Corbin (The Mavericks Book 17), page 9
Corbin reached out for the pregnant one, and Aiden grabbed the other. Corbin slapped a hand over the woman’s mouth, as she started to fight and scream. “Stop. Stop, damn it. I’m here to help.”
He didn’t even slow down but just tightened his grip around her, picked her up, and raced back to the vehicle. As soon as he got her into the front seat of the vehicle, Aiden came up behind him with the other woman, who didn’t look to be in very good shape. Corbin immediately opened up the door to the back seat of the double-cab truck, while Aiden popped her inside and called out to Corbin, “You drive.”
Corbin hopped into the driver’s seat, with the woman seated in the passenger seat, frozen, staring at him. He looked over at her and asked, “Nellie, by any chance?” She seemed in shock.
“You’re the man who my father hired.”
“Yeah.” He frowned. “How do you know?”
She pulled something from her pocket and handed it to him. He stared at his image. “Well, good Lord. How come you have that?”
“One of my jailers asked me if I knew who you were and that you were looking for me.”
“Well, at least you could say no, that you didn’t know me.”
“True,” she replied, “but I have to admit that I hung on to this picture because it gave me hope.”
He looked over at her, and, in a gentle voice, he said, “It worked. We’re here.”
“Let’s get moving,” Aiden said. “This woman needs medical attention.” And directly behind them, a bullet was fired and then another. Their back windshield exploded.
Corbin sped ahead and slammed his hand over Nellie’s head and pushed her down. “Get down. Get down.” A vehicle charged up behind them. “It’ll be a rough ride,” he snapped, his tone grim. He looked over at her and gave her a feral smile. “At least you are with us now.”
“Yeah,” she whispered, from her crouched position, “but we’re hardly safe.”
“No, not yet.” He veered off the road, heading across a parking lot. “But you need to hang on tight, particularly with that belly.” He looked over at her. “Did they hurt you?”
She shook her head. “No,” she whispered, “but Jewel is hurt.” She lurched higher trying to see Jewel. “We have to go back.” He stared at her in surprise. She cried out, “I mean it. We have to go back. Kids are still there and more women.”
He nodded. “I know, but first we’ll get you guys away.”
Another round of bullets was fired into their vehicle. She shrieked and ducked.
“Remember that part about staying down?”
“What about you?” she snapped, from her crouched position.
He just smiled. “They might get me, but chances are in my favor.” He immediately turned several corners and several more, and then he tossed his phone to her. “Let the cops know who you are and where you are.”
“I don’t even know where the hell I am,” she snapped, but, her fingers trembling, she was already dialing. As soon as she got through, she relayed the message and gave a couple street names off an intersection as to their moving location, as coherently as she could.
Just then another bullet rang out.
“We’re being shot at,” she cried into the phone. “They’re trying to kill us. They’re chasing us, and they’re shooting at us.”
Corbin didn’t listen to the rest of the conversation, as his focus was on making sure that these assholes didn’t run them off the road.
As soon as she was off the phone, he told her to punch Speed Dial 1 on his phone, then put it on Speaker. “Hatch, we need backup. We’re being fired upon. We have both Jewel and Nellie. There are more women and children still to be rescued, before these assholes move them.” He quickly gave Hatch their general location, adding, “Jewel needs medical care, and I have no idea on Nellie. She says she’s fine, but I’m not sure I believe her.” At that, she snorted beside him, and he grinned. “She’s not as bad as she could be. Put it that way. … No. We picked them up as they were sneaking out of a building, grabbed them, and ran. … We were seen, and the kidnappers are in pursuit.”
“I’ve got nothing within ten minutes,” Hatch said.
“Cops, ex-cops, military, retired military, anybody?” Corbin swore, as another bullet came his way, and he looked over at her and yelled, “Hang on.” He took a hard corner to avoid the gunman in that vehicle. “I think another vehicle’s coming after us now too. I need a place to hide.”
“Now that,” Hatch murmured, keys clicking hard on his end, “I might give you. Hold on.”
It took less than two minutes, and he came back. “Follow my instructions.”
And, with that, he led them on a continuous path at top speed. “Take a sharp right and pull into the garage,” he said. “The doors will slam tight behind you.”
Chapter 6
Nellie slowly sat upright in the vehicle, as Corbin parked the vehicle in a garage, the door slowly lowering. Corbin was now out of the driver’s side door, running around to her side, telling her, “Go, go, go, go.” Corbin pulled her from the passenger seat, hustling her out of the vehicle and into the adjoining building.
“I thought we’d be safe now,” she cried out.
“No. It won’t take them too long to find us here. Now pick up the pace, and let’s go.”
“I was so grateful that you were on your way to rescue me, but now I could definitely change my mind.”
He looked at her and then laughed. “Too bad, but I’m what you’ve got. Plus, in my line of work, getting to safety means running through some fire, whether gunfire or a forest fire. So quit complaining and just move. Besides, your friend needs help. Remember?”
Nellie nodded, noting Jewel was already being carried into the building with them. “What’s up with coming here?”
“It’s a temporary safe house for us. My boss sent us here, so we have some time to regroup.” He looked over at her. “There are times to argue, and there are times to do as you’re told without hesitation. We learned that lesson early on in the navy. It’s saved my life many times over.”
She got the message. She stayed quiet, as he quickly led them into a hallway. As they got onto an elevator, he punched in a series of buttons which made no sense to her.
“How do you even know where you’re going?” she muttered.
“My contact on my phone is telling me.” He looked over at Aiden. “How is she?” Aiden carried the unconscious woman. “Did she get hit?”
“I think she’s basically okay,” Aiden said quietly, “but I need to do a full check.” He looked back at Nellie. “Do you know what happened to her?”
She shook her head. “She had just returned to our room. She was distraught because they just found a place for her child.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll be going back in very quickly,” Corbin confirmed. “The plan is to rescue everybody.”
“The kidnappers must know that we’re missing—given the guns shot at us just now—so they’ll move everybody.”
Corbin nodded. “Yes, that’s a big possibility. We’ve got satellite coverage for the area right now. So we’re tracking all movement. If they move, we’ll know.”
She stared at him. “Seriously?”
He smiled to hear such hope in her voice. “Yes, my boss is on it right now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, the cops have been called. You yourself did that, and we have an awful lot of resources at our disposal right now. I also have somebody else who wants to talk to you.”
“Who?” She stared at him, a dazed tone to her voice. All she could think about was maybe this nightmare would be over soon. The fact that they had found a way out of the kidnapper’s building on their own was huge, and then Corbin finding them? … It was almost too good to be true.
“Later. How did you get out?”
She shrugged. “I think one guard deliberately left the door unlocked for us,” she whispered. “I’m afraid they’ll kill him.”
He looked at her steadily for a moment. “That’s possible, but he’d have known that too.”
She swallowed. “I was hoping no one would have to die.”
“They’ve already killed one woman we know about so they could get full possession of her two children. And there’s a good chance that Jewel could have been the next one.”
She stared at Jewel in the other man’s arms. He wasn’t showing any strain from carrying the not-so-tiny woman. “I hope she’s okay,” she said anxiously. “She’s been through a lot.”
“Do you have any idea how many other women there are?”
She shook her head. “At least two more in the room beside us, per Jewel. She also spoke of one dead woman who had been there earlier.”
He nodded.
“I’m not sure the mothers were all killed though.” He raised his eyebrows at that statement. She shrugged. “I didn’t get any clarification on that issue. I so want to see Jewel get her daughter back.”
“We’re working on it.”
The elevator opened suddenly, and they moved rapidly down to another door. Corbin punched in a code, and a series of lights flashed, and the door popped open.
She stared at him. “I don’t know what you just did, but damn.”
He smiled. “Go on in.” And, with that, he let Aiden in, carrying Jewel.
Aiden laid Jewel on a bed inside the closest bedroom. “I’ll have to check her over. Give me a minute.”
With that, Corbin pulled Nellie back out, to give Jewel some privacy. “Come on. Let’s go into the living room.”
“But he might need us. I don’t want her waking up and freaking out.”
“You let him handle it. He’s a navy medic. And he’s damn good too.”
“Yeah, but a medic is not a surgeon.”
“He has done more surgeries than most surgeons,” Corbin explained. “Aiden is a surgeon in all but name. He chose to continue doing this kind of work instead of staying in the navy.”
She didn’t even know what to say to that. She held up her shaking hands.
He nodded, walked over, and didn’t even give her a chance to say anything but pulled her into his arms and just held her close.
“I don’t need that,” she said, trying to get free. But that huge expanse of comforting chest and the fact that he’d been the one to rescue her and that she was finally safe, altogether was obviously magical because she burst into tears and buried her face against him. He held her closer. When the tears finally dried up, she lifted her head and whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
He smiled, brushed her hair off her face. “What for? Being human? For going through a horrible ordeal and now being safe? Somebody who’s in shock and still trying to deal with the changes in her life? You’ve been a kidnap victim for how many days now? You don’t have anything to be sorry for or to be ashamed of, and I’ll bring it up once, and then I won’t bring it up again. You are pregnant, so it’s a well-known fact that hormones will play a huge part in your reactions.”
She stared at him and smiled. “I’ll try very hard to not get too emotional on you.”
He chuckled. “I don’t know about that. I know that you’ll do the best you can, but Baby here”—and he gently patted her belly—“will play an important role too.”
She stared down at her stomach, wrapped her arms around it, curled up against his chest, and whispered, “We both thank you.”
“You’re both welcome.”
She didn’t move; she didn’t do anything but cuddle closer, knowing she was finally safe. “I don’t know what the hell happened to my life. I’m just so damn grateful that stage is over.”
“Did you recognize anything or anyone while you were there?” he asked.
“No, nothing. I just woke up in this locked room. Like, one minute I was on campus, and the very next? I was in that locked room. One of the men was really a decent person, and, I know it sounds terrible to say, but the other one was a piece of shit.” She shuddered. “But this one nice guy, I’m pretty sure he deliberately or accidentally didn’t secure the door, so that we had a chance to get free. My gut says that he did this deliberately, and I don’t even know how to explain it.”
“No explanations necessary,” he muttered. “It’s possible that he realized that he had to do something—perhaps seeing a pregnant woman pushed things for him too far, or it’s possible he didn’t realize the other woman had been murdered.”
She stared at him. “You found her?”
He nodded.
“That confirms what Jewel said too. That terrified me. I stayed compliant, so I didn’t end up the same way.”
“Exactly. You’re alive. You’re well, and Baby is doing okay. Granted, we’re not clear and free of danger yet, but we are in a whole lot better scenario than we were twenty minutes ago.”
She smiled, looked around, then back to Corbin. “I don’t even know where you’re from.”
“I’m Corbin Wallace, US Navy. A special division, black ops,” he said quietly.
“You are a long way away from America.”
Corbin nodded. “I got to travel the world with my parents when I was younger. Now, with my navy connections, I still get to travel.” He smiled. “And, yes, as I’m sure you already understand, your father had something to do with this.”
She winced. “Of course he did. I’m grateful, even though things aren’t great between us.”
“That’s between you and him.”
She stared at him and smiled. “Meaning, you don’t want to get between us?”
“Meaning that, whatever disagreements you had,” he said calmly, “probably are no longer valid, given what you’ve just been through.”
“That’s a sobering thought too.” She shook her head. “Believe me. While I was a captive, all I could think about was the fact that my father wouldn’t know how absolutely sorry I was. I know he was worried, and I kept pushing him out of my life, instead of finding another way to handle him.”
“And I’m sure he’s going through something similar too,” Corbin murmured.
She laid her head back down against his chest. “Do you do this for all your rescued damsels in distress?”
He chuckled. “I don’t know about that.” He gently rubbed her back, his chin resting atop her head. “That would keep me pretty busy.” She lifted her head and looked at him. He shrugged. “I’ve been blessed to have a hand in some pretty amazing rescues.”
“And that sounds like stories worth telling, when we have time.”
“Maybe. Right now we’ll keep you safe, and we’ll do our darnedest to get you back home.”
She leaned back slightly, so she could look up at him. “That would be an absolute miracle right now, but we have to rescue those kids and the other women. I’m seriously worried about them.”
He nodded. “I get that. Believe me. Even as we speak, a full-on raid is being planned to rescue them all. Even if they don’t catch the kidnappers, the satellite will track them. They won’t get away with this.”
“No.” She took a deep breath; then she voiced the fears that were choking her. “What if they decide that all the women and children aren’t worth this and kill everybody? What if they decided to cut their losses and run?”
Contemplating such an option, Corbin looked up to see Aiden standing in the open doorway to the sickroom. “She’s awake and asking for you,” Aiden said, studying the two of them with interest.
Immediately Nellie broke free of Corbin’s arms and asked, “Oh, my goodness, is she okay?”
“Well, she certainly isn’t feeling better, but the fact that she’s free helps. She’s worried about her daughter.”
“Yeah, me too.” Nellie made her way to the bedroom.
Corbin got up and headed over, so he could see the reunion between the two women. Jewel opened her arms, and Nellie fell into them, both of them crying.
When Jewel had a moment, she looked over at the men, and her eyes widened. “Oh, my goodness.” Her gaze traveled from Nellie and back to Corbin. Then she chuckled.
“Look at that. He really did come to our rescue.”
Chapter 7
Nellie reached out and gently brushed back Jewel’s hair. The other woman looked exhausted. Her face was puffy, and her eyes were red. One cheek was swollen, and old bruises colored half her face. “How are you feeling?”
“Pretty rough.” She looked over the two men. “What about the kids and the other women?”
“We got you away first,” Aiden explained and walked closer. “You went unconscious as soon as we got you into the car, so I’m sure you have no idea that we were fired upon several times, while trying to get away.”
“No, I don’t remember that,” she murmured, “but kids are still there, like my daughter, and other women.”
“We’re on it. It’s not just us. We have teams out there.”
She sagged in relief. “Dear God, I sure hope this is over now.” She looked around. “Can we call anybody? Can we call families and friends?”
“Not yet,” Corbin said instantly.
Immediately Jewel’s gaze switched to the men, and she frowned suspiciously. “What? Why not?”
“Because we don’t know if there was any connection from those in your lives to the people who did this.”
Her gaze widened. “Oh, God, are you serious?”
He nodded. “Until we have a little bit more in the way of answers—or, at least, until we have the kids and the women picked up, we stay alert. Nobody gets wind of anything yet.”
She took a deep breath. “Okay, fine, but their rescue needs to happen fast.” She swallowed several times. “I just want my daughter back.”
“How old is she?” Aiden asked quietly.
“She’s one,” Jewel replied, pain in her voice. “She’s just one. And they’ve been trying so hard to wean her away from me and to make it so she doesn’t even remember who I am or cares about me.” Her voice broke. “They told me today that they had a family where she would go, and she’d be so much better off without me.” She started to sob, … big noisy sobs. “I know I haven’t been the best mom. I’ve been trying hard though. I really have. I’m trying to get back to school and to get a better job, and it’s just so damn hard.”
