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Shrugging, Alex looked over at the ocean, frowning. “They took Sky, drugged her heavily. That means a long distance must be flown. Probably to Mexico or beyond.”
“It’s Alexandrov,” Cal snarled. “Vlad’s father, Yerik Alexandrov, has done this. I fuckin’ well know it even if I can’t prove it.”
Joe moved his hand gently up and down his wife’s arm. He looked up at Cal. “Abby said Sky recognized one of the Russians.”
“Yeah,” Cal rasped, taking off his black baseball cap and pushing his fingers angrily through his hair. “Vlad had a group of ex-Spetsnaz soldiers on his drug-running team. One of them escaped. It must have been him.”
“I was one of them,” Alex told Joe, apology and sadness in his tone.
“Who do you think it was, Alex?”
Shrugging, he said, “I don’t know. Maybe, when Abby becomes conscious, she can give us a description? The only one that escaped the Quechua village was Lev Zuyev, and I’m sure he held Nik, the other Ukrainian medic, as a prisoner.”
“Shit!” Cal snarled, pacing back and forth.
Abby moaned. Her lashes fluttered open.
“Baby?” Joe whispered, touching her brow, “it’s all right. It’s Joe. You’re going to be okay. Look at me?”
Abby sighed deeply and slowly turned toward her husband’s low, emotional voice. She whispered, “You came…”
“Always,” Joe promised her, his voice shaken with emotions he couldn’t contain. “Can you sit up?”
Nodding slowly, Abby saw Alex and Cal standing nearby. “Y-yes… help me up?” and she offered Joe her hand.
Alex knelt and slid his arm around Abby’s shoulders, levering her into a sitting position, keeping his arm around her because she wasn’t fully coherent yet. Joe placed his body against her right shoulder and then took over holding her.
Cal came around and knelt at Abby’s bare feet. “Abby? Can you tell us what happened?”
Joe held up his hand. “Give her a minute?” He pointed to a bottle of water in the basket. Alex quickly picked it up, unscrewed the cap and handed it to Joe.
“Baby, are your thirsty?” and he held the bottle up for her to see it.
“Ugh… yes… I’m dying of thirst…,” and she weakly reached for it.
“I’ll give it to you,” Joe murmured, positioning her beneath his arm to give her head a place to rest. He gently pressed the bottle to her lips. Abby drank sloppily, water leaking from the corners of her mouth. In a minute, she’d drunk the entire pint of water.
Alex took the bottle. “That is good. She needs to be hydrated.” He hunted in the basket, finding another bottle and opening it. “Let her have as much as she’ll drink. It will aid in washing the drug out of her system much faster.”
Nodding, Joe took the bottle. This time, Abby wrapped her hand around it. He could feel her strength returning. Her blue eyes were more clear, less cloudy. She gulped down another half bottle of water before sinking wearily against him.
“Cal,” she whispered, her voice hoarse, “Sky saw a seaplane land,” and she pointed out toward the ocean. “We saw a raft inflate by the pontoon. We thought… God, we thought it might be SEALs coming ashore because they had wet suits on and wore belts around their waists.” She rubbed her face, trying to focus because Cal’s face was hard, and she could see the anxiety buried deep in his slitted gaze. His fists were clenched at his sides, and she felt his desperation. She wanted to cry for him, for Sky.
“Sky recognized one guy. She screamed at me to get up and run. I was shocked and confused at first. I didn’t know what to think,” and she gulped, giving Cal an apologetic look. “I-I slowed us down. Maybe, if I’d reacted faster—”
“Don’t go there,” Joe warned her, giving her a gentle squeeze.
Cal nodded, his voice gruff. “You’d never outrun them, Abby, so don’t be hard on yourself. What happened next?”
Rubbing her face, Abby thought, her mind shorting out. For a moment, there was clarity, and then, she lost her focus and her memory. “I—uh—we ran. Sky pushed me ahead of her and we took off. I remember something painful hitting me here,” and she looked down at her leg that showed where the dart had struck her. “I screamed, and then I saw Sky get hit in the leg with the same thing. All of a sudden, I just crumpled, Cal. I couldn’t control my body. I remember slamming into the sand and then I blacked out.”
Alex nodded grimly. He wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Abby’s other arm, taking another reading. “That’s how the drug works,” he told them. He smiled a little over at Abby. “You are normal. You are going to be fine,” and he slipped the cuff off her upper arm.
Miserably, Abby looked at Joe and the up at Cal. He was standing so tensely, as if he might suddenly crack and explode into a million pieces. And then, she gasped. “Oh GOD!” and she suddenly pulled out of Joe’s arm, lurching toward the edge of the blanket.
“What?” Joe asked, alarmed.
“The camera!” Abby cried, pushing her hands along the folded edge of the blanket. On her hands and knees, she frantically searched. “Sky had taken photos of the seaplane, the raft and the guys coming ashore… wait! Oh, thank GOD, it’s here,” and she jerked the camera from beneath the fold.
