Page 85 of Her Reluctant Hero
Chapter Sixteen
Santiago shouted an alarm, pushing past her into the hall. He opened a closet in the hall and tossed guns to the three men who responded to his call. Terror squeezed Isabella’s throat as the four men mounted the steps to the deck and she bolted after them, forgotten in the shadow of the new threat.
She reached the upper level as the men dropped to their bellies on the deck and leveled the weapons at the cutter.
“Guns!” she screamed in Alex’s direction.
“Get down,” he shouted back, and she lowered herself into the stairwell as gunfire broke out.
The glass wall in the room above her shattered under the hail of bullets, and shards sprinkled down on her. A strangled cry of pain burst from one of the men. At the same time, the boat lurched to the side, sending her rolling across the steps and bumping against the wall. Bullets hit the hull with horrible thunking sounds. Fear that they could penetrate all the way to the stairwell made her tremble. Would she hear the bullet that hit her?
Staying low, she crawled across the floor to see Santiago huddled in the corner while his men fought for him.
Coward.
She whipped around, grabbed a gun out of the back of the fallen man’s pants and pointed it at Santiago’s face. Fear—and a touch of calculation—in his eyes snapped her muscles tight. Shaking, braced for the bullet that could kill her, she eased herself behind a chair, putting him between her and his men before she said, “Stop. Shooting. Now.”
The men turned, guns raised, aimed at her. Then they saw her position, and knowing they risked hitting their boss, they lowered them.
Outside, gunfire still rattled.
“Alex, stop!” she screamed.
Santiago took advantage of her distraction and rose, pushing her gun hand high. She held onto the pistol—barely—and swung around with it, knocking him across the temple and onto the floor. Her finger trembled on the trigger and she could not think of one reason not to shoot him. Not one.
Alex was the first on the boat, sweeping his gun left to right. One man lay on the deck, unconscious. Another man lay inside what had been a sort of sun porch on the deck, now shattered. Beyond him, Isabella stood, a gun braced in both hands, pointing at the ground.
She looked up, her pretty face bruised, bloody and swollen, eyes terrified. Rage whipped through him. The urge to go to her, to sweep her into his arms, breathe her in, had him stepping forward, forgetting his training.
Before he touched her, he remembered the man on the floor, the gun she held.
“I have Santiago,” she said.
She did too. The son of a bitch was bleeding from a head wound, all over the pretty white carpet. Alex wanted to draw more blood, maybe add some guts to it as well.
“You do that?”
She nodded.
He stopped himself from asking if Santiago had done the damage to her face. That would come later. “Good girl. Now come over here.”
He reached out to her and she approached cautiously, then grasped his hand tightly. After giving her a brief, reassuring glance, he pulled her behind him, his attention on Santiago Saldana. He allowed himself a brief squeeze, pressing her against his side for a moment, feeling her heartbeat hammering, hearing a sharp intake of breath—pain?—before he pushed her toward the deck backing away from Saldana. As badly as he wanted to hammer the son of a bitch into the carpet, he wanted Isabella safe.
So he left Saldana to Julian and Dave, who’d followed him, and escorted Isabella to the other boat. He lifted his fingers toward her bleeding temple, stopped himself before touching her and causing her more pain. His gaze flicked to the blood coating the side of her neck. He wanted Julian to look at her, to make sure the wound was only superficial. He didn’t want her out of his sight.
“You need your head looked at.”
Moments later, the prisoners were secured and she sagged on a bench in the Coast Guard cutter as Julian examined her scalp laceration. Her whole body drooped with exhaustion.
“I thought he’d take me to Hector. I wanted to see him. I thought I’d be holding him, Alex.”
Alex hadn’t released her, didn’t want to stop touching her, and holding her hand was all he could allow in front of his men. He shouldn’t even allow that but couldn’t let her go.
All he had was words, and he was no good with them. “We’ll find him, Bella.”
She turned her gaze to him, eyes fierce in her battered, bloody, sad face. “Make him tell you. Make Santiago tell you where my son is.”
Alex paced in the observation room as Captain Winters sat across the interrogation table from Santiago Saldana, the big fish they’d been trying to find for weeks. Because Saldana was here, Isabella was safe. She was safe. He didn’t have to worry about her being at the hospital alone.
