“Not yet, sweetheart,” he said grimly. “Look around. We’ve got company. Now come on.”
Olivia glanced quickly around the pretty yard. There were people everywhere. In the darkness, she couldn’t tell who was pursuing them and who was simply observing their bizarre exit from Ernesto Cervantes’s party, but Rafe gave her no time to figure it out. He ruthlessly dragged her in his wake as he left the wide driveway in front of the house and melted into the scrub around the manicured yard.
And
melted
was the only word for it, Olivia thought. If she hadn’t been attached to him, she’d never have believed he could move so quietly and efficiently. Wouldn’t have believed anyone could.
“Where are you going?” she whispered. It did not occur to her to scream out their whereabouts to potential rescuers.
“Where are
we
going,
princesa,
” he corrected breathlessly.
“I said, don’t call me that,” she snapped furiously.
“Be quiet. You make as much noise as five regular women, I swear,” he muttered. He could hear thrashing behind him, knew Cervantes’s men were just hitting the brush. At least, with Olivia tagging along, they wouldn’t shoot at him. Or let dogs loose on him. He’d been chased more than once by dogs in the
barrio,
usually after he’d performed some moderately illegal act. He hated being chased by dogs. It made the hair on his neck stand on end.
“How many ‘regular’ women have you kidnapped?” she demanded. Personally, she thought she was holding up pretty well.
He didn’t bother to answer, just dodged hard left, dragging Olivia along pitilessly. Both of them hunched over to make themselves invisible in the low, thick brush. He tucked the gun into the waistband of his jeans and wrapped his free arm around his chest. It didn’t help much, but at least he didn’t feel as though he was going to pass out.
They made their way in that odd, shuffling, walk-jog for what seemed to Olivia like an hour, though when she looked back at the lights of the house she knew they hadn’t gone nearly far enough for Ernesto’s men to have given up the chase. She wondered, as she caught her sandal on another prickly clump of sagebrush, if any place on earth would be far enough.
They reached a road, or what passed for a road in this part of Baja California. Rafe paused, still keeping his death grip on Olivia, and studied the terrain. He cursed quietly.
“Yes,” Olivia said encouragingly. “This looks very bad. We’ll never make it at this pace. You must go on without me.”
“Shut up, will you?”
“I’m slowing you down. Leave me here. You’ll make better progress without me.”
“If you don’t stop yanking your arm around, Doctor, I’m going to pull it out of the socket and drag you through this brush on your butt,” Rafe said sharply.
Olivia peered through the darkness at his face. He looked ghostly pale despite the run, and she realized he’d been holding his chest as though to keep his internal organs from spilling onto the desert floor.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing. Be quiet,” he growled.
She glared at him. “Very nice,” she said, her breath coming out in gusts after their flight. She waved wildly in the direction of the
hacienda.
“I just saved your ass back there, if you weren’t paying attention.”
His head whipped around, and Olivia was instantly sorry she’d poked at the wounded beast.
“I was paying attention to everything you were doing back there,” he said through his teeth. “I was certainly paying attention when you let that son of a bitch put his tongue down your throat and his hand on your—”
“He’s practically my fiancé,” Olivia said rashly.
“The hell he is,” Rafe muttered, and started walking again. He pulled her roughly along when she slowed. They crossed the road and dove back into the low, sand-swept cover. This time, they headed west, toward the foothills.
Olivia stumbled along as best she could, every few minutes or so experimentally tugging at her hand, which was still clamped firmly in Rafael’s. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” she asked again after a while.
“No.”
“Ow,” she said loudly as her sandal snagged on a rock, peeling a strip of skin from the side of her big toe.
Rafe didn’t so much as glance back at her exclamation or slow his pace. “Quiet.”
“I think you just ripped off my toe.”
“You wear stupid shoes,” he muttered, though the first glimpse of her small, slim feet in those strappy sandals back in that dim hallway had made his mouth water. “I’m surprised you have any toes left.”
“I didn’t know I was going to be kidnapped tonight or I would have worn something more sensible.”
He stopped, turned very deliberately to her. “I didn’t kidnap you,
princesa,
” he said, and watched the light of fire come into her eyes. Good, it would help propel her the rest of the way up this mountain tonight. When Bobby discovered Rafe had never made it back to the beach camp, he’d meet them there. Rafe and Bobby had worked out a contingency plan weeks ago, before Dr. Galpas had ever come along to ruin his mission and his destiny and possibly his life. “You tossed yourself into this whole mess headfirst.”
“What was I supposed to do—let Ernesto kill you?”
He snorted. “You think he could have killed me?”
Olivia gaped at him. “He had a gun, you moron.”
“So did I.”
Olivia threw her free hand in the air. “Are you stupid? What makes you think he wouldn’t have shot you first?”
Rafe shrugged. “I’m faster.”
Olivia hoped a derisive snort would let him know her opinion of that bit of lunacy. When he appeared unfazed by it, she decided to make her point more forcefully. “You’re not the sharpest tack in the box, are you.”
Rafe glanced over her shoulder. He could see men fanning out into the scrub around the
hacienda.
“Keep your voice down.”
“You may have been faster, but you were in his house,” she continued in a furious whisper. “Without me, you never would have gotten out alive.”
He looked down at her. Her mouth was swollen—from the bastard’s kisses, he thought sourly. Still, he could think of nothing he wanted more than to pull her into his arms. She
had
saved him. She was far braver than he ever would have given her credit for. Far braver than any woman he’d ever known. Not that he’d tell her that.
“Now is not the time to congratulate yourself,
princesa,
” he said into her ear. He bit down on her lobe, making her gasp. “If you don’t start moving your butt up this mountain, your efforts will have been for nothing.”
“Why are you holding onto your chest like that?”
“I think your boyfriend broke me,” he said shortly. “Let’s get moving.”
“He broke you? He broke your ribs?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, my God. How many?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “My X-ray vision is on the blink.”
“Let go of my hand. Let me feel.”
He eyed her suspiciously. “I don’t think so.”
She hissed at him like a snake.
“You’re not that kind of doctor, anyway,” he said. The truth was, he didn’t want to let go of her hand. He couldn’t have explained it, but he felt that if he did, she’d disappear into the desert and he’d never see her again.
“No, I’m not that kind of doctor, but I can help you if you let me, you dufus.”
The American slang sounded incongruous, preceded as it was by a long stream of furious Spanish, and Rafe had to bite back a smile.
Dufus?
He couldn’t think of a Spanish equivalent. Now,
psycho
—
He let go of her hand, then realized his was sweaty and wiped it down his pant leg.
“Lift your shirt.”
He gingerly lifted his black shirt, and heard her gasp.
“You look like you’ve been hit by a truck,” she said in English.
He watched her curiously as she bent over and ripped the bottom half of her long skirt along the slim strip of embroidery that attached it to the top half. She straightened.
“What are you doing?”
“Applying first aid,” she said.
“With your dress?”
“Well, I could take off my bra and snap it to your chest, but then you’d have a lot to explain to your cell-mates once Ernesto throws you in jail.”
She clamped the bottom of her skirt to his chest with one hand and began wrapping the material tightly around him.
“If you don’t hurry, he will throw me in jail,” Rafe said, sucking in his breath as she touched a sore spot.
“I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying, you ungrateful pain in the neck.”
He heard her mutter in English, and he smiled over the top of her silky hair.
“Good thing I was wearing a skirt like a proper damsel. Good thing I’m not a respected scientist or anything. Then this would be absolutely absurd. Oh, if my parents ever find out about this…Oh God, and Dr. Eames—at least he won’t make me do any more press conferences—” She tucked the end of the fabric into the wrapping and stood back. “There,” she said, switching to Spanish again, proud of herself.
“Thank you.”
“I don’t have to go with you.”
He put his chin on his chest to check her bandage. Good field dressing. “Yes,” he said. “You do.” He moved experimentally. His ribs did feel slightly better. They’d be able to move much faster now. Before she could think to run, he clasped his hand over her wrist.
“No, you’ll be safe now,” she insisted. “I’ll go back down the mountain, divert their attention, tell them you went in the opposite direction.”
It made perfect sense, Rafe knew. And he wouldn’t have let her do it in a million years. She was not going back to Cervantes. Not only did the thought of the bastard touching her again make Rafe nuts—for some ungodly, Neanderthal reason that he’d need a psychiatrist and an anthropologist to explain to him—but Cervantes was one slip-up away from being taken down by the United States Drug Enforcement Agency and a half-dozen cooperating Mexican law enforcement organizations. No way was Rafe letting any woman, willing accomplice or not, rush back into a situation as volatile as that. His mother would murder him.
Olivia Galpas had saved his life tonight. And she
was
an American. A spoiled and wealthy American who had an obvious knack for getting herself into trouble, but an American nonetheless. She deserved some consideration from a DEA agent such as him.
“You’re coming with me, Doctor,” he said.
Olivia put her foot down, such as it was. “No,” she said quite firmly—even barked the word, she might have said. “I am not.”
Rafe leaned forward. “Once again,
princesa,
you’re wrong.”
Suddenly, his head whipped up like that of a wolf scenting prey, and she heard the sound of men coming through the desert.
“Come on,” he said, and began to run.
Olivia had no idea when the bottoms of her feet began to bleed, or when the blisters on her heels popped. Or when the moon came up. Or when the wind died down and left the desert quiet enough to hear the small animals scurrying home at their approach. Her world had winnowed down to the hand in hers and the mountain in front of her.
He let her stop for a while once during the night. But just for a few minutes, and even then he did not let her take off her sandals.
“I’m beginning to be very sorry I didn’t let them kill you,” she muttered at him in English, while he stared off into the distance, obviously trying to pinpoint any men who might be following them up this godforsaken hill.
She thought she saw him smile, but decided that was impossible. He had never spoken a word of English. His clothes, his speech, his Spanish dialect all told her he was a peasant; she was sure he did not speak English. Which was good, because she’d been muttering at him in English for most of the hellish trip up the mountain, and she fully intended to mutter at him until he let her go or until one of them died of heat exhaustion or pursuing lawmen or bloody feet.
He made her get up after a short rest and follow him again up some indistinct trail to some obscure place only he knew about and only he could imagine. All Olivia could see was rock formations and low brush, the silhouettes of barrel cactus and dusty, endless sand. And behind her, far in the distance now, the Sea of Cortéz shining in the moonlight.
She cursed at him in English all the way up the mountainside. If his chest hadn’t been so sore and his mood worse, Rafe would have laughed at her. The esteemed doctor knew some good, dirty American swear words. His mother would be shocked. He imagined
her
mother would faint dead away.
They reached the predetermined meeting place just as the sky lightened. They’d left any pursuers far behind, but Rafe knew it was only a matter of time before Cervantes and his goons picked up their trail in the bright light of a Baja California day. He turned just as the sun seemed to break the surface of the gulf. In spite of everything, the sight took his breath away.
Olivia sat on a rock and watched him. She hated to admit it, but he was sort of…beautiful, actually. His eyes were tired, and seemed to her to be tinged with some vague…regret. His gorgeous mouth was relaxed as he breathed in the morning air, his edgy face showed shadows, softening the angles into something almost artistic. Her mother would kill to paint that face, Olivia knew.
“Why do you do it, Rafael?” she asked.
He turned to her. “What?”
“What you do.” She saw his eyes narrow, but kept hers steady on him. “Run drugs.”
His face went expressionless. “Is this what your lover told you?”
“He told me there were two men in the area, bringing drugs from the mainland through Aldea Viejo. From his reaction to you in that bedroom back there, I’m just assuming you’re one of them.”
“I’m one of them,” Rafe said.
“Why?”
Rafe ran a hand down his face. Working undercover meant lying. Lying to everyone. Telling the good doctor he was a common bandit. He could not take a chance that this extraordinary lovely woman would reveal his secret. She could easily return to the arms of Cervantes, tell him the DEA, not common thieves, were trying to catch him red-handed in his own crimes. Cervantes would surely pull back then, lay low, become impossible to prosecute.