“What the hell is going on?” Chase demanded as he checked Chelsea once more. The bandage and seal were working; bleeding and losing air through the wound was stopped. That was good. Still no sign of an exit wound. That was bad.
“They kidnapped Cole,” Sarah said once more. She had her arms wrapped around her body, shaking. “I couldn’t stop them.”
“Who kidnapped him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Call the cops,” Chase ordered. On Sarah’s face, he could see shock setting in.
“They’ve got Cole.” She said it as if she didn’t believe it. She blinked. “We need to get your dog to a vet.”
Chase looked up from checking Chelsea’s wound and spoke distinctly, combat mode when trying to get through to someone in shock. “Call. Nine. One. One.”
She shook her head slowly. “We can’t go to the police, and we especially can’t go to Spanish Wells Security. You saw them today.”
“This is kidnapping. Not some dispute over a dog.”
She seemed adamant. “We can’t call the police.”
“The guys in the SUV have him?” Chase asked.
Sarah had not stopped shaking her head. “Two men in a boat snatched him off the dock where he was crabbing.” She nodded over her shoulder. “The house is on the other side of the street. Backs onto Broad Creek.”
Chase knew that boat was gone into the dark, up Broad Creek, into the Intracoastal and gone among the thousands of barrier islands and miles of wetlands. “I still think you should call the police and—” He stopped as Chelsea whined loudly, struggling in his arms. He grabbed some disinfectant, and gingerly poured it into Chelsea’s wound as he pulled back the bandage. She whined once more, but didn’t fight him as he pressed the bandage back on the wound.
With a shaking hand, Sarah pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. Using an ACE wrap, Chase secured the bandage and seal to Chelsea. She whined in pain, but didn’t try to pull away.
“Good girl.”
“Closest veterinarian!” Sarah shouted into the phone.
“Searching your location,” the phone replied. There was a pause, then the mechanical female voice continued. “I found three veterinarians. One of them is fairly close to you.”
Sarah did something on the screen of her phone and put it to her ear. There was a pause, then Sarah spoke rapidly. “We have a dog that’s been shot. She’s hurt badly.”
Another pause, then Sarah looked at Chase. “The vet will meet us at her office. Twelve-forty Palmetto Road. Do you know where that is?”
“Yeah.”
Once more, Chase scooped Chelsea up and carried her out to the Jeep, Sarah following. He laid the dog down in the back, then jumped in the driver’s seat as he tugged on a black pullover that had been draped over the steering wheel. As soon as Sarah slid into the passenger seat, he threw the Jeep in gear and raced down the driveway, spitting out gravel and taking the turn onto the hardtop too fast.
With the wind whistling past them and his focus on the road, there was no more conversation as Chase raced out of Brams Point and onto the Island’s main drag. He tried to remember if he’d seen a Vet’s office on his way to his new home in the morning, an event that seemed very long ago now.
“Eleven-ten,” Sarah called out, pointing to the right as she spotted an address. “It will be on that side. Soon.”
Chase saw a light go on in a window ahead and turned the wheel, skidding to a halt in front of the building. It was an old service station, painted bright green. Chase jumped out, picking up Chelsea and carrying her to the door. Sarah was ahead, opening it.
Chase came to an abrupt halt as he spotted a woman wearing jeans and a green smock waiting for him. Her red hair was fiery as he remembered, but cut short now, tight and efficient. “Erin?”
The veterinarian smiled. “Horace Chase. Been a long time. I got your message, but you didn’t leave a callback number and it just said private line.” The smile faded as she saw the blood on his and Sarah’s clothes. “Bring your dog in here.” She pointed toward a swinging door and led the way.
Chase carried Chelsea in, and gently set her down on an operating table. Erin already had a needle out, and expertly stuck it in Chelsea’s right front leg.
She looked at the ACE wrap, bandage, and seal. “You know what you’re doing. QuickClot. That’s good. And the seal.” She glanced up at him. “But that’s Army gear and Army training, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“All right. West Point, and all that good stuff. Never saw you again after you left for the Academy. Tried to call you, and you never called back. Tried to write, and you never wrote back.” Erin shifted her focus back to the dog. “She’s stable. You can go back out now. I’ll take care of her.”
Chase nodded and slowly backed up.
Erin smiled. “Good to see you again, Chase.”
Chase could only nod, then his back was against the door and he almost stumbled out into the front room. Sarah had collapsed on a rumpled old bean-bag couch at one end of the room. He half-smiled, thinking the couch and the rest of the waiting area fit Erin Brannigan as he spotted a large rocking unicorn in the corner. At least the seventeen year-old Erin Brannigan he remembered with surprising clarity from his teenage years. Weeks, Chase reminded himself. He’d only known her weeks.
“You need to call nine-one-one,” he said.
Sarah was about to answer when the door to the operating room flew open, and Erin stuck her head out. Her red hair was covered with a surgical cap and her smock had a splatter of blood on it, and Chase felt a moment’s déjà vu, remembering the Evac Center in Kandahar, waiting on the doc to tell him about one of his men.
“Get in here, Chase. I need help to get the bullet out.”
Chase ran to the door, following Erin to the large, blood-stained table where Chelsea lay on her side. An IV ran into one leg above the wrist and a large mask covered her muzzle, a pump rhythmically working.
“She has a pneumothorax on the left side,” Erin said as she took a position on one end of the table, pointing for Chase to get on the other. “The bullet hit the chest obliquely before penetrating, or else she’d be dead. It cracked a rib before piercing the lung.”
“Where’s the bullet now?” Chase asked.
Erin shook her head. “In the lung. I need you to hold the outer wound open so I can go in and line up the pleural wound, remove the bullet, then suture it.”
Chase nodded and grabbed a pair of surgical gloves.
“Here.” Erin pointed. “Push the skin forward.”
Chase did as instructed. He looked up as Sarah stuck her head in the door. “Do you need my help?”
“No,” Erin snapped without looking at her. “Hold it there,” Erin ordered Chase. He watched as she used a scalpel to cut into the wound, widening the narrow opening so she could work. Then she dropped the scalpel and picked up a pair of forceps and forced them in. Chase glanced at the swinging door. There was no sign of Sarah.
“Steady,” Erin whispered, as much to herself, Chase figured, as to him, as she maneuvered the forceps inside of Chelsea’s chest. She clamped down, and then carefully pulled the forceps out. She dropped a disfigured bullet into a tray along with the forceps.
“Keep holding,” she ordered. She grabbed a tube and placed it in the wound. “I’m tunneling under the skin following the entry pattern of the bullet.”
Chase maintained his hold on Chelsea’s chest. He could see it rising and falling, but knew that could be the machine working, and had to wonder if she would be capable of breathing on her own.
Erin got the tube in, then grabbed a suture. “This is going to take a little time. I’ve got to do three layers of closure. The pleura, the subcutaneous, then the skin.”
Chase nodded, wondering why there was no sound of sirens. He watched as Erin worked quickly and efficiently, her long fingers tying off the sutures. As she worked her way outward to the skin, she began speaking again.
“OK, Chase. As soon as I get this last in place, we’ve got to immediately re-establish negative pressure in the chest so she can breathe on her own. Go to that cabinet and grab a three-way stopcock, and attach it to the end of the chest tube. Then get a thirty-five-cc syringe, and attach it to the stopcock.”
Chase did as she instructed. Where were the police? He had the syringe on the stopcock just as Erin finished the last suture. She reached up and turned the stopcock. She pulled on the syringe, extracting air from Chelsea’s chest cavity, and then closed the stopcock. She expelled the air in the syringe. She repeated it several more times, and then suddenly Chelsea twitched, coughed into the mask, and began breathing on her own.
Erin immediately stopped what she doing, reached up, and pulled the mask off Chelsea’s muzzle. She smiled at Chase. “I think she’ll be all right.”
“Thank you.” Chase looked toward the door and saw it was cracked open, and Sarah was peeking in once more. “Did you call the police?” Chase called to her.
She disappeared without answering, and Erin gave him a quizzical look. “Wife?”
Chase shook his head.
“Girlfriend?”
Chase indicated negatively once more. “I just met her today.”
Erin laughed. “Horace Chase. Always the bad boy.”
Chase bit off telling her about the kidnapping. “I need to talk to her.”
“I’ll clean up in here,” Erin said, sensing the mood.
Chase went into the waiting area. He saw that Sarah had her cell phone out, and he assumed she was finally calling the police.
As soon as she started talking, he knew he had assumed wrong.
“Walter!” she cried out. “They’ve kidnapped our boy.”
Chase couldn’t make out what was being said on the other end. Sarah listened for a few moments, then cut in, voice shrill. “Damn it, Walter. What the hell is going on?”
Again, a pause.
“Who? Who is doing this?”
She listened, her eyes shifting to Chase, tears beginning to fill them.
“You think? You don’t know?”
Another pause, this time longer. Chase wished he could hear the other end of the conversation.
“What should I do?” she finally asked.
Obviously, she didn’t like the answer.
“Just sit here and do nothing? They came after me too, Walter. They wanted both of us. They came with guns.”
The other voice was speaking fast, that much Chase could make out.
“The house isn’t safe,” Sarah finally said, her voice getting firmer. “That’s where they found us. I can’t go back there.” She waited a few seconds, then locked eyes with Chase. “I think I have someplace safe.” She cocked her head in question, and Chase nodded. “Yes. For a little while, at least. Find out who’s behind this, Walter. We’ve got to get Cole back.” Then she clicked off the phone. She stared at it for a moment, then put it in her pocket and looked at Chase. “We can’t call the police.”
Chase folded his arms over his chest. “Why not?”
Sarah began crying, and Chase paused for a second, knowing this was one of those junctures where things were going to travel down one path or the other. He went over and wrapped her slender form into his arms, absorbing her sobs into his own body.
His arms were one place, but his thoughts were back at the firefight. He knew he’d hit one of the intruders. He was a little surprised the police or security hadn’t come screaming down the road right away, given the gunfire. Curious, thought Chase. It was as if gun battles happened every night on the street. His new neighborhood was definitely not an inner city with daily drive-bys. Multi-million dollar houses dotted both sides of the dead-end road that ended at Brams Point. The ones to the east faced Broad Creek, the ones to the west faced the Intracoastal Waterway. Prime real estate, on an island that was prime real estate. And he had a house with tree limbs poking through the roof into his living room. On prime real estate.
“Why can’t we call the police?” he pressed as he gingerly let go of her and stepped back.
Sarah ran her long fingers through her short, blond hair, and took a deep breath before speaking. “Walter’s job. What he does.”
Chase waited.
“Walter programs and runs the main-frame computer for an off-shore on-line gambling site called SAS,” she finally said. “It’s a very unique one that caters to a handful of high-rollers all over the country, but primarily here and in Savannah. And the Super Bowl is this weekend. The biggest event of the year for gambling. He received a call a little while ago. Someone wants him to shift all the money on bets in the twelve hours leading up to the game to an off-shore account. We’re talking at least fifty million dollars. Maybe more. They’re using Cole—and wanted me—as leverage to get him to do this.”
“Tell me exactly what happened earlier,” Chase said, already doing the ticking clock. It was late Friday night. The Super Bowl was Sunday evening. So the kidnappers deadline was Sunday morning.
“Cole was in the back, on the floating dock at the end of the pier. Crabbing.” She took a deep breath. “Too far away. But he likes going out there at night. I looked out the kitchen window when I heard an engine, and I saw a boat pull up to the dock. Two men got off. It was dark, and I couldn’t get a good look at them. They grabbed him, hauling him onto the boat. I started to run to the back door to go after them, but then those two guys you saw came smashing through the front door. I ran out a side door and down the street here, because I knew you would know what to do.”
“Where’s your husband?”
“In Antigua, with the main-frame at SAS’s headquarters.”
“He knew Cole had been kidnapped?”
“He said he’d just gotten a call, threatening to kill Cole if he didn’t do as instructed. And to not go to the police, or else they would kill Cole.”
“A call from who?”
Sarah wiped tears off her cheeks. “Walter didn’t know, but he guesses it’s the Russian mob. They’ve been crashing on-line gambling sites and extorting them over the past couple of years. Pay up or your system goes down. Walter said they had trouble with the Russians a couple of weeks ago during the Conference Championship games. Got shut down for six hours the night before. Cost them a couple of million in lost bets. So they paid out to a bank account in the Caymans, and got the system back running.”
Part of Chase’s mind was considering the angles to the extortion, and the other part was processing the Russian mob angle. “I was in Afghanistan,” he said. “The Russian mob was running a lot of opium out of that country through the northern border. Pretty—” He paused, biting off the word ruthless. “Pretty much a formidable opponent. But this is America. How does Walter know it’s them?” Even as he said it, Chase thought back to Colorado and how the Russians had infiltrated there.
“He doesn’t,” Sarah said. “He doesn’t know for sure who it is.” She had her arms wrapped tight around her body as if she were cold. Chase took off his long-sleeve pullover and gave it to her. He only had on his black T-shirt and his MK23 was exposed, but he didn’t think that was an issue right now.
“Who else could it be?” Chase pressed as she pulled the shirt on. He heard a clatter of metal from the operating room, and figured Erin was cleaning her instruments.
Sarah sighed and leaned back in the couch. “If it’s not the Russian mob it, could be—” She paused, obviously trying to think through her emotions as the reality seemed to catch up with her.
Chase waited.
“It could be your neighbor, Peter Rollins.”
Chase remembered the man with the gun. “What? Who the hell is he?”
“Rollins is—well—” She shook her head as if to clear it. “He’s a big part of Hilton Head Island. His father was one of the first to buy up large tracts on the island, before there was a bridge. It was a quiet backwater barrier island, up until that bridge.”
Chase had come to the island for the first time twenty-seven years ago with his mother. Just two years prior to going to the Military Academy. He’d never heard of Rollins. And he was pretty sure Rollins hadn’t recognized Sarah earlier.
“How do you know Rollins?”
“I don’t know him, I know of him. Most of Walter’s clients are on the island or in Savannah.”
Chase shook his head. “I don’t understand. If Walter lives here and—”
“Walter and I haven’t been close for a long time. I live in New York. I’ve always made it a point to stay away from Walter’s business locales, both here and in Antigua. Works better that way.” She seemed to anticipate his next question. “Walter wanted me to come down with Cole to the house that he rents when he comes here. He comes in by private boat, and doesn’t go through customs because there’s a warrant for his arrest for the gambling site. It’s the only place in the States we can meet. We were going to celebrate after the Super Bowl.” She sighed. “Things have been hard for us the last couple of years. This was supposed to be a big step toward a reconciliation.”
“What’s Rollins got to do with what happened?” Chase walked over to the rocking unicorn and gave it a slight push.
“Oh, I don’t know for sure,” Sarah said, slapping her palm down on the couch, resulting in a dull rattle of beans. “I don’t know who did this. But it happened on the island, and anything that happens on the island, Rollins knows something about. Notice that Spanish Wells Security didn’t show up. You think nobody on that street called in the shots?”
“How would Rollins know about Walter? Is he a client?”
“Yes, and I think he’s into SAS for a lot of money.”
“I don’t see why Rollins would do something like this.” Chase glanced toward the door, behind which his long-ago summer fling had just saved his new dog’s life. There was no longer the sound of metal on metal.
“I don’t know, either,” Sarah said. “But you saw him with that gun. The man isn’t all there. And Walter told me that Rollins has been doing some questionable land deals, and Rollins is one of the biggest land speculators in the area.”
Chase felt his anger surge as he heard Erin moving about inside the operating room. Shooting a dog. That was pretty damn low. What the hell was it with people? Chase wondered as he looked about. He noticed a couple of small statues of unicorns on the counter where the receptionist would work. The unicorns stirred something about Erin, but he couldn’t latch onto the memory.
“Is Walter going to do what the kidnappers want?”
“He told me he was going to check with his business partner.”
“Who is...?”
“I don’t know.”
The door to the operating room swung open and Erin came out, pulling off her surgical cap. “She should be all right,” Erin said. “Barring infection, she’ll recover quickly.”
“Thanks,” Chase said.
“Who shot her?” Erin was eyeing the gun, which was clearly visible in the middle of his back.
“I don’t know.”
“Where are the cops?” Erin asked.
“It’s a bit complicated,” Chase replied.
Erin regarded him for several seconds. “Always getting in trouble. Nothing’s changed, has it? I’d hug you, but the blood—”
Chase stepped forward and wrapped her in his arms. Two women in one night. Both with blood on them. The circumstances could have been a hell of lot better. “Thank you.” He let go of her and stepped back. He realized Sarah was watching them.
“Erin Brannigan, Sarah Briggs.”
The two women shook hands warily.
Erin turned back to Chase. “I’ve got to keep your dog—what’s her name?”
“Chelsea.”
Erin smiled, all dimples and freckles. “Chelsea. Nice. I’ll have to keep Chelsea here for a couple of days at least, for observation. She’s out right now. Should sleep at least for another six hours. Which also will help keep her from trying to scratch or chew out the stitches.”
Chase nodded. “Okay.”
“Is she up-to-date on her shots?”
“Uh. I don’t know.”
Erin frowned. “You don’t know?”
“I got her just two weeks ago, and I’ve been a bit busy in the meanwhile. I think they’re up-to-date.”
A sly smile crept across Erin’s face. “Horace Chase. Always rescuing the women. Gonna get you in trouble someday.”
Today’s the day, Horace thought.