LITMIR.BIZ

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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.”

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