Shirlee McCoy - Running Blind

They were moving fast, and she could hear her rescuer’s steady, deep breaths as he covered ground. He was in shape, she’d give him that, but Jenna doubted that was going to be enough to save them. Another sharp crack, and something whizzed by so close that Jenna felt it slice through the air.

She wanted to scream. Would have screamed, but her throat was too tight with fear.

Please, God, please.

The prayer was only half-formed when her rescuer skidded to a stop, shifted her weight. “In. Quick.”

He slid her down in front of him, and she reached out blindly, her hands sliding against warm leather seats as her rescuer urged her to move.

And she did. Crawling onto the leather seat, barely managing to move aside as he climbed in after her. The engine roared to life, and the vehicle jerked forward, picking up speed at an alarming rate.

“Get down!” He shouted the order as he pressed a hand against her back, forcing her to lean forward, her head slamming into something as she went. Pain wiped away all thought, and for a moment she floated in darkness, hearing nothing, feeling nothing. Glass shattered, dragging her from the edge of unconsciousness, pulling her back into reality.

She tried to sit up but was pressed back down as the car continued to accelerate, the tires spinning as her rescuer took another sharp turn. Jenna flew sideways, banging into the door and bouncing back again. She gripped the seat, her fingers digging into soft leather.

Had she escaped the basement so that she could die in a fiery crash?

Please, God, get me out of this alive.

The prayer filled her mind as the car took another sharp turn. She lost her grip on the seat, flew into the door again, her shoulder hitting first, her head following. Pain exploded through her and she felt a brief moment of panic, and then she felt nothing at all.

Nikolai Jansen had survived enemy fire in Afghanistan and a roadside bomb in Iraq. He didn’t plan to die twenty miles from the U.S. border during what should have been an easy assignment.

He took a sharp left, smiling grimly as the squeal of tires and the sound of shattering glass filled the car. The old truck that had been following hadn’t been able to make the turn.

Good.

One less carload of bad guys to deal with.

Beside him, Jenna groaned, straightening in her seat and nearly toppling forward into the dashboard. He grabbed her shoulder, holding her up as he eased off the accelerator. She was in bad shape. Beaten and blind, the wound on her forehead three different shades of green and blue. The sooner he got her to a hospital the better, but stopping now wasn’t an option. The Mexican drug cartel that had grabbed her was notorious for silencing people it took issue with. It seemed that Jenna was one of them. Or, perhaps, it had simply been her friend the Mexican Panthers were after.

“Did we lose them?” Her words were soft and slurred, her face colorless, aside from the bruise on her forehead and the freckles that dotted her nose and cheeks. According to her brother, Nikolai’s boss, Kane Dougherty, she’d been in Mexico working as a physical therapist at a pediatrics clinic. She hadn’t gotten anything but trouble for her effort.

“For now.”

“What if they find us again?”

“Let’s not borrow trouble.”

“I’m not talking about borrowing it. I’m talking about having it handed to us on a silver platter,” she muttered, leaning her head back against the seat.

“If they find us again, we’ll deal with it the way we did before.”

“By running?”

“Or fighting. Whichever will get us out of the situation alive.”

“I’m not sure I’m in great shape for fighting.”

“No worries. I’ve got enough fight in me for both of us.”

“You said my brother sent you.”

“I work for your brother’s PI firm and was following a lead in San Antonio. Kane asked if I could take a trip across the border to see how you were doing.”

“Typical Kane. Always keeping an eye on the people he loves.”

“That’s not such a bad thing, is it?” he asked, more to keep Jenna talking than because of any real need for conversation. Twenty minutes and they’d hit the U.S. border and the medical help Jenna obviously needed. Twenty minutes wasn’t long in the grand scheme of a life, but with head injuries, twenty minutes could be all a person had.

“No. And, right at this moment, I’m really glad he likes to keep an eye on me. I couldn’t have escaped that basement without your help.” She paused, took a deep shaky breath. “I don’t suppose you have any kind of pain relievers on you?”

“There’s a bottle of Tylenol in your purse, but I’m not sure a doctor would approve of you having any.”

“You’ve got my purse?” Her head was tilted down and her hair fell forward, covering her face and preventing him from seeing her expression.

He reached over and brushed straight red hair from her forehead and cheek, and she turned her head, her light blue eyes eerily empty. Blind, she’d said, and looking in her blank stare, Nikolai had no doubt that she was right. “Do you have my purse?” she repeated, and Nikolai jerked his attention back to the road and to the conversation. He’d have time to feel sorry for Jenna after they made it to safety. Until then, all his focus needed to be on the mission.

“I grabbed it from your hotel room. I figured you might need your passport and ID.” And he’d also figured that if the police found the purse, they’d keep it until Jenna or a family member retrieved it. That would have made it difficult for him to follow through on his plan to find Jenna and to get her out of Mexico.

“I guess your foresight paid off.”

“It will if we make it to the border.”

“How far are we from it?”

“Fifteen minutes.” But it only took seconds for things to change. For good to turn bad. For easy to become difficult. He’d seen it dozens of times as a Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan. Had nearly died when a peaceful day had exploded into violence. Expecting the unexpected was what he’d been trained to do. Returning to the United States and to life as a civilian hadn’t changed that.

“Fifteen minutes. That’s not so bad, and I guess if we’ve made it this far, there’s no reason to think we won’t make it the rest of the way,” she said.

He didn’t bother to tell her that there was every reason to think they wouldn’t. There was no point in stating the obvious. “Once I get you across the border, I’ll go back and search for your friend.”

“If that’s what you’re planning, why cross the border at all? We can both go look for her.” Her voice was weak, the adrenaline that had been keeping her going, fading.

“We’ve covered that ground before, Jenna. Right now, my priority is you.”

“Because my brother is paying the tab? If that’s the case—”

“No one is paying the tab. I came down here as a favor to a friend.”

“Then let’s go back. Magdalena—”

“Wouldn’t want you to die for her.”

At his words, she fell silent, dropping her head into her hands, her thoughts about his comment hidden. Either she realized the truth of his words, or she’d run out of energy and no longer had the strength to argue.

Nikolai wanted to comfort her, but there was nothing he could say. No way that he could convince her that they were doing the right thing. Leaving someone behind never felt right, regardless of the circumstances.

He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed Kane Dougherty’s number. Owner of Information Unlimited, Kane had asked Nikolai to join the private investigative firm two months ago. The job offer had come at the right time, and Nikolai had accepted. Since then, he’d tracked down missing relatives for two clients, traced the money trail of a man who’d left his wife and kids for another woman, and followed a suspected embezzler from Houston to San Antonio.