Jett scanned the fog-covered island. The ground was rocky, that much he could tell. How far to the mainland? To help? He could swim a long way if properly motivated, and he was feeling more motivated every moment with Tom’s arrogant stare fixed on him.
He would have thought the island was uninhabited, part of the Channel Islands National Park, a chain of eight small islands off the Southern California coast, where he’d done some kelp forest diving in his younger days, enjoyed some abalone and lobster hunts. That opinion changed as they drove down a steep slope, passing a helicopter pad and turning onto a paved road. Another two miles down and they came to a palatial home, softly lit by ground lights. It was a long, rectangular structure, three stories with a pillared front entryway. It had a mausoleum quality to it, but what did Jett know about mansions? He’d lived in a beat-up Dodge truck when he’d had to.
The cart pulled around to what Jett figured must be the back entrance. Tom turned. “You will be permitted to use the facilities. You will be fed. If you try anything stupid like escaping, you will be shot.” Tom spoke calmly. “You understand there is nowhere for you to go. This is an island, accessible only by boat or helicopter, neither of which you have at your disposal.”
Jett’s grip tightened around Sarah’s shoulders. “When exactly do we stop with all the cloak-and-dagger stuff and find out about our mystery abductor?”
“Soon,” Tom said, and Jett didn’t like the smirk. “You’ll find out soon enough who you’re dealing with.”
“We’ve had a very long day,” Jett snapped.
Tom stopped at the top of a staircase and motioned for them to go down. “It’s going to get longer.” He grinned as they passed him.
When they reached the bottom, they made their way down a long, tiled corridor, which led to the empty kitchen and a final set of stairs.
Jett tried again. “We’re not sheep. We deserve to know where we’re going.”
“All right,” Tom said, as he motioned for his partner to unlock a metal door. The smell hit him first, the scent of old stone and mildew, the smell of prison. Time to take action.
Jett spun and clipped the guy on the side of the head with a fist. He went down easily. As Jett lunged for the fallen guard’s gun and turned, he realized his opponent had predicted the action.
Tom had his gun drawn, pointed at them both. “That got you nothing. Now get inside or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
Jett held up his hands and let out a breath. The guard he’d clobbered shakily got to his feet. They were guided inside a massive wine cellar. He could make out a wall covered with tiny cubbyholes, many of which housed dusty bottles. Electric lights were fixed into pockets in the rock. The low ceiling was formed of honey-colored stone, and he had to hunker down in order to keep from bashing his head on a brick archway.
Ahead, two stone cells faced each other with iron bars across the openings, sturdy bars with shiny new padlocks hanging from the old iron locks. Whoever this nut was, he intended to cage them like animals. Anger flooded past the fatigue. Jett considered trying to overpower Tom again, but he had taken a spot just behind Sarah, shielding himself. Coward.
Think it through, he remembered Marco saying time and time again. Before you blow the fuse.
He forced himself to breathe.
“Into the cell,” Tom said, giving him a shove in the small of the back, which nearly pitched him forward onto his face on the stone floor. Tom clanged the door closed. The padlock clicked into place and the darkness washed over him. The combination of darkness and cold triggered a memory from his arduous fifty-one weeks of navy EOD training. He was a new recruit again, deep at the bottom of the pitch-black training pool. His instructor clipped him on the side of the head, stripped him of his air tanks and left him to find his way, blind and disoriented, back to the surface. He’d felt fear then until he’d reoriented, eventually rescuing himself so he could go on to be an EOD and rescue others. He still felt the weight of that crab pinned to his uniform, the nickname for the coveted badge with its lightning bolts, bomb and shield he’d earned with blood, sweat and tears, the badge he could no longer wear.
“You’ll be sent for,” Tom was saying.
“When?”
“When you’re needed,” Tom said. “In the meantime, make yourself comfortable. You’re going to be here awhile.”
To Jett’s surprise, Tom gestured for Sarah to follow him back the way they’d come from.
“Where are you taking her?” he demanded.
Tom didn’t answer.
“I said, where you are taking her?” he shouted, smacking a fist against the bars that caged him.
There was no answer except a soft laugh and total darkness as Tom snapped off the light and led Sarah away.
The helplessness and rage filled him, making him want to lash out and kick at the bars with all his might. But one thing he’d learned as an EOD was patience. Slow deliberation meant success, though his emotions tugged at him like a vicious riptide. He would solve the problem, disarm the situation. He forced a couple of deep breaths in and out. Sarah would probably be praying at this moment.
She could go ahead and say her useless prayers, but he was going to do what he always did—give it his all. For himself, and for her.
Settling back into the darkness, Jett began to take stock.
* * *
Sarah’s pulse thudded in her throat as she was taken up two flights of stairs. Her thoughts circled around Jett. He was probably safest locked up. Maybe she would have a chance to calmly reason with their new abductor. Whoever it was had to be more reasonable than Antonio Beretta. Jett wasn’t in the frame of mind for anything calm, so the tact would have to be left to her. Tom ushered her into a bedroom.
“You can clean up in here. The housekeeper put out some clothes. You have five minutes.”
“But I—” He closed the door in her face. The room was large, decorated in white with touches of pink, clearly a woman’s room, she thought. On the delicate bedspread was a pair of jeans and a UCLA sweatshirt. She didn’t want to wear these things—clearly they belonged to whoever owned the room—but her own clothes were soiled and damp. Quickly she stripped off her pants and pulled on the others. The jeans were too big, so she rolled them up at the bottoms, but there was nothing she could do about the baggy waist. The sweatshirt was also made for a bigger woman, but the soft, dry fleece was bliss against her skin. The bathroom mirror shocked her with her own reflection. Shadows smudged her eyes, and her cheek was scratched. Smears of dirt streaked her chin and temples. She looked like she felt—a scared, frightened child.
The familiar sick sensation, the hopeless, helpless wave, rippled through her insides like it had done in the four long weeks of hospital recovery time. Every time she’d battled her way to consciousness, the emotional maelstrom hit her and pushed her back under when she’d realized that she was not dreaming: her father really was dead. Worse yet, she had been the one at the wheel. At those moments she wanted to slip back into oblivion and keep the terrible truth away. Only God had gotten her through. With His help and the tireless support of her sisters, mother and Marco, she’d gotten her life back, or at least her new version of life. She wasn’t going to let it go.
“Sarah,” she said to her reflection. “You are not powerless.” Quickly she splashed water on her face and rubbed it clean, retied her ponytail, used the facilities and washed her hands. Soap. Water. Dry towels. Strange how just those few meager normalities made her feel braver. The cracked face on her watch told her she still had a few minutes left, so she riffled through all the bathroom drawers for something she could use—scissors, a nail file. They were empty and pristinely clean.
Her search of the dresser drawers also yielded nothing. On the bedside table she noticed an old rotary phone, the kind her mother still kept in the study at home. Hope surging, she snatched it up, until she realized there was no dial tone. She plunked the receiver down. For all its prettiness and the tasteful spring landscapes on the walls, the room had an abandoned feel, as if the occupant had moved out long ago. Not surprising if the lord of the manor made it a policy of kidnapping people, she thought.
Tom must have been keeping time, because he unlocked the door at exactly five minutes by her watch.
“Come on,” he said.
She was led down a tiled hallway. A half dozen paintings hung in alcoves along the way, each enhanced by its own soft light. Thundering seascapes, portraits and a handful of abstracts. Sarah was not an art expert by any means, but the work was eye-catching and expensively framed. They passed another room, clearly a gallery, with plush carpet and more framed pieces on the walls.
“You work for an art collector?” she said to Tom. He didn’t answer, but she figured she’d been on the mark. On the way, she memorized the floor plan as best she could.
He led her into a formal dining room featuring a long, gleaming wood table. Jett was seated in one of the upholstered chairs, looking out of place.
“Sarah,” he said, half getting to his feet until Tom gestured him back down with his gun. Jett’s hands were still tied and he had not been allowed a change of clothes. His face was as bruised and tired as hers, though the edge of defiance was as strong as ever.
Play it cool, she wanted to say.
“Our host is an art collector, Jett,” she said. It made her feel stronger to take charge of the conversation.
Jett raised an eyebrow. “Bully for him. Did he drag us all the way here to talk about art?”
“In a manner of speaking,” said a voice from the shadows. A well-dressed man, maybe in his late sixties, stepped forward. He wore trousers, a button-up shirt open at the neck, and a heavy-gauge knit sweater. As his gray eyes drifted from Jett to Sarah, he sucked in a breath. His hand went to his throat as if his suit collar was too tight. He stared at her, mouth pursed in a surprised circle, a neatly cut wave of silver hair catching the lamplight.
“Mary,” he whispered.
Tom cleared his throat. “Mr. Ellsworth, this is Sarah Gallagher, the nurse who was tending to Del Young in Mexico along with this man, Dominic Jett. We brought them here at your request.”
Ellsworth stared at Sarah, and the sustained eye contact made her stomach knot. At last he spoke again. “You are wearing her clothes.”
“They were left out for me,” Sarah said. “I’m Sarah Gallagher.”
His eyes narrowed, seeming to come into focus. “Of course. For a moment...” He waved a hand. “Forgive me, I have not been sleeping well.”
Jett’s expression grew even warier, she noticed out of the corner of her eye.
“Sarah Gallagher,” Ellsworth said in a near whisper. “The missionary nurse.”
“Right,” she said. “And I want to know why you kidnapped us.”
“Yes, of course.” He blinked. “Please sit down. You must be hungry.”
In fact, she was famished. “No. Answer the question.”
He smiled. “So like my Mary. Soft and strong at the same time. I’m Ezra Ellsworth, and this is my home, mine and my daughter Mary’s. Her mother—” his lip quivered and he cleared his throat “—her mother, Jane, died some years ago of cancer, though she fought it valiantly.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Sarah said. “But you’ve not explained a thing. We’ve been kidnapped, threatened at gunpoint and drugged. We’re not going to sit down here and have a nice family dinner with you.”
Jett smiled, and it pleased her. Her chin went up another notch. She’d felt so...tentative about everything since her father died. Her own confidence, even if it was a bluff, surprised her.
“I apologize for your mistreatment. It has been a stressful time for me,” Ellsworth said, sinking down onto a chair.
“We’re a little stressed, too,” Jett said. “What with being abducted and all.”
Ellsworth ignored him, gaze riveted on Sarah. He pulled out a chair next to him, across from Jett.
“Please, do sit down, Sarah.”
Perhaps indulging the man would help. She sat and tried a gentler tone. “Why did you have Tom bring us here, Mr. Ellsworth? You went to a lot of trouble to smuggle us out of Mexico. Why?”
“I need Mr. Young, and you two were his best chance of making it to me alive.”
“Why do you need him?”
A ripple of disgust distorted Ellsworth’s face. “He knows the whereabouts of my two greatest treasures. I am an art collector, as you said a moment ago. Del Young was working to acquire a painting for me. The piece is entitled The Red Lady.”
Sarah sifted through the odd bits of conversation she’d had with Young. “He mentioned it, I think.”
He jerked. “Yes. Did he tell you where she is?”
“No, he was mostly incoherent, but he rambled something about ‘finding her.’”
“No doubt he would. The Red Lady is a painting by Dutch master Johannes Vermeer.”
Jett looked interested. “The guy who painted Girl With a Pearl Earring?”
Both Sarah and Ellsworth stared at him. Who knew Jett was an art connoisseur?
Ellsworth raised a finger in salute to Jett. “Very good. Vermeer was a seventeenth-century Dutch painter, only moderately successful in his lifetime, but now...” Ellsworth’s face grew rapt. “Now we can truly appreciate the sharp contours, the accents of color. The Red Lady is even more spectacular than Girl With a Pearl Earring. Just the color palette alone...”
“Okeydoke,” Jett said, holding up his palms. “We got it. The Red Lady was painted by Vermeer, which means it’s worth what, approximately?”
In spite of his abrupt, cavalier attitude, she knew Jett was goading, probing, trying to gauge if Ellsworth was truly an enemy or if he had the potential to be an ally. He’d always seen people in black-and-white, friends or enemies. She didn’t have to wonder which camp she fell into. She’d dumped him. Helping her now was merely moral obligation, not anything more.
“The Red Lady is priceless,” Ellsworth was saying.
Jett laughed. “Everything’s got a price. What did you pay for it?”
He drummed his fingers. “If you must be so crass as to stick a tag on her, she was purchased at an auction for thirty million dollars.”
Sarah gaped. Thirty million dollars would build an entire hospital in Playa Del Oro and maybe a fire station, too.
Jett whistled. “That’s a tidy sum. So The Red Lady is yours?”
Ellsworth hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Yes.”
“And the problem is?”
“Someone else believes otherwise.”
“Who?”
“The man whom I hired Mr. Young to steal from.”
A ripple of cold passed through Sarah’s heart as the pieces fell into place. “Wait a minute. You hired Del Young to steal The Red Lady from Antonio Beretta? I thought you bought it at the auction.”
Ellsworth grunted. “No. She was meant to be mine. Young said he could get her for me. He has...skills in this area, which I have utilized before.”
“Hang on.” Jett put his hands on the table. “So if you weren’t the buyer at the auction, The Red Lady never belonged to you, did she?”
“I said she should have been mine, if it weren’t for Antonio Beretta. I was on my way to the auction to purchase her, but he prevented it, so I arranged the theft to take back what should rightfully belong to me.”
“Uh-huh. What could possibly go wrong with that plan? Stealing from a Mexican drug lord,” Jett said with an eye roll.
Ellsworth missed the sarcasm. “The plan went perfectly until Young double-crossed me and fled with both my treasures a little over three months ago.”
“What is the other one?” Sarah asked. “What is the second treasure Young stole from you, Mr. Ellsworth? Another painting?”
Ellsworth’s eyes went hard as flint. “He took my daughter, Mary.”