LITMIR.BIZ

      It was hard to think clearly, but he had to. He knew that Callie had a cell phone. He didn’t know if she had it with her. Kemp, her boss, had let that slip to Eb Scott during a casual conversation. If Callie had the phone, and Lopez’s people didn’t know, she might be able to get a call out. He didn’t flatter himself that she’d call him. But she might try to call the adult day care center, if she could. It wasn’t much, but it gave him hope.

      He drove to the center. For one mad instant he thought about speaking to his father in person. But that would only complicate matters and upset the old man; they hadn’t spoken in years. He couldn’t risk causing his father to have another stroke or a second heart attack by telling him that Callie had been kidnapped.

      He went to the office of the nursing director of the center instead and took her into his confidence. She agreed with him that it might be best if they kept the news from his father, and they formulated a cover story that was convincing. It was easy enough for him to arrange for a nurse to go home with his father to Callie’s apartment every night and to drive him to the center each day. They decided to tell Jack Steele that one of Callie’s elderly aunts had been hurt in a car wreck and she had to go to Houston to see about her. Callie had no elderly aunts, but Jack wouldn’t know that. It would placate him and keep him from worrying. Then Micah would have to arrange for someone to protect him from any attempts by Lopez on his life.

      He went back to his motel and spent the rest of the night and part of the next day making international phone calls. He knew that Chet Blake, the police chief, would call in the FBI once Callie’s disappearance was noted, and that wasn’t a bad idea. They would, of course, try to notify Micah, but they wouldn’t be able to find him. That meant that Lopez’s man in law enforcement would think Micah didn’t know that his stepsister had been kidnapped. And that would work to his benefit.

      But if Lopez’s men carried Callie down to the Yucatán, near Cancún, which was where the drug lord lived these days, it was going to become a nightmare of diplomacy for any U. S. agency that tried to get her out of his clutches, despite international law enforcement cooperation. Micah didn’t have that problem. He had Bojo, one of his best mercenaries, with him in the States. It took time to track down the rest of his team, but by dawn he’d managed it and arranged to meet them in Belize that night. He hated waiting that long, and he worried about what Callie was going to endure in the meantime. But any sort of assault took planning, especially on a fortress like Lopez’s home. To approach it by sea was impossible. Lopez had several fast boats and guards patrolling the sea wall night and day. It would have to be a land-based attack, which was where the DC-3 came in. The trusty old planes were practically indestructible.

      He couldn’t get Callie’s ordeal out of his mind. He’d kept tabs on her for years without her knowledge. She’d dated one out-of-town auditor and a young deputy sheriff, but nothing came of either relationship. She seemed to balk at close contact with men. That was disturbing to him, because he’d made some nasty allegations about her morals being as loose as her mother’s after she’d come on to him under the mistletoe four years ago.

      He didn’t think words would be damaging, but perhaps they were. Callie had a reputation locally for being as pure as fresh snow. In a small town, where everybody knew everything about their neighbors, you couldn’t hide a scandal. That made him feel even more guilty, because Callie had been sweet and uninhibited until he’d gone to work on her. It was a shame that he’d taken out his rage on her, when it was her mother who’d caused all the problems in his family. Callie’s innocence was going to cost her dearly, in Lopez’s grasp. Micah groaned aloud as he began to imagine what might happen to her now. And it would be his fault.

      He packed his suitcase and checked out of the motel. On the way to the airport, he went by Cy Parks’s place, to tell him what was going on. Eb was doing enough already; Micah hated the thought of putting more on him. Besides, Cy would have been miffed if he was left out of this. He had his own reasons for wanting Lopez brought down. The vengeful drug lord had endangered the life of Cy’s bride, Lisa, and the taciturn rancher wouldn’t rest easy until Lopez got what was coming to him. He sympathized with Micah about Callie’s kidnapping and Jack Steele’s danger. To Micah’s relief, he also volunteered to have one of his men, a former law enforcement officer, keep a covert eye on his father, just in case. That relieved Micah’s troubled mind. He drove to the airport, left the rented Porsche in the parking lot with the attendant, and boarded the plane to Belize. Then he went to work.