In the Enemy's Arms

He dragged his hand through his hair. “Okay, look, you’re right. They didn’t just go off. They’re in trouble, and so are we. Yeah, those guys broke in here, looking for us and…”

“And?”

“And a flash drive with files that Susanna and I kind of, uh, stole.”

Cate stared. She couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d declared he was wildly in love with her. Susanna stealing… Oh, hell, Justin stealing… It was so wrong, not just morally or ethically or legally, but for who they were.

She didn’t realize her mouth was gaping open until he pushed it shut with one fingertip under her chin. His grin was crooked. “I guess I should feel honored that you’re stunned speechless. You don’t think as badly of me as you like to pretend, do you?”

She tried to ignore the faint heat where his finger had been, tried to form a coherent thought. “So you guys st—” She couldn’t say the word. “You took some data that belongs to someone else and they want it back so now Susanna and Trent are…what? In hiding?”

Grimly he shook his head.

Horror replaced that stunned feeling. “Kidnapped? They’ve been kidnapped?” At his nod, she shoved him with both hands on his chest. “And these same people were shooting at us and they broke into your house looking for us and— Oh, my God, what have you gotten me into?”

She shoved him again, knocking him back a few inches, and he grabbed her wrists. “Hey, it’s not me. They got into trouble on their own. Well, more or less.”

“What does that mean—‘more or less’?”

“It means this isn’t the time or the place to talk about it.” He lifted her wrists a few inches. “If I let go, will you stop punching me?”

“Those weren’t punches,” she muttered. “I can show you a real punch.” His grip loosened, and she jerked free. “I can’t believe… Oh, of course I can believe it. You and Trent never did think about the consequences of anything you did. Why should you? Your parents or their money or their lawyers always took care of it for you.”

Scowling, he took her arm and steered her toward the vine-covered fence at the back of the yard. “You’re such a snot, Cate. When you see a patient in the E.R., don’t you wait until you have his history before you start passing judgment?”

“I don’t pass judgment. I treat their illnesses, patch up their injuries and turf them upstairs or out. My responsibility and interest end when they leave my department.” Stolen information, kidnapping, getting shot at… Dear God, this was not what she expected of this trip.

He led the way straight to a gate that she wouldn’t even have noticed, covered as it was with the same flowering vines as the fence. Brushing aside leaves, he typed a code into the keypad, then pushed the gate open and sneaked a look outside before he stepped out.

“So we’re going to the police now, right? Or no, wait, we should probably call Trent’s parents and let them contact the FBI. With all the lawyers and politicians in the Calloway family, they probably know someone who can get them straight through to the director himself, and we are in a foreign country. The FBI or the State Department should be involved. I can get in touch with Emilia…or maybe I’d better call Trent’s dad instead. Emilia will be so devastated—”

Justin stopped short and faced her. “Stop babbling.”

She stiffened. “I don’t babble.”

“We’re not contacting the police or the Calloways or anyone else.”

“We have to. We’re not cops. We’re not qualified to deal with a double kidnapping!” That was the way things went in her world: she came across evidence of child or spousal abuse, a sexual assault, a shooting, a stabbing, a beating, and she reported it to the police. End of her involvement, except for an occasional court appearance to testify.

“This may come as a surprise, doc, but the kidnap pers—the people who have Trent and Susanna in custody, the people giving orders to the bad guys hunting for us—don’t want the police involved. All they want is their files back, or they’re going to kill them, and they’re going to do their best to get you and me, too. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to piss them off anymore than they already are.”

She stared at him, his features as implacable as she’d ever seen them, then clamped her mouth shut and looked around for the first time since clearing the gate. They were on a narrow swath of grass, about as wide as the average car. On the left, fences and cinder-block walls marked the rear boundaries of homes and hotels that faced the ocean. On the right, heavy undergrowth that could conceal an army of thugs opened in a narrow gap to reveal the crumbled foundations of a structure long gone. Cozumel had found itself in the sights of numerous hurricanes over the years—probably the reason for the type of construction of Justin’s mini-mansion.

He exhaled, drawing her attention back to him. He mistakenly took her silence for acceptance, but she wasn’t convinced. “Did you listen to yourself just now?” she asked, the panicked tone gone from her voice, sounding much more like the seasoned E.R. doctor she really was. At least she had that much under control. “These criminals are threatening to kill Trent and Susanna. There’s not even a question what we should do next.”

“You’re right. There’s not. We’re going to find a place to stay for a while and come up with a plan for getting them back. Come on.” Shifting the backpack to his other shoulder, he started walking again.

Cate growled, surprising herself. Oh, she’d done it silently before when people annoyed her, but this was out loud, a good, threatening growl. She was that frus trated. But Justin’s only response was a snort as he continued moving at a steady pace.

Even as she dogged his footsteps, she considered her options: call her ex-father-in-law anyway. Call AJ and ask his smart detective advice. Call the local authorities—

She couldn’t call anyone unless she wheedled her phone back from Justin or managed to escape him long enough to find a pay phone. Wheedling was out—he would enjoy it too much and still refuse—and the idea of escaping him, of going out into town on her own when she didn’t speak the language and every man she saw might be the one who shot at them, turned her insides morgue-cold.

“Unless you like playing the subservient little female scuttling along ten paces behind, you might as well come on up here where we can talk.” Justin sounded entirely too easygoing. Why shouldn’t he? He was a risk taker, an adventurer, a thrill seeker and, as she’d said, he never worried about consequences. He’d probably gotten an adrenaline kick out of getting shot at. He was probably looking forward to the next moment of danger.

But she was none of those things, and she just wanted the world she’d awakened in that morning to come back—the safe, settled, routine world.

She refused to jog to catch up, but after a dozen of the longest strides she could manage, she was beside him again. He looked so damn complacent that another growl nearly escaped before she forced it deeper down.

Despite his invitation to talk, he didn’t say anything while they walked another few hundred yards. When she glanced over her shoulder, she couldn’t pick out which grown-over fence was his, and she couldn’t help but shudder as her gaze skimmed the opposite side. Any thing could be hiding in there. Wild animals. Wilder people. The kind of people who were holding her ex-husband and her friend captive.

A shudder rippled through her, strong enough to make her stumble. Justin’s fingers curled around her biceps, holding her upright until she caught her balance. She tried to put gratitude into her look, but it came off more a grimace than anything else. All the years they’d known each other, they’d never touched, not once, and suddenly he was grabbing her, pulling her, catching her, every time she moved, it seemed.

And she was grateful—for some of it, at least. Just grateful, nothing more, nothing less.

She was repeating that to herself when a car turned off the street ahead and onto the grass and stopped, facing them. The sun glinted off the windshield, hiding the occupants, and fear rushed through her veins. “Oh, God,” she said breathlessly, her gaze darting around in search of the nearest cover. Another vine-draped fence was a few feet away on her left, the overgrowth more than eight feet to the right. The nearest cover was Justin, and she didn’t hesitate to spin around behind him, her eyes closed, her hands clenched, waiting for shouted orders or a hail of bullets.

Instead, all she heard besides the thudding of her heart was…

Chapter 3

Laughter. Justin knew he shouldn’t laugh. He understood that Cate was frightened. Hell, so was he, though not at this very moment. After all, he had called Mario for a ride while he was upstairs and told him what he knew about Trent and Susanna’s trouble. It just wouldn’t have been fair to ask him to involve his family otherwise. “Gee, thanks, doc. Let the bad guys shoot me first.”

Her body went stiff and she opened one eye, then the other. Peering past him, she saw what he’d already seen—Mario’s wife, Benita, standing beside a Beetle twice her age, her pregnant belly almost too big to fit behind the wheel, and four-year-old Rafael poking his head out the open driver’s door. The tension drained from every part of Cate’s body except her face and her right hand, still knotted in a fist. He quickly moved out of striking range.

She sniffed haughtily. “At least I know emergency medicine. If she’d shot you, I could put pressure on the wound until the ambulance arrived.”

“You’d be surprised how much first aid I’ve learned over the years. I do care about the consequences sometimes.” That comment had stung. Sure, he’d been a little reckless years ago, but who in their late teens/early twenties—besides Cate—hadn’t been? He still took risks. Just living was a risk. A person couldn’t exist in a vacuum—or, in her case, an emergency room.

But his risks were calculated. When he dove or climbed mountains or trekked into the wilderness, he was prepared. The experience was as safe as a man could make it.

Turning from Cate, he approached Benita and bent to accept a hug first from her, then Rafael. “Thanks for coming.”

“I’m happy to help out.” Her words had a faint, lyrical accent that hinted at time spent elsewhere. Before marrying Mario, she’d worked for a cruise line and traveled the world. She didn’t seem to have any regrets that she stayed in the same place all the time now, spoiling a family instead of passengers.

Cate cleared her throat, and he stepped back to introduce them. The two women exchanged looks and nods before they all got into the car, Cate squeezing into the backseat with Rafael, Justin struggling to fit in the front passenger seat while Benita did the same on the other side. When she caught him frowning, she shook a warning finger his way. “Be grateful I didn’t pick you up on the scooter. That would be a tight fit.”

He’d seen entire families tootling around on bikes made for two. “Hey, I’m not complaining. I like Bugs. Love ’em.”

Once the vehicle was moving, Benita shifted her gaze to Cate’s in the rearview mirror. “I understand you’re a doctor, you used to be married to Trent and you help out at La Casa.”

“I am, I was, I do.”

Benita’s scoff was soft. “If Mario and I ever divorced, I would take him out on his boat, weight him down and send him to the bottom of the sea.”

Justin grinned. “Yeah, but Mario’s not like Trent. At least, not the Trent she divorced.”

A glance over his shoulder caught a flicker of surprise crossing Cate’s face. The instant her gaze connected with his, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. She didn’t like him, didn’t trust him, and he didn’t care. Well, he cared only in that it would make the next however-many hours they were stuck together more difficult, as if dealing with bastards like the Wallaces wasn’t difficult enough already.