican sun etched his bleeding face in golden fire. Why was he here in her clinic? She must be seeing things.

Peering at Sarah through swollen eyes, Jett sighed. “I really hate hospitals.” His legs buckled and he dropped to his knees, letting his burden slide to the floor. His collapse finally jerked Sarah from her frozen shock.

She ran to the men, Juanita two steps behind her. Juanita called for their teenage helper to summon her father, the doctor, from the next village. Somehow she and Juanita wrestled the two men onto cots. It was a harder job with Jett, who was six feet five inches of ornery muscle and bone. He might not be in the navy anymore, but he kept his fighting trim. Sarah examined him, pleased to see his eyelids flicker open, revealing the chocolate-brown eyes that haunted her dreams, now hazed with pain. As they slowly opened, she recalled being lost in those eyes, her high school sweetheart, her everything. She blinked away the memory. “Can you tell me your name?” she asked.

“George Washington,” he said, pushing her hands away. “I’m okay. Stop poking me.”

Typical. He was the same stubborn, reckless man she’d known since they’d gone steady nine years before, except...different, as if the soul inside him had hardened into granite. She’d heard a rumor that he was working on a dive boat near the health clinic where she was completing her last medical mission, but she hadn’t believed it. “Just hold still and let me check your pupils at least. What happened? Did you say the wrong thing to the wrong guy again?”

“For your information, I saved that scrawny dude over there from the three men trying to beat him senseless. I was trying to be a do-gooder, like you.” His tone dripped with sarcasm. “See where that got me?”

She would not rise to take the bait, not now. Instead she pressed a wad of cotton to the cut on his forehead, her fingers grazing the strong bones of his cheek. He winced.

“Sorry,” she said, her stomach tightening at the intensity in his eyes. “Hold this while I get some disinfectant,” she commanded, pressing his fingers to the cotton, trying not to let the feel of his hand distract her. “Did you get hit on the head?” A blow on top of the injury she knew he’d sustained in his navy service could prove deadly.

His eyes narrowed, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “Just help him. I’m okay.”

“Jett...”

He sat up, wincing again. “I said I’m okay. Go minister to someone else.”

He was pushing her away like she’d done to him so many years ago. The lump in her throat surprised her. “Jett...”

An engine noise drew her to the door. She peeked out, heart dropping into her shoes at the sight of three men getting out of their truck. If she had any doubts about their intent, one look at what they carried told her the truth—one held a machete and the others baseball bats.

The tallest of them looked up, gave her a lazy smile. She slammed the door and dropped the bar across it. At least there were already stout beams in place covering most of the windows, an effort to keep away thieves.

Jett sat up. “What?”

“Three men,” was all she could get past her terrified lips. Jett dived off the table and started to drag a heavy file cabinet in front of the door. She went to help him, pulse thundering.

“I got this,” he snapped. “Go check the back.”

Though she knew the back door was locked and secure, she raced to the rear of the small clinic, where there was a single window covered with shutters instead of barred to allow for ventilation. As she watched, the shutters were ripped aside and a man’s arm plunged through the gap where the window had been raised a few inches. She skidded to a stop, shoes squeaking on the tile. While she looked desperately around to find something to use to fight him off, he cranked the window frame up and stuck his head inside. His eyes were red rimmed, wild, as if he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol or just plain hatred. There was an ugly purple bruise darkening his cheekbone—probably courtesy of Dominic Jett, she surmised.

She grabbed a teakettle from the stove and swung it as hard as she could. The man grunted, protecting his head with his crooked arm. His thin lips contorted in anger. He grabbed at her, catching her by the wrist and twisting until she dropped the kettle, gasping in pain. She could feel his hot breath on her face as he pulled her close, struggling to both get in the window and hold onto her.

If he managed to make it inside, they would all be dead, she had no doubt. His grip was so hard she felt her fingers start to go numb. With his other hand, he reached inside to grab for her hair.

She struggled to pull away, jostling a pitcher of disinfecting fluid with two pairs of surgical scissors soaking inside. The pitcher was inches from her grasp, and she strained to reach it. Muscles pulled tight and her neck aching with the effort, she finally grasped the handle. She heaved it sideways at the man, dousing him with the contents. Eyes stinging, he pulled back just enough for her to slam the window and lock it.

She expected him to grab the nearest rock and use it to smash the glass to pieces. Her mouth fell open in surprise as she saw him run away. Panting, trying valiantly to make her lungs start to work properly again, she returned on wobbly legs to the front room.

Juanita turned frightened eyes on her. “They’ve left, for now.”

“Why?” she managed, the terror making her tongue slow and unwieldy.

She soon saw for herself what had discouraged them as Jett let in a uniformed police officer. Don Rodriguez, Sarah knew, the commandant of the tiny Mexican village. She offered a relieved greeting, which he returned politely. Rodriguez stood, hands clasped behind his back, heavy brows twitching as he took in every detail of Jett and the unconscious stranger.

“There were men outside,” Sarah said between gasps. “They attacked Jett and they were about to break in here when you arrived.”

He shot a disdainful look at Jett. “It seems you have found trouble. Again.”

Jett wiped the sweat off his forehead. “This time, it found me. I was returning from picking up a fuel filter a couple miles down the road and I came upon three guys beating on this one.” He jutted his chin at the unconscious man. “They were trying to force him into their truck.”

“Does he have any identification?” the officer asked.

Juanita handed him a wallet she’d taken out of the victim’s pocket. “It says his name is Del Young.”

Sarah thought the officer’s mouth tightened at the name, but perhaps it was her imagination. Her nerves were still firing too erratically to trust her judgment. “Do you know him?”

“No. He is a stranger to me.” He looked at Jett. “And the men beating him? They showed up here?”

Jett confirmed with a nod.

“What do you know of them?”

“Three guys, short, stocky, plenty strong. One was missing part of his pinky finger.”

Now there was no mistaking the nervous look that stole over Rodriguez’s face. “I will look into this matter. Best to let this man go.”

“Go?” Sarah gaped. “He’s unconscious. He needs to be flown to a hospital before those thugs return to kill him.”

Rodriguez cocked his head, weighing his reply. “These men, the ones you fought,” he said to Jett, “they work for Antonio Beretta.”

Sarah felt her stomach flip over.

“Yeah? Who’s that?” Jett said.

Sarah gaped. “How could you have lived here for a month and run a dive business and not know Antonio Beretta?”

Jett pulled the bloody cotton from his forehead and tossed it in the trash can. “I’m not the neighborhood busybody. I try to mind my own business.” He gave her a sly smile. “But it’s nice to know you’ve been keeping track of my life. I didn’t know you’d paid attention to when I’d arrived.”

She rolled her eyes. “Beretta’s a very wealthy, very powerful man,” she said. “We treated one of his victims just before you arrived.”

“Victims?”

“Someone who crossed him.” And would never cross him again, she thought with a shiver. “Beretta runs drugs.”

“Rumors,” Rodriguez said.

“More than rumors.” Sarah looked at her patient. “You think we should leave this man because Beretta is after him for some reason?”

“This is a local concern. You should not be involved.”

“I’m a medical missionary, and he’s injured. I’m already involved.”

Rodriguez stared at her. “You have done good things for the people in my town, so I am telling you this out of gratitude. If you are in Beretta’s way, he will kill you and everyone with you, and no one, not even God Himself, will be able to save you.”

Her chin went up. “God brought me here for a reason, and I’m not going to leave my patient to die,” she snapped.

Rodriguez shrugged. “If Beretta is involved, he is already a dead man. Take him back where you found him and leave him there.”

Sarah stared him right in the face. “I’m not going to do that.”

“As you wish. It is no matter to me.”

“Well, aren’t you going to investigate?” Her cheeks flushed hot. “We need some protection, at least.”

“I have other matters to attend to.”

“You’re not even going to do your job?” she demanded.

He pointed a finger at her. “Please do not tell me about my job. You have no right to direct affairs here.”

“I am a part of this community.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Isn’t it true that you are due to leave next week, Senorita Gallagher?”

She didn’t answer.

“It is fact, is it not? Your mission in Playa del Oro—” his tone dripped with derision “—is nearly complete, and then you will fly away to your comfortable life in America and our lives here will continue on.”

“That doesn’t mean—” she started.

“You are an outsider, in case you have forgotten,” Rodriguez said, “and now you are on your own.” He whirled on his heel and exited the clinic.

Sarah walked to the door and watched him drive away. “He’s not going to do a thing,” she said. “Unbelievable.”

“But understandable,” Jett said, “if Beretta is such a bad dude.”

She stared outside, wondering when the men would return. “No, it isn’t, not to me.”

“Ah, Sarah, always the idealist,” Jett said, and she thought there was a tinge of longing in the words under the sarcasm. It confused her, and she turned back toward her patient.

The man on the other cot lay completely still. He was probably in his mid-thirties, thin, with blond hair that hung in sweat-soaked clumps almost down to his chin. Her heart went out to him. A stranger to Playa del Oro finds himself the victim of a violent attack. Not so unusual anymore in a town that struggled with a flourishing drug trade, poverty, gang violence and corruption. She’d grown to love the town and the people here in her last two medical missions. But Rodriguez was right, she was scheduled to leave, and this time she would not return, since she was starting down a new path, retiring from nursing to join the family private investigation business.

Young’s cheeks were swollen and bruised. She wondered who he was, if his family was worrying about him, if he had a wife somewhere standing by, waiting for the phone to ring. Was he a father? Her heart squeezed. She knew how huge a hole a father’s death could leave in a family.

Juanita’s face was grave. “He’s got a serious head injury. There’s a laceration on his arm and cheek that need stitches.”

And they had no CAT scan machine, not here in the Playa del Oro mission clinic. “We’re going to need to move him to Puerto Rosado as soon as we can stabilize him. The hospital there can handle this.”

Jett was sitting up now. “I can take him up the coast in my boat. We have to get him and you out of here before the Three Stooges return.”

She bit her lip. “We’ll find someone to fly us. It will be faster.”

“No, it won’t. The airport is an hour away, and you’re going to have to pay a king’s ransom for a pilot, not to mention they’ll soak you for fuel.”

He was right, of course, but she wasn’t ready to admit that to him. “For now we’ll monitor his vitals, stitch him up and wait for the doctor to check him out. We’ll keep the doors and windows locked.”

“That is a ridiculous plan,” he snapped.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

“I’m offering it, free of charge. You can’t stay here and...” Jett’s head jerked up. He made for the front door again and looked out. “Too late,” he said. “They’re back, and this time they’re not going to leave until they finish the job.”

There was a sound of shattering terra cotta, a baseball bat decimating the pots of bougainvillea on the porch. Then they began to batter down the door.

* * *

The bat struck so hard the walls shook.

In spite of the urgency, Jett admired the fire in Sarah’s hazel eyes, the firm tilt of her delicate chin as she’d tried to figure out how to save her patient. He attempted to shake off the ringing in his ears that had roared to life again when he’d taken on the thugs. Great. He’d finally overcome the seizures, leftovers from the grievous injury that had ruined his navy career and reduced him to being the dive master on a rinky-dink boat in Tijuana. Now the ringing was back.

He ground his teeth together. You’ll overcome this, too.

The next crack of the bat against the door sounded like cannon fire. Both women jumped.

Jett tried for what he figured was a reasonable tone. “We’ve got to get him out of here.”

“It’s not safe to move him. He might be bleeding internally,” Sarah said.

“He’s going to be bleeding externally, too, if we don’t move, and so will the rest of us.” Another pot shattered outside.

She trembled, the crown of her blond head barely brushing his chin as they hauled the kitchen table over to join the file cabinet. “Just because Marco sicced you on me doesn’t mean I have to take orders from you,” she fired off.

He tensed. “Marco didn’t sic me on you. He asked me to make sure you were okay during your missionary stint, and since I was in Tijuana, it was easy for me to make my way to this part of the coast for a while.” A partial truth. Even if his bank account hadn’t been down to his last hundred bucks, he still wouldn’t have taken the job so close to Sarah if Marco Quidel, his mentor and a protector to the Gallagher sisters, hadn’t asked him to. He wouldn’t let Marco down for anything. You’re a sap, Jett, for all your tough-guy moves.

One of the men was shouting now, whacking his baseball bat against the walls of the clinic as he looked for windows or unlocked doors.

Sarah went pale. “Will anyone come to help us?”

Jett braced himself against the next blow as boots began to smash against the flimsy door.

“Sorry, Sarah Gal. We’re on our own.”

TWO

Jett saw Sarah flinch, her slight frame tensing as if an electric current had passed through it. “The same men?” she whispered.

“Beretta’s guys, all right.” His gaze slid to the unconscious man on the table. Like the cop said, they’d come back to finish the job.

One of the tiny windows set high up in the walls shattered, and a rock clunked onto the floor along with a shower of glass. “Get back,” he yelled. Fortunately, the tiny opening was too small for the thugs to get through, but their message was clear.

Coming for you.

It was just a matter of moments now.

Sarah raced to the back, only to return seconds later. “There’s a guy out there again, too. He’s almost gotten through. I wedged a chair under the handle, but it won’t hold for long.”

“Any other exits?”

Sarah looked at Juanita who nodded. “There’s an underground exit off the cellar, but we’ve never had to use it before.”

“No time like the present,” Jett said.

“What if it’s boarded up?”

“Then we kick it open. Take Young down there and get out. I’ll hold them off as long as I can.” Their blows were already causing the heavy wood to shudder.

“I can’t just leave you here,” Sarah said, mouth twisted.

“I’ll be right behind you. Get moving.”

“But...”

One booted foot punched through the wood and slammed against the metal file drawers, the impact vibrating his spine. It was probably the time for calm reasoning and diplomacy, but he had none to offer. Besides, in his experience the best way to combat fear was a commanding officer barking orders at you. “Now, Sarah,” he thundered. “Go now.”

Sarah and Juanita threw a bag of supplies together and loaded Young onto a stretcher, strapping him onto the canvas frame. Juanita heaved open the trapdoor in the floor and crawled down first, guiding the stretcher into a near vertical position with Sarah on the other end.

“Jett...” Sarah said, green-gold eyes wide with fear. He could see now that her hands were shaking. Badly.

“Go on,” he said, trying for a gentler tone that was still persuasive. He wasn’t sure how hard he should push her, how strong she was after being in the hospital so long after the accident that killed her father, but there wasn’t much choice at the moment. She’d always been a strong person, and he had to hope that was still the case. “I’ll be right behind you.”

He could see her jaw muscles tighten. She flashed him a determined, almost defiant look—which he loved—before she climbed into the hole with her end of the stretcher. It couldn’t have been easy, but she managed the thing. Sarah Gallagher, you still got your spunk.

He shoved his back against the file cabinet to make the inevitable breach take as long as possible. The metal slammed against his shoulder blades, nearly taking him off his feet. As much as he longed for a rematch, he was not going to win another fight against these three, not now, when he was still bruised and sore from their last encounter. The thought rankled him. He was going to lose. Again. He detested losing, always had.

Fine, he thought. If he was going down, at least he’d buy time for the women to get out with their patient. He looked around for something, anything useful. No weapons, no tools. What he wouldn’t give for a baseball bat or a shovel.

The jug of hand sanitizer. He smiled. Alcohol based, classified as class I flammable liquid substance with a flash point of less than one hundred degrees. Not as satisfying as disposing of small arms ammo with copious amounts of gasoline and thermite, but it might gain them a few minutes. Of course, Sarah would never condone the damage it would cause, but lives were more important than property and beggars couldn’t be choosers.

He seized the jug and a handful of towels. Throwing the towels down on the center of the floor, he dumped on the gel, two gallons of it. Then he grabbed a box of matches and lit it. It took a few seconds for the alcohol in the gel to catch. When it flamed to life, he dumped on a pile of paper towels, just for some extra oomph, and soon the smoke filled the small building, tickling his nose and stinging his eyes. Excellent.

He heard the creak of metal as their boots finally crashed through the door and started to work on shoving the file cabinet aside. In the back the sound of splintering wood indicated Sarah’s barricade was near failing. One more minute and Beretta’s men would walk right into the wall of smoke. His nerves were dancing with adrenaline. Fire, smoke, danger, risk. Good times.

Enjoy the campfire, gentlemen. With one last smile, he raced to the trapdoor and let himself down into the darkness, closing it firmly behind him.

* * *

Sarah felt like her lungs would explode in her chest as she and Juanita bumped through the damp earthen basement with their stricken patient. They tried their best to sync their steps to avoid jostling him too much.

Please, God, don’t let the exit be blocked.

She strained to hear the sound of running feet above her. Fear coiled like a live snake in her stomach. Jett was battered, alone with three men, and he had the same superhero attitude he’d had all his life. It was the same attitude that caused him to take a dare one stormy evening to jump a riverbed on his motorcycle. That hadn’t ended well. She still remembered her fear at seeing him there in the hospital bed, still and unresponsive. What had she been thinking leaving him in the clinic by himself? But how could she abandon her patient?