chapter three.

Lisa crawled sideways away from the tree where she'd been sitting, her palms and knees crunching against dead leaves, taking cover behind a large, p.r.i.c.kly shrub. When she looked back at the road, it was so dark that she couldn't make out anything about the car. All she saw was the bright glare of headlights slicing through the night.

The car came to a halt. A man stepped out. He was nothing but a tall, dark silhouette, and she had a sudden flashback to the men who had stood at the top of that ravine and that moment of silence right before her plane had been blasted with machine-gun fire.

He stood behind the open car door for a moment, flipping on a flashlight. He directed the bright beam at the bunkhouse, then swept it toward the woods. Lisa ducked back behind the shrub just as the beam of light pa.s.sed by her.

The car door slammed shut, the sound reverberating through the stillness of the night and searing her already raw nerves. She couldn't look around the bush again, just in case he was glancing her way. She just sat there, holding her breath, her whole body slick with sweat, praying she'd hear the bunkhouse door open and close behind him. If she did, she was going to run as far and as fast into the trees as her weary body would carry her.

Then the flashlight beam came back around, stopping a few feet to her right. Glancing over, she saw it had landed dead center on the backpack and shovel she'd left beside the tree.

Lisa put her hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp. She heard footsteps. Feet shuffling through dead leaves.

He was coming.

In a moment he would be right on top of her. He was undoubtedly armed, which meant she was a dead woman. Out here in the middle of nowhere, would anyone even hear the shot?

As the footsteps drew closer, she couldn't stand the tension any longer. She leapt to her feet. Fueled by adrenaline and driven by sheer terror, she started to run.

"Stop!"

His voice was deep and commanding, but still she ran. Behind her she heard the loud swish of his footsteps through the leaves as he ran to catch her, and he was closing in fast. A tree branch raked across her face. She slapped it aside, only to have her foot catch the edge of a sapling. She tripped, almost fell, then righted herself again and kept running.

"Stop!"

She braced herself for the bullet she knew was coming. She'd be dead before she hit the ground, but by G.o.d, she was going to die running.

But no shot came. Instead, he caught her arm. She screamed and tried to pull away, only to stumble and fall. In the struggle, he lost his footing and fell beside her. She flipped over and came up swinging, but he'd already risen to his knees. He caught her wrists and dragged her close to him. She twisted left and right, struggling in his grasp, desperate to pull away.

"Lisa! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!"

She froze, breathing hard. English. It suddenly dawned on her that he was speaking English. She focused on his face, blinking with disbelief. It couldn't be.

She had to have been shot after all. That was the only explanation. She was lying on the forest floor, drawing her last breath, her weak and fevered mind throwing her a bone in her last moments of life, making her believe something that couldn't possibly be. But she couldn't mistake those warm dark eyes she remembered from so long ago, eyes full of kindness and compa.s.sion and quiet strength that could soothe over even the most desperate of situations.

"You came," she whispered.

Dave's grip on her wrists relaxed at the same time his brows drew together with intense concern. Suddenly her head felt light, and she started to weave.

"Lisa? Are you all right?"

All the tension and fear and pain of the past two days overtook her, and she lurched to one side, her muscles going limp. He caught her as she fell and swept her into his arms, and she was aware of nothing but the absolute a.s.surance that because he was there, everything was going to be okay.

He carried her out of the woods and into the bunkhouse, lowering her to one of the beds. The mattress was brittle and cracked with age, but it was far softer than the ground where she'd spent the past several hours, and she sank into it as if it were a featherbed in a five-star hotel. He sat down beside her, the mattress dipping with his weight, then brushed the hair away from her forehead with his fingertips.

"Lisa? I need to know what's going on here. Can you talk to me?"

She blinked her eyes open. He'd rested the flashlight on the floor on its end, its beam reflecting off the ceiling, casting a dim glow around the room. She opened her mouth to speak, but her throat felt dry as dust.

"Do you have any water?" he asked.

"Had some in my backpack," she croaked. "When my plane went down. It's gone."

"When's the last time you ate something?"

She slid her hand to her stomach. "I don't remember."

"I'm going to go to the car. Get some food and water. Okay?"

She nodded. He slipped out the door, returning a moment later carrying a large canvas bag. He sat down beside her again, unzipped the bag, and pulled out a bottle of water. He helped her sit up, then cradled her in his arms as he put the bottle to her lips. She took several swallows, then turned away.

"More," he said.

He brought the bottle to her lips again, encouraging her to drink until her stomach felt sloshy. Then, with a steadying arm around her shoulders, he lowered her gently back down to the bed.

"Are you hungry?" he asked.

She put her hand to her stomach. "Don't . . . Don't think I could eat."

"Does anything else hurt besides your head?"

She felt so weak and sleepy she could barely speak. "Pretty much everything."

He wrapped his hands around her thigh, squeezing gently. She flinched with surprise at his touch.

"Just checking to see if anything's sprained or broken," he said.

He ran his hands all the way down to her ankle, squeezing softly as he went, then did the same to her other leg, bypa.s.sing a place at her calf where her jeans were ripped, with a cut beneath.

"Any pain?" he asked.

Pain? G.o.d, no. His touch felt like heaven, so warm and gentle and protective, relaxing her muscles when they'd been wound so tightly for the past two days that she'd barely been able to breathe. It was all so unbelievable. Never in her wildest dreams could she fathom a scenario like this, a situation that would bring Dave DeMarco seven hundred miles to the backwoods of Mexico to touch her one more time.

"No. Nothing hurts. Not like anything's broken."

He gave her arms and fingers the same treatment, then placed his palms against her rib cage, pressing gently. "How about here? Anything hurt?"

"No. Just sore. Bruises and stuff."

"The plane crash."

"Yes."

"Have you gotten much sleep?"

"No," she said. "Couldn't sleep."

"Because they're after you?" he asked.

"Yes," she murmured, then felt a jolt of panic. She thought she heard a lilt of disbelief in his voice, a patronizing tone that told her he still wasn't completely sure she was in possession of all her marbles. She grasped his arm.

"You haven't told anyone where I am, have you?"

"Only my brothers, and they're not telling anyone. You're safe. But sooner or later you probably need to get to a doctor."

She sat up suddenly, every muscle screaming with pain. "Didn't you hear what I told you on the phone? He's out to kill me!"

"Take it easy, okay?" he said, easing her back down again. "I hear you. We're not going anywhere right now. Are there any other doctors in Santa Rios besides Douglas?"

"No. The clinic is all there is. That's why it's here. Because this is the place that needed it the most. But Robert Douglas is not what he seems to be. I swear he's not. You have to believe me. If he knows I'm alive, he'll kill me!"

She wanted to shout, but her voice came out in a raspy whisper. She sounded crazy. He was going to think she was delusional. He was going to drag her into town, take her to the clinic, and if he did . . .

"They already shot at me after the crash." She dug her fingers into his arm. "They had machine guns. Machine guns!"

She was rambling like a madwoman, her voice slurring worse than the time she'd done a dozen tequila shots in high school and pa.s.sed out. She tried to clear her throat, but she coughed instead. Weakness overtook her and she could barely muster up the energy to talk again. Did he understand? Did he understand how much danger she was in?

"Just go to sleep," he told her.

"No. I can't sleep. I can't."

"You need sleep, Lisa. We'll talk again when you wake up."

"Promise me," she said weakly. "Promise me you won't tell anyone that I'm alive."

"Lisa-"

"Promise."

"Of course. I promise."

"But if they come-"

"I'll protect you. Just sleep."

She stared up at him, still amazed that he was here. In spite of the chaos that ruled her mind right now, still she remembered with startling clarity that day so long ago that she'd looked into those dark eyes and imagined a thousand more tomorrows filled with the sight of him.

"Just sleep," he repeated.

His voice was quiet, hypnotic, and suddenly she felt as if a hundred pounds of pressure were being exerted on each of her eyelids. She had no doubt that she was only one step away from a well-placed bullet if Robert should find out she was still alive, so she should still be afraid, still be on her guard. Every shred of her being was geared toward standing up for herself, taking no c.r.a.p, defending her own life. She felt driven to stay awake. Needed Needed to stay awake. But with Dave here . . . to stay awake. But with Dave here . . .

I'll protect you.

For the first time since this whole thing began, her pulse returned to normal, her muscles relaxed, and her jangled nerves quieted to a sleepy lull. He told her she was safe, and she believed him.

And she slept.

When Dave pa.s.sed through the distasteful little community of Santa Rios, swerving his way up the potholed road to the abandoned mining camp, he'd had a hunch the situation wasn't going to be pretty, but he hadn't expected this.

He hadn't expected to find Lisa hiding out in the trees, then running from him like a cornered animal. He hadn't expected the crazed expression of fear in her eyes. And he hadn't expected her to look as if she'd been to h.e.l.l and back through a sewer pipe. Three times.

He sat on the bunk across from her, his back against the wall, shining the flashlight in such a way that allowed him to watch her but didn't disturb her sleep. She wore a pair of jeans, boots, and a white sweatshirt with a Dallas Cowboys logo over the left breast. All were splattered with mud and grime, as if she'd gotten wet, then rolled around in the dirt. Her reddish-blond hair stuck out in ten different directions like a stray kitten caught in the rain. Various minor sc.r.a.pes and cuts marred her arms and face, and on her forehead was a bruise that spanned two or three inches and wrapped around to her temple, black and purple in the middle, ringed by pale yellow, with a deep sc.r.a.pe in the center crusted with dried blood.

The good news was that he'd seen her pupils reacting equally to light. His meager emergency medical training told him that was a good sign in favor of no neurological damage and probably no internal bleeding resulting from her b.u.mp on the head. Considering she'd been in a plane crash, she'd come away relatively unscathed.

It had taken her approximately three seconds to fall asleep once she closed her eyes. No wonder. It was probably the first real sleep she'd had since the accident. Since she didn't seem to have any significant injuries outside of the whack she'd taken to the forehead, he guessed that she was just completely exhausted from lack of food and water and from the effort it took to crawl away from that crash, along with the tension that came from believing that somebody was out to kill her.

That was the question he'd pay a thousand dollars for an answer to right about now. Did somebody actually want her dead?

He knew for a fact that if circ.u.mstances were right, the human mind could take some strange detours. He'd once helped pull a guy out of a wrecked 18-wheeler who had a b.u.mp on his head and thought he was being abducted by aliens. Dave had been reasonably sure that no aliens had been spotted in the area. He'd once cornered an escaped psych patient in the produce section of a grocery store who was absolutely certain he was Jesus Christ, and Dave hadn't been the least bit inclined to phone the pope to alert him of the Second Coming. Why, then, would he take this outlandish story of hers seriously?

Trouble was, no matter how outlandish it seemed, he just didn't know the truth, and he had no intention of going anywhere until he did. But he was unlikely to get the truth by continuing to question her when she was half out of her mind from lack of sleep. Until she woke, he hoped with a newly acquired grip on herself, he was stuck here.

He grabbed a bottle of water out of his bag and took a drink, then smacked the lid down again, thinking about how Alex and John had gone berserk when he told them he was coming here. Dave had ended up telling them that they could flip out all they wanted to, but when the dust settled he was still going to Mexico. Eventually they'd backed off. John had taken Ashley, and Dave had hit the road for Dallas, barely catching a 10:15 flight out of DFW to Monterrey.

It did feel more than a little surreal that he'd ended up in this G.o.dforsaken place, staring at a woman he'd thought he'd never see again. A woman he'd thought was dead. A woman who, even though she was a wreck right now, he couldn't take his eyes off of. Lisa Merrick was imprinted on his brain to represent all things hot, s.e.xy, and dangerous. Even now, just looking at her made his heart pick up its pace and his mouth go dry.

At age eighteen, she'd been a volatile, defensive, hard-edged girl who'd seen more of the seamy side of life than a woman three times her age ever should have. At maybe fivefoot-four, there wasn't much of her, but he pitied the poor person who underestimated her.

She'd matured physically, her shapely girl's body becoming lush and womanly. She wasn't dressed nearly as provocatively as she'd been known to back then, but still her sweatshirt outlined her b.r.e.a.s.t.s in a way that dared him to stare. They rose and fell rhythmically with every breath she took, and for a long time he held the flashlight steady, not even bothering to try to drag his gaze away.

He remembered a time in high school when he'd seen her on the back of Derek Brody's motorcycle, wearing a crop top so short that a simple lift of her arms left little to the imagination. And as she rode that motorcycle behind that spikehaired, leather-clad, silver-studded son of a b.i.t.c.h she called a boyfriend, she'd looped her arms around his waist and pressed those b.r.e.a.s.t.s against his back, and to this day Dave still remembered the stark envy that had rolled through him at that moment.

Consequently, when Lisa slid into the seat beside him the first day of shop cla.s.s in the second semester of their senior year his brain had instantly fallen to his crotch and stayed there for the remainder of the hour. Right off the bat, she gave him a blatant, protracted, up-and-down stare, as if she was picturing what he looked like naked, then spent most of the cla.s.s period crossing and uncrossing her legs, displayed at their most spectacular in a pair of cutoff shorts that couldn't possibly have pa.s.sed the dress code. But few people messed with Lisa Merrick, including Mr. Pennington, the vice princ.i.p.al. Once Dave had seen her walk past him, and Pennington's gaze had slid right down the curve of her back and landed dead center on her a.s.s. Looking back over her shoulder, Lisa had winked at him. One wink, and the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d had fallen apart. His squinty little eyes had flown wide open, his pasty face had turned six shades of red, and he'd stumbled back to his office as if he'd been kicked in the groin.

As the teacher droned on and on about engine overhaul, Dave leaned away from Lisa, trying to put as much distance between them as he could. But still he could feel her next to him, shifting and breathing and running the eraser of her pencil back and forth across her lower lip. He pretended to focus on what the teacher was saying, all the while thinking about Lisa's lips and just how adept she might be in the use of them. Then he thought about how Carla would be waiting for him after cla.s.s. If she'd had any idea what was going on in his mind right then, she'd have broken down and cried.

At the end of the hour, the teacher told them to pair up for a project they were starting the next day, and Dave hadn't moved quickly enough. When the shuffle was over, only two people were left without partners.

s.h.i.t.

Lisa turned and looked him right in the eye. "Well, DeMarco, looks like you're stuck with me. You got a problem with that?"

She might as well have drawn a line across the greasy shop floor and dared him to step over it.

"Of course not. What makes you think I'd have a problem with it?"

"Body language, baby. If you lean any farther away from me, you're going to fall right out of that chair."

He instantly sat up straight, only to have her turn away with an amused shake of her head. She stood up and slid her backpack over her shoulder, giving him another one of those brazen up-and-down stares, accompanied by a mocking smile.

"I'll be counting the hours until tomorrow," she murmured, with a s.e.xual lilt to her voice that would have put Madonna to shame. She walked away, her backpack bouncing against her hip. After half a dozen strides, she glanced back over her shoulder and caught him watching her. She smiled knowingly, then slipped out the door.