Dangerous Waters (21 page)

She knew that advice was probably aimed at the hostage of some nut who'd gone over the edge, not cold-blooded businessmen who wanted to converse. But surely even they would be less likely to want to kill her if she'd been cooperative.

So she said, "I don't really know. I just...felt like I belonged in the water from the time I started lessons. Sometimes I wanted to quit, but... the reasons for quitting were never as strong as my desire to swim."

His very dark eyes scrutinized her. At last he nodded. "Interesting. Tell me, was it hard to rescue such a large man?"

She swallowed again. Her mouth felt too dry to talk, but she answered anyway. "Yes. If it had been much farther, I might not have made it."

"So the location wasn't badly chosen. It was just bad luck that you of all people happened to be there."

Now she was supposed to critique how good a job a couple of hit men had done! This was insane. Or was she the one who had gone around the bend?

"That's true," she agreed, trying to sound grave.

Those dark eyes studied her for a moment longer, and then the man turned to face the front. He said something to the driver in Spanish, and Megan glanced out the window. They seemed to be leaving the city. She saw a road sign that said Beaverton. If they went into any town, there would surely be stoplights.

Out of the corner of her eye she located the button that released the door lock. If the car began to slow, if she could move quickly enough...

She never had a chance. The car exited the freeway, but the man beside her grabbed her hands and pushed her face down onto his thigh. Megan wriggled and fought, but his powerful hands held her effortlessly. When the car did stop, she would have rolled onto the floor were it not for his grip.

But her mouth... He couldn't hold her hands and her mouth at the same time. Megan drew a deep breath and screamed.

Almost instantly she was drowned out by rock music. "Born in the U.S.A." Surely passersby would wonder about a car full of dark-suited businessmen listening to Bruce Springsteen at a deafening level! Wouldn't they look? Remember it later?

Still she fought the hands pinioning her. And screamed. Her throat was raw from her screams. She was rocked back as the car began to move again. They stopped at another light, accelerated again, and this time picked up speed. After a nightmare few minutes, the man released her.

"Don't waste your breath," he said coldly.

Megan pushed herself up to a sitting position, as far across the seat from the man beside her as she could get. The highway had narrowed, and beyond barbed wire fences were green fields.

"Where are we going?" she whispered.

The man in the front seat barely spared her a glance. "We've rented a house. It will do, while we wait."

Wait for Mac, Megan thought. Wait for him to offer himself. For her.

She had no doubt at all that he would come. A stranger in a hospital bed, he had said, "You save a life, it belongs to you. So what are you going to do with mine?"

Now she knew. The rescue had been futile. For her sake, Mac would die anyway. He would do it to save her, but something told her his sacrifice also would be futile. These men, who had allowed her to see them, would never let her go.

CHAPTER 12

Four hours later, Mac's rage and fear hadn't abated at all. He slammed his fist down on the desk hard enough to make coffee cups jump. "I should have seen this coming! Damn, I know the man. Why didn't I expect—"

Norm interrupted him. "How could you have predicted this move? Megan shouldn't mean anything to Saldivar."

Bitterly angry at himself, Mac leaned his head back and closed his eyes. "He kidnapped Mercer's wife. She didn't mean anything to him, either. When something works, he uses it again. I should have seen it coming."

"What could you have done, hidden her forever?"

He opened his eyes to stare savagely at his boss. "If I had to."

"How'd the snatch happen?" asked the man from the Drug Enforcement Agency who'd joined them.

"I thought her parents were picking her up at the airport," Mac said, leashing his inner frustration. "Turns out, she decided she'd like a day in Portland on her own and changed arrangements. I guess she just intended to grab a taxi. Not that it would have made any difference either way. They'd have gotten her sooner or later. Anyway, a porter saw her pushed into the car and called the police, but he didn't remember the license plate. They didn't have anything to work with until Megan's parents got the call."

"Any demands yet?"

"The caller said she'd be returned safely when they have me. I'm to go to Devil's Lake alone. A meeting is set for tomorrow evening. If there's any hint that I have company or I'm being followed, she's dead."

His words hung in the silence, sickening him. Rage tightened its screw and he had to stand to pace. Megan had had to pay over and over again for his sins. This time, he might not be able to save her.

Might not. Who was he kidding? He didn't have a chance in hell of saving her. They had let Maria Mercer go because of the reason they had held her. They operated here in Miami. If they were seen not to keep promises, the next time they tried to put that kind of pressure on a cop, he wouldn't play along. They'd been damned careful not to let Maria see faces; grabbing her had been easy, and they'd basically thrown her in a room and locked the door, except for meals and the phone calls. Her jailer had been masked, Maria said. Or else she was just too afraid to identify him. Mac wouldn't blame her.

But Saldivar had good reason not to release Megan. She was a threat alive; dead, she couldn't open her mouth. If she and Mac both died, nobody could prove Saldivar was behind it. Besides, Megan had made the mistake of interfering in a death dear to Julio Saldivar's heart. He wouldn't appreciate that, however good intentioned she'd been.

No, she would die either way. But she wouldn't die alone. He owed her. He would have made the attempt to save her even if he didn't love her.

As it was, he didn't want to live if she didn't.

He hoped Megan knew that. He hoped she knew that he would come, that he'd do his damndest to pull off a miracle.

And he hoped she knew he would have to take the biggest gamble of his life, with her life on the line.

*****

The sun was still high in the sky when Mac steered his latest rental car through the last curves up the wooded ridge that protected Devil's Lake. It was the end of summer, but the highway was still busy. Megan had told him that life here didn't change until after Labor Day weekend.

If that one chance in a million came true, if he and Megan survived tonight, Mac wouldn't mind finding out what it was like around here in the quiet winter. Who knows, maybe the sheriffs’ department had an opening. Megan's brother had said the worst crime they had was an occasional boat being stolen. That would make a pleasant change.

Mac's grip on the steering wheel was tight. Too tight. He made himself uncurl his fingers, then discovered five seconds later that his knuckles had turned white again. Damn. It wasn't like him to let tension interfere with his concentration this way.

He glanced again at the rearview mirror, though no one car had stayed behind him for an unreasonable length of time. If he couldn't spot a tail, nobody watching would be able to, either.

He had been directed to go to Megan's cottage—alone—where he would be contacted this evening. Saldivar was too smart to keep to a preannounced schedule, however. Mac expected that meet to be moved up.

He didn't expect what happened as he slowed down at the outskirts of town. A dark van hurtled out of a poorly marked side road. Mac slammed on his brakes, swearing. He'd barely reached a stop on the shoulder when his car door was yanked open.

"What the hell..."

He recognized the man with the scar down his right cheek who grabbed his shoulder. Antonio. "If you want to see the lady alive, get your butt out of there."

Mac let himself be pulled through the door and roughly stuffed into the backseat of the van, which took off with tires skidding on the gravel and dirt of the road's shoulder. Not thirty seconds had elapsed.

How close behind had his backup been? Would they find his empty car, and have no idea where he'd disappeared to?

When his old buddy Antonio gave one more push, knocking him painfully against the armrest, he swore again. The next thing he knew, he was looking down the short barrel of a Wesson .38 Special.

Antonio smiled. "I never did like you."

"I wasn't too crazy about you, either," Mac said. Tempting though it was, he didn't allow himself a glance backward. Antonio was looking for that kind of mistake.

Unless, of course, they already knew he'd disregarded orders to come alone. Was that the explanation for the surprise pickup? Did that mean Megan was already dead?

It was a struggle to shut his emotions off with the cool detachment that had served him well in a dangerous career. He had made the only decision he could; the only one that gave her a prayer.

"Where's the woman?" he asked.

The driver, who Mac didn't know, glanced in the rearview mirror. "You'll see her in a minute." He, too, smiled. "But not for long."

Mac held his reflected gaze longer than the bastard liked. Cold anger glinted in the dark eyes before the driver had to pay attention to the next turn.

Mac knew Devil's Lake well enough to recognize where they were. On the lake road, maybe half a mile from Megan's cottage, but heading toward the public beach. Where were they going?

He had his answer when the van swerved into the drive of a waterfront house almost hidden by a ramshackle six-foot fence and tall trees. The place had an indefinable air that made it look deserted: the windows were dark, curtains pulled, a padlock on the closed doors of the detachable garage. A summer place, Mac guessed, used without the owners' knowledge.

When the van stopped, Antonio reached with one hand to open the sliding door. Then he gestured peremptorily with the gun. "Out."

Mac didn't argue. Another old acquaintance waited there, with an uglier weapon yet: a Beretta automatic. Mac had almost liked Rafael. Ironic if Rafael would be the one to kill him.

"Hands up!" Rafael snapped. Antonio's gun poked between Mac's shoulder blades.

Rafael gave him a shove and he half fell around the front of the van. A small knot of people waited near the front porch. With a lurch in his gut he recognized Megan, who stood white-faced between Saldivar himself and another man, her hands tied in front of her. When she saw him, she made a convulsive move toward him, but she was yanked back.

Mac ended up with his cheek ground into the porch railing. Splinters and peeling paint scoured his skin. Rough hands moved over him and divested him of the automatic he carried in his shoulder holster and the smaller weapon strapped to his ankle, as well as checking him for a wire. Then his hands were wrenched behind his back and tied with cord that bit into his wrists.

At last he was spun around to face the group who waited in a silent tableau.

*****

Megan was frozen with terror that she struggled to transform into anger. For a moment when she first saw Mac, broad-shouldered and reassuringly solid, her heart had leaped with hope before it dropped sickeningly into despair. He had come alone, and was now as helpless as she. What she'd expected him to do, she didn't know, but something. Something besides walking into the trap.

She had spent the two days of captivity praying for a chance to escape, but though the men guarding her had been unfailingly polite, they hadn't been careless.

She had been taken to a farmhouse somewhere out in the green valley beyond Beaverton. One country road turned into another, and she doubted she could find the house again. An interior parlor with high ceilings and no windows had been set up for her with a cot and a recliner. Twice a day she had been allowed to go to the bathroom. The boredom was almost worse than her fear.

Early this morning Saldivar himself had arrived, greeted her courteously, and returned to the dark limousine with tinted windows that was so out of place in the dusty farmyard. Megan discovered that her captors had traded in the blue car for a van; maybe in case her kidnapping had been witnessed. She was firmly escorted to the van, where she sat in the middle seat between two men. Rafael she knew; he had brought her meals and taken her to the bathroom. The other man was far more unpleasant. Antonio, he introduced himself, with a smile that made her skin crawl.

But the one who really gave her the creeps was Julio Saldivar. For some reason she hadn't expected him to be so young, or handsome, but he was both. Perhaps thirty-five, with smooth dark hair, a smile that would have been charming had those brown eyes not remained so cold, and a slender build under the most beautiful suit Megan had ever seen. When he took her hand in his and held it, her stomach roiled.

And now he was smiling in a different way altogether as he walked toward Mac, who managed to look dangerous despite the fact that his hands were tied behind his back and he had been stripped of weapons. Compared to the other men, he was big and disreputable-looking, wearing jeans, his dark-blond hair brushing his collar and an angry scrape slashing across one cheekbone. Mac's gaze met hers for a fleeting instant that told her nothing, and then he switched his attention to Saldivar.

"Let her go now."

"Not yet." Saldivar stopped not a foot in front of Mac. Still smiling, he slammed a fist into Mac's stomach. Mac doubled up, retched, then with an angry roar flung off Antonio, who'd been gripping his upper arm. Before he could reach Saldivar, who stepped back, Rafael and Antonio had wrestled him to his knees.

"You son of a..."A kick from Antonio doubled him up again, but somehow he pulled himself to his feet. Rage flared in his gray eyes. "You want a reputation for not keeping promises? If she doesn't walk out of here, the whole world will know what Julio's word means."

The smile was gone now. "My word means something. It means that you will die. This time, I'll watch to make certain." Saldivar jerked his head. "Let's go."