"I'm carrying," Elijah said. "You?"

"Yeah." And a G.o.dd.a.m.n lot of good it had done him so far.

Buildings pa.s.sed in blurs of shadow, and Jackson waited to hear that the officer who'd sighted the car had stopped it.

But that didn't happen.

"What the f.u.c.k?" Her car was an economy sedan, not a stock racer. Why hadn't it been pulled over by now?

They blew through the intersection of Ventura and Oasis. There was no sign of Belle's car, but the intersection was at the edge of the West Palms neighborhood a middle cla.s.s grid of single family homes and townhouses.

"Let's search the neighborhood," Jackson said. If she'd been abducted, maybe whoever had taken her lived here. Why else would they have driven all the way across the island from Moreno's to West Palms?

Elijah began cruising up and down each residential street. "I've got the left side of the street. You watch the right."

Jackson nodded, straining to see clearly in the darkness. There were streetlights here and there, plus the occasional light left on over a garage or front door, but many of the vehicles were difficult to immediately identify by color. Especially the darker colored ones, like Belle's.

Because of the limited visibility, he almost didn't see the blue Honda parked close to the side of a house, all but hidden under a latticed carport.

"There!" His heart slammed against his ribs, and the pulse-pounding thrall of adrenaline gripped him in an instant. He itched to move, his muscles primed, and tasted metal.

Elijah stopped and killed the lights, then the engine. As Jackson threw his seatbelt out of the way, Elijah grabbed the radio and reported their location and requested help.

Where the f.u.c.k the officer who'd spotted the car was, Jackson had no idea, but he did know that something was definitely wrong. The car was Belle's he recognized the white and orange college parking pa.s.s hanging from the mirror, even though the license plate was hidden by shadow.

She'd never mentioned West Palms to him. Mariah didn't live here, and her colleagues were all at the party. It was virtually unthinkable that she'd have taken off to this random home in this random neighborhood without warning.

Drawing in a deep lungful of air, Jackson opened the car door as quietly and quickly as he could.

When he climbed out, he almost fell the rush of adrenaline had numbed the pain in his leg, but he was still clumsier on it than he'd once been. Catching himself with a hand on the open door, he resisted the urge to swear.

"Easy, man." Elijah's voice was barely audible. "We're here. We'll take care of this."

Before Jackson could breathe a word, the sound of a door slamming cut through the night.

He stiffened, then took off around the side of the home with as much speed and stealth as he was capable of, pausing by the carport just long enough to see that the car was empty. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the night, it was obvious that the two story home was divided into an upper and lower apartment the bra.s.s letters spelling out 509 A by the front door gave it away.

The second apartment entrance had to be around the back.

Sure enough, when he rounded the corner he found a wooden staircase leading up to a door. 509 B. The light above it was off, leaving Jackson and Elijah to climb the stairs in darkness. Jackson moved awkwardly, hugging the rail as splinters snagged his palm.

The landing at the top was small, which made it hard to approach the door safely there was barely room for them to squeeze to the side.

If a hail of gunfire greeted them, so be it. Jackson had endured that for a total stranger; he'd gladly relive it for Belle, if necessary.

He knocked, and no gunfire came.

Nothing came at all there was only silence. But he'd heard that door slam. Someone was inside.

His gut screamed that Belle was in there and that he needed to get to her. But logically, he knew that she might just as well be in Apartment A, or that the parking location might've been a ruse and she could be in another home, or even in another vehicle and on her way off the island.

His gut cramped as he thought on that, and he pushed the possibility aside for the time being. He needed to worry about the scene in front of him.

A flash of movement caught his eye, barely detectable in the darkness. The curtain in the window to the right of the deck had moved.

Police. The word jumped to the tip of his tongue. Should he call out?

He weighed half a dozen different scenarios in his head. To a stranger, he and Elijah looked like two guys creeping up on doors in the dark. On the other hand, if Belle had a stalker which now seemed the most likely explanation that person probably knew exactly who Jackson was.

"Police," he called.

At that very moment, headlights appeared on the street. A police cruiser stopped beside the sidewalk, a few yards behind Elijah's vehicle.

Jackson didn't have any attention to spare for the officer climbing out of the car.

"Police," he called again, and knocked hard on the door.

CHAPTER 38.

Belle couldn't have kept her eyes open if her life had depended on it. Sound drifted to her from far away, distorted as if she were listening from deep underwater. It felt as if she were floating, but something soft was against her back.

When she tried to focus on the noise, it bled away. Still, there was something familiar about it.

A repet.i.tive banging worsened her headache and made it impossible to focus on what was being said. She could've sworn she had a head full of pain and helium.

Something clamped down hard on her shoulder, and the contact tethered her to reality. Opening her eyes halfway, she finally got a look at her surroundings.

White walls cast with the yellow tinge of cheap lighting swam around her, and Zackary's face loomed in front of her, dominated by his gla.s.ses.

The sight of him brought back her anger. When she narrowed her eyes at him, they drifted shut against her will.

s.h.i.t.

The banging grew louder so loud it seemed to shake everything around them, threatening to bring the walls down.

"Police!" She finally made out a word, which was quickly followed by multiple voices. An argument?

"Come on." Zackary's voice drowned out the others, and the pressure on her shoulder increased. "Get up, Belle."

She floated forward, banging her shoulder on a sharp corner. The pain was unnaturally dull.

Then the world exploded around her in a concussive blast of sound fragments.

The door gave way under Jackson's shoulder, popping out of its cheap frame. The protests of the on-duty officer who'd arrived on the scene were nothing but meaningless noise.

There were no laws governing what he'd do to protect Belle. Whoever had peeked at them from behind the curtain and then refused to open the door had something to hide, and his gut told him that something was her the woman he loved.

Nevertheless, the first person he saw when he stumbled into the apartment wasn't Belle.

Instead, he saw a tall, slender kid with dark hair and gla.s.ses. Recognition hit Jackson like a lightning bolt.

"You f.u.c.k!" The kid was supposed to be back at Moreno's, at the party. Jackson had seen him there, giving Belle goofy looks of l.u.s.t.

It suddenly all made sense the d.i.l.d.o in the office where the kid worked with her and the intrusion into her home. How easy would it have been for the kid to swipe her keys and make copies without her even noticing?

Jackson moved toward the little s.h.i.t with vicious intent, his heart pounding like a war drum, preparing his limbs even his bad leg to do damage. The kid raised his hands, eyes wide like a deer's while caught in headlights.

Oh, s.h.i.t. The expression on his face was easily readable, and Jackson relished his obvious panic.

And then something else caught his eye. Feinting to the right at the last second, he ignored every bit of his training and turned his back on Belle's abductor.

Because there she was, slumped against the wall in a dark hallway, her delicate body folded at odd angles as her head lolled forward.

His heart stopped, nearly causing him to crash to the ground, and his mouth went instantly dry. She looked dead gone. The realization threatened to floor him, but he lurched forward, scrambling to her side.

She wasn't couldn't be dead. She'd probably been drugged, or knocked out cold with a blow. How else would the scheming college kid have gotten her back here?

She wouldn't have gone willingly.

Mentally repeating that to himself like a prayer, he slid two fingers over the arch of her neck, feeling for the carotid artery. She was fully dressed and there wasn't a drop of blood on her good signs.

He was no doctor, no nurse or EMT. It took him a few seconds to find her pulse, and within those seconds, he lived and died a thousand agonizing times.

Then it jumped beneath his fingers, slower than it should've been, but steady.

"Call an ambulance," he said to whoever might be listening.

When no one answered, he snapped his head around, still keeping his fingers over her pulse point, needing to feel every beat.

Elijah had the snot-nosed college kid on the ground and was pulling a pair of cuffs out of his pocket. As he secured them, the uniformed officer stepped through the battered doorway and into the apartment.

His entire body p.r.i.c.kling with angry heat, Jackson raised his voice at the officer. "Willard, call an ambulance! She's unconscious."

Everything seemed to move in slow motion as Willard raised his radio and requested a.s.sistance.

"You gonna tell me what the h.e.l.l is going on?" Willard asked when he was finished.

Jackson turned back to Belle just in time to see her eyelids flutter.

"Belle!" He only caught a glimpse of her dark eyes, crescent moon slivers of her irises. "I've got you, Princess. You're all right."

He debated moving her. He had no idea whether she'd been injured, and so he needed to let EMTs do it the right way. But f.u.c.k, he wanted to hold her.

He settled for holding her hand as the kid Elijah had cuffed began to babble.

Jackson paid no attention to his words until he caught Belle's name. Then he looked back at the kid and saw him staring at Belle where she was slumped on the carpet.

"Don't you f.u.c.king say her name!" Jackson ground his teeth.

"Get the h.e.l.l off of me!" The kid's voice was shrill. "I didn't do anything wrong!"

If Jackson hadn't felt duty-bound to stay by Belle's side, he would've pulverized the kid. Instead, he just sneered.

The death glare had no effect on her abductor. "We came here to hang out! She hit her head! I didn't do anything wrong!"

Elijah kept a knee in the kid's back, pinning him to the floor.

Belle opened her eyes.

"Jackson?" Her whisper was slurred.

Immediately, he was buried by an avalanche of relief.

"I've got you, Princess." He squeezed her hand.

"Belle!" The kid started screeching. "Belle tell him I didn't do anything wrong!"

Elijah jerked the kid to his feet and started walking him to the door.

He babbled the whole way, trying to get Belle to pay attention to him as he did an Exorcist-style head spin to stare at her.

And then came the sound of sirens.

Jackson breathed deep, holding Belle's hand even tighter.

Belle woke up feeling as if she had the world's worst case of the flu. The pounding in her head and ache in her stomach were the first things she noticed; Jackson and Mariah were the second. Lastly, she realized she was in a hospital bed.

The sheets crinkled beneath her, crisp, white and just a little scratchy.

"Thank G.o.d!" Mariah leapt up from her green vinyl seat and leaned over the bed to hug Belle. Meanwhile, Jackson squeezed her hand.

Belle's mouth had a gross cotton-stuffed feel. "What?"

Her stunted question hung in the air, and she tried to will some moisture into her mouth.

Mariah wore jeans and a tank top instead of her scrubs.