Читать книгу Born A Hero - Paula Detmer Riggs - Страница 10

Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, California;

two days earlier

The shiny gilt letters on the door spelled out the name of the boutique in the same ornate script gracing the bottle of the obscenely expensive perfume sold at the desk and wafting through the ventilation system. Salsa pulsed through the small, but opulent fitting room, as hot and steamy as its Latin origin.

Alone in the fitting room, Kate stared at her reflection in the mirror. The woman staring back at her was a perfect stranger.

A goddess.

A siren.

Or dare she even think it, a slinky, sleepy-eyed sex object?

She drew a shaky breath and wetted lips the color of ripe plums. Secrets shimmered like summer heat in wide-set eyes of dark clear amber. Beneath sweeping, honey-toned brows, feathery lashes of the same hue fluttered in a provocative invitation. Slender hips longed to sway beneath thin silk the color of fuchsia, while her blood heated and her skin glowed.

“Oh my,” she whispered in awe. This woman would never be invisible in a roomful of people. Her face was a perfect oval, her features delicate. Her unblemished skin had been sun-kissed to a golden hue, with a subtle hint of rose-petal pink brushed over exotic cheekbones.

Still reluctant to believe her own eyes, Kate lifted a tentative hand to the softly curling tips of her glossy auburn hair, now layered and blow-dried into a breezy, asymmetrical, shoulder-length shag that did terrific things for her cheekbones.

When she walked into the clinic on Monday morning her staff would stare. Her pint-size patients would giggle. When she joined her parents for their traditional Sunday brunch next week, both would express their disapproval with their customary multisyllabic eloquence. Father, in particular, would be outraged that she’d cut off her crowning glory. Hadn’t Mother worn her hair in the same sophisticated—and boring—French twist for the past thirty-odd years? The same French twist Kate had adopted as her own sometime around her fifteenth year.

It had been a brain warp or some kind of temporary insanity, of course, combined with the two margaritas she’d gulped down to give her the courage to bare her head to a stylist’s scissors.

Muy magnifico, Doctor Remson. Que linda!

Magnificent? Beautiful?

Her? The nerd who’d been two and then three years younger than everyone else in her class, even in medical school? The pathetic geek who’d had only one date in high school—and that arranged by the brother of her best friend, Sarah?

The same Sarah who had talked her into spending the last six days at El Puerto d’Oro, the outrageously expensive health and beauty spa located fifty miles south of San Diego on the Baja California peninsula.

“Give her the works,” Sarah had ordered. A major makeover.

If Sarah hadn’t been standing right there next to her, urging her on, Kate was pretty sure she would have leaped out of the fancy salon and run all the way back to the Bay Area.

So what if she wasn’t attractive to members of the opposite sex? She had a life, didn’t she? A boring one, sure, but it was richly rewarding, which was what she’d been raised to value above all things. Service to others had been a Remson tradition for generations. Teachers, doctors, scholars and philanthropists dotted her family tree. As her parents’ only child, she’d always known she had an obligation to carry on the tradition. Founding the Children’s Free Clinic in San Francisco’s Mission District three years ago had been both a joy and an obligation.

Unmarried, and rarely been kissed, she had a cozy, turn-of-the-century flat on Nob Hill, the same VW bug her father had driven as a graduate student at Stanford and a small, but beloved, group of women friends. Perhaps there were moments in the darkest hours of night when her heart wept for her lost dreams, but by the light of dawn she had banished her haunted memories to the back of her well-disciplined mind. Maybe she wasn’t always over-the-moon happy, but she was productive and valued.

“What’s taking you so long in there, Kates?”

Before she could answer, Sarah slipped through the yellow-and-white-striped curtain, her green eyes glittering with expectation. A brunette who was also highly intelligent and remarkably kind, Sarah had been Kate’s rock during the worst period of her life, and she loved the outrageously unpredictable woman like a sister.

“Wow!” Sarah murmured, her hand still clutching the curtain, her large, heavily fringed eyes going wide. “You look…dangerous.”

Kate snorted a self-conscious laugh. “It’s the dress, what there is of it.” Which was no more than a couple of yards of flowing silk, cut on the bias to fall from thin, rhinestone-covered straps. The bodice dipped into a V so deep it would be considered a misdemeanor in more conservative states. Below a slinky stretch of shimmering fuchsia, the ruffly hem hit her in midthigh, shorter even than her favorite man-tailored nightshirt.

Her father, the biblical scholar, and her mother, the primary-school principal, would be appalled to see their properly reared daughter parading around in a couple of flimsy scarves sewn together—and not much else.

“Um-hmm.” Pursing her lips, Sarah cocked her pretty head and studied Kate through those famous, sinfully thick Hunter eyelashes. “Give me a twirl, sweetie, so I can get the full effect.”

Kate reluctantly complied.

“Hmm, that sucker’s a definite keeper,” Sarah pronounced with a wickedly naughty grin Kate desperately wished she could replicate. But dull old Katherine had done only one naughty thing in her life—and she was still suffering the aftereffects.

“Oh, Sarah, I don’t know,” she wailed piteously. “I’ve already spent so much money on the spa and clothes and shoes I’ll never wear that the numbers are all but worn off my credit card.”

“So what? You’re a rich surgeon, aren’t you?” Eyes the color of sunshine on jade sparkled the way they always did when Sarah teased her childhood friend. Another pair of sun-dappled, jade-green eyes shimmered for an instant in Kate’s mind. Eyes that were haunted and bleak and…brutally angry. Years of practice helped her banish the image almost as quickly as it appeared.

“What I am is darn near broke after this past week,” she declared firmly. “I’ll be lucky to make the mortgage payment on my flat next month.”

Sarah dismissed that with typical Hunter imperturbability. Besides, she knew all about the trust fund from Kate’s maternal grandfather that had put her friend through medical school—with plenty left over. “Nonsense,” she declared airily. “Did you or did you not tell me only two weeks ago that you were…uh, let’s see, how did you put it exactly?” She lifted one winged brow. “Oh yeah, I remember, ‘fed up with looking in the mirror and seeing someone’s dried-up spinster aunt’?”

Kate felt her face warming. Her wine-soaked soliloquy on the night of her thirtieth birthday still had the power to make her wince. “Well, yes, I might have said something like that, but—”

“Did you or did you not tell me your sex life was a total dud?” The sudden glint in Sarah’s eyes dared her to disagree.

Damn her, Kate thought peevishly as she swallowed the skillfully worded denial already forming in her mind. “Yes, but I’d had a few glasses of champagne and—”

“Look at yourself, Katie!” Sarah demanded now. “A terrific, trendy hairdo instead of that awful retro-hippie look—”

“Thanks very much.”

“—and flattering makeup instead of that awful pink lip gloss.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Sarah, I spend most of my time behind a surgical mask. My patients don’t care whether or not I slather on mascara before I scrub.”

“But those studly residents prowling the halls do.”

“Attendings do not date residents,” Kate declared in her mother’s haughtiest tones.

Sarah, the rat, ignored her the way she always did. “Mark my words, sweetie, straight men all over the Bay Area will be falling prostrate at your feet, begging to be your devoted sex slave for life.”

Because Kate had a particularly vivid imagination, the image that arose featured hard muscles beneath bronzed skin, narrow hips and a particularly outstanding example of masculine anatomy. Her breathing sped up. But when her imagination directed her attention higher, to bold aggressive features and deep-set, haunted eyes, she deliberately wiped her mind clean.

“I don’t recall mentioning anything about sex slaves—”

“No, what you actually said was, and I quote, ‘Oh Sarah, just once in my life I’d like to feel wild and wicked and…utterly wanton instead of so damned proper and…matronly. Just once I’d like to have a man lick champagne from my navel and drive me into a frenzy with his mouth. Just once I’d like to—”

“Enough, please,” Katherine begged, her cheeks flaming. Narrowing her gaze, she glared at her friend with as much indignation as she could muster. “What did you do, bring a tape recorder along with that obscenely huge bottle of bubbly you forced down my throat?”

“No need,” Sarah replied breezily. “I have a photographic memory, remember? It’s genetic, like Mom’s dimples and Dad’s laugh.”

Kate arched a brow. “She who gloats brings serious karma down on her head,” she foretold in somber tones.

Sarah smiled smugly. “I’ll remind you of this conversation on your wedding day.”

Kate’s heart leaped—and yet again those haunted, sea-green eyes rose to taunt her. She had once loved Elliot Hunter with all of her heart and soul. She had given him her virginity with the sheer joy of being a part of him. Now she cringed inside every time she remembered the foolishly naive ninny she’d been at twenty.

“I don’t want to get married,” she said a little too shrilly—then forced herself to take a breath. “All I want is a little spice in the romance department before all my vital juices dry up.”

Sarah lifted her own perfectly shaped—and naturally golden—brows. “You want children, right?”

So desperately it was a soul-deep ache. “Yes, but—”

“And you’ve always said you believe in marriage before kids, right?”

“For me, yes, but—”

“So go for it, girl! Be proactive for a change. Be aggressive, be bold, be a little naughty.” Sarah clamped her hands on Kate’s bare shoulders and turned her toward the mirror again.

Biting her lip, Kate shifted her gaze to the skimpy cocktail dress, swaying just a little to make the hem tease her thighs—like the brush of a man’s mouth. Her breath caught, and she nibbled at the inside of her cheek.

Was it so wrong to want to feel feminine and desired and cherished just once in her life? Was it wrong to ache to hold a child to her breasts and feel an eager little mouth suckle? To have the child’s father curve strong arms around the two of them, love shining in his eyes?

“I’ll take it,” she said, making up her mind. As Sarah gave her a fierce hug, Kate had a feeling she’d just taken a giant step on the road toward some unknown destiny. She only hoped she wouldn’t live to regret it.

Somewhere on the road outside Puebla del Mar, southern Spain

“Bueno, mamacita, breathe through the contraction. You’re doing fine. Uh, fantastico, sí?”

Pausing while his fractured instructions were translated to the laboring mom, who looked more like a child herself, Elliot Hunter used his forearm to swipe away the sweat mixed with blood from the gash in his temple.

Though a surgeon by training and inclination, he’d done a rotation in obstetrics during his internship at Stanford Medical Center. All but a few of those births, however, had been normal deliveries in antiseptic conditions with the state-of-the-art equipment and superbly trained, highly skilled personnel of one of the best hospitals in the world backing him up.

In this case he had to make do with the few essentials in his medical bag—stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, an old-fashioned thermometer. Instead of scrubbing for the full five minutes, he’d drenched his hands in tequila from the bottle in his duffel, the only antiseptic he had. Instead of surgical scrubs he wore jeans, six-year-old boots and a Medics Without Limits T-shirt. An identical shirt, the last one he had that was clean, was folded nearby, ready to be used as a blanket for the newborn.

When the contraction finally eased, he settled back on his heels, resting his aching spine. The air was thick with heat and dust and the smell of sage. There wasn’t a hint of cloud cover, and the merciless midday sun beat down on the dusty road where, less than an hour earlier, the bus taking him to the seashore had blown a tire.

Before the driver could regain control, it had plowed into a rattletrap pickup truck driven by a frantic husband racing his pregnant wife to a woman’s clinic in Puebla.

When the tire had blown, Elliot had been jammed into the corner of the last seat in the bus’s rear, doing his best to block out the sights and sounds of happy, chattering families on holiday. The sickening screech of metal compressing metal had jolted him awake a split second before the heavy bus slid sideways into a deep drainage ditch beyond the rutted road’s dusty shoulder, where it had settled at a dangerous angle.

Terrified screams had rent the air as the passengers had been tossed around like corks in a savage sea. Elliot’s head had hit the window with a sickening thud, making his ears ring. The two chubby little girls from the seat across from his had tumbled against him, inflicting various blows from sharp little elbows and hard soled shoes as he cushioned them from serious injury.

It had been chaos then. Noise and confusion and near hysteria—all very familiar to a man who spent most of his days working in places sane doctors prudently avoided.

As a trauma surgeon working with MWL for the past three years, he had experienced firsthand the aftermath of war, terrorist attacks and natural disasters. He’d learned to block out the noise and confusion and terror in order to function.

After discovering that the stocky, middle-aged driver spoke decent English, he’d handed the man his cell phone to call for help while he conducted an informal triage, identifying those passengers whose injuries required more than a soothing word and a Band-Aid from the bus’s pathetically inadequate first aid kit.

He’d just finished applying a makeshift splint to a teenage girl’s broken arm when a furious barrage of high-pitched Spanish had caught the driver’s attention. Minutes later, Elliot had found himself struggling to deliver a baby in the bed of a wrecked pickup, with several matronly passengers assisting.

Beneath the hand he kept splayed over the laboring girl’s swollen belly, another contraction rippled, then strengthened, until her entire belly was rock hard. Her hand desperately clutching that of her terrified husband, the frantic young woman screamed. Elliot murmured reassurance, hoping she would understand the tone if not the words.

“Ayudame, por favor!” she begged between cries.

“Help me, please,” the driver translated, his eyes dark with worry.

God, Elliot wanted to, but the baby was a posterior presentation. A damn breech. He glanced toward the empty stretch of road ahead. The driver had made three more calls to the authorities in Puebla del Mar, who promised to hurry.

Standing in a ragged circle around the truck, solemn-faced onlookers waited in an eerie silence broken only by the sound of prayers uttered in low, urgent tones.

Elliot had prayed in just that same way once, his voice thick with an icy terror, his eyes stinging with tears instead of sweat. Over and over he’d begged God to spare another young mother and her child. A baby old enough to lift up her arms to her daddy when he walked in. A dark-haired, dark-eyed bambina with the smile of an angel and a bubbling laugh.

His thoughts began to shatter the way his life had after he’d lost his girls. His chest hurt from the wound where his heart had once beat strong and steady.

Another contraction ripped across the girl’s stomach. Her eyes were huge pools of suffering and fear, beseeching him for help. For a bloody miracle.

Leave me alone, he wanted to shout. Don’t you think I would perform miracles if I could? But I can’t, damn it!

He took a second to pull back from the black empty pit that had been his prison for so many years. He wasn’t God, but he’d sworn an oath to do his best.

“Tell her husband to get behind her and support her shoulders,” he ordered the driver crisply. “I’m going to push the baby back into the birth canal, then try to turn it.”

“Ah sí, comprendo! Like birthing a…a calf, no?”

Elliot nodded. “Sí, exactly like that.” He only hoped he didn’t kill both mama and baby in the process.

Elliot didn’t care where he died. Still, it surprised him to discover he still had enough humanity left not to kill himself where his body might be discovered by someone who cared about him.

The third-rate, bug-infested hotel in the nowhere village of Puebla del Mar was ideal. Here he was just one more gringo. An outsider with a surly attitude and the take-no-prisoners swagger of a barroom brawler.

Hell, most of his fellow guests rented their rooms by the hour, so he doubted they’d even flinch at the sound of a shot. The desk clerk might even take it as a favor, given he could rent the room twice in the same night.

After twisting the cap off the tequila he’d bought after leaving the public clinic this evening, Elliot drank straight from the bottle, one fiery swallow after another until his head was swimming. Reeling a little and careful to keep a tight grip on the bottle, he walked to the sagging bed with its worn gray spread and lumpy mattress.

Old-fashioned wire springs creaked under his weight as he sank down. He took another long swallow, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before reaching under the thin pillow for the worn leather photo case he’d stashed there this morning after checking in. It fell open easily, the fold thinned by constant handling during these past ten years.

A familiar ache spread through his chest as he gazed into the laughing eyes of his two dearest loves—his wife and daughter. Sweet, generous Candy with her open smile and shiny black hair that always smelled like apples and sunshine. Feeling as though he were being strangled, he shifted his gaze to the face of his baby girl, his angel, Lauren, who had her mama’s stubborn chin and beautiful smile. Today would have been his fifteenth wedding anniversary—and his daughter’s eleventh birthday. Ten years was long enough to wake up every morning telling himself his work was enough. No matter how many broken bodies he put back together or how many lives he saved, he still felt empty inside.

He’d tried once, to put it behind him. On a miserable night shortly after the funerals, when he’d hit bottom, Katie had come to him. Sweet, innocent Katie, his sister’s best friend, wearing her heart on her sleeve.

She’d held him, talked to him, made love with him—and in that small window of time he’d felt peace. But afterward, the guilt had nearly crushed him—and Katie. It still hurt, the way he’d treated her.

His mind drifted. It had been a close call this afternoon on that hot, dusty road, but the mama and baby had survived. He’d damn near lost it when he’d drawn that tiny little body into the world. Mad as a little hornet, she’d started squalling as soon as he’d cleared away the amniotic fluid. Despite the temper, she’d been a dainty little girl with dark fuzz covering her little round head, and milky-blue eyes sure to turn dark.

Suddenly it had been Lauren there on her mommy’s tummy, and Candy gazing down at her daughter with dark, shining eyes. It was too much for one man to bear, this crushing grief that never let him rest, no matter how tired he made himself. God knew, he’d fought it, pretending that he had put the grief and despair behind him, hoping he could make the pretense real if he repeated the lie often enough.

Only now he’d simply stopped caring. He couldn’t fight any longer. He missed his girls. If there was a heaven—and he had no faith that there was—he wanted to be there with them.

His parents and his sister would mourn for him, he knew, and that hurt. But Mom and Pop had each other, and his baby sister had her friends and her job as a social worker. And sweet little Katie? He did regret not being able to make amends for the way he’d treated her. He tried, but every time he was home, she made it a point to avoid him. Not that he blamed her.

He smiled a little sadly as he drained the last drop from the bottle, then let it fall to the mattress. Head swimming, he unzipped the duffel bag at his feet and took out the .44 Magnum his dad had given him when he hired on with MWL.

“Keep it loaded and never point it at anyone you’re not willing to watch die,” his dad had said in a steely voice Elliot had never heard before.

Even as he slipped the barrel between his lips, he grieved a little when he thought about how upset Pop would be if he ever found out it was his gun that had fired the bullet into his son’s brain.

Elliot closed his eyes and his finger tightened on the trigger.

Washington, D.C.

The tall, white-haired gentleman with chiseled features, close-cropped white beard and military bearing who stepped from the elevator of the historic Willard Hotel and turned left was familiar with the agony of war and the sorrow of its innocent victims.

Though he no longer wore the olive drab of the U.S. Army, seventy-year-old Jonathan Dalton’s dedication to peace and freedom for all was still the abiding force in his life. To that end, a few years after resigning his commission he had begun using his skills and training to aid victims of abuse and oppression all over the world.

One by one he had recruited others to this same cause, fellow warriors with expertise in a wide range of fields, from medicine to demolition—men he trusted with his life and his honor, men willing to lay down their lives to make the world a better place.

For a long time there had been only five, an elite force of tough, dedicated commandos who had been sadly disillusioned after the Vietnam War. Few knew of their existence, and those who did had been sworn to secrecy as a condition of receiving their help. One of the few, a forward-thinking leader of an emerging nation in South America, had given them the name by which they were now known—the Noble Men—after they had successfully thwarted the overthrow of his government by dissidents.

Over the years others had joined the cause, good and valiant men all. As the original five men became more deeply involved in raising families and building businesses, they’d gone on fewer missions. Still deeply involved, however, the original five conscientiously considered every plea for help, accepting more than they declined.

Scattered across the continental U.S. now, where each had lucrative business and investment interests, they routinely communicated by secure phone lines and e-mail when security wasn’t crucial. But this mission was special.

King Marcus Sebastiani of Montebello was both a friend and, because of a past mission in his own land, a fellow comrade-in-arms. It had been his urgent, though rushed, telephone call to Jonathan’s private line at his Texas home yesterday morning that had brought the five Noble Men together tonight.

The room Jonathan sought was at the end of a dogleg corridor. Unlike the others he passed, its twin doors were unmarked. Officially, it was listed on the hotel’s roster as a house suite held in reserve for unexpected VIP guests. Occasionally it was even used for that purpose. Far more often, however, the three rooms beyond those doors served as a meeting place for some very hush-hush groups known only to a select few, extremely senior officials in the uppermost echelons of the intelligence community.

Satisfied that he was unobserved, Jonathan lifted a large, suntanned hand and rapped twice. An instant later, the door opened a crack, and he found himself facing a grim-looking man holding a Glock .45 pointed directly at his belly.