Footsteps echoed toward me. My head jerked in their direction, and a blurry shadow of a womanly figure appeared. It must have been the woman who robbed me and took me hostage. I couldn’t see her face clearly without my glasses, which she must have taken off me.
“Please be quiet. I told you no one is gonna hurt you,” she said.
“You knocked me unconscious and cuffed me to a freaking pillar God only knew where. Excuse me if I find your words hard to believe.”
“I’m sorry. I just couldn’t risk your knowing where we headed.”
Fuck. Did they take me out of Taormina? I glanced around to get any clue as to where we were, but all I could see was an abandoned place with nothing but sunlight bouncing on dirt and dingy, burned down walls. The salty, sultry smell of the beach filled the air. Based on the light, no more than three hours had passed since she took me. That meant we were still somewhere along the Sicilian coastline.
She came closer and squatted in front of me, stretching her hand with my glasses. “Here.”
Glaring at her, I grabbed them with my free hand and put them on. I could see her clearly enough now. She had long blond hair tied in a messy bun. Blue eyes. No makeup to hide the circles lack of sleep and stress had created under them. Nonetheless, she looked oddly familiar.
Her lips and skin were pale. The sick kind, not the natural one. Was it because of her bleeding wound? I checked the ground around her feet. There was no more blood. “You patched yourself up?”
She nodded. “It was just a scratch. Like I said, it’s my…friend…who needs help. I did the best that I could, but…”
Was the battered man I saw in the car real? My heart skipped a beat. “Did I really hit him with the car?”
She shook her head. “I threw a rock at the car and used his blood on the bumper to trick you. He was already hurt before you came. I’m sorry, but we had to get out of there, and you were the first car on the road.”
At least, she was being honest. “I’d be happy to help, but please, I need to get back to Taormina. There are people expecting me there. If I’m not, bad things will happen…to all of us.” My father would be worried sick. The Lanzas would suspect my sudden disappearance, and the consequences of that would never be good.
“Bad things have already happened, Doctor Berlusconi, and more will come.”
Well…she got that right. “How do you know my name? You went through my things?”
“Again, sorry about that…and for taking out and breaking the GPS in your car, but it was necessary. Um…I hope you don’t mind, but I texted yourpapa, too, letting him know you’re going on an early walking tour around Taormina. He kept calling, so…” She got to her feet and shoved her hand in her pocket. Then she brought out little keys. “Now, can I trust you’re not going to run?”
I glanced at the gun she’d tucked in her jeans and made sure it was visible. It didn’t intimidate me, though. She wasn’t a killer. She was never going to shoot me with it.
“You might think I’m not gonna use it on you, and you’re probably right,” she looked me straight in the eye, reading my mind, “but the man with me will.”
I blinked once, reminding myself of herfriend’sface. Then I swallowed. “Are you going to give it to him?”
“Only when I have to.”
When, not if. Although her voice, body language and behavior assured me she wasn’t referring to me in this incident, but a chill ran through me. Whatever those two had planned was ominous, to say the least, but I had no part in it. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nonetheless, she might have been stable enough to make moral decisions, but, obviously, he wasn’t if I didn’t play by their rules. How did a woman like her get tangled into such a dangerous situation with a man like him?
“I’m gonna uncuff you now, but only if you promise you’re not gonna run. The nearest town is three miles away anyway. There’s nowhere to go.”
I nodded. “I promise.” It was easier to obey rather than fight. I’d long learned my lesson. Besides, there was a patient that needed my help. I couldn’t just leave him behind.
“Thank you.” She unlocked the cuffs and helped me up. Then she nodded at an open arch in this abandoned house. “He’s in there. I gave him something for the pain from your purse, but it only helped for a couple of hours. He’s in a really bad shape. I thought maybe you could give him something stronger before you take care of his injuries. You have quite the collection.”
“My job dictates it,” I said, a little more defensively than I’d have liked.
She held my arm, leading the way. “Sure. Speaking of your job, your ID says psychiatrist, but it doesn’t say where.”
I was glad I’d left my Filicudi card at the resort. If the face of the man I’d seen had indeed belonged to…him, we would have been having a different kind of conversation. “I have a practice back home. I’m only here on vacation. What about you?”
“The less you ask the better, Doctor.” She ushered me to a room with nothing but a few plastic bags, a broken bed, a stripped mattress lain on the ground, and the shirtless man bleeding on top of it, his arm cuffed to the bed.
My feet faltered at the entrance, and my breath caught. “Jesus.” I stared at him, at the scars marring his body, at the blood coming from his leg. “What have they done to you?”
Sweating, he moaned as he wrenched his back upright, his eyes barely open I wasn’t sure his bruises allowed him any vision. “Can you take a bullet out?”
His voice sent a shiver down my spine. It was exactly as I remembered it, masculine, rough, always wreaking havoc on my mind before my body. He might have looked like a different person now than he used to be five years ago, with his cropped hair, scars and contusions, but that voice I’d recognize anywhere.
