CHAPTER 27The chaos of departure matched that of the embarking eight days before. Sleep had come in scant bits and pieces, despite the guards posted outside. High on the love of the most wonderful man in the world, Caroline forgot to put in a wake-up call, so after she finally succumbed to exhaustion in the wee hours of the morning, she overslept. Fortunately, she’d showered the night before.
Now Karen commandeered Blaine’s shower, while Annie bathed in Caroline’s. Freshly shaven and dressed, but showing the strain of too much excitement and too little rest, Blaine held down the lid to Caroline’s Pullman so she could zip it.
“Heaven help the customs official who opens this up.” Her droll comment prodded a smile from her somber companion.
“What’s in those bags?” he asked, pointing to the gaping top of a fake straw bag with Mexico emblazoned on it.
“More souvenirs,” she replied.
With a sigh she surveyed the cases covering the unmade beds.
Each person had two cases plus a few packages. “I guess we’d better call and see if the bell captain can send up a forklift.”
“I’ll call,” Blaine offered. “You put a rush on the girls.”
Half an hour later, the teens were dressed and putting the final touches on their hair. Caroline sat at the bistro table on the balcony reading her morning devotional in a weary stupor.
Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit.
Ain’t that the truth, she mused, gazing unseeing beyond the little booklet at the beach coming to life below. The helplessness she’d felt yesterday still made her tremble, but God had intervened in so many ways.
“Peso for your thoughts.” Blaine leaned over her shoulder from behind and kissed her cheek.
Caroline pointed to the highlighted verse. “Today’s horoscope . . . although it really suits yesterday better.”
“Wow,” Blaine said after reading it. “I see what you mean. God was working overtime for us this time yesterday. What if the girls had been in the room when the thugs ransacked it?”
“What if they’d found the girls on the island before we did?” It never ceased to amaze Caroline how incredible the Word was. “See why I call it my horoscope? There’s always something that applies to something either I, or someone I know, is going through. Like it knows before it goes to print,” she said with a mysterious wiggle of her eyebrows. She gave herself a little thump on the forehead.
“Duh, that’s why it’s living.”
When Blaine remained silent, Caroline looked up to see him lost in thought. “Peso for your thoughts.”
“I was just remembering . . . at the airport luggage claim, on my way to catch your plane, this lady gave me a pink slip of paper. Like something from a fortune cookie,” he explained. “It was a Bible verse that basically warned me that all my work was in vain without faith.
My house was falling apart, no matter how much time I put on it.”
Caroline remembered the high-strung, troubled man Blaine had been when they first met—such a contrast to the faith-seeking, compassionate, and passionate soul of last night. Was it only days ago? So much had changed. “Maybe that lady was an angel . . . an earth angel put in that place at that time just for you.”
Blaine scowled, not quite comfortable with that train of thought. “Does that mean those two batty sisters are angels, too? I mean, they certainly saved our girls.”
What a joy it was to see mischief light in his gaze. “Could be.”
Caroline chuckled. “I understand angels come in all shapes and sizes.”
“Then we’ve been traveling with a band of them.” A glaze formed over his eyes for a moment before he blinked it away. “I don’t know what I’d have done yesterday without Randy. He’s quite—”
A knock sounded on the door, followed by an accented “Bellman.”
“I’ll get it,” Karen announced, shoving her hairbrush in her knapsack.
Instantly on guard, Blaine cut her off. “No, I’ll get it.”
“There are guards out there, Dad,” Karen protested, relegating Blaine back to stupid-dad status.
Yes, life was returning to normal, Caroline thought, closing her devotional and heading inside to put it away.
Cautiously Blaine opened the door as far as the chain allowed and peered out.
“You call for the luggage cart, señor? ”
“Yes, gracias.”
Caroline expelled the breath she’d inadvertently held.
Blaine took the chain off and stepped back to allow the uniformed man into the room. But instead of bringing in the brass luggage cart, the bellman stepped aside, allowing a second man into the room before Blaine had a chance to react. Like a sinister magician, the second man suddenly brandished a pistol with some kind of attachment on the end and leveled it at Blaine.
“Easy, señor,” he warned Blaine. “Keep your heads and no one will be hurt.”
“Omigosh!” Karen backed against the wall as if she’d seen a ghost. “It’s the man from the cave!”
“You have a good memory, señorita,” the assassin acknowledged.
“Perhaps you will also remember where your boyfriend is?”
“He . . . I haven’t seen John since he ditched me at the club the night before last.” Karen gave her father a plaintive look.
Blaine could hardly do anything at gunpoint, save the half-surrender, half-caution display of his raised hands.
The masquerading bellman brought a brass luggage cart inside, letting the door drift shut behind him. “All clear, Argon.”
Despite his weapon, the young man in the uniform didn’t appear nearly as threatening as the man he called Argon. Caroline had never seen an assassin, but this guy fit her image of one. His narrow face was scarred, with a large hooked nose—probably broken in some mob brawl—and the ointment plastering his black hair in place most likely contributed to the psoriasis flaking on his part.
“Look, amigos, your card or stamp or whatever it was is gone,”
Blaine said.
The malicious glint in the gunman’s eye made Caroline’s blood run cold. Would he shoot them for bad news?
“Señorita, put the hair dryer down.”
All attention shifted to Annie, who in her frozen state held the running dryer like a pistol in her hand. “Mom?”
If the situation weren’t so dire, it might have been funny. “Turn it off and do as he says, Annie,” Caroline assured her with a calm she hardly felt.
Annie snatched the cord from the wall socket and tossed the dryer onto the bed like a hot potato.
“What happened to the guards?” Blaine asked, as Caroline coaxed her daughter behind her.
“In the supply closet, sleeping off the coffee I brought them earlier,” the uniformed accomplice informed them. The manner in which he glanced at Argon for approval was akin to worship.
Maybe he really was a bellman—a greedy kid who’d been paid off by this Argon.
Caroline summoned her nerve. “Well, you’ve wasted time and risk for nothing, since we don’t have the card. The kids had second thoughts about taking it across the border and put it in the mail in Cuernavaca.”
The devil with catching whoever was on the receiving end of the mail route. All Caroline wanted was to get these guys out of here.
“As she said, you’re wasting your time here,” Blaine chimed in.
He started to reach for Karen, but Argon stopped him.
“Stay where you are, señor.”
“Daddy?” Karen’s terrified look as Argon grabbed her arm with his free hand tore at Caroline’s heart.
Blaine looked as though he’d been kicked in the belly. “Why?
You already know she doesn’t have the card . . . or stamp . . . or whatever it was.”
“Señor, don’t make me shoot you in front of your little girl.” The gunman held the gun steady at Blaine’s chest.
Caroline’s mouth went dry. For one half of a heartbeat, she thought it was over. She tried reading the Mexican’s swarthy face.
The deep lines furrowing his face relaxed. One corner of his pencil-thin lips twitched, a precipitous sign of what? Reprieve?
Argon made it a short one. “Put the girl in the trunk, Ricki.”
Trunk? For the first time, Caroline noticed an aluminum case on the luggage cart, the kind that media equipment was often transported in. Or a child . . .
“Omigosh,” Karen sobbed, coming to the same sick conclusion.
“I c . . . can’t get in there.”
“It’s okay, baby, I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
Blaine stood glued to the spot, but the steel in his voice left no doubt in Caroline’s mind that Karen was leaving over his dead body.
Dear God in heaven, please . . . do something.
“Why?” Caroline cried out. “Why do you need her? Why can’t you just go?”
“My boss, he picks up all his bases.” The assassin’s convoluted metaphor would have been funny in any other setting. “And she will be our insurance until the goods reach the right person, no?”
Even if Argon did spare them, the chance they’d ever see Karen alive again was at best remote.
“Now, señor,” Argon continued, “I suggest that your next step be backward, toward the balcony with the lady and the other girl.
Otherwise, I will have to shoot all of you. It matters not to me.”
It really didn’t. Caroline could see the man had no emotion in his black gaze. She exchanged a furtive glance with Blaine. His look spoke volumes of love and desperation, volumes that she returned with understanding. The decision was his.
Blaine contemplated the gun, every muscle in his body coiling tighter, awaiting his decision. Surely God hadn’t given him a second chance with his daughter for it all to end like this. He had Caroline and Annie to think about as well. He was close enough to kick the gun from Argon’s hand—if he still had the sureness of his old football days.
Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit.
His thoughts tumbled to a halt at the challenge. Was Caroline’s devotion about letting go and trusting the Holy Spirit meant for today . . . for this? He rebelled at the idea of acquiescing to Argon’s demand, of turning his daughter over to the gun-wielding demon before him.
Or was this God’s demand? Professing faith was one thing.
Putting it where his mouth was, where his loved ones’ lives were, was another. The split-second decision took an eternity to make in Blaine’s mind.
Dragging his first foot backward was like moving the Quebrada cliffs, but somehow he did it. Then the second. And another backward, and another . . . until he felt Caroline’s hand on his shoulder.
God, I claim Your Word, he prayed as Karen pulled away from bellman’s grasp with a terrified “Nooo!” and ducked through the open bathroom door.
The sound of it slamming against the porcelain of the tub inside erupted in gonglike thunder. Ever so briefly, Blaine thought a gun had gone off in it. Head pivoting, so apparently did Argon. But it was neither the bathroom door, nor a gun. It was the slam of the hallway door striking the luggage cart. The cart careened into the gunman.
Caroline’s astonished “John!” penetrated the adrenaline rush in Blaine’s ear as he tackled the distracted thug.