HER SECRET GUARDIAN Page 2

  "Yes," she admitted.

  "And he's gone now?" Allison asked.

  "Yes."

  Then Jane. "Are you okay?"

  Grace nodded.

  "Who is he?"

  "He wouldn't say."

  "Where did he come from?"

  "I wish I knew." She'd track him down if she could.

  "Sweetie," Allison said, "you look like you've been hit upside the head and the world's kind of spinning all around you. Are you okay?"

  "I think so."

  "What did he do to you?"

  Grace would never hear the end of it. She knew it. But she was too surprised, too overwhelmed, and she couldn't hold it inside. "He kissed me."

  Stunned silence greeted her revelation.

  Jane cocked her head to the side, then felt Grace's forehead. "No fever," she said, holding up two fingers. "How many?"

  "I'm not sick, and nobody hit me over the head," Grace said, pushing her away. "Do you think I'd have to be delusional to believe a man kissed me?"

  "No." Jane looked offended. "I didn't mean that at all. Although, I know you, Grace. You have a sex life that would make a nun proud."

  "That bad?" Allison chimed in.

  "Oh, yeah," Jane insisted, turning back to Grace. "Are you sure he didn't cast a spell over you? You still look a bit dazed."

  She felt that way, too, and no matter how odd it sounded, found herself compelled to ask, "You both saw him, right? Tall, dark and handsome? A bit dangerous, maybe? He was here? Just now?"

  Jane looked even more concerned.

  Allison giggled and took Grace by the arm. "Come on, sweetie. Let's go inside. Somebody needs to check you over. I think you've got a fuse on the fritz. But don't worry. We'll take good care of you."

  "I'm fine," Grace insisted. "I'm just … surprised. That's all. He knew my name. How would he know my name? How does he always know where to find us and when we have to go? Why does he even care?"

  "So he's like a stalker now?" Jane suggested.

  "No," she insisted. "I don't know what he is, but he says we have to leave."

  "And we're going?" Jane asked.

  "Yes."

  "Because he said so?"

  "Yes," Grace admitted. "I know it doesn't make any sense. I know nothing about this makes sense. But he's always been right about these things."

  She believed in him, and she didn't believe in anything or anyone.

  Grace looked up at her two friends. Jane still looked worried. "Are you going to write me up?" Grace asked. "Send me off for a psych consult when we get back to London?"

  "I don't know. Do you need one?"

  She sighed. "I don't know."

  But she needed him. She needed him to come back. To tell her his name. To kiss her about a dozen more times.

  "So," Allison said, devilish delight in her tone. "He kissed you…"

  "Yes." Grace blushed.

  "And you liked it?"

  "Yes."

  She put her arm around Grace's shoulders. "Come tell Mother Allison all about it."

  Grace ducked under the arm and turned to go back inside. "Come on. I promised we'd be out of here at first light."

  Reluctantly, she packed up her team.

  Grace stopped the small convoy just across the border. At the request of the UN's officer in charge, she told him what she could about the situation they'd left behind. He told them it wasn't public knowledge yet, but within hours, UN Security Council-authorized military strikes would begin against the rebels trying to take control of the area.

  Grace and her team had known that was coming. Even when they'd gone in, weeks ago, they'd known. But military powers tended to talk about things for a long time before taking action, and a lot of innocent people got hurt in the interim. People who needed the kind of help Grace and her team had to offer. So they always stayed as long as they could, sometimes too long.

  Grace could tell by what she saw at the border that the time for diplomacy had passed. Military action was indeed imminent.

  And he'd known. The tall, dark, handsome man, who thought she'd grown into a beauty and had kissed her until her brain short-circuited, had known.

  Grace thought about asking the British commander if he'd sent anyone into the city to warn people like her to get out, thought about asking about him, her mystery man. But what would she say? She could barely describe him, couldn't even be sure of his nationality.

  He'd saved them one more time. And she didn't even know his name.

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  « ^ »

  Eighteen months later

  The communications technician frowned at his computer terminal, which was emitting an unsettling beeping noise he'd never heard before outside a training exercise.

  "What the hell is that?" he said to the senior man sitting next to him in the room where communications were monitored twenty-four hours a day.

  "Bad news," the second man said calmly.

  A message, clear and concise, flashed across his screen, a level-five flash directed to his superior's superior.

  "Geez." The technician read the message twice, blinking in disbelief. "I thought the president had to get shot or something before I'd seen an L-5 flash."

  "Close to it," the second man said. "What's it about?"

  Puzzled, he said, "Some lady doctor."

  The printer was spitting out the message, even as they spoke. The second man picked it up and read it himself, cursing and shaking his head. "The boss is visiting today. I think he's on the firing range. Keeping us all humble, I'd bet."

  The first man took the message back. Procedure called for it to be delivered immediately, by hand if possible. "I'll see to it."

  "Rodrigez?"

  "Yeah, skipper," he said, already turning to head to the firing range.

  "Let me give you a little tip. You don't want to hand that to the boss while he's got a loaded weapon in his hand."

  Rodrigez frowned, not at all sure how he might get his boss to put down his weapon before handing over the message.

  He was almost out the door before the second man called after him. "Tell the boss I'm pulling together any info we've got on the situation down there, and that I'll find him a plane."

  Surprised, Rodrigez said, "You think he'll go down there?"

  "He and the lady go way back. He'll go."

  Two hours earlier

  Grace, Allison and Jane stared intently at the murky image on the television screen. There was Grace, two days before, calmly explaining to the camera how little she could do to save the people painstakingly making their way to the IRC clinic in the tiny Central American country of San Reino, because she simply didn't have the necessary medical supplies.

  As the camera panned down the rows of makeshift cots, past the painfully thin bodies of children and adults in desperate need of help, the IRC's medical director, Peter Baxter, shouted, "Are you seeing this?"

  "Yes," Grace said into the static-filled pay phone connection. She'd given an interview to an American television journalist two days ago. And now all hell had broken loose. "I don't see the problem."

  "Keep watching," Peter said.

  Her face gave way to that of the serious-looking journalist, who said bluntly that medical supplies from all over the world, sent by well-meaning people trying to avert disaster in Central America, were likely being stolen by the country's rebel dictators, then sold at hugely inflated prices on the black market to fund the rebels' military operations. It was the kind of news that dried up donations all over the world and ultimately made her job much harder.

  "I didn't tell him that," Grace shouted into the phone. "I didn't."

  She'd wanted to, because everything the reporter said was likely true. She knew exactly where her supplies were going. But Grace hadn't said any of that, because she knew it wouldn't do any good. The reporter went on, about greed and frustration and the tragedy of a country's citizens being betrayed by its own people.

  "Come on."
Grace waited. "There's got to be more to it than this."

  There wasn't. The reporter had let Grace complain and then added his own conclusions, from his "anonymous sources," that her supplies were being stolen for gun money, and one thing ran so smoothly into the next, it looked to all the world as if it had all come from Grace. End of story.

  Beside her, Jane groaned. Allison whistled her trouble-is-coming whistle.

  "I didn't tell him that," Grace said again into the phone. "I swear."

  "All right. I believe you. But I'm probably the only one who's going to," Peter warned.

  "The kicker is, I still have no supplies, Peter."

  "I understand. But infuriating the local officials is not going to help."

  "Neither has anything else I've tried," she complained.

  "Hey, do you want out of there?"

  "No," she said.

  "Because if you can't do this job, I'll take you out."

  "Peter, I can do this job."

  "You're sure? I could send someone for a couple of weeks. You could take a break. How long has it been since you've had some time off, Grace?"

  "I don't need time off. I just need supplies."

  "Okay. I'll find a way to get them to you."

  "Thank you," she said, not sounding at all grateful. Grace sighed. "I am sorry, all right? I don't want to make your job any harder, either."

  "Then be careful, okay. And watch yourselves. There's a tropical depression that popped up yesterday. You might get hit with another hurricane."

  "Great." She hung up the phone and frowned.

  "That bad?" Allison said.

  "No." She'd been bawled out before, by men far more stern and imposing than Peter Baxter. Granted, she normally handled things with a bit more diplomacy than she had this morning's grilling by Peter. But she was okay. She could cope with all of this. Grace always found a way to cope.

  "I noticed you didn't tell Peter about your little chat with the locals this morning," Jane, her conscience, said.

  "No, I didn't." Why add fuel to the fire? Peter was upset enough already. "This will all blow over. You'll see."

  The three of them strolled down a narrow, crowded street in the capital of San Reino. The tiny country in Central America had been crippled by devastating floods and mud slides following a hurricane that had stalled off the coast three months before, dumping torrential rain on the area for days on end. They were working in the countryside, near the coast, under the most trying of conditions – understaffed, overwhelmed and desperately short of supplies – and Grace was tired. Desperately tired. That was the only excuse she had for her little show of temper this morning with the provincial governor, who'd sent troops to her clinic to "escort" her and her staff to his headquarters. Grace hadn't even thought of arguing at the high-handed tactics.

  She'd tried to swallow her temper once they arrived. But the man – Milero – had been so smug, making a show of apologizing for the difficulties she and her team faced in trying desperately to help his people. He'd assured her that he wanted her organization here and would do all he could to help her by putting an end to the irregularities with the delivery of her supplies. But his tone clearly said something else, delivering the kind of veiled threat that made Grace's blood boil. Clearly, he was furious at her and her organization.

  "You really think I came on too strong with our so-called friend this morning?" Grace asked. "What was I supposed to do? Smile and nod and look contrite?"

  "He could kick us out of the country if he wanted to," Jane warned.

  "He won't." Grace's pride was smarting, her temper still short. "If we were gone, who would he steal supplies from?"

  Allison chuckled.

  Jane persisted. "You could be careful. I know you're never afraid, but you could think of the rest of us. The man scared me, and I'm scared for you now."

  "Come on," Allison said. "Grace is right. All of this will blow over. And we can't be in real trouble. If we were, Grace's mystery man would be here."

  Grace rolled her eyes. The legend lived on. It simply refused to die. Just like her memory of his kiss. She'd drawn his face a million times in her mind. There were times when she'd be in a city somewhere – a civilized place – and she'd catch sight of a dark head in the crowd, and think just for a moment it was him. That he was indeed watching over her and knew she was looking for him, wishing for him to appear.

  She was frustrated enough today that she was ready for a fantasy man. Ready for him to drop from the sky and carry her off with him, to somewhere cool and clean and untroubled.

  A holiday, Grace thought. Peter was always pestering her to take a holiday.

  Where would she go?

  Anywhere with him, she decided.

  "Good Lord, look at her face," Allison said. "You're not holding out on us, are you, Grace? You haven't seen him lately?"

  "No." Much to her chagrin, he hadn't appeared out of thin air, at least not anywhere near her. Not for more than a year. Her life had been downright predictable. He'd told her to go find a nice, safe natural disaster, and a string of them had fallen into her lap – as if he commanded the forces of nature, as well.

  "You're still grinning," Allison said. "You never tried to find him?"

  "How could I? I don't know anything about him."

  "Oh." Allison sounded disappointed. "I thought you might be telling us a story about that, too."

  "I didn't make him up, and I don't know anything about him. I swear."

  "If she did, she'd have disappeared with him by now," Jane said wryly.

  "You know something," she admitted, "you're right."

  They were still laughing as they turned the corner onto the main street, a hot, dusty, bumpy ride back to the clinic site awaiting them. Grace was distracted, thinking about him. Irritated with him. A man shouldn't be allowed to kiss a woman like that, then disappear for a year and a half. Especially a woman kissed as seldom as Grace.

  Shaking her head, she continued on. Traffic noises were constant, raucous and unpredictable. She barely paid attention to the squeal of tires forced to stop too quickly. Even as she sensed a real commotion behind her, she wasn't really alarmed.

  Maybe she had put entirely too much faith in her so-called guardian angel, because she hadn't worried about anything really bad happening to her, even before he first showed up. Death was something she hadn't feared from the time she was a girl. Not since she lost everyone who mattered to her. So she was only mildly interested in the commotion that erupted around them.

  Allison screamed first. Turning, Grace saw that her friend had been thrown to the ground. Vaguely, she realized the crowd on the streets had fallen back, creating a cavern of sorts – a line of people, the building, the cars, her friends and her in the middle of it.

  The men in front of them had submachine guns. Grace knew the make and model. She'd gotten up close and personal with a lot of weapons.

  Jane went hurling sideways next, knocked out of the way by a burly-looking man dressed in fatigues and a pair of army boots. Dark-complected, dark-haired, with a bushy mustache and of indiscriminate age, he could have been from any number of factions of Central American rebels, freedom fighters, militia or military. Everybody fought for some cause in San Reino. Chaos reined.

  She'd known that, and still, she hadn't been afraid.

  Grace knew she'd feel so stupid about it later, but she actually looked around for him. Her angel. He'd speak Spanish here. Flawless Spanish.

  Of course, it was broad daylight, and he didn't venture out in the light. Now, when she needed him most of all, he was nowhere to be found. Would that be his excuse, she wondered? The light?

  Grace gasped, near-hysterical laughter threatening to erupt from deep within. She fought it, let loose a scream instead. Because one of the rebels was reaching for her, and if they were going to take her off a public street in broad daylight, she wanted to make sure as many people as possible saw them, saw her, and remembered. Maybe someone wouldn't be afraid to t
ell what happened to her.

  The man closest to her hooked a beefy arm around her waist and flung her toward the waiting car, the back door open, the motor running. Someone was gunning it. Ready. She would simply disappear. It happened all the time in Central America. Kidnapping had become a favored sport.

  She fought again, getting her arms out, pushing against the frame of the car they intended to use to take her away. That was the first rule in this sort of situation. Don't let them take you. She got slammed against the car frame for her troubles, the impact knocking the breath from her lungs.

  The man shoved her down, her chin connecting painfully with the top of the car before he backed up long enough for her head to slide in. He shoved one more time. She went sprawling on the floor of the back seat.

  He jumped in beside her. The door slammed. The engine revved. The car tore away from the curb. She was still screaming, still trying to draw as much attention to herself as she could. She rose up on her hands and knees, and her captor backhanded her across the mouth, so hard she hit her head against the back of the seat. The tinny taste of blood filled her mouth.

  It was done. They'd taken her.

  She could hardly believe it, even when her kidnapper pressed a dirty cloth, wet with some chemical, across her mouth and nose. She fought him, knowing it was a losing battle. The way she was gasping for breath, it wouldn't take long for the chemical to do its work. Already, that seductive sense of calm and quiet was calling to her, weakness invading her limbs and making her head spin.

  But still, she fought, because she was mad, almost as mad at her abductor as she was at herself.

  Mad at another man, as well, the one who hadn't come in time to save her.

  * * *

  They'd bound her ankles together with duct tape while she was unconscious. Her hands, too, she found as she slowly came to. Her arms were stretched behind her back in a hold that was painful; they'd gone tingly, almost numb, from poor blood circulation. She was moving in an awkward way she couldn't comprehend, her head bouncing, the world bouncing around as well.

  And then she realized she'd been flung over a burly shoulder. Her head hung over the man's back, bobbing as he walked.